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Winston Deavor had been hovering outside the central room of his forth estate for the last half an hour. He'd also just made what felt like the millionth lap up and down the entrance corridor. But it was no use, the knot in his stomach wasn't budging. If anything it was getting so much worse, and far from settling his thoughts into something more coherent, waiting was only scattering them further.
The spacious main living room was on the ground floor of a stylish property he'd recently purchased just outside of the city. It was luxurious and surrounded by a large amount of land, with beautiful gardens that merged seamlessly with the building by way of an immaculately designed conservatory. It also had the most security features of any property he'd owned, and it was the property to which his, until recently, incarcerated sister had been delivered into his custody to serve the rest of her sentence under house arrest.
It was a more lenient deal than even his most boastful lawyer had been prepared to estimate. The Deavor name and reputation was still held in high regard it seemed, even after everything. That was their parents' legacy.
So the paperwork had been hastily signed, the guards and escorts had left, evening was encroaching. He was alone in the huge hallway, outside of large varnished pine doors, feeling more lost and alone than he had done in years, even knowing his only living family member was on the other side of them. Maybe especially knowing that.
He adjusted his tie for probably the hundredth time for no one in particular and released another shaky breath as his hand hovered over the door-handle.
Evelyn . . . He wanted to see her so badly. The last few months had been harder on him than he could ever have anticipated, her absence in the huge DevTech offices weighing heavier on every room the longer she was away, and in every facet of his day-to-day business he was aware of just how much his sister had done behind the scenes without him fully realizing, or appreciating for that matter.
Picking up the slack had left him exhausted, and finding a lead designer to take her place while she was gone had been impossible. And that was on top of everything he'd been left to arrange with the newly legalized supers relying on him for his continued support.
Winston swallowed and steeled himself a final time. He rested his hand on the silver door handle, feeling the cool metal sharp on his palm, then pushed it down and entered the room in one quick motion, like tearing off a band aid.
He held his breath. Evelyn was sat, perched on the arm of one of the many sofas in the large open-plan room, with her back to him. In the large empty space with the cold evening light flooding in through the glass skylights, she looked so slight and fragile that Winston's mind had trouble understanding that the events of the previous months had ever happened. The whole thing still felt like a dream . . . or a nightmare.
She did look thinner though, and her hair was in need of a brush. Winston felt a sharp pang of pity noticing that. Just another emotion to add to the growing pile of anger, hurt, and confusion.
“Evie,” he breathed softly, even that quiet utterance echoing unnaturally off the cold central room walls in the silence. And silence was all there was for several heartbeats. Winston could hardly stand the tension.
Then finally came the answer.
“Don't,” a pause, “call me that.”
Evelyn would often scold her brother for using the infantilizing nickname, but it was always half-hearted and done more with mildly irritated affection over any kind of serious anger. Not this time though, this time the words came loaded with so much jagged, pointed bitterness that it made Winston physically wince to have it directed at him.
He instantly felt his heart sink. This was the worst possible scenario out of all of the ones he'd endlessly imagined, the one he'd tried to tell himself wasn't going to be the case, the one where she hated him now too.
As Winston scoured his mind for something, anything, to say to her, a memory came unbidden into his mind, from years ago when the two of them had been taking their first steps within DevTech, still their father's company at the time. He'd just finished up a stint working for the NSA, and she'd been fresh out of university.
They'd still been feeling out the roles that played to their strengths, and while most company meetings were handled by Winston as a given now, at the time it had been decided that a very begrudging Evelyn would take a meeting with an executive they had been trying to woo into a distribution partnership.
The woman had a curt, frosty demeanor and had seemed more annoyed by him the longer they'd talked on the phone. He'd thought Evelyn would have an easier time finding her way past her attitude in person. His sister wasn't exactly the most easily social of creatures, but she was a woman and surely two smart business women would be able to find something to bond over.
He hadn't realized how literal that would turn out to be, when he'd casually trotted straight into the room with extra paperwork, only to find the two women locked in a frantic embrace up against a cabinet, hands in each others' hair, making out like teens.
It had been surprising, definitely, on a number of levels. Awkward, obviously. But funny too, to watch Evelyn, usually so unflappable, looking so mortified as she clumsily tried to wipe the red lipstick smeared over her face off, the other women quickly smoothing back her curly blonde hair, readjusting her glasses and skirt with a cough.
Winston had handed Evelyn the paperwork and hastily seen himself out of the room.
The next morning Evelyn had tentatively come to sit down across from him for their morning briefing to let him know that the executive had signed. She slid the contract over the table along with a short note from the woman detailing how impressed she was with their father's choice to involve them in the company at such a level, and how she felt it had paid off.
A few awkward moments had passed.
“It suuure looked like she was,” Winston had finally offered casually into his cup of coffee as he looked over the documents, “Impressed.”
And Evelyn had looked at him then with a note of genuine open relief in her eyes and given a little snort-chuckle into her own cup.
And they'd neither of them mentioned it again. They didn't have to, acceptance was a given. They'd always had the kind of easy, effortless symbiosis that didn't need to rely on words, and as Winston had eventually been forced to find his way to the forefront of the company; talking the big game, making the big deals, understanding their customer base like no other, Evelyn had also found her place in the design room with her drawing board, her computers and her coffee. Together, they had perfectly steered their father's company to even greater heights, against all odds after tragedy.
His frustrating, brilliant, messy contradiction of a sister and a business partner. Who would have designs, notes and reports on his desk within hours of his asking for them, but could never seem to make it into an actual room on time herself. Whose office and design studios were never anything less than a bomb-site of mess, littered with screwed up papers, jumbles of files and stacks of dirty coffee mugs, but was always so immaculately turned out herself; in perfectly coordinated silk button-downs and cashmere sweaters. Whose soaring intellect was belied by such poor, lazy posture, and whose easy, nonchalant charm still radiated through anti-social tendencies.
The person he was staring at now seemed like the furthest thing from that. Someone undefinable, who was capable of concocting a plan so terrifying in scale behind his back, while she was happy to put everything they'd worked so hard to achieve together on the line for it.
“So you finally decided to grow some balls and show your face,” Evelyn's voice echoed off the walls, although she still hadn't turned around. “Or just finally found some time away from all your new super friends anyway. Did you get a chance to show them all your action figures yet?”
Winston couldn't tell if she was trying to goad him into a fight, or if she was genuinely making fun of him, but he couldn't pretend his feelings weren't hurt that these were the first words she was choosing to say to him after their months of separation—the longest they'd spent apart their whole lives.
“What?” Winston breathed out incredulously, trying to hide his own anger. “Evelyn . . . I've been working for months to push this arrangement though. Do you have any idea how much effort this took? I haven't slept through the night since the last time I saw you, I've called in every favor from the NSA I could wrangle, my lawyers have been on this around the clock-”
“Our lawyers,” Evelyn interjected sharply.
She turned and at last stood up, casting him a venomous glance out of the side of her eye, before pulling up the sleeve of her sweater, holding up her arm for Winston to see a sleek black tracking bracelet with its blue light flashing on her wrist clearly. “And this is my tech,” she shook her head with an ironic laugh. “You sold my tracking tech to a prison. That's low, even for you.”
“Technically, a correctional supply distributor,” Winston corrected weakly, regretting his choice to inject even a tiny amount of humor into the moment immediately, as Evelyn turned on her heel and swept the contents of the table behind her onto the floor, books and magazines crashing, pages fluttering loudly.
“I don't understand,” Winston yelped, flinching away from the crash and nervously shifting on his feet. “What else could I have done? Did you want to still be back in that prison? Did you want me to just leave you there, no lawyers, no help, just years rotting in some jail cell with murderers and god-knows who else?”
“If it would have meant not having to spend one second longer in this tacky, gaudy, mid-life-crisis house with you acting like you can just waltz in here and magically have everything back to the way it was, then sure, you should have just left me in the prison," she retorted.
“Who are you?” Winston asked slowly, staring at this wild woman, who stood in the place of his soft-featured, coffee drinking, fashion-loving sister. “Who even are you?”
“This is me!” Evelyn shot back, angrily clutching at her sweater. “Nothing is different! It's not my fault you don't have the capacity to see anyone unless you can put them on a pedestal. The second someone doesn't live up to your ridiculous expectation of the ideal, you act so confused and wounded, like you can't believe your pathetic imaginary bullshit doesn't have any basis in reality. Well this is reality!”
They both stared at each other for a second in tense silence, before Evelyn screwed up her nose at him and turned away again.
“I just hope you're prepared to feel exactly the same way about all your new friends soon enough, when they let you down by not being perfect and you realize they can't fix anything for you. You're such a baby,” she growled as she made a move to refill her glass with the bourbon he noticed she'd taken out of the alcohol globe by one of the bookcases. “Go the hell home you goddamn child. I don't even know why you came here.”
Winston's frown deepened and he clenched his fists with renewed determination.
“No.”
The word didn't come out as commanding as he'd intended, more petulant, and he heard Evelyn scoff. He cleared his throat and tried again, “I came here because we have to talk.”
“Oh, okay, now you want to talk?” Evelyn chuckled darkly, sarcasm dripping from her voice as she lent back against the arm of the nearest chair and downed her newest poured drink in one. “Winston wants to talk now. Now the reputation of his business is at stake. Now all his new super-buddies are counting on him for endless cash-flow. Now his stocks are falling and he's realized he's totally fucked on his own.”
“That's not tru-” Winston dropped his reply as he was forced to duck out the way of Evelyn's empty glass tumbler, thrown in his direction with some effort behind it, shattering behind him.
“I said 'GO HOME'!” Evelyn rounded on him, moving from her position across the room and making as if to shove him back out the door he'd entered through. He had no choice but to catch both her wrists in his hands as she came at him.
“Evelyn!” he pleaded, the situation thoroughly spiraling away from every direction he'd envisioned it going, much to his panic.
“You picked your side, just go back to your precious play-pretend superheroes and leave me alone!” she was still yelling, but there was a falter in her voice now that was verging on desperation over rage. “LET GO!”
She tried to wrench her shaking wrists away, but something compelled Winston to keep hold of her. He tightened his grip against her struggles, and all at once she looked so vulnerable, not physically able to break away from him. She kept trying though, and Winston caught a flash in her eyes like she was seriously considering physical violence to get him off of her at that point. All of her explosiveness felt like it was on a precipice and it scared the hell out of him.
But he didn't know how to turn back the clock, or how to even start undoing everything that had led up to this; to her losing all sense of scale, of empathy, of consequence, to the point that she was actually prepared to potentially let people die. Or that she'd rather—and this thought was the one that caught him the hardest mental blow—die herself. That she'd be fine with leaving him that way, after everything they'd been through.
Was there anything he could say that would even begin to make this right between them? Winston didn't know, but he was overwhelmed by the sudden rush of one singular feeling—of not wanting to lose her.
Acting on nothing but that thought, he finally dropped Evelyn's wrists, and, before she had a chance to react to the freedom, pulled her slender frame against him completely in one fluid motion.
He felt her whole body go rigid against him as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and he could tell he had shocked her into immobility. So he let his face rest against her dishevelled hair and allowed himself the tiny comfort of having her there still with him, even if it only lasted for this brief moment.
When was the last time he'd truly hugged his own sister? He couldn't remember.
At their parents' shared funeral, as the minister had given the moving eulogy over their lavishly decorated caskets before they had been lowered, Evelyn had caught his hand gently with just her thumb and forefingers as they stood next to each other. She'd stared straight ahead, expression blank and oversized sunglasses on, as he'd cried loudly into the sleeve of his jacket.
That subtle yet meaningful touch had meant the world to Winston that day, which had been full of far too many showy, hollow shoulder-slaps and overlong pity-filled hugs from well-wishers for him.
But he'd never asked her what she'd needed, had he? He'd thought they'd been grieving together in that moment- no, he'd assumed. But they hadn't been, he realized that now.
He wondered if she'd tried to talk to anyone. If anyone had any clue about how complicated and twisted-up her grief had become, and how she'd redirected it. Evelyn didn't have that many close friends, there wasn't anyone he could picture her opening up to like that . . .
Suddenly, the realization that she had tried to talk to someone, to him, many times, hit Winston all at once. She'd tried that very day as they'd walked to their car from the funeral in fact, remarking with exhausted bitterness in her voice that neither Gazerbeam nor Fironic had bothered to show up. She'd sounded so hurt, but what had he said to her then? He couldn't remember. Something sharp though, and angry.
The same anger he'd reacted with when she'd looked up from the morning paper months later and mentioned that X-Ray was currently under investigation as a peeping tom, something he'd dismissed as gossip column nonsense, his mouth still full of breakfast. And . . . the same anger he'd reacted with when they'd been talking to Elastigirl, Mr Incredible, and Frozone for the first time.
“I disagree strongly!” he'd shouted, cutting her off mid-sentence in the middle of their business meeting when she'd so much as implied her concerns again. Letting his emotions win out over his usual cheery professionalism just to end that too-hard conversation. Frustrated with her for digging it up yet again and in the middle of something so important with his idolized supers.
She'd flopped her head to the side and quirked an eyebrow at the juvenility of it and, as always, said nothing else.
Winston suddenly had visions of Evelyn hovering in the background at the wake and beyond it, hurting and alone as people flitted past her, never noticing. Or of her seeing herself quietly back to her otherwise empty penthouse apartment at the end of each work day and having no one there to process her own grief with. . . . or her anger.
Or even those few times he had actually noticed her getting through maybe too much drink, but nothing in her work productivity had changed, so he'd left it.
Unflappable Evelyn, who took care of him and could rein in his over-zealous enthusiasm with just a sentence, who put up with what must be his sometimes infuriating naivety without complaint. He'd abandoned her, hadn't he? Because he could handle every kind of conversation but the difficult personal ones, and because he'd just assumed her silence had always meant everything was fine between them, like it had that time after the awkward meeting, back when things were simple and good.
Winston slowly came back out of his thoughts and realized he must have been holding Evelyn for several minutes by now. She was still tense against him, but she hadn't tried to pull away, and she had her cheek lightly resting against his shoulder.
Winston closed his eyes against Evelyn's unkempt hair and allowed a thought he'd spent the last fifteen years never allowing to settle to finally come into his mind—superheroes couldn't fix the past, and he and Evelyn wouldn't ever be able to go back to how things were.
Their parents were gone, and gone forever. Both of those wonderful, loving, brilliant peoples' lives snuffed out with violence and heartbreak, and he had invested all of his mental energy since then into the distraction of work, or in fantasies of a world with perfect justice and colorful, dependable heroes. He'd refused to see his sister struggling, because it was hard, and he'd dismissed her when she'd needed him the most. Now they wouldn't be able to undo the events of the last few months either.
But . . . they could still try to move forward, couldn't they? The past couldn't be salvaged, and what was done was done, but she was here now, and he was here now with her, and he loved her. Could that just be enough to start?
Winston took a breath and moved one of his hands from around Evelyn's shoulder to gently hold the back of her head, and said the only thing he could think of that could encompass just how much he wanted to try.
“I'm sorry.”
He heard her swallow and take a sharp, shuddering inhale.
“It's not fair,” she finally whispered in return, her naturally raspy voice cracking into nothing on the last syllable.
Winston lifted his head and turned to look at her as she put a shaking hand over her mouth, the other curling to clutch at his jacket lapel, her expression flickering between the rage she'd been so desperate to cling to and something else entirely. Then all of a sudden, she was crying. First only tears rolling slowly down her cheeks, then finally, uncontrollable sobs, and it was like watching a building crumble.
Except this time, Winston wouldn't refuse to look because it was hard. Ironically, it was the superheroes he'd spent time with who had made him feel like he finally had that strength. And Evelyn was as right as she was wrong, because maybe he was naive and idealistic and had spent too much time dreaming of a world where others were always there to save you, but surely anyone could be a hero if that was all it meant. Evelyn had spent years quietly being his hero, and he was ready to try and be hers now.
Rebuilding wasn't going to be easy, but they had already salvaged a business empire together, and, as they both now sank to their knees holding each other tight in the middle of the huge house it had bought, the moonlight now flooding the room with pure white light, he knew they had a good chance at salvaging their futures too.