Archive of Our Own ^beta

Motion. (Flickering orange and blue and white and pink shapes; heads and hair and mouths, moving hands.)

Shouting. (A name- someone’s name- her name? Is she okay? Why would she be- why wouldn’t she be- who is that?)

Sound. (Clanging of swords. Wood against wood against stone against flesh. A cat’s yowl. Blade against flesh against blade against flesh against blade against flesh against blade against flesh-)

Light. (Purple- dim. Hurts her eyes; shielding herself with one hand. Soft voice. Cool hands.)

Touch. (One titanic finger dwarfing the top of her head. Cool voice. Soft hands. Relief, immediate and buzzing and disorienting. Pain that she hadn’t noticed was there- that she stopped noticing was there a long time ago- gone, for now.)

Thoughts. (Not moving fast enough; dry and foggy and painful, scraping like blood against desert-dry expanse of thoughtless mind. Who is- what is- why is- all questions she can’t answer. Who is she?)

Motion and light. (Not too out of it to not notice a teleportation spell.)

Scent. (Acrid tang of teenagers’ body spray; leather musty smell of basketballs. The gym at Aguefort? Why? Her nose wrinkles.)

Touch. (Someone picks her up off her unsteady legs. Furry arms cradle her under the knees and the back.)

Movement. (Jostling of walking slowly. It goes on for a while.) 

Pain. (The touch, the healing- shouldn’t it have- shouldn’t it be over?)

Hunger. (Empty, clawing, an ache in the blood and the bones; hollow breaths through a hollow chest, shaking limbs and shaking heart.)

Need. (Hunger must be sated.)

—

Aelwyn Abernant wakes up with a pounding headache.

A pounding everything-ache, if she’s being honest. She shifts in the bed, her legs moving painfully against a soft comforter and sheets. She blinks heavily, rubbing sleep out of her eyes, and squints at the noonday sun filtering through the cheerful green blinds. 

The… green blinds? Her room has white blinds. She’s not at home.

The room reeks of familiarity while also being deeply new and strange. Floorboards with the stain worn off, old metal-framed bed, outdated wallpaper. Strangely charming and cozy; a candle (magic one, presumably) sits on a dresser across from the bed, and there are a number of houseplants scattered around the place. Fairy lights cast a soft yellow glow, joining the sunlight, over the room, creating dancing shapes and refractions on the fluffy rug underneath the bed. A well-appointed desk sits in total disarray in the corner, covered in papers and textbooks and library books and pens and papers and books and pens and highlighters and she’s pretty sure there’s a sword somewhere under that stack of secondhand spellbooks- 

Something rustles in the bed next to her. Aelwyn goes stock still, listening and waiting and watching and-

and it’s just Adaine. She pops her head out from under the covers, immediately looking a thousand times more alert than Aelwyn feels. “Hey,” she breathes, almost awestruck. “How’re you feeling?”

“Well, sister dearest, I just got tortured for nine months and I don’t know where I am, so how do you think I’m feeling?” is what she intends to say. Instead, she forces her voice, soft, stumbling, to say “ Whawheremiwhahappen ?”

Adaine blinks, her face creasing with concern and sorrow. Aelwyn blinks back, then scrunches up her face in frustration. She tries again, this time slightly more articulate. “Where am I?” (Her voice is still softer than she wants it to be. Infuriating, broken, wrong.)

Adaine’s stare grows soft around the edges. “It’s, um- Mordred Manor. I moved in here with Jawbone- uh, the school guidance counselor?”

Aelwyn cocks an eyebrow. “The werewolf? Truly, have some standards, baby sister,” she quips almost without thinking. Her voice is dry. She’s- so hungry. Weak, too weak-

Adaine looks away for a few seconds and breathes loudly, obviously collecting herself. “I’m going to choose not to be mad about that,” she says, “because you’re recovering from a lot of things, and you need food.”

Aelwyn nods, her mouth dry. “Yes, I- food sounds nice.” 

—

“I can’t eat this.”

Jawbone sighs, steepling his hands in front of him at the dinner table. “It’s alright if you’re not feeling too good right now, kiddo, but you haven’t eaten anything in, like…”

“About a year,” Adaine fills in quietly from where she leans against the kitchen counter nearby.

Jawbone’s expression twists strangely, foreign spectres of anger and sorrow and guilt flitting across his muzzle. “About a year. I know elves can survive on almost nothing, but that doesn’t mean they should. You gotta eat something, okay? Starting small is fine. Just a bite or two, see if you can keep it down, then we go from there, ‘kay?” he pleads, hands open, palm-up. His kind gaze is uncomfortably piercing. 

Aelwyn feels herself nod. It makes sense. It’s just toast. It’s one piece of toast. It doesn’t have anything on it and it’s not too burnt. It’s toast. She just has to pick it up and take a b i t e-

“The bite will take in about two hours,” says the harder, sterner of the two voices.

The softer one speaks. “Is all of this really necessary? She… she’s your daughter, Angwyn.”

“Not anymore.”

-and she’s back, staring blankly at the piece of toast. Adaine hovers off to her side, one hand outstretched, unsure. “You okay?” she asks, gentle and soft.

“Fine,” Aelwyn chokes out. She takes a bite of the toast to occupy her mouth.

It’s dry. It’s bland. She’s not sure what she was expecting other than dry and bland. 

She swallows the awful lump of carbs with some difficulty. It moves painfully down, then hits a mass of roiling pain deep in her gut. She’s hungry, hungry, oh so hungry, empty and gnawing and needing, but all she wants to do right now is find the nearest garbage can and get rid of this trash, this wasted effort, this dead weight. Her teeth sit heavy in her mouth. Her eyes fill their sockets.

She forces herself to eat the rest of the slice of toast. Adaine and Jawbone ramble on about elven nutritional needs, providing a steady background track to the awkward affair. 

When she’s done, she excuses herself to go upstairs and lie down.

—

Aelwyn spends the next thirty minutes on the tiles of the second floor bathroom curled around the toilet.

—

That night, Aelwyn lies awake in the bunk bed below Adaine’s, her heartbeat unsteady, listening to the gentle sounds of Adaine breathing rhythmically through her trance. 

She’s exhausted, her body protesting everything she did today (even if that amounts to walking to the kitchen and back, then sitting up for a while). Despite the haze of exhaustion over her thoughts, she still can’t trance, can’t even sleep. She just…

She doesn’t know what happened to her in that orb, but she can hear Adaine’s heartbeat. It’s quiet and steady, barely even louder than the atmospheric creaking and groaning of the ancient house around her, but it’s almost all she can hear.

Nine months, was it? Ten? All that time she was trapped in that stiflingly sterile room, and she doesn’t remember any of it. Her failsafe worked, but when she made it after the first day of her imprisonment, she’d expected she’d only have to lose a week or two, maybe a month at most. She still doesn’t even know the timeframe for sure; clarifying that wasn’t at the top of anybody’s list of priorities. 

The memories probably aren’t gone, or at least not fully. Earlier, she’d felt… She’d heard something, some snippet of conversation between her mother and father. Something about… bites.

Adaine’s heart beats in Aelwyn’s ears. Elves can survive on almost nothing , Jawbone had said, and that much was true. Left without food for long enough, elves enter a kind of biological stasis wherein their heartbeat slows, their breathing becomes sparse, and everything not absolutely necessary for survival simply stops operating. Stasis is not healthy, not in the slightest, and recovering from it is a lengthy, complicated process that not all elves survive. 

Aelwyn wonders, for a long, horrid moment, whether she deserves to survive that process. 

Adaine’s heartbeat in her ears reminds Aelwyn that she is not only living for herself, now. She has somebody to protect, and she cannot shirk her duties. 

She’ll stay, and she’ll protect Adaine, for as long as it takes. 

—

Aelwyn wakes suddenly with no memory of falling into a trance, nor of falling asleep. Hunger is the first thought in her mind. Her body is no longer in stasis, and is reminding her of that fact with clawing, twisting pain and aching hollowness in her gut. Her heart pounds in her ears, and the wizard’s tower around her feels too large and too new, and it starts to feel too much like somewhere else- somewhere bright white and sterile- and she’s too hungry to do anything but curl in on herself and wait for this… episode to pass. 

When the hunger pangs and the visions of elsewhere finally abate and she straightens back out, she notices with a jolt of cold, blooming shame that she had placed one hand in her mouth. She wipes it off on the blanket and tries to ignore the bite marks, tries to ignore her hunger-

“Not an elf, no, certainly not. Look at her- what elf is so driven by base needs? What elf forgets herself so easily?” says a voice dripping with heavy, acidic disdain.

“I suppose. She’ll still be useful, so…”

“Yes, yes, we’ll keep her around for now. Leave her to me, dear.”

She shakes her head, clearing the memories from behind her eyes. She knows it’d probably be useful to feed into the flashbacks, so to speak; if she lets them run for longer than they have, perhaps she might discover something important, some key moment she’s missing from her time in the orb. She just… can’t. She doesn’t think she’s strong enough, yet.

Aelwyn registers belatedly that the room feels more empty than it should. Her heartbeat, loud as it is, is the only one she can hear. She swings her legs over the side of the bunk bed and sets off in search of her sister.  

—

Aelwyn follows the scent of something fragrant and freshly-cooked, walking slowly on unsteady, aching legs to a sitting room on the first floor. She ends up finding Adaine easily despite the labyrinthine layout of Mordred Manor; something flitting and brief passes through her mind, some thought about sisterly intuition, but it’s gone before she can grasp it. 

Adaine is sitting at a small, rectangular dinner table with her crystal out, idly scrolling with one hand and eating a piece of toast topped with a fried egg with the other. Aelwyn pulls out the chair next to her sister’s and sits with an unceremonious whumph , planting her chin in her own arms on the table.

Adaine looks up from her crystal. “Hey,” she says. She’s clearly trying to seem calm for Aelwyn’s sake, but a note of surprise enters her voice nonetheless. She’s never been good at hiding what she’s feeling. “Sorry for leaving you alone up there. You want some eggs?” 

Adaine points behind her head with a thumb, and Aelwyn’s bleary eyes follow the motion to the stove with some difficulty. “Mm,” she mumbles, her tongue feeling thick in her mouth. “In a minute, prob’ly,” she lies. 

Adaine nods with a hum and goes back to scrolling on her crystal. 

Aelwyn takes a long moment to breathe and be still. On one particular inhale, she notices… something. Not a bad something, she doesn’t think, it’s just that something in the air feels odd. Some scent or vibration or temperature is different than it should be. 

She decides the only thing for it is to seek comfort, something new she’s been thinking of trying now that she’s no longer the Abernants’ perfect daughter. She sits up, then pitches to one side, perhaps more quickly than she intended, to plant her head on Adaine’s shoulder.

Adaine takes a quick inhale in surprise, setting down her crystal and looking over at Aelwyn’s half-lidded eyes. “Did you get enough rest?” she asks, one arm hesitantly lifting to not-quite cradle Aelwyn’s back, hovering an inch away from her loose t-shirt.

Aelwyn nods against her sister’s shoulder, the motion causing the fabric under her cheek to bunch up. “I think,” she says, hesitant and trailing. “What time is it?”

Adaine picks her crystal back up for a moment. “Eight thirty.”

“Okay. About eight hours.” 

Adaine blinks. “Huh. You slept?”

Aelwyn can’t help the annoyed frown that plays at the edges of her mouth. “Yes. I went through, like… I’m not… I should be allowed, uh… It’s fine if I sleep,” she finally settles on, though her voice is more defensive than she’d like it to be. “I’m fine. My body has to, I’ve gotta… recover.”

Adaine nods uneasily. “Why don’t we move to the couch? I don’t have school today, so we can just hang out for a little while,” she offers, one hand coming to rest hesitantly on Aelwyn’s shoulder. 

Aelwyn gives another nod. “Alright. I… alright,” she says, and she tries hard to make her voice sound steadier than she feels.

—

She ends up laying against Adaine’s side- clinging to it, really- as they sit together, Aelwyn’s face pressed up against Adaine’s shoulder, sinking into the plush expanse of the living room couch with the meagre weight of two twiggy elves. Adaine has an arm around Aelwyn’s shoulder, loose enough that she could leave if she wanted to. It’s warm. It’s soft. She’s being cradled and held by her sister after eighteen years of needlessly depriving herself of this. 

For reasons that are unbeknownst to her, but that are all-too-rapidly crystallizing into a shape that fills her with creeping dread, it is utterly and completely torturous. 

The hunger gnaws at her, no longer limited to just her stomach. Her arms feel heavy and leaden, and her throat feels hot and constricted, and her eyes weigh heavily in their sockets. Her thoughts move without moving, pressing against invisible walls of fog, plying them for weaknesses and finding none. All she can think about with any coherency is how achingly, all-consumingly hungry she is.

She needs food. This much is obvious; this much she knows. She knows with crystal clarity that she would feel a million times better if she could just eat . Something she also knows is that the extra egg Adaine had fried up for her in anticipation of her waking up is the least appetizing thing she’s ever smelled in her life. She doesn’t want it; she doesn’t think she can want it. 

She wants- she needs- she doesn’t know what she wants, what she needs, doesn’t know how she can be so mind-numbingly empty and yet not want to eat; she knows, distantly, that she’s starving herself-

Cold voice, cold hands. “You can starve or you can feed elsewhere. Your choice does not matter to me.”

Touch on the back of her neck that constricts. Touch that pulls her head up to face forwards. She hisses loudly, baring her-

In the present, Aelwyn feels her heartbeat quicken, and Adaine pulls her in closer. She breathes for a second, feeling almost like she’s free, but the sensations don’t fade; they get stronger.

Cold hands, cold voice. A slap across the face that stings, leaves marks deeper than it should. “This behaviour is not nearly becoming of an Abernant,” he says, voice low and harsh. “You’re hardly an Abernant anymore, though, are you?” he muses. “The Abernants are elves. I don’t count monsters amongst the members of my family.”

Aelwyn shudders and shakes, her eyes shut tight. The vision is superimposed onto the present like a bad screenprinting job. Adaine’s saying something, she’s pretty sure, but she can’t hear anything over the rush of blood in her ears, over her father’s voice, stinging and sharp.

“Here’s something else I know about monsters that I feel may interest you,” he says, helpful words betraying an acidic tone. “Monsters, Aelwyn, do not deserve to eat. Monsters, in fact, do not deserve much more than to be used until they can be used no longer, then to meet an early grave.”

Crack. Something swings and connects, and pain blooms hot and ugly on her ribcage. “Unless you want to be treated like a monster- unless you enjoy this- you’d best at least start acting like a functional member of society, hmm? You’ll never be an Abernant again, of course, but I’d hate to have to kill you on top of that.”

She nods numbly. “I’ll… I’ll be good, Father.”

“Yes, you will,” he says simply. “You know what happens if that is a lie.”

Cold hands, shaking chest and fingers and eyes. She presses her face closer to Adaine, seeking warmth, hoping for something, close to it and yet so far-

Aelwyn kneels in the dirt and waits for her father to leave. When he does, she finally lets her legs give out, and she lays sideways on the forest floor, the dark clearing seeming to swallow her up. She does not cry, scream, or try to run; she just lays down. She remembers reading something in a book a long time ago about learned helplessness. She remembers reading something in a book a long time ago about abjuration magic. She remembers the look on Adaine’s face the very last time she had failed to protect her from their parents.

She goes mostly limp in Adaine’s arms, though her arms still cling onto her sister like a life preserver in a hurricane.

She feels hungry, as she always does these days. It gnaws. It aches. She knows what would fix it, and she knows she can’t have it.

Her teeth weigh heavily in her mouth. Her- her fangs weigh heavily in her mouth. She- she…

In the present, the images fade from behind Aelwyn’s eyes and she freezes with her face hovering just above Adaine’s neck. 

Her lips are parted. Only slightly, but it’s damning.

She had been leaning in.

Leaning in to-

to-

“Aelwyn, are you alright? Can you hear me?” Adaine asks, some sort of concern or grief colouring her voice. She has to- Aelwyn has to protect her. She’s so small. She sounds so small. Adaine’s always been smaller than her, and she knows that, and she was trying to-

trying to-

Her mind does not process what would have come next. It simply refuses. The thought, the image, it slips away from her like water off a duck’s back. 

She rolls sideways off of Adaine, then scrambles to her feet as fast as she can with her aching legs. She runs off as quickly as possible and tries not to look back.

—

The next day is… difficult.

There is a horrible realization bubbling up in memories and feelings deep within the core of Aelwyn’s mind. The sound of it, inaudible as it may be, is almost deafening, and she keeps away from people for the morning, afraid in an absurd way that they’ll somehow hear what is percolating in her head and her chest.

Adaine asks her about it, of course. Adaine always asks people about things. She’s good like that. She cares . She cares enough to corner Aelwyn (she’s not being cornered, she’s not, it’s Adaine, she's safe) in the kitchen of Mordred Manor before she leaves for school. 

“Are you doing okay? You kind of, um… ran off yesterday? Did I do something to upset you?” she asks, care and love dripping from her voice.

Aelwyn takes a step back as if afraid that the drips will get on her clothes. “No,” she says, her voice tight and controlled and yet still too small and pathetic. “You didn’t do anything. I’m fine.” 

“Alright,” Adaine says with a nod. “If you’re sure. Let me know if you need anything?” she continues, giving a bright smile that is creased with worry at its edges, and turning on her heel to head off to school. Even though this is objectively what Aelwyn asked for, her rejection burns like lightning.

Aelwyn watches Adaine leave, her heart aching in some unnameable way, and she does not call out for her to return. 

—

She finds herself in a closet. She’s not sure whose it is; she just needed somewhere to hide. The clothes aren’t her style- they’re baggy, sporty, and altogether too garish; the shirts are an odd mixture of tie-dye and athleisure. There’s a pair of cowboy boots on the floor with acrylic paint splattered across the ankles and toes. 

She focuses on the clothes, critiquing them in her head with a wisp of her former bitchiness, and ardently ignores everything presently whirling and unfolding in her mind.

The room outside is silent (mostly- she does hear some fabric rustling, but it’s probably nothing). The house is mostly empty. She thinks she can hear Ragh’s mother upstairs, maybe on the third floor. She’s humming some Orcish drinking song while making a rhythmic rustling noise. Fabric rustling. Paper rustling. The scratch of nib against paper. She’s… writing? Huh. Aelwyn hadn’t taken her for the kind of person to journal…

If she really listens in, really strains herself, she can just about make out the sound of Lydia’s breathing.

From two floors away. 

Aelwyn immediately zones back into the clothes, her eyes landing on a shirt that says, in garish red font, “KISS THE COOK”. She is baffled by the fact that it isn’t an apron. What if someone wears it out of the house? Do they need to be cooking at all times for it to be appropriate? Why is she thinking about cooking so much? She needs to stop thinking about cooking, because then she’s going to think about food, and she’s-

She’s so hungry. Aelwyn slams a closed fist into her own thigh and tries to focus on that instead of how hungry she is, and it doesn’t work, and she can’t make her brain cooperate, can’t control her thoughts like she used to be able to, and her grip is slipping on everything, not just her mind but her body and her soul and-

“I can hear you thinking through the closet door,” someone whines. 

“Please, no,” she sobs, entirely on reflex. “P-please go away.”

“Oh shit,” says the voice. It is accompanied by footsteps coming too close and heartbeat too loud and blood rushing and-

The closet door opens, and she flinches hard, not fully aware of her own body. She curls up into a ball and casts Shield, just in case.

“Damn. Are you okay?” says the voice of Kristen Applebees, loud and insistent as it drills through her skull.

A familiar thorny vine of annoyance strangles the back of her neck. “A-aren’t you supposed to be at school?” she grits out through her teeth. 

“I skipped,” Kristen responds, cavalier as ever. “Bad brain day. You wanna watch Bluey with me?”

Utter confusion stops Aelwyn’s panic dead in its tracks. “What the fuck is Bluey?”

—

Twenty minutes of dogs with odd accents later, Aelwyn has had utterly enough of Kristen Applebees. Not her loud comments on the show, nor her open-mouthed chewing of chips the whole time, though both of those things are certainly annoying. To be more accurate, Aelwyn’s had utterly enough of a warm human body next to hers. 

Kristen’s bed is comfortable, even if Aelwyn’s only sitting on the edge of it. This is not the problem. Kristen herself is actually fairly relaxing to be around, mainly in the fact that she’s the only one in the house not handling Aelwyn with kiddie gloves. This is not the problem.

The problem is that she can hear Kristen’s breathing and Kristen’s heart pumping and, try as she might to ignore it, she knows exactly why. She knows exactly why she can hear Kristen’s blood rushing through her veins and arteries better than she can hear her own thoughts, and she knows exactly why she wants- why she wants-

A twig snaps somewhere outside of Aelwyn’s field of view. She looks up from her meal with anguish in her eyes and a comfortable fullness in her gut for the first time in days.

Mother gasps from the edge of the clearing. “Aelwyn, no,” she says, breathy and quiet, as she rushes towards the thing that looks like her daughter. 

Aelwyn licks her lips. She tastes copper. “I’m sorry,” she says, garbled and unclear but stronger than she’s felt in a long time. 

Her mother casts a spell, and some of the copper smell is gone from the air. “Clean yourself up. You know what Angwyn will do if he sees you like this,” she says quietly, placing one hand on Aelwyn’s shoulder. (Aelwyn notices that that shoulder is the one her mother Prestidigitated clean.)

She nods reluctantly. “Can I at least finish…” she starts, floundering a little for what to say before simply gesturing behind herself at the animal- some little fuzzy thing, maybe a squirrel or a stoat- she’d been halfway done with.

Her mother hesitates for a long moment, before resolving, her brow setting in place. “Fine. We don’t want you starving when your sister’s friends catch up,” she says, quiet and firm, like surrender. 

Aelwyn bares her fangs and she descends. 

In the present, Aelwyn’s teeth give a sympathetic ache, and she feels a set of fangs flex forward and fall into place. 

They feel wrong and foreign, the points of them pressing into her gums in strange ways, but at the same time, she feels… right, strong, powerful. Her gut twists.

She covers her mouth with one hand and mumbles, with her voice snagging on the points of her fangs like a fish in a net, something about needing to go to the bathroom. Kristen just nods, nonchalant as ever, barely even looking away from the show.

Aelwyn pushes herself to a standing position, her knees protesting with sharp, prickling pain, and leaves the room, limping slightly as one of her hips joins in on the protest. 

She wanders for a little while. The house yawns, empty and massive, and swallows her up. Rooms she didn’t know existed lead the wrong way through twisting hallways to rooms that she could’ve sworn only had one entrance.

It’s the perfect environment for thinking, in short. Not that what Aelwyn is doing is exactly thinking; she’d call it something more like panicking, or spiralling, if she had to call it anything but pathetic. 

Her mind whirls, and each time her tongue brushes against one of the points of her still-extended fangs, it whirls faster. Memories and images of her time in Calethriel Tower, as well as of the days-long black pit of memory that followed, rush back to her in fits and starts. 

“I know she’s our daughter, Arianwen, but some crimes must not go unpunished,” he says, and within the orb, Aelwyn does not cry because she no longer has enough water in her body to do so-

Down another hallway. Paintings on the walls of ships in storms. Faded wallpaper. Her steps, uneven with her limp, thump-thump on the carpeted floor-

-Sets of footsteps down the hallway, most light and airy, one clomping and angry. 

A man with raven black hair and vibrant, un-elven clothes winces when he sees her. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”

The orb is dispelled. She lifts her head to ask the man why he’s sorry, but he is shoved forward by one of the elves before she can get the words out.

His fangs pierce her throat, and with all the strength left in her body, she screams-

Opening a door that seals invisibly when it closes. Walking through the dining room. Opening another door. Yawning, dark hallway. She walks in. She doesn’t need a light, of course she doesn’t, and-

-“What, did you think you’d get food now? No, no, no,” he chastises. “It was dangerous to give you food before, and it’s dangerous to give you food now. You‘d do well to starve quietly. Fewer consequences will follow.”

Well-polished boots turn and stride out of the room. A small voice says: “I’m sorry, Aelwyn,” before following, and-

Left, right, then left. Near Fig’s room. Skirting around Ragh’s room silently. One more hallway, its walls emerald green with sconces positioned intermittently. Walking, walking. Her hip screeches with each step. Her feet burn. Her spine aches. She’s so hungry, and-

-she croaks out, as best as she can: “Who bit me?”

It echoes in the empty room. 

Almost empty.

Father’s response is smug. “Nobody you’d know. Your sister told us that awful music club in Elmville was infested with those vile creatures, so we had the Court of Stars take one just for you.”

Silence. Gears, rusted with time, turn in her brain. Her response is halting. “Why?”

“Well, your mother and I decided that if you were going to act like an animal, you might as well be one,” he says, a sick satisfaction in his voice.

The response stings, but maybe not as much as it should, and- 

Through another door, down another hallway. Limping turns to staggering. She is no longer taking in her own surroundings. She cannot hold herself up much longer, can’t keep walking, can’t keep-

-doing this to yourself, kiddo,” Kalina chides.

“I’m… I… Mother and Father did this,” Aelwyn croaks. 

Kalina her tongue, shakes her head in mock sadness. “You know they didn’t, kid. A punishment is just a reaction to an action, and the action was all you. You could’ve just behaved. You know that, right?” she asks, false pity colouring her voice in sickly green.

Aelwyn knows Kalina is wrong, but she also knows what happens when she goes against her. “I know,” she says. “I’m sorry,” she says. 

“You’re not, but I appreciate the effort, kiddo,” she says, apathetic and distant.

Aelwyn is shambling by now. Her hip screams in agony with every step. Her knees are making grotesque popping noises, she thinks, but really, she can’t hear them. At some point, her head had joined in on the fun, blooming with a migraine that throbs in time with her heartbeat. She stumbles and nearly falls with every few footsteps. Rooms have started to blend together. Hallways look the same. She knows she can’t keep walking for much longer. She trips on something-

and Adaine catches her, words falling rapidly and senselessly from her mouth, a string of “No, no, wait- please, Aelwyn-“ as she tries to grab onto Aelywn, keep her from struggling away-

Aelwyn, despite the juddering weakness in her bones, breaks away from Adaine’s hold. She whips her head around and snarls. “You don’t fucking get it!”

Adaine’s face twists into a mask of deep hurt and sorrow that is immediately replaced by rage. “What don’t I fucking get, Aelwyn?” she demands. “That our parents tortured you? That you’re trying to fucking run back to them after the fight’s already won?”

Aelwyn sees a large purple shape forming on the horizon, and a sudden wave of exhaustion washes over her. “No,” she says, all of the fight drained out of her voice. “I’m not trying to run back to them. I promise.” 

“Then where were you going?”

“There’s something- something they did, I think,” Aelwyn starts slowly. “I can’t- I can’t be around you. I don’t know. I don’t remember what it is. I think my spell made me forget,” she whispers, small and broken. 

Adaine is silent for a long few moments, her face flitting through a thousand different emotions. Both of them breathe heavily. Around them, quiet conversation suffuses the still battlefield as their allies attend to the wounded and the scared. The purple shape on the horizon unfolds itself and stretches. 

When Adaine finally responds, it is thick and choked through a wave of oncoming tears.

“I thought you were gonna stay,” she begins, her mouth wobbling, her voice rough. “I thought you were gonna come home and be my big sister.”

Aelwyn’s gut twists with guilt and shame, and she wraps her sister up in a tight hug.

She finds a room that seems empty, and she slides down against one of the walls, sitting silently and allowing images and sounds and smells to pop behind her eyes like phosphenes. 

She knows, now, what they did to her. She knows, now, why she’s so hungry. 

Her fangs ache, feeling new and raw despite her now knowing she’s had them for… four months? Five? Six? She can’t say for sure, but long enough that they shouldn’t be…

Well, they shouldn’t be there in the first place, but if they’re there, she’d rather they not hurt. 

The hunger isn’t even really manifesting as hunger anymore, not in such simple terms. She just feels… weak. Exhausted. Her hands are cold, and her fingernails have an unhealthy bluish tint to them. She can’t feel her legs, and it’s getting hard to keep her eyes open. Her thoughts are moving far too slowly, and her awareness of the room around her is only peripheral and vague. She thinks there’s a bed in here, potentially a table. A figure by the door. A carpet. A painting. 

Wait. A figure by the door? 

The images fade from behind her eyes, and she squints blearily in the direction of the doorway. It’s dark; must be nighttime. The lights are off, too. She sees pointed ears, short hair, an athletic build, all in silhouette. She hears, distantly: “Aelwyn? What’s up, kid?”

She struggles to make the puzzle pieces snap together in her mind. She knows this person, she thinks. She knows… how to talk, yes. “Sandra Lynn?” she says, then coughs as her voice comes out gravelly and rough. 

Sandra Lynn’s eyes widen in alarm, and she  immediately rushes to Aelwyn’s side. She tries to get an arm under Aelwyn to pick her up, but she wriggles out of her grasp, mumbling “no, no, no-“ over and over again. 

Sandra Lynn stops trying to pick Aelwyn up and backs up into a low crouch a few feet away from her. She raises her hands in surrender, shushing her gently. “Hey, hey, you’re okay- it’s okay. You don’t have to go anywhere right now. Can you talk to me? What’s up, what’s going on?” she asks, halfway frantic.

“I’m fine,” Aelwyn croaks. “You can go.”

Sandra Lynn squints at her. “I’m gonna stay here, I think. No offense, kid, but you look like shit.”

Despite herself, Aelwyn huffs out a laugh. “Wow, thanks,” she snarks, and it feels good and normal and comfortable .

Sandra Lynn gives a soft chuckle in return, seeming slightly mollified by the fact that Aelwyn is well enough to be a bitch, though the primary emotion on her face is still concern. “Yeah, yeah,” she says, a smile in her voice.

The conversation lulls awkwardly. Aelwyn tries to force her brain to think for a moment. All she can think to ask is: “Why… why are you here?” 

Sandra Lynn blinks. “I got home from work and went to… This is my room? Could ask you that question myself.”

Aelwyn looks around through hunger-blurred eyes and spots a bed, a nightstand with a book about native fungus species on it, and a laundry chair. “Oh,” she says, slow and somewhat distant. “That’s interesting.”

“Yeah, uh… Speaking of, why are you hiding out in my room, kid? Did something happen?” Sandra Lynn asks, blunt as ever.

The fledgling smile dies off of Aelwyn’s face. She hadn’t been smiling with her teeth quite yet, but she is at once intimately aware that if she had been, Sandra Lynn would’ve seen a mouthful of fangs filling out her gaunt cheeks. And, of course, Sandra Lynn is a Ranger, and Rangers… kill monsters, as far as Aelwyn is aware, so…

She shuts her mouth tighter and shakes her head, not meeting Sandra Lynn’s eyes. 

She cocks her head in response. “Okay, I don’t really think that’s true, but lemme give you a deal, okay?” she says, placing both hands palm-up on her knees. She lifts one hand: “If this is something you don’t feel ready to tell anyone about, I’ll just leave you here,” she says. The other hand: “Or, if this is something you want people to know about but you’re worried about how they’ll react, I’ll stay and try to be judgement-free. Your choice, kid.”

Some part of Aelwyn registers a near-invisible note in Sandra Lynn’s voice when she lists the first option. That part of her says, essentially, that picking the first option will have consequences; it says that Sandra Lynn is offering a false choice, and hinting at the correct answer. 

She tells that part of her to shut up and instead listens to another, deeper part of her that says she is scared of the adult leaving. 

“Stay,” she says quietly, almost whispering.

Sandra Lynn gives a short nod. “Cool,” she responds, moving from crouching to sitting against the bed. (She didn’t even know she was next to the bed.)

Aelwyn pulls her knees up to her chest and hides her face in them. She knows that if she speaks or emotes with her face visible, her fangs will show. “I’ve been… remembering things,” she says, slow and hesitant.

Sandra Lynn makes a humming noise like she understands. “Yeah, that’s always rough, kid.”

“Like… things from when…” she begins, then stops and considers. “Do you know what happened to me?”

“I got the basic gist of it from Jawbone, yeah. You’ve been remembering things from then?” she asks, a certain masked mounting dread present underneath her voice. 

“Yeah.” Aelwyn pushes her face further into her knees before continuing. “Basically, I messed up my parents’ plans, so they locked me in a magical orb for about a year and didn’t let me eat or sleep or drink water.”

When Aelwyn peeks out from her knees to gauge Sandra Lynn’s reaction, she, appropriately, looks vaguely sick, but a larger part of her expression speaks of a deep-seated rage towards Aelwyn’s parents in a thousand-yard stare and a furrowed brow. “Sure,” she says, jaw grinding slightly.

Face back in the knees. “I cast a spell on myself in the first few days of imprisonment that preserved my mind… as it was,” Aelwyn explains, voice somewhat steadier now that she’s digging into the particulars of a piece of arcana rather than the particulars of her emotions. “Adaine activated the spell when I got out of the orb, and as far as I know, it was supposed to overwrite my… tortured self with my non-tortured self.”

Sandra Lynn takes a long moment to respond.“Right.”

“I don’t think I casted it right. Some of the things from… that time, they’re slipping back in,” she explains. She raises her head from where it was buried in her knees, and her voice gains back some of its tremolo. “Like… I’m remembering things I thought I erased. Does that make sense?”

A slow nod comes in response. “Yeah, I think so. Anything major that’s got you shaken up?”

Aelwyn looks down at the worn floorboards, tracing the lines with her eyes. “Yeah,” she says, trying to sound more brave than she feels.

Sandra Lynn fiddles with one of her belts. “Right.”

“Right,” Aelwyn echoes.

The hand on the belt stills. “And?” she says, leading.

Aelwyn shrinks as her body gives another sharp hunger pang. She squeezes her hands together tightly, ignoring how numb and cold they are. “I… d-don’t think I can talk about that yet,” she says, stumbling embarrassingly over her fangs. 

The Ranger frowns. “Look, kid… I get that, but you kinda don’t have a choice here.” 

Aelwyn’s blood goes cold. “What?”

The Ranger sighs, long and exasperated. (Tired of me, annoyed, did something wrong, whispers Aelwyn’s brain.) “I just got home from work and found you shaking and shivering on the floor of my bedroom. If I let you just… go back to your room and forget this happened, you’re just gonna keep breaking down ‘til you either burn off all that energy or seriously hurt yourself. Got it?” the Ranger says, making a chopping hand motion. 

Aelwyn is no longer seeing the Ranger’s facial expressions. Her face seems shadowed; her hands are thrown into stark relief. She notes the sheathed knife at the Ranger’s thigh, how easy it would be to-

She swallows, her mouth suddenly dry. “I’m fine.”

Brusque, dry, firm, as if stating a fact: “You’re not.” 

Aelwyn’s response rips out of her with surprising furor, near a snarl. “I’m fine! I would’ve been just fine if you had minded your own fucking business!” she shouts, one hand making a sweeping gesture over the Ranger’s body.

The Ranger remains infuriatingly level. “Aelwyn. You’re breaking down. I talked to Jawbone, and he said you haven’t been eating, so that can’t be helping either. You’re gonna come downstairs with me to the kitchen, and then maybe we can have a talk,” she says, her facial expression exaggerated as if to say she’s simplifying the situation for somebody she thinks is below her. Aelwyn’s blood boils with rage, and she breathes heavily in and out, the only sound in the patronizing, awkward silence. 

Aelwyn can tell, clear as day, that the Ranger wants a response, and she is utterly determined not to give her the satisfaction. She sits in obstinate silence, her jaw set and her nostrils flaring with heavy breaths, and she can’t tell whether she’s about to cry or scream.

The Ranger grows tired of silence after a few moments. “Gonna take that as a yes,” she says, then makes to grab Aelwyn by the shoulder, and-

-for a moment, her brain stops perceiving anything other than threat , stops considering any course of action besides remove the threat-

-and she bites.

Her fangs sink, heavy and deep, into the fibrous muscle of the Ranger’s forearm. Her head moves down farther than she’d expected it to as they pull apart skin and flesh, feeling almost like misjudging the last step of a flight of stairs and pitching forward, jolted off-balance.  

Her only instinct had been to remove the threat , but with her fangs in the Ranger’s arm, tasting copper and feeling capillaries burst, she knows exactly how she can solve several problems at once. Her heartbeat pounds in her ears, the rush of blood overpowering all other sound as she unfurls herself, going from the fetal position to an awkward, yet strong grip on the Ranger’s forearm. She clamps her jaw down tighter, then releases it slightly, and is rewarded with an immediate welling flow of blood from around her fangs. 

The Ranger might be saying something, but Aelwyn can taste blood for the first time in- she doesn’t know how long, and it tastes like sweet relief.

Realistically, she thinks as her eyes drift lazily shut and she drinks up the welling blood, it tastes like blood tastes. Copper and tangy and sweet and salty. The taste doesn’t matter as much as the fact that it tastes like anything at all- the fact that as it hits her stomach it stays there, resting heavy and warm and right. It’s almost enough to make her weep with joy. She remembers all the attempts in the last few days to get normal food down- how unsatisfied she’d felt, how nauseous, how empty- and almost laughs at how ridiculous of an idea it is that she would ever want anything but this-

-this thing that is no longer flowing, that has dried from a welling to a trickle to nothing after only a meagre few mouthfuls. She gnashes her teeth slightly in irritation, but no more comes. She opens her eyes and-

Oh. That’s Sandra Lynn staring at her. Those are her teeth in Sandra Lynn’s arm, what the fuck-

She releases the Ranger’s arm as quickly as possible, opening her jaw and loosening her grip, then scrambles backwards as fast as she can. Her back hits the wall quickly, too quickly, she’s still so close to Sandra Lynn-

-who is silently regarding her arm, and its two fresh puncture wounds. 

Aelwyn raises her hands in surrender and immediately stutters out a hasty “I’m s-sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry- you’re not- are y-you- okay? I’m so sorry, I-“

Sandra Lynn cuts her off with a quick hand wave. She casts Healing Word on herself casually, and the punctures, tiny little things left by thin, hollow fangs, close up easily. 

The Ranger still does not speak. She silently regards Aelwyn’s hyperventilating, her rapidly flitting eyes, her shaking hands.

Aelwyn knows the coolness in those eyes. Aelwyn knows the poised stillness, like a contained explosion, in that careful, downturned frown. Aelwyn knows the way she is being studied. More than anything, Aelwyn knows what comes next.

(She sees pointed ears and a sharp jaw, and she knows that face.)

Aelwyn wipes a thin trail of vomit off the side of her mouth, and prays with fervour that none got on her nice teal cocktail dress.

The bathroom door opens, and she looks up. 

“Aelwyn,” Mother says from the doorway. “This behaviour is not becoming of an Abernant.”

Mother holds out her hands. Aelwyn knows what to do. 

She staggers to standing, and Mother readies a spell.

Aelwyn blinks hard, confused and disorientated. She closes her mouth and stops babbling apologies; she sits up, prim and proper, crossing her legs in front of her; she wipes all trace of traitorous emotion from her face and replaces it with placid submission. 

Then, she holds out her wrists towards Mother. 

She regards them for a moment, confused. “What are you doing?”

Aelwyn keeps silent. She knows this part of the charade, too. She wants to squeeze her eyes shut to brace against what’s coming, but she knows that will only make it worse. 

Mother shifts uneasily. Aelwyn’s arms begin to shake. “No, seriously, kid. What is this?” she asks. 

The routine has never gone this way before. Aelwyn struggles to process it, struggles to process the genuine fear and confusion in Mother’s voice. “You know,” she says, timid and small, still not meeting the adult’s gaze. 

Mother shakes her head slowly. Her hair follows the motion, like always. It’s… shorter than usual. “I… don’t.”

Silence is always the best option, but sometimes speech is permissible if she’s using it to demonstrate she understands what she did wrong. “I hurt you,” she explains, voice level and monotone. 

Mother shrugs. “I mean… sure? Not that bad, though, and I just healed myself, so…” 

“I hurt you,” she repeats. “Do whatever you need to.” She holds her wrists out farther, more insistently. 

“Kid…” she begins, a tremor in her voice. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Aelwyn wrinkles her nose. “Yes, you do.”

Mother’s mouth is open in an expression that almost resembles horror or dread. Aelwyn isn’t sure why it would, though. “Kid, I…” she begins. She sighs, and Aelwyn’s mind pings with bright flashes of danger danger danger. “Like I said, you didn’t actually hurt me that bad, and I’m fine now. Also, I understand why you did it, so it’s… I get it. Why… why would I want to hurt you?” 

Aelwyn stares past Mother to a place somewhere far away, her face blank and her bottom lip just beginning to wobble. Her response, when it comes, is soft, almost silent, to the point that only the consonants are audible. “Because you always do, Mother,” she says, and very carefully does not allow herself to cry.

Aelwyn hears a sharp intake of breath. Mother says “Oh,” sounding oddly choked, then stands up. Aelwyn flinches hard, but all she does is walk away.

The overhead light flicks on at maximum brightness, and Aelwyn is completely blinded. Someone mutters “oh, shit”, then a dimmer brings the light down to a more manageable intensity. Aelwyn spends a few moments blinking the light out from behind her eyes, disoriented. Her head pounds.

She opens her eyes after a little while and sees Sandra Lynn sitting on the edge of her bed.

Shit.

Aelwyn lowers her wrists. 

Sandra Lynn shuffles over closer to Aelwyn on the bed, then extends a hand, palm up, down to her. Her movements are slow and telegraphed, and she does not look at Aelwyn. 

Aelwyn takes her hand. 

“Kid,” Sandra Lynn starts, then opens and closes her mouth a few times. “I’m… sorry.”

Aelwyn shrugs, trying to seem like her usual nonchalant self and failing miserably. “It’s fine. My brain being fucked up has nothing to do with you.” 

Sandra Lynn makes unexpectedly intense eye contact with Aelwyn. “No, kid,” she says with a shake of her head. “You‘ve been starving under my roof for the last week, and I didn’t do anything about it,” she says, her voice tight.

“It’s fine,” Aelwyn mutters. “I’m not… Figueroth, or Adaine.”

Sandra Lynn winces, giving Aelwyn’s hand one awkward, sympathetic squeeze. “You’re not, but you’re still a kid without a caretaker, and you’re living in my house, so…”

“I… I suppose I follow your logic?” Aelwyn says, quiet and unconfident.  

Sandra Lynn hums in agreement. “So, why don’t we go tell the rest of the gang about this, and we can get the food situation sorted out?” she says, strangely blasé. 

Aelwyn hums, and it reverberates against her fangs, and she almost doesn’t feel sick. “Sure,” she says. “I’m… not in trouble?” she asks, hesitant.

Sandra Lynn gives her hand another squeeze. “No, kid,” she says. “You’re not.”

— 

The conversation that followed had been… tense, to say the least. 

Aelwyn has never liked being pitied. Most of the time, Jawbone’s demeanour is realistic and grounded enough not to trigger that area of her brain. Today, though, she’s just… sensitive. Alert. She’s not used to being vulnerable, and it shows in the way she prickles and bristles at any word levelled her way. 

(“I’m sorry they did that to you, kiddo,” Jawbone had said.

“You didn’t deserve that,” Jawbone had said.

“We’ll get things sorted out; you don’t have to go hungry, okay?” Jawbone had said.

All true, perhaps; stifling nonetheless.)

After a conversation that can’t have been longer than ten minutes, but which felt like an eternity, all of the people gathered (Jawbone, Aelwyn, Sandra Lynn, and Adaine) had noticed the late hour (turns out Sandra Lynn got home at 11:00; could’ve fooled Aelwyn) and decided it’d be best for everyone to get some rest. Aelwyn and Adaine had been sent to bed with strict orders to get lots of rest, and Adaine had been handed a sleeve of cookies and a full water bottle for… a specific purpose.

That specific purpose being that Aelwyn was to…

Well. She wouldn’t have to go hungry anymore, at least.

Adaine sits on the edge of the lower bunk bed- hers, as she’d said she feels safer in enclosed spaces, and far be it from Aelwyn to deny her baby sister safety- and deliberates. 

“Okay, I’ve just drank a bunch of water, and I can probably grab some juice out of my jacket… do you think a bandage will be enough, or should I get Kristen…? Eh, it’s probably fine. Ooh, do you think I have enough gauze…?”

She continues on this way for a few minutes. When it finally peters off into awkward silence, Aelwyn shifts uncomfortably from where she sits next to her sister. “Are you sure you’re alright to do this? It’s fine if you aren’t- I would understand. I haven’t exactly done much to- to deserve it.”

Telegraphing her movements carefully, Adaine punches Aelwyn playfully on the shoulder. Miraculously, she doesn’t flinch. “You don’t have to earn food, dipshit. I don’t want you to be hurting. I know you said all that stuff about protecting me and being my big sister, and I really like and appreciate that, but it goes both ways, okay?” she says, her eyes wide, searching Aelwyn’s face for something.

Aelwyn looks away, facing the floor. “Right. Sorry.”

Adaine loops one arm around Aelwyn’s shoulders. “It’s okay,” she says. “Let’s just get this figured out, then we can sleep, and see where we’re at from there, okay?”

At the gentleness in Adaine’s voice, so new and so hesitant, the corner of Aelwyn’s mouth pulls up slightly, and she looks back at her sister. “Yeah,” she says. “It’s simple when you say it like that.”

Adaine huffs out a laugh. “Maybe it’s just simple in general!” she says, throwing her arms up in the air. “Maybe Mom and Dad were all like rah, rules and earning and punishments and deserving, and actually it’s more like ‘starving children is bad, and you should feed your children’? What then? Huh?” she asks, poking Aelwyn in the side. 

Aelwyn fruitlessly tries to block her side with her arm. “You fucker,” she says, laughing. “Unhand me!” 

“Nope! Not unhanding you until you acknowledge you don’t have to earn nice things,” Adaine says, prim and smug. 

“You may be here for a while then, baby sister.” 

“Fuck you,” Adaine says, but she’s still laughing.

“If I say it, will you…” is all Aelwyn gets out before the reality of the situation sinks in. How do you even continue a sentence like that? “Give me your blood?” “Get out the knife?” 

Adaine notices it as Aelwyn trails off. “Hey, you know I’m just joking, right?” she asks, quiet and soft. “I know that you’re not gonna be, like… ten-years-of-therapy perfect after like, an hour of this being out in the open. I’m not expecting you to be.”

Aelwyn shrugs. “I guess. I’m not… I don’t know. I’m not worried about being perfect, exactly? Just… the reality of the situation setting in.”

“Yeah…” Adaine says, wincing slightly in sympathy. “Would it help if you faced away while I was doing it, and we talked about something else?” 

Aelwyn scrunches up her face in a mask of deliberation for a few seconds, then nods. “I think so.”

“Cool,” Adaine replies, flashing a thumbs up. “Swivel, bitch.”

Aelwyn snorts out a laugh, complying begrudgingly. She hears the sound of Adaine picking up the cup and the knife, then the rest of it is drowned out by Adaine’s voice. “You ever think about what our lives would’ve been like if we were raised here instead of there?”

Aelwyn almost laughs. “Oof,” she says. “Right for the jugular, hm? Do you know what a bedside manner is, dear sister?”

Adaine sighs. “I dunno,” she says. “It’s kind of just on my mind.”

“Yeah, I… mine too.”

The sisters sit in silence for a few moments. Aelwyn pretends she cannot hear the drip-drip-drip of Adaine’s blood. 

“I guess I’d be less afraid about all of this,” Aelwyn starts, tentative and unsure.

“Yeah. I’d be less scared about a lot of things,” Adaine says.

“They… said a lot of things, while I was…” Aelwyn shudders. “When it was just me and them. About me, and about me being a… you know.”

“Vampire, yeah,” Adaine says. At the way Aelwyn winces, she quickly follows it up, saying, “I know you’re kind of uncomfortable with that word, but like, it’s probably good to get used to it.”

Aelwyn shrugs. “I guess.”

“Right. But you were saying, about…?”

“Yeah. I think the reason I tried to keep it a secret is… them. What they said,” she explains, slow and deliberate, trying to pick the perfect phrasing. She hesitates before continuing, knowing Adaine won’t be happy with her next words. “I didn’t think they were… wrong, exactly, you know? They said my hunger was monstrous, that it didn’t deserve to be fed, and weren’t they… right, even just a little?”

Aelwyn hears silence from the other side of the bed for a few long, long moments. “No,” is what Adaine eventually settles on. “I don’t think you’re a monster. Even if you do have to hurt people to eat, I mean… doesn’t everyone?”

“If you want to get into the nitty-gritty with regards to the broader consequences of agriculture, sure,” Aelwyn deadpans.

“That’s kind of exactly what I meant, though,” Adaine says, earnest. “Like- your thing’s just more direct! I… you know?”

Aelwyn just hums.

“Is this a bad analogy?”

Aelwyn mm-hm s.

“Well, shit,” Adaine mutters, then immediately perks up. “Well hey, would you look at that! I’m done! Cool topic change! Good job, me!”

Aelwyn snickers a little before turning around. Adaine’s sitting there on the edge of the bed sporting a bandaid with little cartoon horses on it stuck to the meat of her thumb, a freshly-cleaned-off pocket knife placed on the bedside table to her right.

Aelwyn does not look at what is in Adaine’s hands. “Did you clean out the cut?” she asks instead, occupying her mind.

“Yeah,” Adaine says, nodding proudly. “I got one of those alcohol wipes from the medicine cabinet downstairs,” she explains. After a moment of consideration: “I guess you wouldn’t know about those, but they do exist, and I got one.”

“Good,” Aelwyn says, her voice small and shaking.

Adaine immediately notices, because of course she does. “Are you okay?” she asks. 

Aelwyn looks at what is in Adaine’s hands. A small drinking cup, probably crystal, is full about an eighth of the way with a dark, rust-red liquid. (“Just while we get a more regular supply sorted out,” Sandra Lynn had explained. “You won’t have to do this forever.” It doesn’t make it any easier, though.)

Aelwyn almost winces at how flowery and indirect her internal monologue had gotten without her noticing. She reins it in, forcing herself to describe what she sees: 

That’s a bit of Adaine’s blood in a cup. Things in cups are put there intentionally so people can drink them. That’s her sister’s blood. 

Her brain stutters, and her tongue follows. “I-I’m fine,” she answers belatedly. “Just… I can have this? You’re not…” She struggles to think of words. “You don’t… think this is… bad?”

Adaine shakes her head slowly and offers the cup to Aelwyn. “You can have this,” she says. “It’s the least I can do.”

Aelwyn takes the cup gently, trying to touch Adaine’s hand as little as possible. She stares at the blood for a long moment. 

“Thank you,” she whispers.

Adaine wraps an arm around Aelwyn, giving one encouraging squeeze before letting go.

She lifts the cup to her mouth and takes a sip. 

Again, she’s reminded of how intense blood drinking is stereotyped as being; again, she contradicts her assumptions. There is no rush of unnatural vitality, no supernaturally sublime taste that surpasses any mortal food. It’s a cup of blood, and it rolls down her throat like any drink might. It’s just… that relief from earlier, of finally being able to taste something, finally being able to keep it down, finally being able to feel full, hasn’t gone away. If anything, with blood freely given, that feeling is stronger. She is reminded, absurdly, of the feeling of eating a hearty, home-cooked meal, or at least what she imagines that must be like; safety, warmth, satiation. 

She tips the glass back further, savouring each mouthful thoroughly. 

When she’s done, she lowers the cup to her lap and stares off into the middle distance. She allows the reflexive guilt to wash over her in waves, allows herself to hear her father’s disappointment and her mother’s fear. 

The guilt fades, after a moment, to a more manageable background hum. In response, Aelwyn sets the cup on the ground, then leans sideways until her head rests on Adaine’s shoulder. Adaine wraps Aelwyn up in a tight hug (Perhaps a little too tight- was she always that strong? A thought process for later, perhaps), and she relaxes into the touch, and for a glorious moment, she can almost believe that she deserves this.

—

Aelwyn comes back inside through the sliding back door of the Faeth residence, her hair pasted to her forehead with sweat, after a few hours. The Bad Kids- and co.- had staged an impromptu party to ring in the end of their sophomore year and the beginning of summer, and it had gotten somewhat rowdy when Kristen had arrived. (Well- as rowdy as a Bad Kids party can be expected to get, so… refreshingly boring. Aelwyn caught a few water balloons to the face, and that was enough excitement for her.)

She sets her crutches by the kitchen table and sits down at one of the upholstered stools. She places her chin in her arms, breathing heavily.

(Her crutches had been a gift from Jawbone, at first, when she had finally opened up to him about the ever-present ache in her bones. They were plain matte black, fitted to her forearms, and absolutely wonderful. She still felt some degree of shame over using them, but couldn’t deny how much easier life had been for the last few months.)

(The fact that Adaine had gotten every resident of Mordred to paint a design along the length of them didn’t hurt, either. Little signatures dotted amongst fields of vibrant yellow flowers; a reminder to eat; a scribbled “love you” from Adaine on the underside of one of the forearm pieces, tucked away where no one but Aelwyn can see it.)

(She still felt, these days, like expressing every emotion that she experienced was an impossibility, or at least a lofty, far-off goal, but she was trying. She was trying.)

The sliding door opens again, and Adaine comes through, also breathing heavily, and kicks off her sandals. “Hey,” she says. “You okay?”

“All good,” Aelwyn responds, her voice somewhat muffled by her arms, and somehow, it isn’t even a lie.

Adaine gets some water, then comes to sit next to Aelwyn at the kitchen table. “Cool,” she says. She drinks some of her water, then furrows her brows. “Have you eaten today?”

Aelwyn looks away. “No.”

“You know, nobody’s gonna take it from you-“

“I know, shush-“

“Like, do you think Riz is just gonna come in and go-“

“I know-“

“-‘ooh, my favourite, red Gatorade!’ and take a sip? Girl-“

“I said I know! Sweet fucking Cassandra, I’m going, get off my back!” Aelwyn complains, mock indignance dripping heavy from her tone.

“Cool.”

Aelwyn gets up, walking gingerly on her bad hip to the fridge. She opens it, and is met with a sight that, even now, never fails to throw her for a loop: a blood bag with her name written on it in marker. 

(When the adults of Mordred had found out about what happened, the first order of business had been finding a steady supply of food. No child, not even a blood-sucking creature of the night, would starve under their collective roof. It had been surprisingly easy to secure a steady supply of blood; turns out that most of what the Abernant parents had said about vampires was bullshit, and they were, for the most part, accepted members of society whose needs were easily accommodated for. Who knew!)

She plucks the blood bag out of the Faeths’ fridge- one she’d brought from home (and isn’t it still such a novelty to call Mordred home?)- and pops it in the microwave. 

Aelwyn hops up to sit on the counter with a grunt of effort, ignoring Adaine’s side-eye at the exertion. She can handle herself perfectly fine, Adaine. 

The blood bag spins around in the microwave for a few minutes. 

Over the microwave’s low hum, Adaine says: “How’ve you been doing?”

Aelwyn shrugs. “Better. I think I’m going to get that job at Oakshield.”

Adaine smiles, broad and proud. “Hell yeah. What’d I tell you?”

Aelwyn sighs and recites, from memory: “They’re not going to toss out your resume if you’re a vampire; they’ll only toss out your resume if they find out about the crimes.”

“And did they find out about the crimes?”

“You know I made sure they didn’t, sister dearest.”

“With blackmail?”

“With blackmail.”

“Excellent.” Adaine says, snickering.

“God, you’ve grown into such a little rebel, haven’t you?” Aelwyn muses. “I suppose you always were more of one than me, though…”

Adaine’s smile dims a little. “Yeah, I… I don’t think you need me to tell you why I had to rebel.”

Aelwyn nods, her own smile dimming in tune with her baby sister’s. She scoots sideways towards Adaine on the counter, and offers out a hand, palm-up. 

Adaine takes it.

“I’m sorry,” Aelwyn says.

“I know you are. You’ve said it, like, fifty times,” says Adaine.

“Yeah, but I am sorry,” she insists.

“I know.”

“Do you?” 

Adaine looks away. “I do,” she says slowly. “This is nice. I like this,” she continues, gesturing at their intertwined hands. 

“Mhm. Agreed.”

“But… you know.”

“I know.”

“They did a lot of stuff they shouldn’t have, and so did you.”

“And so did you.”

“Yup. Aren’t we just two peas in a pod?”

Aelwyn snorts. “God, you’re a dork.”

Adaine scoffs in mock indignation. “Says you! You’re practically Queen of the Dorks!”

“Ha. Yeah, I suppose I am. How did either of us ever think I was cool?”

“We may never know,” Aelwyn says, a false far-off tone to her voice. 

“Yeah. I…” Aelwyn’s voice creaks. “I am sorry, though, for everything.”

Adaine nods. “I am too, for what it’s worth.”

The microwave beeps, and Aelwyn winces, slowly unfolding herself off of the counter. “Pause the emotional moment. Can you do that? Just hold for a second. Stop experiencing emotions. Be right back,” she instructs.

Aelwyn pops open the microwave and grabs out the blood bag. She pops a straw in it like a Fantasy Capri-Sun, something she is, again, still getting used to, and sits back over with Adaine at the kitchen stools.

Adaine immediately plants her head on Aelwyn’s shoulder as soon as she sits down. “Miss me?” Aelwyn says. 

Adaine knows what is coming; they’ve had this conversation many times before. “Shut up, I don’t have separation anxiety,” she grumbles.

“You do! Like an anxious chihuahua, you are. Right and proper.”

“Biiiiitch,” Adaine grumbles, though the effect is somewhat lessened by her mouth catching on the fabric of Aelwyn’s button-up. 

Aelwyn takes a sip of her lunch.

Silence reigns.

“Mm,” Adaine hums. “Did you know?”

“Did I know what, baby sister?” Aelwyn says, a note of reflexive teasing in her voice.

“Even if we had to get a late start on sister stuff because of everything, I’m glad we got any start at all,” Adaine mumbles into her shirt. 

Aelwyn sets the blood bag down on the counter for a moment so she can have both hands free to hug her sister. She wraps Adaine up with both arms and plants her chin on top of her head. “I knew that,” she says, near a whisper.

“I think I forgive you,” Adaine mumbles, then throws both arms around Aelwyn in turn. 

For all of the sappy, emotional conversations she’s had with Adaine in the past few months, Aelwyn hasn’t heard that from her sister yet. “Oh,” she says, choked and small. 

Adaine burrows her head further into Aelwyn’s shoulder. “Don’t make me regret it, dork.”

Aelwyn nods against her sister’s head, mussing up her hair slightly. “I won’t,” she says, her voice hard like steel, like a promise. “I won’t.”

After a long few minutes, Adaine disentangles herself from her sister and sits on her hands, bouncing slightly in place. “C’mon,” she says, fresh excitement replacing the emotion in her tone. “I wanna get back outside. Finish your lunch.”

Aelwyn grins at Adaine’s excitement, then offers a sarcastic salute. She picks the blood bag back up and drinks.

After a little while, Aelwyn grabs her crutches, and both sisters get up to head back outside through the big sliding glass door. From the kitchen, the splash of a water balloon making impact can be heard. It is followed by an indignant cry of “oh, you fucker! ” from Adaine, then a slightly quieter “do you want me to get him?” from Aelwyn. 

Fabian yelps in fear as the sound of Aelwyn’s crutches approaches, but it’s not real fear, not really.

The only thing in the air, the only thing in people’s minds, is joy, if only for now.

The sky is bright and sunny over Elmville, and it is a wonderful day to be a vampire. 

fin