Chapter Text
“Oh, Lami! There you are! Your sister-cum-daughter is in trouble!”
Lami’s younger sister was a little menace who got into small trouble every other day and a big one every other week, despite being a normally very sensible child. The newcomer’s casual use of the ridiculous epithet told the young woman all she needed to know about the situation. Her elegant eyebrow still shot up above her glittering green eyes as she took in the sight of the young boy who struggled to catch his breath as if he had just run straight from the city to their town.
Deciding to give the news-bearer some time to steady himself, Lami turned back to the merchant she was haggling with. She sighed very exaggeratedly, “Kids these days. A thousand seven hundred it is then, Old Mark, but only this one time.”
The miserly bastard was quick to swipe the bundle of foraged herbs off the table and shoved the agreed amount of money in Lami’s hand as if he was afraid she’d change her mind. Lami’s lips twitch in amusement. She wouldn’t mind selling them for a flat thousand, actually, but it was strangely satisfying to needle the town’s own berry-pinching ancestor.
Today’s hunt proved successful. Lami sauntered toward the waiting boy, already bracing herself for whatever mess Ali had managed to find herself in this time. Draping her arm casually around his shoulder, she led the boy onto the main street. Golden afternoon sunlight washed over them as soon as they stepped out of the dim store.
“Well?” she prompted, “What has my wayward daughter done this time, Will-ya?”
William scoffed helplessly, “Not much, really, only getting herself detained by the marine after school somehow.”
Her footsteps slowed to a stop.
The boy didn’t seem to notice anything amiss from her reaction. He continued with a grumble, “I swear, those three got worse without me! Addy just called Pa’s office snail about them needing their guardians to be called in to pick them up. I figured you’d be the one who could get there the fastest. I still need to tell Aunt Bethy and Aunt Mia, though. Ugh! The lectures they’re going to give me!”
Marine.
The word hit harder than it should have.
Twelve years were suddenly gone.
In the blink of an eye, she was but a helpless six-year-old once more.
A repeated loud crashing noise forced the tired little girl out of her dazed slumber. The sun was high in the sky. When she peeked out of her hiding place, she saw the looming barbed, metal gate she had no way of opening the previous night was being repeatedly rammed in by a white family car, which was already slightly dented in the front.
It took her a while to process the sight.
She couldn’t see the one behind the wheel, but a heavily pregnant lady was standing worriedly to the side, watching the preceding anxiously.
They’re clearly trying to get in just as Lami was trying to get out.
Lami didn’t think she could get close with the short interval between each crash. She wanted to tell them it was too dangerous, but a selfish part of her wished they’d actually succeed in forcing the gate open.
A convoy of Marine cars was closing in just as the white car backed a little further away to gain bigger momentum.
Lami thought they were finally saved.
Whoever was inside the white car clearly thought the same. The pregnant lady let out a cry for help. Lami brushed the soot from her cheeks and prepared to make herself known. Her legs were numb from the little ball she’d fold herself to sleep in. The barricades were stupid. Her whole city had burned down to ash, and she couldn’t get herself out because they decided a metal gate was what was needed to keep the Amber Lead contained. Someone was here to help them, at last.
BANG! BANG!
Lami learned the sound of a gunshot. Twice.
Her fingers loosened. She hadn't noticed she'd been clenching her fist.
Just in time for Will’s voice to pierce through her daze.
“...So, yeah, that’s basically it! You need to get to their base in Krada. Do you need a horse or do you want to run?”
She was listening, actually.
Some kind of prank went wrong. It was nothing very serious by the chronic troublemakers’ standard. An embarrassment, at most. They had gotten themselves into worse situations before.
Just a prank.
Ali wasn’t hurt.
Neither of the kids was.
There was no reason for her to panic. Nobody knew them. Nobody here knew the truth Lami had kept buried for more than a decade — of their blood.
Yet her pulse refused to slow.
It was ridiculous.
Ali wasn’t from Flevance.
Not officially.
No records existed.
No witnesses remained.
Ali had never set foot in Flevance, and nobody could ever connect her to a dead city half a Blue away. Her skin was unblemished. There was no evidence remaining of the deadly disease that spelt the death of their fellow countrymen. No one would even start to connect the dots when nothing but a blank existed.
She knew that but her body didn’t.
Krada was thirty minutes away on horseback.
Fifteen if she ran.
Maybe twelve.
She was already calculating the shortest route before she’d realize she had started moving fast.
It was probably her own fault.
Lami held no secrets from her precious little sister except the most fatal of them all. It was clear as day that Lami hated the Marine, so her little sister had no respect for them. Still, it didn’t give these little devils the excuse to set fireworks in the city’s patrol stations as some unhinged form of last school year’s mischief with the whispered reasoning that they found ‘those uncles and aunties too idle’ to be worth their taxes — they were not even the ones that had to pay them!
Still, it was better than what she’d thought.
“I’m sorry, Mr Officer. I’ll be sure to punish them properly at home,” said Lami with a deceivingly servile tone as she stood behind three children. Her hands were clasped on their shoulders heavily to nudge the unrepentant brats into a little bow. No one was actually sorry, but Lami couldn’t care less for their sincerity.
The officer twirled his ugly moustache and hummed arrogantly, “Hmph, so be it! Whatever could be hoped from a bunch of country bumpkins!” — Lami was seriously contemplating murder — “You have to still pay for the damage, of course, and the fine for breaking the rules!”
He snapped a finger imperiously, and a subordinate presented a paper which he glanced at briefly before sending it her way. Lami freed a hand to receive the slip, and a blinding fine of fifty thousand berries was staring back at her. She gave in easily when the kids tried to strain their necks to take a peek. Ali had been suspiciously quiet throughout the entire exchange, but she still hunched closer with her friends to peruse the outrageous infringement notice.
“Mr Officer, surely this amount is excessive? How could setting off a few firecrackers justify a fine like this?” Lami protested.
In their region, a thousand berries could feed a family of three for a day —or a whole week if you really tightened your belt. Fifty thousand was not a punishment. It was a robbery.
The Head Officer’s moustache twitched as he snapped, “Excuse me, are you implying foul play, miss?”
Well, if the shoes fit…
“As detailed in the notice, if you could kindly read, harmful explosives your children had set up led to disruption of the city’s peace and order, grave injuries to some of our soldiers and unlucky bystanders, as well as a not insignificant amount of material damages to public and private properties. Terrorist behaviour is nothing to be brushed lightly, you see. You should be very grateful, miss, that I so generously consider the age of your charges,” he finished with a flourish.
“What lies! We didn’t injure anyone, Lami! Our toys were loud but not harmful! They’re exaggerating the damage!” Addison hissed.
“Silent, you brat!” The marine slammed the table in anger, “How do you explain the mess you left at the market, huh? All those upturned crates of goods!”
Addy was unfortunately not cowed, “Your soldiers are a bunch of incompetent fools who couldn’t run and take a turn at the same time! Why blame us!”
Because clearly those incompetent fools were chasing after you, honey.
The officer shouted that thought out loud, albeit more accusing and less affectionate than her own silent sigh. Lami felt the faint throbbing headache from her quick run just getting worse by the minute. She pressed a hand on Addy’s crown to shut her up and not worsen the shouting match, and the other on Oliver’s when he seemed about to open his mouth. Alas, she only had two hands in total.
Ali, ever so great with numbers with her amazing photographic memory rivalling that of her late brother, started to list the damages she had directly witnessed, as well as the exact person responsible for each, adding her estimation of possible further damage based on the time and distance before each of her friends was caught and argued that a maxed range would reach ten thousand at most. It truly was not the time to be such a smart-ass. No matter how proud Lami was of her sister usually, she was now trying her damndest best to control herself, not to get into panic attacks, or worse, join in on the verbal clash.
Lami felt her skin crawling the longer she stayed inside this place. She didn’t like how the marine focused on her children. On Ali.
“We’ll pay, Mr Officer,” Lami decided with finality despite the protest.
It didn’t matter how corrupt the Marines were, or how utterly ridiculous they made it out of their not-so-harmless teenage prank; she decided getting Ali and her friends out of here was her top priority. She was not too happy about this either, but one of them had to be an adult.
—Honestly, his squished mug and that catfish moustache were going to be heavily featured in her mental material to practice her knife throws for at least seven days straight.
“I’ve just sold my wares and only have ten thousand with me at the moment. Will it be all right to come back at a later time with the money? The last wagon to our village would be leaving in a quarter hour.”
That pie-eating smug face.
Lami went out of the local Marine base with three scowling children in tow, ten thousand berries less, and a forty-thousand-berries debt that she had no intention of paying. They walked to the gate at a leisurely pace. The further they got from the station, the more ridiculous her panic had seemed. No one had figured out her and her sister’s nationalities despite being in the thick of the enemy’s lair for almost half an hour, and that’s considered a success in her book. The children were not of the same opinion, if their complaints were any indication.
She interrupted their grumbling fest to ask the million berries question. “How do you even get caught?”
This bunch of devious little children created trouble left and right, but were largely able to shimmy their way out of most of it with no help. It was a sport for them to meticulously plan their pranks before any action, and they got better at getting away with all of them over the years, much to the adults’ dismay. Lami would know; she had watched them since they were six and seven years old. She might also encourage and participate in one or a dozen of them, but shush!
Ali was the one who raised her hand, “I was distracted.”
“That she was,” agreed the others easily.
“You guys should’ve hidden yourself and not turned around for me!”
“Lalalala can’t hear you~” “Don’t be an idiot.”
“Unbelievable.”
Lami carded her long fingers through her little sister’s dark locks with a questioning expression. What could’ve possibly distracted Ali while being chased by Marines across the city? Twelve-year-olds’ shoulders made for a nice armrest, but she also noticed she was still distracted, and that’s why she pulled her in to squeeze against her side.
Ali sighed and relaxed into her. “Sorry, Lami. I didn’t mean to cost you your money. I’ll break my piggy, but I don’t think I’ll have much.”
Money was the least of her worries.
“Ten thousand berries is a fair price for bringing three troublemakers home in one piece.”
Olly grumbled, wearing a pout large enough to be seen from the shore. “You still shouldn’t have just agreed like that, you know! They’re clearly playing it up. We ain’t harming the common peeps in any way.”
Addy hugged her from the other side, adding, “That officer is vile! I like the previous one better. He would’ve just laughed it off.”
Lami rolled her eyes at their clear lack of repentance. The sun was low, and the colourful city was bathed in the red-purplish hue of the sunset. It took her less than twenty minutes to run here from their town, but a cattle-drawn wagon would take an hour or more. There’s still some time before the actual adults, Addy’s and Olly’s parents, would arrive. Then, it’d be way past dinnertime when they got back to their houses.
“Let’s go find something to eat first.”
◇ ◇ ◇
Later at night, the two girls with the same dark-colored hair but each with bright blue and green eyes respectively lay sprawled across the same bed together despite having another perfectly functional bedroom in their little house. Lami was attached to her side like a particularly clingy octopus.
It wasn’t unusual. Stress apparently made her sister forget that personal space existed. Ali could only indulge her.
They stayed in comfortable silence before Ali suddenly went rigid and sat up from the hold, much to her sister’s whining. She shoved her tentacles off, “Shut up, I remembered why I got distracted today.”
Lami groaned and threw herself on her back, “Your thoughts are so weirdly spaced out. Can this wait until the morning?”
The younger girl didn’t answer in words but just stared at her sister. More specifically, her dark hair, her olive skin tanned despite the cold weather, her brows, her high cheekbones, the shape of her eyes, her nose, her jaws, and even the curve of her lips. There was sixty to seventy per cent similarity to the face she had glanced at today in a wanted poster of all places. She had not brought this up at the marine base for obvious reasons. She was then reasonably distracted by the food selection in the night market afterwards.
“You’re creeping me out.”
No, Ali was the one creeped out. She nudged her sister in the side and asked, “Hey, you said you had an older brother, right?”
“We had an older brother,” she insisted, because it was so important Ali knew they were one family despite how she allegedly dug the other one out of her mother’s still warm corpse, “but yes, the best brother in the whole world!”
Ali was not interested in listening to another of her repeated speeches she had listened to since she could remember, but one question needed to be asked: “What was his name again? Something with L?”
“Law.”
Ali hummed, ignoring the sadness that colored her older sister’s tone of voice for the urgent confirmation, “Like, Trafalgar Law?”
“Yeah,” Lami answered, then stilled, “Did I tell you my surname? Oh, well, don’t repeat it to anyone. You-know-why.” Ali didn’t get the chance to answer when she started to ramble — another one of her sister’s habits when she got tired or cranky or upset. “Man, I was so sure I wouldn’t let it slip. When was this? Was it at any party that involved alcohol? Was anyone else there? Hmm, I guess I really can’t consume things that lower my inhibition. Did I say anything else?”
Ali had hoped she would say no, but she also hoped that she would say yes. For one, confirmation would mean that her stopping stupidly in a high-stakes chase would have a valid reason, but that would also mean that their lives were about to change in a somewhat huge way. She… wasn't sure she would be happy with it.
“No, you didn’t.”
Lami raised her eyebrows and made an impressively demanding face, considering she was lying flat on the bedding in nothing but her faded old shirt and sweatpants. Ali got tired of looking down at her and lay back, a blanket shoved under her chin. “Would he have golden eyes by any chance?”
Lami was quick to latch onto her teddy person for moral support, “I wouldn’t know. He didn’t live long enough for me to find out.”
Ali gave her an unamused glance, “I know babies didn’t take that long to decide their eye colours.”
Lami told her everything, but she also felt that she told her nothing. Ali understood that she was ‘pursued by bad people’ so there were things better left unspoken, but she would like to have more specifics, such as why she would have a brother four years older than her but know nothing of his eye colour. She had to be sure not to give her beloved sister a false hope and break her heart later.
Lami wouldn’t deliberately lie to Ali, but she sometimes chooses to be silent. This wasn’t one of those times. Lami had that weighted pause when she decided something was worth the risk, like trying to climb a tall tree to take bird eggs for her baby sister, or agreeing to the adults that found them and persuaded them into their homes for the harsher winters. She played with Ali's hand as if it took time to weigh her words.
“We were sick. You, me, my brothers, my parents, yours, all of us,” she said eventually.
Ali certainly didn’t expect that, her soup of thoughts halted, “Me too? What sickness?”
She might not be a medicine freak like her sister, but she did have some knowledge by proximity and their years together. Her sister lectured her about cures to common ailments with intensity rivalling that of her most strict academy teacher. She wouldn’t be surprised if there are diseases out there that affect eye colours. The way she said that, though, as if they all have this same illness.
“The Amber Lead Disease,” her sister said with a grimace, “It messed with our natural colourings, washing them all out.”
It didn’t come quickly to Ali because, as much as she prided herself on her impeccable memory, history was something she actively shelved or erased from her brain storage capacity.
It came, nonetheless.
“Flevance?!”