Chapter Text
It had only been a month into her stay at Mordred Manor that Aelwyn Abernant began to feel suffocated.
Not that everything had been incredibly fantastic before. She still felt immense guilt at times when she looked at her little sister, and the kindness of the adults at Mordred made her want to run away half the time. But still, it hadn’t been until she was dragged into attending a movie night by Adaine that her uneasiness came to a boiling point.
It was just the Bad Kids, Ragh, and Tracker tonight- the group was only short of two people, Zayn probably being in the cemetery and Ayda being... somewhere. She wasn’t quite listening to her sister’s side of the argument to come downstairs before she was being dragged down the stairs.
The group of eight felt like a thousand, though, as she sat beside her sister at the end of the couch, trying to force her face to have less of a notably uncomfortable look.
The funny part was, she didn’t even feel that suffocated by the endless chatter that was happening as the movie began. Over four years of partying behind the backs of her and Adaine’s parents had led her to take solace in boisterous conversations and the wild energies of others. The noise kept away the high standards she was held to, kept away the thoughts of guilt and what-ifs. Both then and now, it drowned all of the noise in Aelwyn’s head out.
It was the happiness that made her throat close up and every word sound like she was underwater. And she knew that was shitty. It was selfish of her to sometimes see Adaine with her friends and feel jealous of this happier version of her sister.
She knew Adaine had bad days, of course. But when she did, she always just went to Jawbone or one of her friends. Aelwyn didn’t have that. She took one look at Jawbone’s open arms and had to force back words of cruelty. And friends? What friends? The only people who really wanted to talk to her other than her sister were Zayn and Ragh, both of whom she was certain deserved more than being her friend.
There Fabian too, but Aelwyn knew that talking to him alone again, having him look at her with those eyes that said ‘I am very obviously attracted to you’ would just bring back old habits of pushing feelings down with drugs, booze, and meaningless sex.
So she had to be by herself. Despite the jealousy she sometimes felt towards Adaine and how well she fit in at Mordred Manor, she knew that her little sister, who she had hurt too many times, deserved friends. Aelwyn wasn’t going to take that away from her by openly being broken and miserable.
“Hey, are you okay?” Adaine’s concerned whisper caused her gaze to quickly snap away from her hands.
She could run now. Go back up the stairs of the tower, pack her things, and leave. There was no reason for Adaine to truly need Aelwyn in her life. Their parents and herself were the leading causes of her pain for years.
But Adaine had said she wanted her to be her big sister, and that was the one thing that kept Aelwyn stuck in place.
“Yes.” Aelwyn knew her response came too late to be true, and the furrow in her sister’s eyebrows showed that she knew that as well.
That was when the suffocation started to become too much. And there were really only two things she could do. She could go with Plan A and run away, go with her abjurer instincts to protect herself. Or she could, like the perfect child and student she has always been, make a plan to better herself.
So, with that idea, she created a plan. Aelwyn Abernant’s Five Step Plan to Becoming a Better Person . Not that she would ever say that out loud.
“Stop worrying, little sister. I am perfectly okay,” Aelwyn added after a brief pause, giving the most comforting smile she could muster.
—
Once she had made a resolution in her mind to organize her healing process more, and Adaine’s attention was turned away from her, Aelwyn waited on the movie to end while she formulated her plan.
Almost immediately after the credits rolled, Aelwyn held back a sigh of relief at the sight of everyone but her little sister having already fallen asleep. She stood up and stepped over a pile of blankets with a barely visible Tracker and Kristen underneath before turning to her sister. “Are you going to stay down here tonight?” Ever since she moved to the manor, Aelwyn’s newfound protective older sister instincts made it so she couldn’t trance until Adaine was also safe and trancing. And even if Aelwyn didn’t plan on trancing as soon as she got upstairs, she still needed to know where her sister was trancing tonight in case anything happened.
Adaine stood up and used mage hand to throw away two empty pizza boxes that were on the floor. “No, I’ll do it in the tower, but I’m going to clean up a little first.”
She nodded, thinking for a moment how astounding it was that they had grown up in the same house. Certainly, Aelwyn was working on being the good person that deep down she knew she could be, but Adaine didn’t even have to dig deep. She was already a good and caring person.
“Okay, well… I would help, but I do need to trance. Goodnight.” Aelwyn chose to ignore Adaine’s response of how that was bullshit, and they tranced at the exact same time last night, going up to their room to write her list.
This list was not something that she wanted anyone to know about, so she tried to get it done before Adaine finished cleaning up. She grabbed a pen and the first empty notebook that she could find before sitting down on the bottom bunk.
Aelwyn Abernant’s Five Step Plan to Becoming a Better Person
She used illusory script to write the title, then continued with it as she hastily, but still in a way that the list still looked neat to her, wrote out the rest of the list.
1. Get a hobby
2. Go back to school
Starting small seemed like the best way to go, as a good foundation would yield better results.
3. Make amends
4. Befriend at least three people
Aelwyn bit her lip in concentration. The making amends part was something that she did not want to do- talking about her mistakes did not come naturally to her. It was what she had to do in order to get rid of the guilt, however, and she knew it was what she had to do.
5. Find a purpose
Just something to keep her going. That step was definitely going to take her the longest to complete.
After the last step was written down, she closed the notebook and hid it underneath a stack of folded shirts in one of her dresser drawers. Then she promptly laid down in the bed, waiting for Adaine to come back so she could finally trance.