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Vi loved horror stories.
Movies, books, shows, stories- she adored them.
She was good at telling them and hard to frighten; she, Claggor, and Mylo liked to laugh at what Pilties thought was scary.
Powder, though, was....a little more sensitive. She wanted to be right there with them, laughing at the bad scares and unafraid, but it got to her. She never understood how they could scare Pow; they had already seen things that would leave most people traumatized and scarred. Plus, those situations were so irrational and unrealistic- it was stupid.
"She's just a little one." Vander reminded her, gently, one day when a frustrated rant finally burned his ears. "You're normally good at remembering that, Vi, but you've got to remember it in moments like this. What seems stupid to you seems possible to her because she's too little for anything to be impossible. And you know she-" He trailed off because of the sharp, dark look Vi pinned him to the wall with, holding his hands up. "Put the teeth away, pup. I'm just sayin', the shadows might be a little more real for her."
Monsters- real monsters- were people. Vi had always known that. Enforcers. Chem barons. The people in the dark who would try to grab your ass or pin you against a wall with a deep, nasty smile until you learned to knee them in the balls or smack them upside the ear with a cupped palm. Ghosts and demons, curses, spirits...they didn't exist.
They'd had a game, when Powder was little- a game where they pretended to be bigger and bigger monsters. It almost always ended in Vi having to fight off a monster that had frightened Powder too much; usually one of her own making. She'd always fought off Powder's monsters. She'd always kept her sister safe.
"Maybe," Claggor said, one night, when they were talking together quietly in the dark, Powder asleep in Vi's lap, Mylo trying to get the crappy old tv in the corner to work, "you should teach her to fight her own monsters."
Teach her to fight her own monsters. Vi frowned thoughtfully, petting Powder's hair. Could she? Should she? Wasn't it her job to do that for Powder? To keep her safe? To make it so she didn't have to fight her own monsters? That was her job as a big sister. Wasn't it?
"Courage is funny." Vander told her. "Takes it to do the strangest things. Like letting little sisters grow up."
She tried, at first, finding a movie. It wasn't the scariest movie, so it should have been fine. She sat Powder down with her, and turned it on,and insisted she watch it with them.
About half way through, when Mylo was jeering loudly at the screen and Claggor was taking bets on which of the two surviving women would last, that Vi made the mistake of reaching out to tap Powder's shoulder. Powder was no Vi. She wasn't even a Claggor. But the screech and the rabbit punch directly to Vi's boob sure as hell did what it was supposed to, stunning a perceived predator. Vi let out a rather un-warrior like yelp of pain and doubled over, surprised and unprepared for the sonic attack and surprising amount of pain.
Her reaction startled Powder, who was already surprised that she'd lashed out at her sister, who leapt backwards spilling apologies. She also spilled her drink all over Mylo, who reared away, cracking into Claggor. "Jesus Powder!" Mylo managed to get out, before he went ass over teakettle onto the floor. This, of course, lead to more apologies, and the girl scrambling to get away from the group, Claggor now nursing a bloody nose from Mylo's skull.
That....could have gone better.
The next move was to try and teach her some basic self-defense. Powder wasn't a fighter. That's what Vi was for; to protect and cover and aid Powder and people like her. People who weren't big and strong and fearless.
(Vi was not fearless, but she would never say so. No one could know that; could know that she woke up sweating and panting and sometimes dry heaving from nightmares, that sometimes she'd get out of bed and crawl into Vander's, or sit on the edge of Powder's just to make sure she was breathing and real.)
(That sometimes, when there was a fight, her heart would race and her head would spin, and she would think what if I lose, what if I get hurt, really hurt, what's going to happen to Powder, what if, what if.)
(So she hid it, and everyone thought she was fearless and nuts and Claggor and Vander were the only two who ever saw her break.)
So she wasn't going to be going toe to toe with Vi any time soon; but she could learn basic, simple, easy things. Clapping a hand over an ear. Kicking out someone's knee. Biting. Throwing a rock or sand in someone's eyes. Vi paired her up with Claggor, trusting him to be easy on her baby sister; but he was still big enough to be actual practice. Powder, though, was just- she was just- she-
"She's too nice." Claggor summed up, sufficiently, as they watched her chattering away happily with Ekko, heads bowed together, deep in conversation.
"Nice? She makes bombs." Mylo snorted out. "I mean ,they don't work for shit, but she tries. I think your sister might be an actual psychopath." Vi hit him in the side of the head with her cup for that one, earning a yelp of pain. "What?" He whined. "She does! Nice people don't make bombs."
"She's nicer then you." Claggor rumbled. "Besides, most of her bombs are smoke bombs."
"Bombs let her keep her distance." Vi murmured, as Powder laughed so hard at something Ekko said she fell backwards. A soft smile touched her lips at the sight. "She can pretend she's not hurting someone."
"She and Ekko practice being you." Mylo said, less antagonistically now, more honestly thoughtful. "I don't think she's afraid of hurting people, Vi."
"Pretending to be big and tough is different then actually attacking and hurting someone, even in self defense." Claggor pointed out. "And it's different then getting hurt doing it."
Vi (who had not turned roughly the same shade as her hair when Mylo let slip that Powder and Ekko tried to be like her) let out a hard, tired huff of air. Still, it was worth a shot.
So Vi pushed. She pushed, and insisted, and one day Powder finally landed a shot right to the side of Claggor's head, nailing him in the ear as she'd been taught. And Claggor, on pure reflex, had sent her tumbling like so many potatoes right into a wall, where she'd dislocated her elbow and started wailing.
Vi, of course, had been furious. Claggor was so apologetic that he was buying Powder sweets and treats weeks after the event, and avoided his big sister for longer still.
That. Also could have gone better.
She was running out of ideas and getting frustrated. Powder needed to be brave if she was going to make it. She needed to not be someone spooked off at the thought of a silly ghost, or monster. She was too old for that shit. Wasn't she?
This 'letting Powder grow up and be brave on her own' thing was hard enough. But every failed attempt at seeing Powder tough and not scared made Vi wilt more and more, like her namesake flower burning under too-hot sun.
"You know it's not real, right?" She tried, once. "Ghosts and stuff. They're just made up to scare little kids. Like on spirit's night."
"I know." Powder had answered, tentatively, tucking her covers up to her chin. "But just in case."
"Just in case what?" She threw her hands up, flopping back on her bed. "Just in case, I want to be careful." Powder shrank further into her blankets.
She was on the verge of giving up. She wasn't sure what else to do, and while she could usually understand her baby sister in a way no one else could, she was stumped on this one. If Powder knew it wasn't real, if she was afraid of some nameless, formless maybe...how was Vi supposed to help her fight that back?
It was Mylo, hilariously, who gave her the idea. Mylo, who pointed out, very matter-of-factly, that his courage came from her. They'd been talking about a kid who'd had the shit beaten out of him recently, some poor miner shit who had pissed off the wrong roving gang of kids.
"Won't be me," Mylo had chuckled out. "Not with you lurking around."
"Good to know you just think of me as a body guard for your big mouth." She shot back. He gave her his shit-eating grin, rubbing the back of his neck. "Nah, I- c'mon, Vi, that's not what I meant." He chuckled, nervously. "I just- y'know. No matter what I'm looking at, I've got you at my back. I'm not alone. I'm- look, can we not do the sappy crap? I didn't mean it in a bad way."
And it had clicked. Like a light bulb flicking on, it hit her all at once.
One trip to the market later, she had her answer.
_________
She wasn't good with letters.
Vander made sure that she had a basic grasp on reading and writing, but she had never been good at it. It didn't come naturally to her, the way it did Powder and Mylo. Even Claggor was better at it then she was. Still, this was important, and it needed to come from her. Really from her.
So it was hours later that Powder found a tiny pin on her pillow, beside a tightly folded piece of paper. It was silver, and at the tip, there was a tiny flower. A blue violet, rimmed in silver trimming. In Vi's misspelled chicken scratch hand writing, the note simply read:
Pow-sorry. I didnt think about what you were relly scared of. You cant punch a ghost and you cant fight some thing you cant see, rihit? remember what I keep telling you. Your stronger then you think. but if you need a little extra help, hold on to this. no baddie is gona get my sister if she has me with her. Its magic. Like the magic things in movies people find that keep demons away. Itll keep you safe. Promise.
(Powder sat with them and watched scary movies after that. She laughed at what Pilties thought was scary and she beat Mylo over the head with a pillow when he tried to make her jump.)
(No one could quite figure out what had triggered the change, but Vi saw, nestled in the thick hair of her sister's braid, the violet flower pin catching the light every time.)