Chapter Text
Vi could feel Powder moving next to her, shifting and turning slowly in a failed attempt not to disturb her. In the middle of the night, her little sister had climbed up to the top bunk of the bed they shared and laid beside her. She’d carefully maneuvered Vi's arm around herself and rested her head on Vi’s shoulder.
To be fair, Vi could tell she’d done her best attempt at not waking her older sister up. But she was a kid with about as much delicateness in her tiny body as a three-legged dog.
This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. Since Powder hadn't said anything, Vi guessed she didn't want to talk about it and would appreciate being left alone. She had concentrated to try and detect signs of Powder crying, like tiny sniffs or trembling, but none could be heard which meant her baby sister mustn’t have been that upset. So she'd quietly let it go, pretending she hadn't been woke at all.
But that had been twenty or so minutes ago and Vi still hadn't been able to fall back asleep because every time she was about to, Powder jostled her.
Vi internally sighed as a stray foot landed on her leg again and Powder winced and held her breath to see if Vi had been perturbed. This was a good time as any to give herself away.
"Powder, baby." She started, hoping her voice didn't sound as exasperated and pleading as it did to her ears. She took a deep breath to see if it helped. "Is something wrong, bluebird? Did you have a nightmare?"
Three beats of her heart passed before Powder’s low voice spoke out next to her ear. "No." She sounded nervous. Vi hadn't even opened her eyes but in her mind, she could see her little sister chewing her lower lip. "I just couldn't sleep."
Vi, who had had years to sharpen her big sister's instincts, could sense this wasn't the whole story. She made a curious hum, hoped it sounded encouraging, laid her free hand on top of Powder's head to gently scratch at her scalp in an attempt to soothe her.
Several minutes passed in silence, just their quiet breathing in the dark and her little sister's body next to her and warm breath against her neck. Distantly, she could hear some muffled sounds of night life in The Lanes.
"I-" Powder started, drawing out the "I" sound for a second to buy herself time to decide what to say next. Finally, she burrowed further into Vi’s side as if trying to melt against her older sister, and continued: "It was... so dark. Felt like I was falling. But I was laying in the bed the entire time, so it felt like I was slipping out of my body and into the dark and I couldn't make my thoughts shut up or slow down..." She whispered, like a confession, her voice becoming more hushed at the end, lower and lower until it just disappeared rather than coming to a purposeful end of her sentence.
Vi felt her chest being squeezed by an invisible hand, a rush of protectiveness and anger rising in her that she swallowed down like bile to not scare Powder. She swallowed something else with it, something acidic, shoved it down with violence (refused to name that thing resentment).
She loved Powder so, so much. But nobody ever made her feel as helpless as her little sister.
She wished that for once Powder would have real fears, something concrete she could deal with, could punch away or fix somehow. But Powder wasn't afraid of going hungry or of rabid stray dogs or building bombs inside the house or even purposefully provoking Enforcers with Ekko. Instead, she jumped at every shadow, made up imaginary monsters in her head like the world didn't have enough of those already. Woke up in the middle of the night crying about someone invading the house and refused to believe it was a dream until they all got up and upturned the entire house looking for the intruder that didn't exist. Sometimes she slipped into small unseen crevices and became unresponsive for hours, with a glassy look in her eyes that made Vi desperate.
And sometimes she said absurd stuff like "falling out of her body" as if that was even possible. As if that didn't somehow describe the worst and most irrational fears that Vi tried not to acknowledge, the fear of losing her little sister while said sister was still alive. Of Powder one of those days becoming glassy-eyed and distant and just never waking up from the nightmares that lived in her mind.
Vander was far more understanding than her, than any of them, had always been even when Vi was nine and selfish and grieving her parents and far too angry to take her baby sister's talks of monsters under the bed seriously. How could she when the world was full of scary things that were real and tangible? She couldn't understand why Powder never seemed to have the same nightmares about that night that she did, for years, why Powder didn't seem to grieve or miss them like she did, spoke of them casually, and asked Vander when they would come back no matter how many times she was told they weren't.
Eventually, the questions stopped coming, Powder stopped talking about their parents at all. Vi never figured out if she finally understood or gave up or if just forgot about them with time, since she was so young when they died. Vi couldn't bring herself to ask, apprehensive of getting an answer she wouldn’t like, of receiving confirmation that she was now the only one carrying around the burden of these memories. The only one left to support the memory of their parents' love, and the love she still had for them, completely and truly alone.
Once Vander had sat Mylo, Claggor, and her down after a night of fruitlessly searching the house for nothing after another one of Powder's nightmares, after Powder had cried herself back to sleep, and had a talk with them. He’d told them that, while bad things that happened affected people of all ages, it was especially bad for a kid as young as 5. That even though she didn't quite remember it, the fear she felt that night at the Bridge most likely still lived in her head. And because she couldn't make sense of it, find a real source for it, her mind made up sources and reasons. That they had to be patient with her and gentle and take her seriously even if it didn't make sense to them.
Claggor didn't get it but tried to be understanding, Mylo not only didn't get it but deeply resented Powder for it. Vi never figured out how she felt about it.
"Loving someone means you share their burdens." Vander had said at the end of his speech, and he'd been distant and sad like he was talking from personal experience, and it had both sounded nonsensical and felt too real at that moment.
She tried to muster up enough spit in a mouth gone dry to clear her throat and say something. Anything. Sometimes it was so hard to have the right words. Even when she could find some, she never knew if they were the right ones, never seemed to be, considering it never put Powder's worries to rest for very long.
"Can I do anything to help?" Was what she settled for in the end, because there was nothing else she could think to say.
Powder hummed consideringly.
"Lay on top of me." She said.
It was so unexpected that it knocked Vi’s spiraling thoughts out of their downwards spiral.
"What?" She asked, dumbfounded and a little amused. "Baby, I'll squish your tiny body, you won't be able to breathe."
"I'm not tiny, I'm a good size for my age!" Powder squeaked indignantly. "And you aren't going to squish me, I like the pressure. It's like a really tight hug. It calms me down."
Vi suddenly had a flashback to all those times Powder had provoked her until she wrestled her to the ground and laid all her weight on top of her. Or when she walked directly into hers or Vander's or Claggor's arms demanding hugs and would sniff disdainfully while saying "a real hug, do it like you mean it!" until they conceded to holding her so tight she was laughing through wheezes.
"Ah." She muttered in realization, mostly to herself. Reluctantly, she continued: "Ok, but if it's uncomfortable or you have difficulty breathing you have to tell me."
Powder made a very happy little chirp and pulled at her, completely confident that Vi would move as she wanted her to since it was usually how it went. Vi complied, going where her little sister directed without complaint. Absent-mindedly Vi noticed that Powder was wearing her favorite shirt that she’d inherited from Vi and dyed pink and by now it was so old that it was only fit for sleeping. It still hanged off her like a dress. She’d left her fish plush back in her bed.
They rearranged themselves until Powder was laying on the bed on her back and Vi was laying on top of her, covering her small body completely, head laid on her little sister's chest. She could hear her baby's heart beating like that and it was unexpectedly calming. Powder indeed seemed to become less tense and sigh in relief as her body relaxed and remained still.
Vi fully intended to wait for Powder to fall asleep and climb off her, but much to her surprise she found her eyes growing heavy within a couple of minutes. She felt tiny hands running up and down through her hair, and it felt good, it felt so good, like nothing was wrong in the world at that moment. Nothing could get to Powder while they were like that, and Powder couldn't slip away from her of her own volition either.
Vi had a second to think that her hair would look like a rat's nest in the morning and it would be hell to sit through Powder brushing all the tangles out for her, and another to think it would be worth it. And then she fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep, the best she'd had in... ever, maybe.
After that, Powder climbing in her bed and asking Vi to lay on top of her became a frequent occurrence, and Vi didn't mind at all.
(It also helped that she was never again kicked by Powder in her sleep or woke up freezing because her baby sister had stolen the blanket.)