Chapter Text
Lark Oak-Garcia never intended to be this way. He never woke up with a plan to screw everything up; to set his school on fire, or indoctrinate a city, or stab his father and destroy the world.
Ten minutes before he doomed humanity, Lark sat on the back porch of his home turning the message he’d received in the final battle over in his head as Grant played keeper against Nicky in the yard and Terry drew runes in washable marker all over Sparrows arms. Their whole strange collection was gathering to convince themselves life was back to normal, never mind that none of them would have attended a party like this before the Realms. The unsung hero was just inside, singing nonsensically and cooking, and Lark was the only free person who knew his identity. The urge to do something about it was becoming unbearable.
Lark tried, he really tried, to be normal, make his parents happy. But then something would catch his attention, and it would catch Sparrow’s too, and then everything would lose importance except for LarkandSparrow and the next thing they could do to calm the ever present itch of chaos beneath his skin. Then they would do it and the storm in his chest would be quelled just enough for Lark to realize that he had made a mistake.
The only thing Lark hated more than the post-chaos guilt was admitting it to other people. So he didn’t. His eyes would meet their match quickly for acknowledgement and apologies that should probably go to someone else, then Sparrow would forgive him, he would forgive Sparrow, and they’d turn in unison to brag about the feat they had just accomplished.
Spilling the blood of the unsung hero would be their greatest feat of all. It was their birthright, their destiny. It would be their legacy. The only thing that had kept Lark from fulfilling the prophecy so far was the source of information. Willy cannot be trusted. If he could be, Lark would have told Sparrow by now. Any secret he kept from his twin has to be a terrible one.
Larks reservations were quickly being drowned out by waves of chaos.
The chaos wasn’t part of him. It was inside for sure, but alien, a parasite that had been there since before he could remember. He hadn’t noticed before the Realms that it wasn’t him, not until Henry pulled that card and another monster nestled itself into his brain, painting every thought he could ever have about his father bitter and angry.
The monsters complimented each other even before Lark realized he had to spill his father’s blood. Chaos was the easiest way to get back at Henry, so they egged each other on, an echo chamber in his soul that escalated their need to explode so similarly to how Lark and Sparrow escalated each other’s. Used to, at least. The twins almost never had to speak aloud to each other, but sometimes recently Lark found thoughts he sent through their mental link would bounce against some new barrier.
In Lark’s brain, the pressure built faster now. He spent days where he couldn’t feel anything but the pulsing energy on his skin and behind his eyes as it fought to be released. Sparrow seemed to feel the chaos less and less, finding some way to calm it internally. Some result of the stupid Love Wolf situation , Lark thought, some stifling sense of loyalty to Father . It had been happening since the pyramid, if Lark was honest with himself. Henry took advantage of a rare separation and changed the part of Sparrow that let him communicate with the chaos, the part that let him communicate with Lark.
Sparrow’s divorce from chaos wasn’t absolute though. Today, both twins had been twitching for hours. The lid was back on Terry’s marker, who was tolerating light kicks to each of his feet in turn as Sparrow incessantly chattered at him. The chaos wanted something badly and the Henry-hating monster couldn’t be more on board. Lark could tell Sparrow felt it too; their mental link was wide open, and there was only one way he could settle their minds.
He caught his twin’s attention as the kids filed into the living room of the Oak-Garcia’s home, Brother, I need a favour.
Anytime, brother, you know that.
Minutes later on the kitchen floor, as the chaos left in a black cloud, and his actions came into focus, Lark’s eyes met Sparrow’s. For once it did nothing to calm the waves of guilt and self-hatred. For once he could do wrong in his twin’s eyes.
Then Sparrow was crying. Lark had made Sparrow cry. And Henry was picking them up, and running, and there was chaos outside, in the darkening sky, in the shaking earth. Everywhere but his mind.
~
That night, Lark moved the few belongings he didn’t share with Sparrow into the guest room. It was better he take the initiative than force Sparrow to play nice with him out of pity. He stared at the ceiling as Henry came by the locked door, then Mama, then Sparrow. When he felt Sparrow’s presence on the other side of the door he sat up. Concern and fear and love pulsed through the door, but the stronger part of their psychic link was closed.
“Brother?” Sparrow said in a small voice when the door handle rattled against its bolt.
Lark didn’t answer.
“Brother, if this door stays closed for five more seconds I will break it down.”
Lark crossed the room and opened the door before Sparrow's countdown could start. He told himself it didn’t sting that Sparrow stayed politely on his side of the threshold. Even making direct eye contact, he couldn’t have sent ideas across if he wanted to. He wasn’t sure what to say.
Sparrow held an afghan their Abuela had knit for the twins’ tenth birthday and the plastic Bulbasaur night light that had been returned to the twin’s room from the first floor bathroom to stave off memories of Ravenloft. Lark folded his arms in an attempt to intimidate Sparrow, who immediately buckled over laughing. Thank god he can still laugh.
“What do you want, Sparrow?” Lark put as much emo annoyance into the words as he could hope to get across to someone he involuntarily shares his moods with. Sparrow sobered a little at the use of his real name. He straightened and gestured with the blanket.
“To go to sleep?”
“Go sleep in ou- your room.”
“Look, brother, if you want to move out of our room, move out, but neither of us are ready to sleep alone.”
Lark stepped away from the door, giving Sparrow more access to come in and plug Bulbasaur in under the window. Lark moved automatically to help lay the afghan over the bed. They stared at each other for a while. Sparrow broke the silence.
“Brother, you’re going to need to learn to speak to me”
“I know how to speak to you, brother.”
“Not really. Not without an audience. I feel we only talk to each other for the benefit of other people.” Sparrow had a point.
“What would we even talk about?”
“What would we even talk about?” Sparrow's mocking-Lark voice was deeper and breathier, even though the two of them sounded exactly the same. He punctuated it with crossed arms and a strange little weight-shifting dance, not flinching when Lark made a feigned swipe at him from his position on the other side of the bed. The two returned to silence as Lark pulled the chain for the overhead light, Sparrow set the fan to a quieter setting, and they both climbed into bed.
As his eyes adjusted to the green light, Lark decided he should make an effort, if only for Sparrow’s sake. “I just meant like, we’re always together, we have all the same information.”
“I think people talk for other reasons than that, especially if they were not blessed with the ability to share thoughts,” Sparrow offered casually, as if he hadn’t just said their biggest secret out loud for the first time, “Also I have not yet informed you of the things I uncovered in my conversation with Terry Junior today.”
“You’re such a gossip. And what was he doing with those runes?”
“Abjuration or something. It was a ploy to keep him talking. And gossip doesn’t count between us, everyone expects we’ll both know anyway. You know how Terry can't keep a secret?”
Lark agreed with a hum.
“Well apparently it’s genetic or something because Ron is the same way.” Sparrow must have felt his skepticism as he continued, “Okay, learned behaviour or a coincidence maybe. In any case, Ron tells Terry everything he knows, and the information is unreliable because it’s Ron, but apparently Darryl and Carol are divorcing, Jodie and Morgan might, because that whole rewriting history demon thing is messing with everything even more now that we unlocked the original memories...” Lark let Sparrow ramble his analysis of all the adult's relationships to each other, focusing more on interjecting with sounds and words when it felt appropriate than the actual information being shared.
He only realized he had lost focus when Sparrow changed the subject, “And then Ron stalked Grant while he was getting rejected, so—”
“Who did he get rejected by?” Lark considers Grant the person he’s closest to of the other three, especially after his memories of Nick were buried. Grant never mentioned it, but Lark remembers him seeming worse for wear after the football thing. ‘
“I think that skateboarder?”
“There’s skateboarders, and then there’s guys with skateboards instead of feet and I think the distinction is important. That guy wasn’t even human, brother, he had wheels”
Sparrow was quiet for a while. Lark figured talking practice was over, and turned away toward the wall.
“Are we human?” Sparrow asked softly.
Lark turned back to face him. “Not completely, no. But well over half. The weirdest part of our bloodline is our father's human part anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter overall. And we definitely don't have wheels” Privately, Lark wondered if they were somehow more human after the day they had just had.
Sparrow laughed a little at that. “I’m going to make sure you never end up being rejected by someone with wheels. That’s my new life objective, now that we managed the last one.”
“I’ll hold you to that, brother,” Lark said, skating around the second part of his statement. He held out a pinky as insurance.
“I swear on my honour as a lord,” Sparrow vowed as he linked their pinkies together, “but we should probably sleep. Goodnight, I love you, brother.”
It was another thing they had never had to say out loud before.
“I love you too.”