Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

In the first few days following the accident, Vi’s entire life changes so quickly that it almost feels like it should be the punch line to some joke that she can’t quite figure out the set up to. Time speeds up and slows down at its own whim, leaving her off-balance and completely out of place in her own skin. The couple of weeks that follow immediately afterward don’t even feel all that real, if she is completely honest– more often than not, she finds herself gaping in confusion at the lines of her palms, barely able recognize her own hands even as she uses them to continue treading water in the endless depths of hopeless depression that seem to always be waiting for their chance to submerge her completely. She just barely keeps her head above that inky-black water most of the time, though she is always fast to force herself to resurface on the rare occasion that she allows her head to briefly sink beneath the crashing waves of emotion that she has no real way to navigate for a second or two at most; she tells herself over and over again that she cannot let herself give into the urge to sink into the dark nothingness that has been trying to drag her down with it, especially now that she is the only surviving member of her little sister’s family. No matter how badly Vi wants to lie down with her mother in the warm dirt of her grave, she clings tightly to Powder, knowing that the girl is her sole responsibility, now. 

To her sister’s credit and Vi’s overall surprise, Powder seems to be adjusting to their new normal at a rate that is much better than she thinks both she and Vander had anticipated the girl would be capable of. As time has gone on, her vividly violent nightmares have started to taper off more, though they are still more frequent than they had ever been, even when their father had been at his very worst. Vi holds her through every single one, unwilling to let her sister cry herself back to sleep alone, even as every single mangled sob that escapes the younger girl’s throat cracks her chest open even further. 

She dutifully soaks in every bit of her sister’s pain that she possibly can, believing wholeheartedly that it is just one more part of the penance that she must pay– she is not the reason her parents are dead, she was not behind the wheel of either car, but she cannot seem to wash herself of the sticky guilt that clings to her very being like a thick film that diligently tries to stretch over her mouth and nose. Vi doesn’t know what the last few minutes of her parents’ lives consisted of, but her overactive imagination plagues her with unbidden thoughts of the way her mother must have screamed and reached for her husband in some misplaced attempt to protect him. Though she tries her hardest not to, she can never seem to stop herself from ruminating on what their last thoughts must have been; on good days, she imagines that their deaths had been sudden and abrupt, that they hadn’t had the time to consider everything that their once-happy family had been forced to go through because of Vi’s weakness.

On bad days, she figures that they must have spent their last few breaths cursing her name for how completely she had managed to split them all up. 

Vi does not have many good days. 

In lieu of allowing herself to wallow in the shame created by the ever-present weight of her sins, Vi pushes every horrible thought to the side as soon as it stops suffocating her, choosing instead to focus completely on her little sister so that she can pretend that her own struggles don’t exist. Her appetite is ruined, her sleep in a general state of disruption, and she feels like her entire brain has been scrambled past the point of fixing. She dodges Vander’s eyes while she scrapes her fork around her meals in disinterest, pretending she doesn’t notice how her clothes start to get looser, all while scooping her uneaten food onto her sister’s plate in distress as she worries about the girl doing the same thing.

The hours she spends laying in the darkness beside her sleeping sister are long– she is plagued by the same nightmare on a nearly-nightly basis, to the point that she is practically able to anticipate it, even when it starts to form on the tail end of another dream. Part of her wishes to never dream again, hating how badly they always end, but the rest of her accepts the nightmare as just another punishment that she has to bear. To some extent, she actually prefers when the dreams start sweetly, grateful for even the briefest flash of joyful reminiscence, even when they come with the underlying sense of dread for what she knows is coming.

Regardless of how it all starts, she only ever has to blink before finding herself in the back seat of her father’s car while he and her mother drive down the narrow, curving mountain roads leading up to Vander’s cabin. His eyes moving erratically as he steers them recklessly, her father’s voice is always raw with anguished, wretched vexation as he begs her to stop hurting her sister, to stop making him self-medicate to deal with what they both know he knows for a fact has been happening right under his nose. As is usual, this version of her mother does not dare to utter a single word in her defense, and it gives Vi an almost-inexplicable sense of comfort to know that the woman is no longer trying to serve as her advocate; she had never once been worthy of the complete and unwavering faith that her mother had always had in her, and knowing that it was partially the reason for her death only makes Vi feel even more undeserving. Instead of saying anything, Vi watches the woman bury her face in her hands while she cries, unable to look at her where she is sitting in the backseat. Her father’s eyes are on hers in the rearview mirror, and they only get more bloodshot and shiny with tears as he repeatedly pleads with her to stop, to disappear and let their family be together again. 

He never turns his attention back to the road, no matter how loudly she shrieks and cries as she begs him to; instead, he simply leans all of his weight on the gas pedal and pins her in place with his accusatory glare while her mother screeches in fear, the bright headlights of the oncoming car blinding as they shine through the windshield. Vi opens her mouth to scream as she is launched forward, her body being flung through shattered glass to land on rough asphalt, but though her jaw aches and her throat burns, no sound will come out, even as she lays broken and bloody on the road. The driver of the other car opens the door, then stumbles toward with a drunken gait and unsteady feet, but when Vi finally twists herself enough to be able to take a peek at the face of her murderer, all she can see are her own eyes glaring down at her with visceral, seething hatred. The scream that is trapped in her throat turns into a strangled whimper as she watches herself kneel, then gapes in horror at her own deformed countenance as it snarls and hisses it should have been you.

Her eyes fly open as she sits up in bed, her hand springing to her mouth to muffle her heavy wheezing as she is brutally slammed back into consciousness. Her limbs buzz with uncomfortable, antsy energy as her brain remains persistent in its efforts to ruthlessly fire on all cylinders; out of habit, she checks on her sister, then slumps in relief when she sees how deeply the girl is sleeping, her features smooth and peaceful in the low light of their room. Keeping her movements slow and cautious, Vi slips out of bed, her limbs weak and unsteady as she pads through the darkness of their bedroom to hide herself in the bathroom attached to it. The lights stay off as she curls up in the corner of the empty shower and lets herself cry, shoving a washcloth in her mouth to muffle as many of the noises as she can. Throughout everything, the only thought that she can form is that none of this is how it was supposed to be– she and Powder should be at home in their room, they should be getting ready for the school year that is coming up in just a little over a week. She doesn’t know how she is going to manage to force herself to sit motionlessly in the back of all of her classes with everyone around staring at her and whispering about the neverending tragedy that she has been forced to drag herself through. It had been bad enough for the first couple of days with how the accident had ended up being one of the biggest new pieces that their sleepy, tired town had seen in years, and all of that only culminated to all of the local news reporters flocking to Vander’s front lawns at all times of the day, each person eager to be the one to get the story directly from the mouths of the dead couple’s children.

The memories of each of the reporters’ hungry eyes make her chest ache; a couple of the bolder ones had tried to sneak closer to the house, to peer inside of Vander’s windows, but the man had no hesitation in chasing them away, his voice loud and booming with disapproval as he gruffly chastised the small crowd of adults for trying to profit off of the grief of children. Thankfully, they had gotten the message after a few days of camping out to no avail, but Vi is achingly aware of the fact that there will be others who will have questions, both teachers and students alike. 

She wipes away her tears as her panicked crying dissolves into more of a dull hum of general anxiety, then tosses the washcloth into the small hamper tucked into the corner of the bathroom before she lets herself tiptoe back into the room to slide herself in between soft, wrinkled sheets on her side of the bed. The room is dark enough that she can’t see much of anything, and she knows that she should try to get at least a little more rest, but though her initial terror is gone, her heartbeat is still far too strong for her to be able to fall back into unconsciousness with any real ease.

As she lets herself sink into the warmth of her sister’s heat radiating from the nest of sheets she is enveloped in, Vi adjusts herself restlessly while she boredly beholds the endless darkness hovering over her. Both Vander and Powder have tried to get her to open up to them, to say even a single thing about the absolute disaster of a summer break that she and her sister have been saddled with, but she truthfully has no way to explain how she feels without simply unhinging her jaw to let every single secret that she has ever kept pour out from between her teeth like tainted, toxic sludge. At the very least, she can admit to herself that she considers herself a murderer; in her mind, her parents’ thick, viscous blood has stained her flesh and sunken into every little line in its surface like a particularly pigmented ink. She has been marked, branded with the mark of her crimes, and her attempts at achieving a semi-even respiratory rate only gets more strained as she tries to focus her eyes enough to get a good look at the backs of her hands, convinced that the crimson blotch must have seeped into her pores. 

Sleep refuses to come for her again– she closes her eyes and fights to control her breathing, focusing on inhaling and exhaling at a slow and even pace, but her mind remains active in a way that she figures must count as self-punishment. It is like she is subconsciously denying herself even a moment or two of peace, and even just a couple of short months ago, Vi would have found herself endlessly frustrated with her sleeplessness; after all, she is nothing short of exhausted, and she often catches herself think that she would take another nightmare if it meant she got another hour or two of rest before she has to peel her sore, heavy form back out of bed to propel herself into another day of barely holding herself together. Frankly, she doesn’t figure that she meets all of the qualifications of being a real person anymore– if anything, she is more like some beaten, broken marionette doll that has found herself trapped in a torturously hellish cycle of picking herself up, just to let herself fall back to the ground as soon as there is no one around to see how pitiful she truly is. 

These days, though, instead of struggling through fields of endless anger-tinged frustration, Vi accepts her fatigue with a weary sort of resignation, reminding herself that this is what she has earned through her habitually repeated transgressions. This is what she gets for her constant cravings, her desire for more, for soft and sweet and hard and fast, this is her penance for taking more and more of her sister’s offered affections while knowing how wrong it was. Her actions have had horrible consequences, ones that came at the cost of her parents’ lives, and it kills her to know that her sister is the one that has to suffer the most for it.

Vi’s eyes well up with tears that she steadfastly refuses to shed. She inhales slowly and shakily through her nose, ignoring the way her throat tightens as she swallows the lump that forms in it, then tangles her hands in the sheets. Fruitlessly, she tries to force her thoughts to switch tracks from her ever-present, never-ending regret to something a little less likely to send her into another silent, petrified spiral, then turns away from her sleeping sister as tears fall from her swollen, tired eyes. Without bothering to check the tiny alarm clock that Vander seems to have plucked out of nowhere for the two of them to use, Vi mentally counts the seconds as they pass, both wishing for the day to already be over while simultaneously praying that it never actually comes. 

In Vander’s defense, he had done his best to put off their inescapable return to their family home for as long as he could, the man intrinsically sensing that neither she nor Powder had any desire to walk through the grave that has been made of their childhood. Still, she is old enough to know that there is no way to avoid the inevitable, and though their guardian had tried his hardest to keep his voice down, she had heard him arguing with their old landlord, the man on the other end clearly eager to rent out their old home to new, living tenants that could actually pay the rent. In the back of her mind, Vi is fully aware that the landlord’s eagerness is only based in a desire to turn a profit, that it isn’t some personal slight, but that doesn’t change how horrible it feels to watch the rest of the world move on and turn at a speed that she can no longer keep up with. It is nothing short of disorienting to be so firmly stuck in what must be akin to some sort of limbo while she waits to see what will happen to her and the little sister that she loves more than herself. It doesn’t seem fair that everyone else is able to walk around without carrying the heavy, profound weight of shameful misery as it sits heavily on their shoulders. None of it feels like it should be possible, really– she has no idea of what she is going to do, has no idea of what each day will bring, and the stress alone is enough to nearly smother her, even on her lightest days. 

One thing she does know is that she does not want to step foot back into what was once her family’s home, but she and her sister have no other choice– she can’t leave it all to Vander, can’t let him be the one to swoop in to save her over and over again, not after all that he has already done for her sister, all while asking for nothing in return. The last thing Vi wants is for the man to wake up one day and suddenly regret extending his kindness and generosity towards either of them.

She swallows back the rush of nauseated nervousness that rises inside of her as she considers the man’s constant charity; she can’t help but question how long his compassion will last in the absence of her parents, and, as always, that thought process only makes her even more sick to her stomach. The truth of the matter is that she and Powder are vaguely-familiar strangers to the man, and any of the fondness he feels for them can only be runoffs of the affection he had held for their parents. The bitterly frustrated, jaded parts of her want to ask him how long it will take for his selfless pity to finally release him from its clutches and lift the idealistic wool from his eyes as he comes to the realization that raising them will be both difficult and expensive, regardless of how hard she tries to offset the cost of her care. Eventually, he is going to want to move on with his life, just like everyone else already has, and that is a lot harder to do when saddled with two children that he didn’t even ask for in the first place. Though she wants to pretend otherwise, Vi is fully aware of how inherently unfair all of this has been to the man, and her heart gets even heavier with endless attrition as she is yet again forced to consider how her misdeeds have branched out and poisoned everyone that comes into contact with her. 

She glances at the shadowed figure of her sleeping sister, then looks away again, blinking back tears as she accepts for the umpteenth time that, though her regret is strong, her combined love and soul-deep need for the younger girl is so much stronger. Vi simply doesn’t have the power to convince herself to stop, not when the only comfort that she can find to truly soothe her frazzled nerves only ever seems to emanate from her sister’s warm, sweaty skin.

Her head begins to throb as her train of thought returns to the fate both she and her sister could be facing– in all fairness to the man, Vander had only ever been prepared to care for them for a short period, just until the next school year, and their stay has already started to stretch past what she is sure he had prepared himself for. Fall has already started creeping in, and no further mention of any plans has been made since the night of their parents’ deaths, at least, not to her. He may have promised them a home in the heat of the moment, but she is nowhere near foolish enough to believe for even an instant that he meant it– his words had been a simple placation, something any adult would tell two scared, grieving children. She can’t let herself believe that he would ever truly want to hold on to both of them, and even if he had, she can’t allow herself to hope that he would actually be willing to let them stay long enough to raise them to adulthood.

Though he has already done more for them than most others would, Vi holds onto the admittedly weak shred of hope that the man will help them find a place that will take both of them in. The fear of separation stiffens her muscles to the point of making her bones ache and her heart beat at an uneven rate as fear starts to darken the edges of her vision. She feels stupid, like she is nothing more than some baby crying out to be held, and, as her mind goes blank, all she can think about is how badly she wants to be home, to be back in the familiarity of the life she once knew, even if it comes at the cost of another beating from her liquor-soaked father. 

Vi bites her lip until she tastes the salty, coppery tang of blood, then rolls onto her side, putting her back to her sister’s sleeping form as she roughly scrapes the pad of her thumb over the wounded flesh. She presses down hard enough for the sting to bloom, her eyes fluttering shut as she loses herself in the sensation. 

All she has to do is ask the man what his plans are– she knows that he will answer her honestly, at the very least, but that, in itself, is the main issue. She can sense rejection brewing in him like the rich, dark liquid in his coffee pot, like he is simply waiting for the best time to break the news that he is done dealing with both of them, and it terrifies her beyond what words can express. Vi wants to stay here forever, she wants to grab her sister so they can run and hide away in the forest until both of them are old and wrinkled, but a trickle of fear weaves its way into her mind as her thoughts begin to circle around the subjects of her father and what she had made him become. 

Her stomach turns sour– Vander is kind and warm, like her father had once been, and it scares her more than anything to sit with the fact that she could be what taints and twists him into a drunken, angry monster. She tells herself over and over again that Powder deserves better; at the bare minimum, she deserves a father figure that will protect her and provide for her without running the risk of being ruined by Vi’s toxic influence. As it is, Vi currently serves as little more than a stain on her sister’s life– she considers herself to be nothing short of a dark mark the world can’t quite scrub free of its otherwise flawless surface, and once more, she is left lying in the dark while guilt eats her alive for wishing that she had died with her parents.

Exhaling slowly, Vi curls into a ball as she wraps her arms around herself. 

She halfheartedly wonders if he would be willing to keep Powder if she agreed to leave; her sister should have at least a chance at having a guardian that she can trust, one that will care for her, one that will love her without ever screaming at her or raising their fist at her. Above all else, Vi wants her sister to have the best life that she possibly can, and while she tells herself that she is willing and able to pay whatever price is required of her, she knows that she is lying to herself. The blatant, painfully honest truth of it all is that she is endlessly selfish; she has built everything that she knows about herself around her sister to the point that she is utterly useless without her. She has only ever been Powder’s sister, her best friend, her protector, and she has no idea of what to do with herself outside of fulfilling those roles. Without Powder, Vi doesn’t know how to exist; she hates to admit it about herself, but the fact of the matter is that she is nothing more than a human-shaped husk without her sister around to give her a sense of purpose. She doesn’t trust herself to last even a single day without the girl at her side.

Vi wishes she could be a better sister, a better person, than what she is capable of being. She wants to see Powder thrive, wants to see her smile and laugh and twirl in the sunlight that is already beginning to weakly stream in through the window. She shifts onto her back, then stares blankly up at the shadowed-covered ceiling. Settling into place, she crosses her ankles, then rests her hands on her abdomen as she tries to focus exclusively on keeping the cadence of her breathing slow and even. The room slowly gets brighter as the sun rises further into the sky, and her sister rolls over to bury her face in Vi’s neck while she groans. Vi bites her lip before she forces all of the terrible, choking emotions down in favor of ironing her expression into a pleasantly neutral mask. The last thing she wants is for her sister to see her struggling– she has to be strong for the girl, has to be her source of stability, even if she isn’t very stable herself. Regardless of her own exhaustions, she knows that she owes Powder her best attempt, at the very least. 

Powder rubs the tip of her nose against the side of Vi’s neck, then brushes her lips against her skin as she squirms even closer. Unable to stop herself, Vi allows a small smile to stretch over her mouth as she turns her head and rubs her cheek against her sister’s. She leaves a thousand tiny kisses over every inch of Powder that she can reach, laughing under her breath as the girl sleepily giggles, all while she pretends not to feel the brand new surge of contrition that spreads through her for not being able to function without touching her sister and giving into urges that she knows that she should not even have, much less act on. 

Vi continues kissing her sister, going so far as to climb on top of her as she carries on with pressing their mouths together until Powder is most definitely awake. Pulling back, she is greeted with the girl’s big blue eyes and her soft, shy grin. 

“Good morning,” Vi murmurs, cupping her sister’s cheek as gingerly as she can. “Did you sleep okay?”

Slowly blinking, Powder nods, then nuzzles even further into Vi’s palm. She yawns and leans forward to peck Vi’s cheek before she pauses to tilt her head as she squints. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Vi lies, smiling the entire time. “Of course.” She does her best to comb her fingers through the abundance of tangles making up her sister’s hair without yanking too hard at any of the more stubborn knots, all while she silently marvels at the soft, shiny locks as they flow between her fingers. Vi closes her eyes, then rests her forehead against Powder’s as they share each other’s air. 

Powder hums in contentment, then snuggles even closer to Vi. 

“We have to get up,” Vi declares reluctantly– she can smell coffee and bacon, and she snorts when she hears her sister’s stomach growl while the girl sniffs the air like a hungry dog. Pushing herself into a sitting position, Vi swings her legs over the side of the bed, then lets her head hang low as she prepares herself to confront the struggles that will inevitably come with the passing of yet another day. 

Her sister drapes herself over her back, then kisses the shell of her ear. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Of course I am,” Vi replies, sighing in relief as her sister’s thin arms wind around her shoulders. “I have you here with me, don’t I?” She stiffens as she thinks about their parents all over again.

As if sensing Vi’s train of thought, Powder pecks her the back of her neck, then moves to sit next to her. “What if we just stayed in here forever?”

Vi glances down at the girl, then rolls her eyes, resting her head against the top of her sister’s. “You would probably get bored after a while,” she says, pausing to raise her brows as her sister’s stomach growls again. “And hungry.”

Her sister doesn’t reply; instead, she lets herself slump further against Vi’s side as they sit in silence, the only noise between them being their synchronous breathing. “We have to go to the house today, don’t we?” Powder asks after a minute or two has passed– her voice is quiet, and flat.

Wiping her hand on her thighs, Vi forces herself to stand, even though all she really wants is to dive back into bed so that she and her sister can go back to hiding away from the world for just a little while longer. “Yeah,” she grunts, her voice sounding nearly unrecognizable to her own ears. She reaches down and grabs her sister’s hand, then gently hauls her into a standing position. “Come on, don’t think about that, okay? Let’s just start with breakfast.”

“Okay,” Powder says, her tone full of docile acquiescence. She squeezes Vi’s hand, steps forward, and leaves one last kiss on the outside of Vi’s arm before she rocks back on her heels and patiently waits to be led downstairs.

They descend the stairs hand-in-hand, their bodies leaning against each other as they take each step together, and as they reach the bottom, Vi gets the briefest impulse to strengthen her hold on her sister’s hand even more firmly so she can lead the two of them right out of the front door and back out into the forest. Despite the allure of hiding in the trees with her sister for as long as they can before plucked away from the trees and bushes, Vi swallows down the desire to run as she leads them both into the kitchen.

Vander’s elbows are braced against the top of the table as he takes slow, quiet sips of his coffee and slowly picks at the plate of food in front of them. Already fully dressed, he looks like he wants to stand up and stride right out of the house, like he is eager to get it all over with, and though she would like to pretend that she doesn’t, Vi finds herself understanding his perceived uneasiness. As soon as he sees the two of them, he springs to his feet and bolts to the stove to serve them their breakfast with a warm smile only contrasted by the hesitance in his eyes. By the time Vi and her sister sit down, Vander has their breakfast plated; he scurries back to the table, slides two bowls and a small plate over to them, then pours Vi a mug of coffee before he turns to get Powder her juice. Neither of them bother touching their food as they watch the man flitter around the kitchen, though Vi raises her brows in surprise, having never seen the man quite so fretful before. 

He catches sight of their puzzled expressions, then instantly freezes before he rejoins them at the table, huffing out a small laugh as he lowers himself back into his chair. “Sorry,” he says after he takes a sip of his coffee, then clears his throat as he gestures to their bowls. “Eat up.” 

Vi looks down at the thick bowl of oatmeal in front of her, then, her appetite already fading away, she nudges the plate of bacon that the man intended for them to share closer to her sister. She reaches for her coffee first, her mouth suddenly going dry as she tries to come up with something to say to the man sitting in front of them. Biting her lip, Vi peers down at the rich, black coffee, then flinches as she sees her own warped reflection scowling back up at her. Her eyes are dead, the shadows beneath them harsh and dark, and her skin is pale and dry. She can’t stand her appearance, so, desperate to escape herself, Vi swiftly chugs her coffee, wincing as the hot liquid burns her throat, but unwilling to put the mug down until there is no chance of seeing herself in it again.

“Slow down, Vi,” Vander says with a concerned frown. He reaches out, his fingertips just barely skimming against the back of her hand, though he drops it to the table as she jerks away from his touch. “It’s hot.”

She gulps down the last mouthful, then carefully sets the mug back onto the table. “It’s fine,” she rasps. Already overwhelmed and discombobulated, she picks up her spoon to stir her breakfast around in her bowl in the hope that Vander won’t notice how little actually makes it into her mouth. 

Powder rams two strips of bacon in her mouth, then rocks herself from side to side as she chews with bright eyes and a happy grin. “Thanks, Vander,” she says as soon as she swallows. “You make the best bacon.”

The man beams in response, his nerves visibly melting away as he looks at Powder; Vi swallows the spit in her mouth, using her spoon to move her oatmeal from one side of the bowl to the other as she peeks over at her sister. She reaches over and pats the top of the girl’s head, her fingers gliding over the silkiness of her hair.

“Are you going to actually eat any of that?” Vander asks, his eyes sparkling as he points at Vi’s bowl. There is no anger in his tone whatsoever, but Vi’s back goes ramrod straight as her eyes drop back down to the table, a cold bead of sweat forming on her forehead. She instantly shoves her spoon into her mouth and begins chewing robotically as she wearily inspects the bowl of sweetly-flavored mush.

“It’s really good,” Powder says softly, as if trying to placate the man. She leans forward secretively. “I didn’t really like oatmeal before I tried yours.”

He smiles at Powder, reaching over to pat her hand before he turns to look at Vi again. She curls inwards, feeling like she is in trouble, but not knowing how to smooth it all over. “Vi,” Vander starts, his tone soft and warm and full of gentle, careful reassurance. “I didn’t mean that you need to shovel it all down at once.”

“It’s good,” Vi says, her throat raw from the heat of the coffee. She feels like her brain is short-circuiting, and she knows that she is acting weird, but she can’t stop her hands from trembling as her face flushes out of childlike embarrassment. “Thanks, Vander.”

“You don’t have to–”

“Today’s the day we have to go to the house, right?” She interrupts with a grin so wide that it hurts her lips, eager to transfer the awkwardness settling into her muscles onto someone else. 

Almost immediately, Powder puts her spoon down, the metal clattering against the wooden table top as her expression goes completely and totally blank while she stares at Vander, her eyes tracing the planes of his cheeks and the wrinkles on his forehead. Vi offers her bowl of oatmeal to the younger girl, but instead of tucking into it like she usually would, Powder uses her spoon to push it around the bowl, much like Vi had just been doing. 

Vi adds another pound of guilt to the weight she has already been carrying, knowing that her sister is only picking up the worst of her bad habits. 

“I’m sorry, girls.” Vander holds his mug in both of his huge hands, slumping forward a little as he shakes his head. “I promise, I tried to put it off as long as I could, but–”

“I guess Marcus wants to get the place rented out to someone new, huh?” Vi croaks. She lets her hands fall into her lap to hide the way they shake, then straightens her back again, even though her line of sight remains low on the table. 

“I can go by myself,” Vander offers, “it might be easier for both of you. I can pack it all up and bring it all back so you two can go through it here whenever you want to.”

Though she knows she can’t accept the man’s incredibly generous proposal, it is certainly tempting; still, she can’t leave the responsibility of going through the remnants of their lives to rest solely on the man’s broad shoulders, no matter how many times he says he can handle the burden. Her leg bounces nervously, and she bites her lip as she presses her palms down against her thighs. “No, that’s okay,” she says after a beat or two of silence have passed; sparing a glance toward her sister, she blows her hair out of her face, then finally drags her eyes back to the man. “It’ll go faster if there’s more of us there to do it, right?” 

Powder remains silent, though she shows no sign of protest– the girl is well aware of the fact that going through what is left of their parents’ belongings is an unfortunately necessary evil, but Vi wishes that she wasn’t. She wants her sister to be able to hold on to the innocent obliviousness of childhood, and she hates that she can’t help her do that, hates that it has to be up to her to both protect Powder’s wholesome virtue while also being the one that is sullying it the most.  

Breakfast ends as soon as Vander accepts that neither she or Powder will be finishing their meals. Vi washes their dishes, her mind going blank and empty while Vander loads up his truck with empty boxes and bins to fill, and she lets the silence linger while Powder sings quietly to herself as she dries their bowls and spoons. Right as they finish, Powder turns to her, then wraps her arms around her waist with enough force to leave Vi winded.

Unable to string any words together in any helpful sort of way, Vi quietly rubs her sister’s back while she leans her cheek against the top of the girl’s head. Vander walks back into the house, then stops and watches them for a second, and Vi stiffens, unsure of what they must look like. Her instant terror completely immobilizes her as waits for his voice to raise, for his eyes to turn fiery with his unbridled rage, but he just smiles at them then motions towards the stairs. “Go get dressed, girls,” he says, leaning his back against the front door as he loosely crosses his arms over his chest.

By the time the three of them are ready, the sun is high enough in the sky that the light almost blinds them as they walk outside. Vi shields her eyes, instinctually grabbing her sister’s hand as they climb into the back seat and buckle their seatbelts. Her heart is already racing by the time Vander turns his key in the ignition of the truck– this isn’t even the first time that they have been in a car since their parents’ accident, but being on the road has not gotten any easier for either of them, despite Vander’s best efforts. Powder’s palm gets sweaty as she holds Vi’s hand as firmly as she can, her fingers starting to tremble before the man even begins to reverse.  

It takes them nearly three times as long as it usually would to get back to their old house, but Vander doesn’t seem to mind as he makes sure to drive slowly and as cautiously as possible, all while his eyes constantly flicker back their reflection in the rearview mirror. The sight is too close to her nightmare, so she avoids his gaze at all costs as her heart races and her chest seizes any time a car gets anywhere near them. Vander sticks to sideroads and alternate routes, choosing the streets that will be the least populated, but it doesn’t matter– her anxiety spikes every time his truck hits even the slightest bump in the road, and she hates herself for it. She can see the same fear that is paralyzing her muscles coursing through her sister’s body with every terrified shiver, and she tells herself over and over again to get it together, to be strong for Powder, but she can’t seem to propel herself past the horrified anticipation that will not stop poisoning every little thought that passes through her brain. 

After what feels like a thousand years of drawn-out torture, Vander finally parks his truck, but though she has spent her entire life in the house in front of her, she can’t quite recognize it in this moment. She blinks and squints at it, but it looks nothing like how she remembers it from the night she and her sister left. Before, the structure felt like the setting of a horror movie, like the house itself was a character of its own that spent all of its time carefully twisting her father into a monster. Now, though, all she can do is bite her lip, knowing that she had more of a hand in that than the empty, quiet house in front of her ever did. They all stagger out of the truck, and as Vi gets even closer to the front door, she feels ridiculously stupid for how fearful she had been to even stand on the porch. 

The house is not sentient, it has no ulterior motives or dark, murky plans; it is nothing more than walls and windows and doors that are completely incapable of absorbing even a little bit of Vi’s culpability. The only monstrous actions that occurred within it were taken by humans, and she can’t tell if that makes any part of this process better or worse. 

Vander pulls out the key to the front door, the key turning without even a whine of complaint or protest from the lock as the door swings open with an ease that seems deceptively welcoming. Despite the lack of any real threat, it takes Vi longer than she would like to convince her feet to move, though Vander doesn’t seem to be in any sort of rush. He waits patiently for the two of them to go in first, undoubtedly out of a desire to give them space, though Vi knows for a fact that they would both much rather turn tail and run than willingly traipse through their old living room. 

Vi once more forces herself to accept that there is no escaping this as she drives herself forward. The house is stagnant and completely silent, and it is by far the most unsettling thing about the whole experience of walking through a room that feels less haunted than it really should. In fact, the entire house seems wrong in a way that Vi has trouble completely understanding for herself– she had thought that there would be a lingering, heavy presence on the air, like the mere memory of her parents would be palpably lurking in every corner of every room, but really, it is all agonisingly empty in a way she never thought to expect. There is no residual presence, no disapproving spirits hanging around to watch her slowly tiptoe across the carpet, and that ends up being what hurts her more than anything else. 

It is just one more little bit of proof that both her mother and father are truly gone, and it shouldn’t hit her like a shot to the chest anymore, given that she watched their cheap pine caskets get lowered into the ground, but she is partially winded by grief as it slices through her like the sharp glass shards of a shattered windshield. Her eyelids flutter shut as she imagines the two of them laying in their graves, their chemically-treated bodies slowly decomposing minute-by-minute, then forces herself to stop, her stomach twisting with distressed nausea as she holds her hand firmly over her own mouth. Taking a few deep breaths, she opens her eyes once more and slowly spins in place as she takes in every little detail of her surroundings. The house is cleaner than she can ever remember it being before, despite how hard she tried to keep it tidy for her overworked parents, and she doesn’t quite know what to make of that. She had always been the one to take on most of the housework, and the fact that it had been done past the extent of her best efforts is clear evidence of her father’s attempt to better himself, and she pinches her arm as her mind wanders down unfortunate paths. 

Would he have stayed this way after bringing her back into his good graces? Would he have managed to maintain his sobriety, his newfound sense of inner peace, or would she have only knocked him right back down into the depths of stressed-fueled alcoholism?

Her back breaks out in a cool sweat as she notices the framed family portraits hanging on the wall that she has not even seen in years. All of the photos are around a decade old, and when she steps closer to investigate the lines of her father’s face, there is no trace of the rage that had been there the last time she had seen him. In every picture, he is happy and loving, like he is at peace with his family, and the sight is so incompatible with her own memories that she flinches as she takes a step back, a chill passing through her as sees her father’s features staring back at her from her reflection in the frame’s glass.

“Vi?” Vander says, slowly closing the door behind the three of them. He lets her have her distance, but his eyes shine with concern as he observes her reaction to the cheaply-framed pictures.

She doesn’t respond; instead, she slinks toward the kitchen, halfway expecting a mess to be waiting for her. To her mild disappointment and overall bewilderment, there is no coffee sitting in the bottom of the pot, and when she turns to check the sink, she is greeted by an empty basin with no dishes waiting to be washed. Opening the trashcan, she assesses the contents with a discerning eye, though she is surprised to see no empty bottles or cans hidden in the bottom. The table in their tiny dining room is uncharacteristically bare, the stack of unpaid bills that had always littered its surface now cleared away to reveal the table’s chipped, scuffed top, and Vi reaches out slowly to run her fingers along the grain of the wood, then lets her hand fall limply back to her side when she inspects the tips and finds only the finest layer of dust clinging to them. Out of habit, Vi gets the urge to march herself back into the kitchen and reach under the sink to fill the bucket there with warm, soapy, lemon-scented water so she can scour every surface of the home. She wants to lose herself in the hypnotic motions of rubbing slow, soapy circles into the yellowed linoleum of the kitchen floor; in fact, she finds herself craving the normalcy of it, in a way. She had always done her best to scrub the floors once a week, both out of a desire to stop her father from flying into a rage about the home becoming a pigsty in his absence and out of an odd fondness for the process of cleaning, but she forces down the impulse to lose herself in her old, familiar chores as she pads back into the living room, figuring it would be better to declutter the space before starting any real cleaning. 

Her eyes instantly land on Powder, and she watches patiently as her sister examines their surroundings, the girl unused to seeing the house so neat and orderly, especially without either of the two of them around to maintain it. Clearing her throat, Vi turns towards the stairs, then slowly climbs the steps, each one making her feel progressively weaker and simultaneously heavier as she tries to haul herself to the very top. By the time she reaches the landing, Vi is winded, despite the hours and hours that she has spent running through the forest. 

Her chest is uncomfortably hollow as Vi enters the old bedroom she and her sister once shared. Someone has straightened it up in their absence, and no matter where she looks or how hard she squints, she can see no evidence of the struggle that she so clearly remembers occurring here. There is no blood staining the carpet, nothing is knocked over or shows any sign of being disturbed, and when she opens her old drawers, she notices that the few pieces of clothing that were left inside have all been neatly re-folded and replaced. She stares at the floor, ice cold fear flooding her veins; she swears she can see the figure of her father crouched on the ground like he had been the night that he swung his big, heavy fists down at her, but when she blinks again, there is no one there. 

Shaking her head, Vi rubs her hand over her mouth as she wills her heart to stop beating so fast; there are no ghosts here, only the horrible memories that she can’t ever wipe away or pretend don’t exist, turns to stand next to her old bed just in time for her sister to come barreling in. The girl beelines straight to her side, then reaches for her hand and squeezes it a couple of times while she leans her head against Vi’s arm. “Nothing feels right in here,” she whispers, her voice shaky. “It doesn’t even feel like it’s ours anymore.”

Vi bites the inside of her cheek as she surveys the room. “I know,” she murmurs, her heart heavy and all but impossible to carry. “Just…” she groans quietly, then rolls her shoulders as she steels herself. “Just grab the essentials, I guess.”

Her sister frowns, her nose scrunching up in blatant and obvious confusion. “Essentials?”

“You know, like your winter clothes,” Vi clarifies as she digs out her backpack and her favorite faded red hoodie. She pinches the fabric of the hood between her fingers, her heart sinking as she does it; at one time, the sweatshirt had felt more like a security blanket, but now, it is just another stale-smelling piece of cloth, just one more thing for her to have to pack away. “Grab any school stuff you can use this year, too.”

Powder doesn’t move from her spot in the center of the room– she looks helpless and hopelessly confused as she investigates what had once been her bed, then their dresser. “What about the stuff we don’t need?”

“We’ll give it away,” Vi pauses, then glances down at her trembling hands as she tries to create a mental list of once-loved possessions that she should grab, of what she might miss once it is gone forever. “Maybe Vander can sell some of it.”

Her movements are robotic, at best, but she persists, knowing that she needs to set a good example for her sister. She has to be the source of the girl’s strength, even if she feels weaker than she ever has before. Nothing in the room seems like it is even remotely important even more– her once-favorite clothes are nothing more than bits and pieces of contrasting materials that she can no longer feel any real attachment to, the books she once loved to read seem trite and banal, and the posters of various fighters that she used to collect feel like a waste of time and money. Nothing is significant enough to save anymore, especially not now that she has gone so long without any of it. She snatches a glimpse of her sister from over her shoulder, overcome by the need to confirm the safety of her sole necessity, then roughly scrubs her hands over her face, only to be shocked by the wetness lingering on her cheeks.

Choosing practicality over her emotional impulses, Vi hurriedly packs whatever clothes seem like they might still fit. Vander brings them a couple of boxes, then walks back downstairs, evidently sensing their need to be alone while they rifle through what is left of a life that isn’t really theirs anymore. In a way, going through her own belongings feels like sorting the possessions of a dead girl– the items are familiar, but there is no real sentimentality left to endear any of them to her, so most of her things end up stacked into piles that she has no intention of taking with her. 

Sitting on the edge of her bed, Vi watches her sister shuffle her feet as she moves around the room. The girl doesn’t seem to be packing very much at all, so Vi stands, grabbing a small stack of shirts and pants to hand her. She plucks a light blue top from the bottom of the pile, then holds it out as she tries to force her lips to curve upwards. “Look, Pow, it’s your favorite shirt.”

Powder stares at her for what feels like hours, then drops her eyes to the floor. “It’s not my favorite anymore,” she says softly as she takes it from Vi to place it in her steadily-growing donation pile. She gazes forlornly at the stack of her discarded belongings, then shrugs listlessly. “I don’t really think I have a favorite now.”

“Yeah, well, you’re my favorite,” Vi declares as she folds her arms around her sister. “So fuck everything else.”

“Yeah,” her sister whispers wetly; she buries her face in the fabric of Vi’s shirt and her tears quickly soak through the thin fabric. “You’re my favorite, too.” 

Vi tightens her hold as she slowly begins to rock their bodies from side to side. “It’s okay,” she lies; closing her eyes and swallowing thickly, Vi exhales slowly through her nose as she searches her mind for anything that would comfort her sister. “We just have to finish up here, and then we don’t ever have to come back.” 

Powder nods wordlessly, then releases her hold on Vi’s shirt as she steps back and wipes away any remnants of her tears. “Okay,” the girl replies, her voice small and hesitant. She skims the contents of the half-filled box of the belongings she has chosen to keep, then wraps her arms around herself as she bites her lip and listlessly swivels her head to make sure that she hasn’t missed anything. “I think I’m done in here.”

Though she wants to say something, Vi can’t conceptualize a single response that will help her sister feel better in any capacity, and her failure to be what the girl needs only weighs her down even more. She scans the room, then purses her lips. “Go through everything one more time, okay? Just in case.” She waits for her sister to bow her head in affirmation before she leaves in favor of getting a head start on the space that had once belonged to their parents. 

Much like the rest of the house, the room in front of her is far neater than Vi can ever really remember it being before. The bed is made, the nightstands are completely clear of their usual clutter, and the floor is remarkably clean, with no signs of the randomly discarded shoes and clothes that Vi had, frankly, gotten used to seeing. She steps further inside of the room, her toes curling into carpet that she doesn’t even fully recognize, then, before she can even give herself a chance to stop and consider her next move, she half-runs to the closet and wrenches the door open, her ribs feeling like they are about to crack and break and disintegrate into nothing. 

Her father’s jacket is hanging on its hook, as if it is simply waiting to be picked up and worn again for a shift at a job that it will never see again. Distantly, Vi wonders if her father’s position has already been filled– she blinks as she observes the outside world from through the window next to her parents’ bed, squinting against the sun as she reflects on how much time has passed since the accident first occurred. With a wet sniffle, Vi goes back to her father’s coat, then, without even meaning to, she reaches her shaking fingers out towards it before she stops herself, leaving her hand hanging uselessly in the air as she gawks at it in horror. 

She closes her eyes as she furrows her brow and mentally replays her blurred memories of the last months leading up to her father’s death, the center of her chest practically caving in as she is hit with the devastating realization that the two of them had not had any real contact outside of the sickeningly dull thud of his fists hitting her face right before she and her sister were swept away to Vander’s house. Out of nowhere, she is hit with a deep set ache that is so intense that it leaves her hollow and empty as she thinks about how badly she wants a hug from the version of her father that had preceded his most recent evolution. She can still remember how warm his arms had felt, how safely they had once cradled her, and she wants that sense of security so badly that she nearly feels like she will die without it. Her body is stiff and cold as she stands in front of the closet, her posture rigid as she reminisces about how protectively he would envelop her– she always felt like she was completely hidden in her father’s embrace, tucked away from all of the things that could try to hurt her. The same questions that she has fought so hard to ignore come roaring back to the very front of her mind: had he meant it when he said he wanted to reconcile? Would he have hugged her like he used to, had he managed to survive the trip to Vander’s cabin in the woods? 

Her lungs feel like they are seizing as she yanks her hand back like she has been burned by the mere air hanging around her father’s coat like a caustic forcefield. She staggers back. Would he have even wanted her to touch it? Did he truly want her to come back here, or was it all an act? Would things have truly been better?

Would she have deserved any part of it, with everything that she has done and continued to do?

She can hear an odd noise, like some sort of wounded animal crying out for help and she swivels her head around searching for it before she catches a glimpse of herself in her mother’s full-length mirror; she looks wretched, like some horrible, terrifying, ugly creature, and she wants to throw something at the smooth glass, wants to shatter it completely now that there is no one around to care what happens to it, but she can’t bring herself to move. Her muscles feel like they are permanently locked in place, her face is reddened and wet with tears, and though she tries to shut her mouth, her jaw stubbornly hangs open while she tries to suck down whatever air she can in between wheezing, choking sobs. She trembles and shakes as she drops her eyes away from the mirror, but finds no success in calming herself or, at the very least, quieting the sounds coming from her mouth. 

She blinks, and her sister is there, the girl’s eyes wide and worried as she runs around their parents bed to reach her. Vi turns toward the closet, ashamed of her weakness and how blatantly on display it all is, then gasps as Powder collides with her, the girl just barely managing to avoid knocking Vi over completely. As soon as her sister’s warmth spreads between the two of them, Vi feels the blood return to her muscles as it instantly thaws in her veins. A gnarled, ugly noise comes from her throat as her back hits the wall, but her mind is consumed with thoughts of how Powder is practically glued to the front of her, and that she should push her away and lecture her about dangerous it is for them to be this close, especially here, where their parents could see.

Holding back a scream, Vi stands stiffly rooted in place as she is reminded, yet again, of why she and her sister are here, in the first place. 

“Vi?” Powder asks, hesitance and fear warring for control over her tone and expression. “Vi, what’s wrong?”

The stairs creak as Vander slowly ascends, but he doesn’t come into the room or do anything to make his presence known or overly apparent. Vi blinks and bites her tongue as she fights for control of emotions that she has no clue of how to handle. All she knows is that she hurts in a way that refuses to be relieved, and she doesn’t know how much longer she can take it.

“I miss him,” she confesses, her throat raw. Her breathing is choppy, her vision is blurred, and she just wants everything to stop for just a minute so she can finally clear the ever-present fog of sorrow-laced exhaustion from her brain. “I miss who he was before and…” choking on her words, Vi’s knees buckle as she lets her sister take on the brunt of her weight. “...and I hate myself for ruining him.”

Powder hugs her even tighter as she steps further into Vi’s space. “You didn’t ruin anyone.”

“I did,” Vi whispers as she curls herself around her sister, her mouth next to the girl’s ear. “He was a good dad until I–” She winces as her voice cracks, then leans her head against the top of Powder’s head with a tired, empty sigh. “I ruined everything, and I’ll ruin you, too.”

“No,” the girl says stubbornly as she shakes her head. Her lower lip trembles as she twists her fingers into the fabric of Vi’s shirt. “You make me happy. You keep me safe.” 

“Don’t you miss them?” Vi asks as her back slides down the wall, her sister following her for every inch of her descent. “I miss them both so much. You deserved to have them around for a little longer.” She pulls her sister into her lap, needing the girl’s proximity– they are hidden from view by their parents’ bed, so she risks a few rushed kisses to the side of her sister’s head. “I wish I could trade places with them, so you could–”

“I don’t want them if it means I lose you,” Powder interrupts her– the girl is more somber than Vi has ever seen her, more serious than she ever thought the girl could be. She holds Vi’s face in her soft, clammy hands, then presses their foreheads together. “I miss Mommy, but I pick you.”

“Powder…”

Moving at a near inhuman speed, her sister joins their lips together in a brief kiss. “I don’t want to live without you. I can’t.” She rubs the tip of her nose against Vi’s neck, then squirms until she is settled even further on Vi’s lap. “I love you,” Powder whispers. “More than I’ve ever loved anyone else.”

“I love you, too,” Vi utters brokenly as she lets her head fall back against the wall while she stares blankly into the room. She has no desire to go through the rest of the house; in fact, she feels like some broken, forgotten thing that her parents forgot to take out to the dumpster on trash day, like she should be left somewhere in a cabinet or a closet for the new tenants to find as an uninvited burden. Despite her sister’s insistence, Vi knows that she has no right to be on the receiving end of the girl’s adoration or devotion, though she is doused in it, regardless. Instead of panic and pain, all she is left with is a dull sort of emptiness, the only source of warmth in her body coming from the points where it is touching her sister’s. She barely feels like a person, now that she has slipped back into her preferred state of not-quite numbness; truthfully, she imagines that she is more like some cheap balloon that is only tethered in place by her sister’s barely-there weight. 

To his credit, Vander waits at the top of the stairs for what must be at least half of an hour  before he comes to stand in the doorway of the bedroom. “Are you two alright?”

“Yes,” Vi croaks, unable to look at him as she gently nudges her sister off of her lap. “Sorry, I, um…” She bites her lip, then drops her hands into her empty lap as she fails to come up with any sort of explanation for what she knows the man is already fully aware of.

“Please don’t be sorry,” Vander implores as he takes a single step into the bedroom. “Neither of you have done anything wrong.” He scratches his beard as he leans his against her mother’s dresser. “This…” he rubs the back of his neck as he licks his lips, then shoves his hand in his pocket. “None of this is easy for anyone to go through, but you two have been through more than most people your age.”

Powder stands, then holds her hand out for Vi to take, and though she would like nothing more than to remain hidden away in the space between her mother’s side of the bed and the wall, she forces herself up onto unsteady legs, knowing that she has wasted too much time already. 

“You two just take your time, alright?,” Vander says, wiping his palms on his jean-clad thighs as he spares a glimpse back down the stairs. “All you need to do is worry about grabbing what you want, I’ll pack up the rest.” 

Vi nods, though she keeps her eyes low; she wishes she could crawl into the depths of her parents’ closet and never come back out. Embarrassment makes her ears burn, but she feels a rush of gratefulness as the man simply steps back out of her parents’ room and heads back down the stairs. 

“I’m okay,” Vi says as soon as her sister opens her mouth. “I’m just tired, I guess.” Reaching out, she smooths down the messiest bits of Powder’s hair, then, sparing one quick peek back at the now-empty doorway, she pecks the girl’s lips. “What would I do without you?” She asks with a small, strained smile– she doesn’t even want to begin to ponder the answer to that question. 

Powder tilts her head as she runs her eyes over Vi’s face, then frowns as she looks around the room. “Why did you come in here, anyway?”

“I thought you might want something of theirs,” Vi confesses awkwardly as she drums a beat against her thigh with the very tips of her fingers. “I figured I’d snoop around and see what I could find for you.”

“Oh,” the girl hums. She spins on her heel, then walks around the room slowly as she runs her fingers along the wooden footboard of their parents’ bed. “Like what?”

Vi coughs, her throat itching. “Dad’s jacket is in the closet,” she starts, changing her approach when she sees the way her sister wrinkles her nose. “And mom’s sweaters should be in there, too.” She points at their mother’s jewelry box. “You could take some of her jewelry, too, if you wanted to.”

Taking a step back, Powder admires the glossy wooden box on top of the dresser, then narrows her eyes warily. “Mommy never let me touch her jewelry box.”

“It’s okay,” Vi says, stepping forward to take her sister’s hand as she gently guides her closer to the dresser. “She just didn’t want anything to get lost or broken.” She reaches up and retrieves the box, then leads her back to the bed; wiping her eyes, Vi sets the box down on top of their parents’ bedspread, then opens it up. “Go ahead. Take whatever you want.”

The girl’s fingers hover over the meager assortment of necklaces and earrings. “You pick first,” Powder offers, shoving the box closer to Vi. “You’re older.”

Vi shakes her head. “I don’t really wear jewelry, Pow,” she reminds the girl patiently as she nudges the box back over. “It’s okay, you go ahead.” Standing, Vi walks back to the closet, then selects a couple of their mother’s favorite sweaters before she carries them back to the bed and lays them down next to her sister just in time for the girl to pluck a delicate silver necklace from the box. The pendant is small, nothing more than four tiny mismatched gemstones set into a little metal heart, each one representing a member of their family; it had been their mother’s favorite, one that she wore more days than not, and had either of her parents been in good enough shape for it, she imagines someone would have put it on the woman to be seen in for her wake. 

As it is, both her mother and father had been too badly mangled by their accident to be seen by any mourners that came to their funeral. Instead, their mangled cadavers had been treated, then hidden away about a week later in cheap pine boxes and buried next to each other beneath minimalistic grave markers. There had been no need to pick out a special final outfit or to place any additional jewelry on her mother’s corpse, and though that thought hurts badly enough that it is like she is being eviscerated, she chooses to focus on the fact that her sister has more options for mementos.

Powder reaches out and touches the sweaters, then picks out the light blue one that their mother always seemed to prefer; she holds it to her nose before she crushes it to her chest, her lower lip trembling. “I’ll take this one,” she rasps, curling her tiny form around it. “You can have the rest of them.”

Though she doesn’t feel like she has any right to it, Vi picks up the other one, barely even looking at it as she sets it to the side– wearing it would sully her mother’s memory, and even touching it feels like a form of disrespect, but she just nods, not wanting to upset the girl. “What about Dad?” Vi asks, turning back to the closet. “He has some shirts and stuff in here.”

“No,” her sister replies shortly, her voice cold. “I don’t want anything from him.” She turns away from Vi as she folds the sweater, then stands, her eyes stuck to the floor the entire time. “I know you don’t hate him,” Powder whispers, her voice cracking, “but I do.” Audibly swallowing, Powder walks out of the room, pausing as she bites her lip. “I’m sorry.”

The girl grabs her box from the other room, then disappears down the stairs, leaving Vi alone to sit with the uncomfortable weight of her sister’s words. She knows that she is to blame for her sister’s distaste of their father, and she adds that transgression to the rest of her sins as she trudges back to the closet. Vi forces her limbs to move, to allow her to reach out and take her father’s jacket down from its hook, though she can barely even feel her hands, even as she clutches the sleeve; she half-expects the man to come flying out of nowhere to strike her down for even contemplating touching it, but she remains woefully alone in the silent room. Inhaling sharply, Vi reaches in blindly and snatches one of the man’s button-up flannel shirts before she shuts the door to the closet and tosses both items on the bed.

She grinds her teeth together as she quietly regards the clothing laying limply across her parents’ mattress with tired eyes. The last thing she wants is for her sister to have regrets about leaving things behind in the midst of her anger-tinted desolation, so she gathers the jacket and their mother’s favorite blanket before she heads back into her room and tosses everything on top of the single box of belongings that she has any interest in holding on to, then picks it all up and stumbles down the stairs. Her stomach twists itself into impossible knots with every step that she takes, but she simply watches her feet move without her direct input, then bites the inside of her cheek in surprise as she looks up and sees Vander staring at her as soon as she reaches the landing at the bottom. 

The man is standing in front of a box with the last of the framed family portraits that had been on the wall, the cheap wood now clutched in his white-knuckled grip– he pauses, glancing down at what must be the rest of the pictures, but Vi doesn’t bother lingering long enough to see what he says. She simply drops her box closer to the couch, then practically sprints into the kitchen, needing just a second or two to collect herself. Her skin coated in a thick layer of anxious sweat, Vi opens the cabinet right above the coffee maker, then picks out her mother and father’s mugs– neither of them are really anything special, but her parents had always shared their coffee in the mornings, the two of them gently clinking the rims together before they ever took their first sips, and it feels wrong to leave them behind, though she knows that she has no place to put them. She wonders if Vander will let her put them up in his cupboard, despite how many are already stacked inside of it. She knows he has no real use for them, knows that she should just let them go with the rest of the dishes waiting in the kitchen, but she can’t stand the thought of the mugs being split up. 

She puts them in her box while observing Vander from the corner of her eye, though her stressed demeanor diminishes as soon as she notices that his attention is primarily focused on folding up the top of the box he had been loading as he faintly croons an old song to himself. Her sister passes by her as she enters the kitchen, and Vi sways in place as she imagines sharing coffee with the girl, the two of them toasting their mugs before lifting them to their mouths for their first sip of the morning. The thought brings a smile to her lips, though it falls just as quickly as it came, her mind and body too heavy with confusion and fear and the steady, underlying sense of wrongness that will not leave her. 

The house is filled with a heavy, oppressive silence that weighs heavily on Vi’s already-slumped shoulders, so, in lieu of sticking around and suffocating in it, she turns back to her box of items, wrinkling her nose at the admittedly small stack of belongings that managed to be deemed good enough to keep, then opens the front door and carries it all out to Vander’s truck. She finally gets her brain to go blissfully and deliberately blank as she loads the box into the covered bed sticking out behind the cab, then stops, swearing under her breath– she can feel someone’s eyes burning into the back of her neck, and it sends a chill down her spine. 

She hesitates, her heart pounding so hard that it makes her head feel light, but she forces herself to look back over her shoulder while swallowing back her fear of what she might find there. To her surprise, her hesitantly curious gaze lands on Mylo and Claggor and she flinches back in shock– both boys are across the street, their eyes wide as they gawk at her in pale-faced disbelief, the two of them rooted in place like they’re paralyzed by fear, like they have just seen a ghost.

Vi can’t blame them for their startled dispositions– if she had been able to have it her way, neither of them would ever have had to even think about her. The house behind her would have remained a permanently-untouched mausoleum, a perfectly-preserved, life-sized diorama that would have held every little secret of her childhood behind a firmly-locked door. She never wanted to have to come back here, never wanted to be packing up what is left of her belongings into cheap cardboard boxes while knowing that their contents can never make up for what she has lost, for what she has forced her sister to lose, too.

Her eyes sting as she frantically blinks back the tears that spring forth, and she inhales sharply; she is tired of crying, so, instead of standing there to fight back the urge under the watchful eyes of the two boys that had once been her friends, she shoves her hands in her pockets and spins on her heels as she darts back to the front porch. She knows she should have said something, or at least waved, but she has no clue of what she should even say to them now that her entire life has been turned around so completely. Truthfully, Vi doesn’t even really feel like the same person that had once walked to next to them on their way to school most mornings; after everything that has happened, the boys across the street are just as strange to her as her own mind has become, and, as she opens the door and scurries back inside, she scratches her arm and hopes that they will simply take the hint and leave.

Vander straightens his back as she comes back in, then motions to a stack of boxes. “I’ve got some things put aside for you and your sister to go through,” he says, pointing back towards the stairs. “Powder went back upstairs.”

“Good,” Vi says softly as she steps forward and peeps into the nearest box with an unshakeable sense of complete disinterest and detachment. The items inside might as well have belonged to complete strangers, and she hates that she can recognize things like her baby spoon without feeling any real connection to it whatsoever. It is like she is missing something inside of herself, like all of the parts of herself that existed in her best memories have been carved out of her, leaving her as nothing more than a husk of the girl she was supposed to be, and that thought scares her so badly that she just barely avoids gagging and throwing up on herself. “I don’t want any of it,” she rasps, her voice raw and rough; she can’t stand the thought of trying to play a role that she has no real chance at emulating anymore, and all she wants is for each little trinket in front of her to be scattered to the wind so that she can forget about every single one of them. “If you want, you could try selling whatever’s valuable enough.” Rubbing the back of her neck, she tries to pitch her voice to sound a little more pleasant. “You probably won’t get much for anything in here, anyway, but it should at least get you a few bucks, right?”

The man’s brows meet in the center of his forehead as he slowly puts the last framed photo down. “Why would you want to sell it?”

“Why would I want to keep it?” Vi asks, snorting to herself as she shoots a disinterested glare back down into another one of the boxes settled on the sagging couch. The house is stuffy and hot, but she doesn’t want to go back outside, just in case there are any more vaguely familiar faces waiting for her. “What’s the point of holding on to any of this stuff? If someone else buys it, you'll at least be getting something to make up for part of what you’ve had to spend on us.” She takes in the man’s knitted brows, then exhales slowly before she forces herself to move even closer to him. Shifting her weight from one side to the other, she bites her lip until it stings, then reaches up and starts twirling a piece of hair around her finger until she can no longer feel the very tip of it. “I don’t have anything right now, but if you keep track of how much you spend, I’ll pay you back when I’m older, I promise.”

“Vi, no.” Vander chokes on his words as he shakes his head. “I don’t need–” He stops himself, closing his eyes as he releases a slow, ragged sigh. “You two don’t need to worry about any of that. I’m here to look out for you, not the other way around.” Reaching out, he puts a heavy hand on her shoulder that she immediately shrugs off, unwilling to let him lull her into a sense of security that will only disappear when she least expects it.

“I know how it goes, okay?” Vi blurts around the lump in her throat. She locks her legs in place to prevent them from trembling and buckling beneath her before she continues, “It’s fun at first, taking care of your dead friends’ kids or whatever, but we both know that you were never trying to have this little arrangement be a permanent thing.” She wipes her eyes, then sniffles, mortified by her childish tears. “Listen, I get it, I really do. You didn’t sign up for any part of this, and it’s not fair for you to get saddled with kids that aren’t even yours.” 

His brows furrowed, the man ducks his head as he tries to catch her eye. “You and your sister have a home with me, Violet, regardless of whose children you are,” he promises solemnly, and while he certainly sounds like he believes himself, Vi can’t quite bring herself to do the same.

Huffing out a tired laugh, Vi lets her head fall back, then hugs herself, feeling more and more like some abandoned, unwanted thing, like some stray creature that is dumb enough to get too close to civilization for its own good. “Yeah?” She asks, her voice cracking, “and how long is that gonna last?” 

A determined glint entering his eyes, Vander steps forward again, then, placing his hands on both of her shoulders, he carefully leans down until they are properly face to face. “We should have talked about this earlier,” he admits, nodding as he silently accepts defeat. “And that’s not on you,” he adds, staring deep into her eyes as she does it. “None of this is on you.” He closes his eyes and hangs his head as he gathers his thoughts, though his grip never loosens. “You and Powder have a home with me for as long as you want it,” he says after a moment or two of drawn-out, troublesome silence. “And I mean that. There is no time limit on how long you are welcome, I’m not kicking either of you out, there’s no count down for the day that either of you leave. But, if you don’t want to stay, I understand. I’ll help you find somewhere else, if that’s what you want,” he offers, his tone quiet and sad. “It is your choice, but, whether you live with me or not, I will not abandon you or your sister, not now, not ever.”

Vi swallows uneasily, then looks away, unable to escape from the hold he maintains on her shoulders. She has never had this much control over her life, and while at one point she assumes that she might have found that control to be empowering, it is now an impossible burden. No matter what option she chooses, she knows that it will be the wrong choice, solely because she is the one making it, and the thought of her sister suffering for her incompetence only makes her lightheaded. She just wants to be told what to do, wants someone to sit her down and plot out her next thousand choices so that she never has to mess any of it up.

“Violet?”

“I don’t–” Vi gasps, mortified as her eyes start burning all over again. She closes them just in time for a fresh round of tears to go sliding down the sides of her face, and her breath hitches as Vander’s warm palm cups her cheek. “I don’t know,” she whispers, leaning further into his featherlight touch. “I just don’t want you to hate me, too.”

Vander pulls her into his arms before he rests his cheek on the top of her head, and though she knows what she is and what she has done, and despite the fact that she is aware of how she should push herself away, if not for her benefit, then for his, she lets herself fall into his hold and buries her teary face into the thick fabric of his sweaty t-shirt. He is warmer than she can remember her father ever being, but she doesn’t know what she is supposed to think of that, so she chucks the thought away from herself in favor of focusing on evening out her short, choppy breathing. 

“Your father never hated you, love,” Vander promises her, his voice a warm, hushed whisper. 

She stiffens as his words remind her just how little he actually knows; she knows in her core that he is wrong, that, at least for a while, her father truly had seen her as the horrible, terrible thing that she is. The man doesn’t know any better– as far as he is aware, she is nothing more than an innocent victim, some sweet child that deserved no part of what she got, and she hates just how far that impression is from the truth. She is every bit the dark, mangled, twisted monster that her father had accused her of being, and she gets no real sense of victory or success out of knowing that she has managed to fool Vander like she had managed to fool her own mother. The blood in her veins is acidic, and she feels like she is rotting from the inside out, like she is filled with some fetid infection that is eating her alive. Craving some sort of escape, Vi closes her eyes as she tries to imagine a version of herself that isn’t tainted and ruined, but she is unable to even draft a rough outline on the back of her closed lids.

Wrenching them open as she rocks back on her heels, Vi pretends that her stomach isn’t cramping like it is mere seconds away from digesting itself. “You should still sell it,” she croaks, sweeping her arm over the half-full boxes. “I’ll be old enough to actually get a job in a few months,” she adds, tugging roughly at her hair as she stares down at the carpet under her feet. “I can work after school or something, it won’t be much, but I can bring home something–”

“No,” Vander says firmly as he cups her face in his hands and wipes away her tears with the pads of his thumbs. “Absolutely not, Vi.”

Powder comes stumbling down the stairs with her own little box of mementos and assorted clothing and miscellaneous possessions, then, with her head down, she skirts past Vi and Vander with wet, flushed cheeks and red eyes. She disappears through the front door, doubtlessly to bring her own things out to the truck, leaving Vi staring out after her with ever-mounting concern. 

“I’m worried about her,” Vi confesses as she curls her hair around her finger until the tip gets pale and cool to the touch. She gnaws at the skin of her bottom lip as she glances back at the man, concern leaking from her very pores. 

Gently, Vander reaches over and gently frees the lock of hair from her grasp before he squeezes her hand. “You let me do all the worrying, alright?”  

Vi scoffs wetly as she rolls her eyes, but doesn’t say anything, even as the man in front of her frowns. 

Her sister bursts back through the door, her shoulders nearly touching her ears, then hurriedly closes the door behind herself as she blows her bangs out of her face. She turns to Vi, her eyes wide as she licks her lips apprehensively. “Mylo and Claggor are outside,” she says, leaning her back against the door as she lifts her hand to her mouth and starts nibbling at the nail on her thumb.

Vander blinks, confusion coloring his expression. “Who?”

Cringing awkwardly, Vi drums her fingers against the back of her neck as she shifts her weight between her feet. “They’re just some kids from school. We used to walk with them.”

The man’s entire form softens. “Oh, did you say hi?”

Powder hugs herself as her eyes drop to the floor. “No.” Instead of elaborating, the girl grabs another box and heads into the kitchen to empty the cupboards, just barely able to avoid tripping over her own feet in her desperation to escape Vander’s confused, wordless inspection. He turns to her, his questioning look only intensifying, but Vi simply heads back upstairs to pack up the rest of the things in their parents’ room that she and her sister have no real use for. She knows exactly what is wrong with Powder, but has no real way to put it all into words that will make any real sense outside of her head. Vander is a smart man, but she isn’t sure if she can explain that her sister has also been changed by their shared grief,  and that their return to the abandoned museum of their past life has only highlighted the fact that they have been transformed into people that can no longer fit into their old molds. The last thing she knows how to do is to look the man in his kind, patient eyes and tell him that the person she had once been is nothing more than a fuzzy, tear-stained memory that she has packed away into a box that she pretends does not even exist; she is far too terrified of how he might react, of what he might say in response.

The bed of Vander’s truck fills up faster than she expected it to, though she is grateful for the break from having to go through each and every item her parents had ever owned. Vander drives twice as slow on the way back, but Vi still clings to Powder, her nerves already long past shot. By the time they get back to Vander’s house, she feels like she is going to throw up, and she launches herself out of the back seat, her knees buckling as her feet hit the ground. She heaves loudly, but nothing comes out of her mouth besides a few thick globs of spit, so she pushes herself back onto her feet, shrugging off any attempts that Vander makes at helping her in favor of allowing her sister to grab her hand and lead her into the house. Vander heaves the boxes inside without any complaint as Vi chugs down glass after glass of tepid tap water, all with Powder stuck stubbornly to her side. 

“Why don’t you girls lie down for a bit?” Vander huffs as he comes in to grab a glass of his own. He uses his fingers to comb his sweaty hair off of his forehead, then wipes the dampness with the back of his hand. “There isn’t that much left back at the house, I can handle the rest of it.”

“No, it’s fine,” Vi insists, despite how her heart starts to race in dreadful anticipation of being back out on the road. She wishes she could just fast forward through all of this like it is nothing more than a part of a movie that she can’t stand to watch, but her sense of responsibility just barely manages to outweigh the desire to run and hide away from the world. “We can do it.”

“I’m tired,” Powder whispers, leaning her head against Vi’s arm as she pouts up at her. She grabs Vi’s hand, then squeezes it a couple of times as she bats her eyes imploringly. 

Vander’s eyes drop to Powder’s face, concern bleeding from every one of his pores.

Dropping her head in defeat, Vi draws her sister in closer to her side, then tucks her hair behind her ear. “...Only if you’re sure,” Vi says softly as she pointedly turns away from the man’s fondly amused look. 

“Rest,” he suggests as he scratches his stubbly jaw, his voice low and quiet. “I can handle it. I should only be a couple of hours, alright?”

Vi bites her lip, then tilts her head to the side. “Thanks.” Her tongue is heavy in her mouth, but before she can come up with anything else to add, her sister grabs her hand and starts gently towing her in the direction of the stairs as she waves to Vander in silent gratitude.

The front door shuts and the lock clicks right as she and her sister reach the top landing, which only seems to spur her sister on; the girl yanks Vi into their bedroom, then slams the door firmly shut behind her before she turns back to pin her in place with an expression that Vi can only describe as starved.  

Vi raises her brows. “I thought you were tired.”

Her sister scoffs, then crosses the room to shove Vi back onto their bed. “You’re the one that’s tired,” she says as she climbs on top of her and straddles her waist with her lanky legs. “You just weren’t going to admit it.”

“Yeah?” Vi laughs, then reaches up to cup her sister’s cheek. “What would I do without you?” She asks, her jaw clenching as she ponders the answer to such a distressingly impossible question.

“It doesn’t matter,” Powder replies flippantly as she leans down and brushes their lips together. She giggles as Vi rolls the two of them over, then breathlessly squeals in delight as Vi promptly starts removing her clothing. With hands made clumsy by jittery excitement, Powder helps Vi strip both of them of their clothing, then reaches out for her, sighing in contentment as soon as their naked bodies come into contact with each other. “Come on,” she whines. “I need it, too.”

Vi exhales shakily, then peppers feather-light kisses over the side of her sister’s neck as her hands feverishly clutch the girl’s slowly-flaring hips. She sneaks one of her hands between Powder’s legs, grinning shakily to herself when she feels how ready her sister already is for her touch. Slipping her fingers inside of the girl, she huffs soundlessly as she closes her eyes and braces her forehead against Powder’s collarbone. 

“There you go, baby,” Vi praises her sister as she mouths lazily at the girl’s breast; she lets the sounds of Powder’s pleasure wash over her and is promptly soothed by what she considers to be her personal symphony. “Just let me take care of you, okay?” She drags her mouth over smooth, freckled skin, then wraps her lips around the girl’s puffy nipples, the action of suckling already soothing her in a way that she doesn’t like to think about very much. Every little touch and gasp and moan loosens the bands rigidly binding her ribs until she can finally breathe again, her head growing dizzy from all of the oxygen finally rushing to her brain. “You’re so good to me,” she whispers, lightly scraping her teeth over the plane between her sister’s flat breasts. She rubs her face against Powder’s chest while she marvels at the soft warmth radiating from within the girl beneath her. 

Powder’s hands cup the back of her head as she gently scratches Vi’s scalp. “More,” she begs, no longer bothering to quiet herself. Her voice turns a shade breathier as she tacks on a reedy, “Vi, please.”

“What do you want, baby?” Vi asks as she scatters gentle kisses over her sister’s ribs. “Hm? My fingers?” She nudges the tip of her nose against the girl’s sternum. “My mouth?”

“Yes,” Powder gasps, her pupils wide and dark. She whines, then pushes Vi’s head down further, her touch gentle, but insistent. 

Vi can’t stop the smile from spreading over her lips as she allows herself to be led and guided. She scatters soft kisses over the girl’s stomach as she makes her way down her thin, freckled figure, then lightly nips her hip, deliberately stopping herself from digging her teeth in hard enough to leave too much evidence of her presence, despite how badly she wants to see the bruises that would bloom beneath over her flawless flesh.

“I wish I could bite you,” Vi confesses as she grazes her teeth over the girl’s thighs. “I wish I could mark you up all over.” She leaves more kisses in her wake, though she grabs and squeezes her sister’s knees as she parts them, her mouth feeling like it is being magnetically drawn to the mess between them. Her fingers gather the slippery wetness leaking from the cleft of her sister’s pussy before she slides two of them inside as she curls them upwards and begins licking the girl’s clit. Her eyes flutter shut as the taste of her sister floods her mouth, and she moans, then fucks into her harder, her mind spiraling into more and more thoughts of all the things she wants to do to the girl, all while knowing that her sister would let her do every last one of them without question.

Now that there is no one around to hear the sounds that she makes, Powder is louder than Vi ever could have imagined the girl being. The noises coming from her mouth are the furthest thing from real words, outside of how her sister pants her name, but she makes sweet, wounded noises as Vi fucks into her even harder, then curls her body around Vi’s head as she holds her in place and humps up against her. She whimpers, then grunts and groans as Vi manhandles her until her back is flat flat on the mattress before she joins their mouths together in a sloppy, messy kiss. 

“Vi,” Powder breathes heavily as she lays back with her hair splayed around her head like a halo. “You–” she chokes, her eyes going wide as her walls clench down around Vi’s fingers, then quietly wails as she tosses her head back and plants her feet firmly against the bed so she can get herself as close to Vi as she can, her entire form spasming as her orgasm grows stronger. Vi keeps fucking her, silently wishing she had a third hand as she zealously rubs the girl’s g-spot. Enamored, she watches her sister shake, and suddenly, all she can imagine is the way the girl would look with both of Vi’s hands around her waist, the way she might shake and cry around an even bigger intrusion. 

“Wanna fill you up,” Vi growls, a giddy sort of excitement running down her spine as she hears herself. She adds another finger as she ghosts her mouth over the inside of her sister’s thigh. “Wanna…wanna hold you down and fuck you even harder,” she continues, her ears burning bright red with self-concious embarrassment as she considers the fabled dildos and harnesses she used to joke with Mylo and Claggor about. “Wanna pull you up and down on my dick.” 

Her sister moans, the muscles in her stomach fluttering as her walls clench even further around Vi’s fingers as a fresh wave of arousal seeps out around them. Surging forward, Vi crushes their mouths together, desperate to taste her sister, to drink down her moans and spit while she persistently thrusts her fingers in and out of the girl, uncaring of the way her wetness wrinkles her fingertips. Powder finally goes limp as her eyes grow shiny and distant while her chest rises and falls in sharp, quick motions.

Carefully draping herself over her sister, Vi buries her face in the girl’s sweaty neck as she licks whatever bit that she can reach and humps down against the hand she wriggles between their bodies. “Fuck,” she whispers,” her head spinning as she huffs her sister’s scent. 

Powder moves slowly as she turns her head, rubbing her lips against the shell of Vi’s ear. “I wish you could fill me up,” she murmurs, running her fingers through Vi’s damp hair. “Like you were saying. You would fuck me so good,” she adds, her nails scratching lightly at Vi’s back. “Even better than you already do.”

Keening, Vi clenches her eyes shut as she braces her forehead against her sister’s clavicle, whining and moaning her way through a clunky, clumsy orgasm that sends her pitching to the side as she tries to catch her breath in between trailing as many kisses as she can over the younger girl’s face and neck. “Yeah?” She pants, huffing out a quiet laugh as Powder blinks up at her slowly, then aggressively nods her head. Slithering in even closer, Vi tangles their legs together as she holds the girl, keeping her hold firm while being careful to not cause her any pain. She rests her chin on the top of her sister’s head, then readjusts as she tries to get more comfortable. “Okay,” she says, patting the girl’s back. “I’ll figure something out.”

Her sister wiggles happily, then goes quiet and still before she rubs her cheek against Vi’s. The peaceful silence between them stretches thin, then snaps as it turns into something far more uncomfortable.

Vi winces, sensing the change in the air as she presses her lips against her sister’s forehead and splays her hand between the girl’s shoulder blades; the girl only gets progressively more stiff, and Vi lifts her head in response. “What’s wrong, Pow?”

“I’m glad we didn’t have to go back to the house,” she confesses with a small whimper that devolves into a muffled sob. “I hated it there.”

“I know,” Vi responds, her tongue drying out as her heart shatters, the shards falling into the spaces between her ribs. She buries her nose in the girl’s hair, then closes her eyes as she fights back remorse-ridden nausea. “I did, too.”

Powder gulps, then nervously scratches her nails up and down the muscles of Vi’s back. They lay there, the two of them saying nothing as they quietly sniffle for a minute or two more before her sister takes a ragged breath. “I didn’t feel like I belonged there anymore,” the girl confesses, her voice breaking. “I felt like a stranger, like I wasn’t supposed to be in there in the first place.” Wetness drips down Vi’s collarbone as her sister’s tears leak onto her skin; Powder starts to shake as her sobs start to wrack her body, and Vi shushes her, then cups the back of the girl’s head. “I didn’t even recognize Mylo and Claggor at first.” She whimpers, distress causing her to tense up as her nails dig into Vi’s neck. “Nothing felt like it was mine anymore,” she adds, her devastation only growing. “I’m sorry,” she cries as she does her best to curl into a ball, despite Vi’s lack of willingness to release her strained hold.

“Why are you sorry?” Vi asks, her own voice rough and ragged. “Powder, baby, none of this is your fault.”

Her sister shakes her head. “What…what if I changed too much?” She asks, her obvious terror making her words fall from her lips in stuttered, mumbled ramblings. “What if it’s more than not liking my old shirts and toys? What if I can’t stop changing?” Powder’s borderline-hysterical panting gets even shorter and more choppy, her fingers trembling as she rhythmically loosens and tightens her grip on Vi. “What if I become someone you can’t love anymore?”

Vi freezes, then climbs back on top of the girl. “That could never happen,” she promises, her voice firm, even as it wavers with the emotion coursing through her. “There’s no way that I could ever stop loving you, not even a little bit.”

“I’m different now,” Powder whimpers as she turns her face away to try and hide it in the pillow beneath her head, her eyes clenched shut as tears streak down her round, pink cheeks, “I’ve changed.” 

“I know,” Vi admits, “I have, too. But the one thing that hasn’t changed is us.” She kisses her forehead as she basks in the scent of her sweat. “At least, not in any way that really matters. I love you a little bit more every day, and that’s never going to stop.” She leans back, then cups her sister’s cheek as she carefully wipes the girl’s tears. “I have you, and you have me.”

“Just us and the stars,” her sister whispers pitifully, her hands cradling Vi’s. “I’m scared, Vi. I’m scared all the time.”

“I know,” Vi replies. “It’s gonna be okay, I promise. I’m gonna take care of us, I’ll get it all figured out.” She kisses the apples of her sister’s cheeks. “Vander said we could stay here,” she mumbles; she forces a shaky smile to her lips, then licks them, though her tongue is too dry to make much of a difference. “I can talk to him, make sure he really means it.”

Powder makes a small noise in the back of her throat as her fingers trace nonsensical shapes over the surface of Vi’s skin. “I like it here.”

“Yeah,” Vi agrees, ignoring the fears that won’t stop lingering in the back of her mind in favor of providing her sister with any sort of comfort that she can. “I do, too.” She repositions herself  back on her side, then strokes the girl’s hair, using her fingers to slowly comb it into a slightly neater state. 

Powder bites her lip, then closes her eyes as she basks in Vi’s warmth. They both stay quiet, though neither of them manage to fall asleep in the early-afternoon light; Vi’s eyes remain stubbornly glued to the bridge of her sister’s nose as she passes the time by counting her sister’s freckles, content to bask in the easy silence that spreads between them.

Their silent reprieve is interrupted by the sound of Vander’s truck rumbling outside of the house, and they spring to their feet as they hastily redress with shaking hands. To their relief, Vander doesn’t seem to take much note of their haggard appearances as he stacks boxes and bins to the side for them to root through, despite Vi already knowing that there will be nothing inside that either of them will have any desire to keep. His shirt is dark with sweat, and his muscles are swollen as he heaves the last of their parents’ belongings through the front door, but he doesn’t look scary or intimidating– he is simply strong in a way that Vi can only hope to be able to emulate as she gets older. All she wants is to finally have the strength to stop any and all dangers from ever reaching her little sister. She doesn’t know how she can change it, but what she does know is that she is so tired of being the weak, flawed thing that she has become. Powder deserves more, deserves better; she needs a true protector, someone that will be able to stand between her and the rest of the world, and as she watches Vander move, she gradually begins to imagine how she would look with more muscles and a more confident slope to her shoulders.

The totality of their meager belongings gets shoved into a tiny, cluttered corner of Vander’s living room, though it all takes up a pitifully small amount of space; Vi scratches the side of her nose. “Do you think you’ll be able to get anything for the furniture?”

Exhaling, Vander stretches his arms over his head; he shudders as his shoulder pops, then puts his hands on his hips as he rolls his neck. “I sold a few pieces with some help from a friend, he came and got everything moved out while I was packing the rest of the boxes.” He glances at the boxes, then scratches the end of his nose. “He had a few people interested in some of the other pieces, so he said he’d pass along any money he got for any of it.”

Vi raises her brows in jaded disbelief. “And you believe him?”

“Benzo is a good man,” Vander explains, his tone even and patient. “I trust him completely.”

“Oh.” Vi's chest grows achy with awkward anxiety; the last thing she wants to do is offend the man by insulting his friends, especially after everything he has already done for them. “Good, then.” Embarrassed, she starts twisting her hair around her finger as she shifts her weight from side to side, then forces herself to stop when she notices her sister picking up on her jittery energy. She gently reaches over to stop Powder from twisting her hands in the hem of her shirt, flashing her a brief grin before she looks at Vander, then gestures to the small tower of boxes. “Is there anything in there you could sell?”

“I’ll have the two of you go through it, then I can take it all down to Benzo– he’ll pick out what he can sell, and either repurpose or just donate the rest of it.” He roughly wipes his hands on the sides of his thighs, then strides into the kitchen. “Let me figure out something for dinner, hm? I don’t know about the two of you, but I’m starving.”

Powder’s stomach growls, and she flushes, then bites her lip as Vander turns, his mouth gaped in shock. 

“I should have made lunch.” Vi shrinks, suddenly overcome by the urge to punch herself.

“The two of you needed your rest,” Vander says as he fills a pot with water, then sets it on the stove to boil. He peers down at Powder, then Vi. “Besides being hungry, how are you two doing?”

“Fine,” Vi blurts, instinctually tensing up as her stress mounts. Her strained grin makes her mouth stretch and burn unpleasantly, but she powers through, hoping that she is at least a little convincing. “We’re fine.” 

The man grabs a couple of boxes of macaroni packaged with cheap packets of cheese powder, nodding slowly as he does it, though he keeps a careful eye on both of them. “It was a long day,” he says after a few minutes of deliberation. “If I were in your shoes, I might personally be a little tired, maybe even a bit emotional, given the circumstances.”

Powder tilts her head thoughtfully, then squints at the man, though she promptly schools her expression into something more neutral. She gnaws at her lip, then, taking a single, hesitant step forward, she scans his features. “Are you tired, Vander?”

The man’s shoulders lock into a rigid line, his eyes fixed firmly on the pot in front of him as the water starts to bubble. He swallows thickly, then clears his throat. “Ah, it’s nothing a hot meal and a good night’s sleep won’t fix,” he responds, his voice full of the sort of cheer that adults inject into their voice whenever they’re trying their hardest to be positive. 

Vi frowns, glancing down at her sister as she watches the girl lift her thumb to her mouth as she starts nibbling at her nail. 

“I’m sorry we left you to deal with it all by yourself,” Vi babbles, her palms growing sweaty. Her mouth is dry, but she pretends not to notice. “We should have helped you more.”

“Oh, none of that,” he replies, waving them off. “I was happy to do it,” he adds, though Vi knows that must be a lie. “Neither of you should have had to go and do it in the first place,” he mutters under his breath as he taps his short, blunt nails in an off-beat rhythm against the top of the stove. His mouth stretched in a manner that Vi can only assume must be incredibly uncomfortable, he flashes them both a strained smile. “But at least that part is done now, right?”

“Right,” Vi echoes the man as she slips her hands into her pockets. She supposes she should be relieved that the responsibility of cleaning out the house is no longer resting primarily on her, and she knows that the man believes that this will be the first step of their healing process, but really, all the trip to their old house seemed to do is remind her and her sister of all the things that they have lost. If anything, she is even more drained than she had been before, and, without a second thought, she blindly reaches for Powder’s hand and squeezes it a couple of times before she drops it and stretches her head to the side so she can massage her neck. Shifting in place as she subtly adjusts her posture, Vi tries her best to appear confident and unshakable, though she feels like she is both two inches tall and made of the thinnest, most fragile glass. 

Vander points at the kitchen table. “Sit down, dinner will be ready soon.” The pot in front of him begins to boil, and he swiftly rips open the boxes of macaroni and sets aside the cheese powder before he dumps the pasta into the pot. He pensively watches the water as it bubbles, as if hypnotized by the sight of their dinner boiling in front of him, and for a moment, Vi wants to ask him what he is thinking about before she decides against it. Instead of speaking, she and Powder simply observe the man as he finishes cooking, her sister bouncing lightly in her seat as she watches him strain the pasta from the hot water and add in the rest of the ingredients. He fills their bowls, then sits across from them, his eyes widening as Powder hurriedly jams her first spoonful into her mouth.

Vi sits back in her seat as she watches the man carefully, her appetite ruined by the contemplative look on his face.

“What is it?” She asks after she waits for her sister to finish her current round of loud, exuberant chewing. 

Huffing out a laugh, Vander rests his elbows on the table as he leans in closer. “I wanted to talk to you two about a few things.”

Powder pauses, then slowly puts down her spoon as she rushes to chew and swallow the food stuffing her mouth.

“About what?” Vi asks, feeling like she has been doused in ice cold water. She sits up in her seat, her muscles stiffening as her heart jumps into her throat. 

Vander’s determination wavers as he notices her response; he blinks owlishly, then shakes his head. “No, it’s–” He stops himself, pinching the skin between his brows before he slowly exhales, coughing a couple of times into his hand as he gathers his thoughts. “I want to reiterate to both of you that this place is your home, as long as you want it. There’s no time limit on how long you can say, and I’m not expecting or accepting any money in return for it.” He makes sure to look both of them in their eyes before he continues, “But I wanted to make sure that living here is what you two want, too. If it isn’t, I meant it when I said that I would help you find another–”

“We wanna stay,” Powder blurts as she leans forward in her seat; she turns to Vi for support, and her eyes are so big and wide and hopeful that Vi can’t bring herself to do anything but bow her head as she swallows back any hesitation. She just wants to preserve her little sister’s smile for as long as she can while also protecting the little bit of sparkle left in the girl’s eyes.

Vi’s hands fall into her lap as more questions drift to the front of her mind, though she is too restless to leave them there. “What about school?” She asks as she pulls at the strand of hair that falls forward and tickles the tip of her nose. 

“Well,” Vander starts, his face softening even further as he watches Powder tuck back into her dinner. “We’re a little outside of your old school zone, but there’s another school nearby.” He taps his spoon against the edge of his bowl, then pushes it to the side. “It will be a little different from what you’re used to, but the good thing is that the middle and high schools are combined, so the two of you would be closer.”

Shoving her spoon in her mouth, Vi dutifully chews her food as she studies the top of the table, her heart filled with a particular mix of relieved excitement and crushing guilt– if Vander knew what she was, if he knew how right her father had been about her, he would never see any part of this as a good thing. He would be chomping at the bit to separate them, he would be dreading the idea of her and her sister getting any closer than they already are. 

“The bus comes by this way, so you wouldn’t have to walk.” He shoves his pasta around his bowl, but doesn’t bother lifting it to his mouth. “We could go down to the school and get you two registered on Monday. It’s pretty last minute, and you’ll be starting the week after, but I know the main administrator there, and she said we could swing it.”

All of this should be overwhelming to her– after all, this is truly the last nail in the coffin of her old life. There should be yet another pang of grief echoing through her hollow-feeling chest, but instead, she is overcome with an uncomfortable sense of calm as she thinks about how there will be no one in the school that will remember her and her sister, no one who will be able to compare them as they are now to the people that they had once been. It almost seems wrong to be starting over so completely, to be building a life that is so unrecognizable from the one that she had lived before, but she knows that this is the best thing that she can do for her sister, so she simply nods her head twice, then takes another bite of her dinner.

Vander’s eyes dart between her and her sister as he frowns to himself, then straightens his back. “I heard on the radio that they’re predicting that the auroras might be visible next week,” he says, his posture relaxing as he sees Powder’s immediate interest. “I was thinking we could all go out into the dark part of the forest, just to see if we can catch a look or two.”

“Really? Do you mean it?” Powder asks, her entire form practically vibrating with excitement.

“Of course,” he says gently, his eyes so soft and warm that Vi briefly envisions them melting out of his skull completely. Vi fights to shift her expression into something that is more neutral, not wanting her fearful hesitation to put a damper on her sister’s enthusiasm– she would like to feel that same sense of wonder and elation at the thought, but the only thought running through her mind is how their last nighttime foray into the forest had gone. Her father is no longer around to drunkenly stumble through the trees in wrathful pursuit of his hidden children, but that doesn’t give her as much comfort as she thinks it probably should; she blinks back tears, bowing her head as she rubs her hands against the top of her thighs. 

“We’ve never seen them,” Vi croaks. She forces a smile to her lips, wanting to at least seem happy for Vander’s sake. “I, uh…I didn’t think they even showed up around here.”

“It’s never a sure thing,” Vander replies, his brows knitting once more as he takes in her pale, clammy countenance. “But on dark nights, if we go deep enough, we should be able to see at least a bit, if they’re out there. The weather should be good and they’re saying that the skies should be clear enough that we have a pretty decent chance.”

Her leg shaking, Vi swallows, then sticks her spoon into her pasta– she has only taken a few bites from the bowl, but she has no desire to eat any more than she already has. She peeks over at her sister, her brow raising when she sees that the girl’s bowl has been scraped clean.

Licking her lips, she silently angles her dinner towards her sister, only to be shocked by the girl’s quiet, subtle refusal. Powder leans forward as she tucks her legs up underneath of herself so that she can lean halfway across the table. “Can we have a campfire?”

“Sure,” Vander replies with a wink. “We can get there early and get settled so you can fill up on sugar.”

Powder’s toothy grin only grows wider as she taps her fingers against the surface of the table while she wiggles in place. “We should have s’mores.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be much of a campfire without them, now would it?” Vander rests his chin on his hand, his eyes glittering as he gazes at Powder’s sweet, angelic face. “What else should we roast?”

Unwilling to let her nerves ruin her sister’s enthusiasm, Vi stands and stacks her bowl inside of her sister’s before she beelines straight to the kitchen sink. She turns the water as hot as it will go, then scrapes her half-congealed macaroni into the trash, her barely-there appetite having fully disappeared. The water in the sink starts to steam, and Vi watches the vapor float and twirl through the air as she carefully dumps the bowls and the pot their dinner had been cooked in into the basin. 

“I can help,” Powder offers as she shifts to get out of her seat, her expression instantly more somber.

“No, it’s cool,” Vi says, unable to look at the girl as she halfheartedly waves her off. “Stay there, finish planning, I’ve got it.” The wet, squishy matter of her brain is on edge with buzzing trepidation, so she shoves her hands in the pool of hot, soapy water, forgoing Vander’s bright yellow dish gloves in favor of soaking in the burning heat; she closes her eyes and hisses to herself as it starts to sting. Curling her hands into fists, Vi digs her nails into the meat of her palm, then winces as the tiny pinpricks of hurt evolve into scalding half-crescents embedded in her flesh. All of the sound in the room fades away until all Vi can hear is the pounding of her own heart and the sound of her blood rushing in her ears; she slumps forward as she leans over the sink, pressing her lips together as she holds her breath and tries to silence the scream bubbling up in her throat.

“Why don’t you let me finish that?” Vander asks. 

Her head snapping to the side, Vi blinks at the man in shock, unsure of how he managed to get so close to her without making any noise. His eyes are glued to her reddened hands and forearms, and she gasps as his hands delicately circle her wrists, as if he is afraid that he will break her if he tightens his grip.

“It’s okay, I’ve got it,” Vi says, her tongue numb and her voice flat. She stares at him, her vision drawn to the fine lines set into his suntanned skin, then traces the slope of his nose; she can’t quite explain why, but it is as if she is truly seeing him for the first time, even though she has been sitting at his dinner table for a couple of months now. “You cooked.”

Holding both of her hands in just one of his, he reaches behind himself blindly and grabs the dish towel that had been hanging over the handle of the oven door. “That’s alright, love,” he replies, his voice pitched low and quiet, as if he is attempting to soothe a spooked horse. “I don’t mind.” Keeping his touch light, Vander dries her hands, then slings the towel over his shoulder as he shrewdly inspects them. 

“I’m fine,” Vi whispers, her hands shaking. She tries to stop, tries to calm herself, but she can’t.

Powder sticks her head out from behind Vander’s massive form, then runs around him to throw herself against Vi’s side as she circles her waist with skinny, freckled arms. 

Lowering himself to the ground, Vander kneels in front of them, his eyes tired, but earnest. He reaches out to cup Powder’s cheek, then squeezes Vi’s hand. “Both of you have lost so much,” he says, his voice thick with emotion that he visibly fights back. “And I know that things are so different now, and they just keep changing, but you have to know that this darkness that you feel…it won’t last forever.” He blinks rapidly as he examines them both. “It may be a while until things start to feel better, but we’re going to find the little pockets of light in this mess, I promise.”

Vi wants to believe him; she can see the sincerity written all over his face, but it is hard to imagine a world without the dark shadow that has been cast over it. She sways where she stands, then gives her sister a quick once-over, recoiling when she sees how pronounced the circles under the girl’s eyes look in the harsh light of the kitchen. 

“You two have had a long day,” Vander grunts as he stands up, blanching for a moment as something in his back makes a loud popping noise. “Go on, I promise, I can handle a few dishes.”

Powder barely even has to tug on her arm to get her to move, though Vi barely even notices her feet shifting as she is brought to the stairs. She watches her sister turn around and wave to the man while she wishes him a good night; she feels like she is is being piloted by someone else as she stumbles through the thick fog hanging over her brain that has turned her into a half-broken marionette for an unseen puppetmaster, but she doesn’t bother fighting any part of it. Her sister is her guide, and she follows her faithfully up the stairs, her eyelids getting heavier as she slowly blinks.

Their bedroom is dark as Powder drags the two of them back inside, but Vi doesn’t particularly notice. The girl closes and locks their door, then immediately hides herself against Vi’s chest as she drapes Vi’s arms around herself, her small hands clutching the fabric of Vi’s shirt as she shakes and shivers. “Don’t do that,” Powder gasps breathlessly, her voice sharp with fear.

“Do what?” Vi asks dazedly.

“Don’t go away,” the girl whispers. “It scares me when you do that.”

“I didn’t go anywhere, I’m right here.” She rubs her sister’s back as she leans down and buries her nose in the girl’s hair. “It’s okay,” she mumbles. “You’re okay.”

“I’m not okay without you,” Powder whimpers as she grinds her cheek against Vi’s stomach, leaving behind a smear of tears over the faded design on the front of the old shirt Vi used to wear to gym class. “You can’t leave me by myself, I won’t make it on my own.”

“I’m not leaving you, PowPow,” Vi promises, her head fuzzy and heavy. “I would never do that.”

“I’l be okay if I have you,” Powder whispers brokenly. “I just need you.”

The dull ache between Vi’s ribs turns to a sharp, stabbing twinge that leaves her feeling woozy and weak. She doesn’t deserve her sister, she isn’t worthy of the love and dedication that the girl sends her way with every look and touch, and she certainly isn’t good enough to be the one benefitting from Powder’s endless supply of affection and kindness and understanding. Her sister is the one thing in Vi’s life that has remained sweet and pure, no matter what she has been put through, and Vi is consumed by dread as she is forced to consider all of the ways that she will taint and ruin her, because it is all she has ever known how to do. 

She doesn’t say any of that, though– Powder would not take it well, and the last thing Vi wants to do is upset her sister any more than she already has. Instead, she ghosts her lips over the girl’s forehead, then gently shuffles the two of them closer to the bathroom. She takes her time undressing her sister and littering tiny pecks over her ribs and stomach as she caresses her hips and waist, then hurriedly strips off her own clothing and turns on the shower. Cranking the hot water as far as it will go, Vi turns back to her sister, her vision tunneled on the younger girl as she unbraids her hair while the bathroom fills with thick steam. Wordlessly, she steps into the shower, putting her back to the scalding hot water as she makes room for her sister.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” Powder asks as she watches Vi’s skin turn bright red from the heat. 

“Yes,” Vi hisses, hauling her sister into her chest as she closes her eyes and drinks in the burn. “It’s okay,” she explains, her muscles tensing before she loosens them completely, the burning sensation grounding her better than anything else. “I need it to hurt.”

Powder blinks up at her, worry bleeding into her eyes at a concerningly fast pace. She reaches around Vi’s waist, wincing as the water hits her arm, then adjusts the hot water until the temperature is more tolerable for both of them. “I don’t like it when you hurt yourself,” she says, her voice taking on a more low, somber note that Vi can’t remember ever hearing before. “No one gets to hurt you,” she whispers, her brow furrowing. 

Her shoulders and back stinging, Vi brushes her wet hair out of her face, then gently shifts the two of them until her sister is under the warm water before she starts washing the girl in nearly-robotic movements. It has always been easiest to lose herself in the process of cleaning, her mind always going blissfully blank whenever she would wash dishes or scrub the bathroom floor that she shared with her sister, and soaping up Powder’s legs and arms provides her with a similar sense of calm as she focuses all of her mental energy and physical energy on caring for the younger girl instead of ruminating on her myriad of mistakes and missteps. She does not apply that same level of care to herself, choosing instead to scrub at herself until she is splotchy and red, a habit that her sister has always tried to dissuade her from. Powder only lets her do it for a couple of minutes before she snatches the washcloth from her hand to massage it over her hips and thighs in soft, gentle motions, her bottom lip sticking out as she pouts. They rush to finish their shower, Vi’s energy abruptly draining as she roughly yanks at the knots of her hair after tenderly detangling her sister’s, then return to their bedroom fully naked, neither of them having remembered to grab clothing to change into. Vi steps towards the dresser, then stops in her tracks as soon as she sees her father’s jacket draped over the top of it, right where she left it. 

It is just a dirty old jacket; she tells herself that over and over again, but finds herself unable to shift her feet forward, to reach out and move it so that she can open the top drawer and grab a pair of underwear for her sister. There is no one coming to claim it, there is no one around to scream at her for sullying the sweat-soaked, coal-stained fabric, but she is practically paralyzed as she stands in front of the dresser and searches for the little spot on the left shoulder that had been ripped at work and mended by her mother’s tired hands. The thread is a few shades off from the rest of the jacket, and the seam is crooked and uneven, the stitches messy, and it is just a jacket, it is just fabric and thread, but it feels like so much more than that, in a way that Vi can’t figure out the words to describe. 

Powder storms forward and snatches it off the top of the dresser, then balls it up and hurls it into the bottommost drawer with a tiny snarl that Vi pretends she doesn’t hear. Her sister’s eyes are sharp as she watches Vi kneel down to dress her, though by the time the two of them are ready for bed, her expression has softened from its initial irritation. She cuddles up to Vi as they lay down, then rests her head on her shoulder as she bunches Vi’s shirt up and draws nonsensical shapes over the flat plane of her stomach, her nail sharp, but her touch light.

Vi closes her eyes; she is exhausted to a degree she didn’t consider herself to be capable of reaching, and she just wants to soak in the peace and quiet of the room.

“Are you still awake?” Powder asks, the edge of her nail scratching the rim of Vi’s belly button.

Though the thought makes her insides churn with shame, Vi’s initial instinct is to lie as still as she can so that she can pretend that she didn’t hear the girl. She doesn’t give into that impulse, as tempting as it is, but she takes a second or two to compose herself before responding. “Yeah,” she sighs, opening her eyes to stare up at the steadily-darkening ceiling. She can hear Vander moving around downstairs, though she can also tell that the man is trying his best to be quiet. 

Powder puffs out her cheeks, then drums her fingertips over Vi’s sternum. “Can I tell you something? Even if it’s bad?”

“Of course,” Vi replies, her vision blurring as she purposely unfocuses her eyes.

Her hesitance palpable, Powder hesitates as she gnaws at the jagged nail at the edge of her thumb. “Do you promise you won’t get mad?” 

“It’s okay, you can tell me anything.” She wishes they could just go to sleep, wanting nothing more than to avoid whatever her sister is about to tell her– she doesn’t want to know, she doesn’t think she can handle it in this moment, but Powder needs this, needs her, so she swallows back her own panic and stress and desire for just five measly minutes of nothingness in favor of forcing a patient half-smile to her lips. “You know that.”

Her sister sits up, biting her lip as she looks down at Vi, then tangles her hands together in her lap as she sniffles, her eyes misted with unshed tears.

“Powder,” Vi frowns, reaching up to smooth down the girl’s hair. “What is it?”

“I know it’s bad,” Powder starts, her form trembling like a leaf in the wind. “I…” she chokes on her words, then shoots a wet glare at the dresser. “I wish you hadn’t taken that stupid jacket,” she croaks as she roughly wipes her teary eyes with the palm of her hand. 

“It was Dad’s,” Vi replies, her mouth dry. “I know you don’t want it now, but you might change your mind.”

“I won’t.” Powder wraps her arms around herself, then digs her nails into her own skin. “I hate him. I’m glad he’s gone.”

Her sister has expressed similar sentiments before, but that doesn’t stop Vi from feeling like she might just throw up all over herself and Vander’s upsettingly ugly comforter. “Don’t say that,” she rasps; she knows she is supposed to let her sister express herself, that the girl has every right to feel the way that she does, but all she can focus on is the part of herself that is glad that he is gone, too, and it makes her feel wretched. 

“It’s the truth,” Powder whispers miserably. She ducks her head even further as she curls in on herself, her nails leaving behind little reddened crescents that stretch into long, angry-looking scratches. “He scared me towards the end.”

Despite the way that her first instinct is to jump to their father’s defense, Vi finds herself at an uncomfortable loss for words when it comes to actually coming up with a single good thing to say about the man, especially the last version of him that she ever came into contact with. If she closes her eyes and thinks hard enough, she can halfway remember the way the pain bloomed across her face as his fists swung down on her, and it makes her flinch out of habit. Still, she knows that the man had been trying to get better, that he had made changes to himself for their benefit.

She pretends that she doesn’t have doubts about that, too, though the fact remains that neither of them will really know what the truth had been regarding their father’s recovery. Perhaps he would have continued to return to the way he once was, maybe he would have been an even better father than he had been before; she will never be able to know for sure, nor will Powder, and Vi hates herself for that, knowing that all of it rooted from the very same actions that even Vander is convinced that she didn’t take. Vi did not hold a gun to her father’s head and force him to drink, but she knows that she had been at least part of what drove him to it, and she carries that responsibility around her neck like it is a heavy collar marking her for penance, knowing that, while she did not pour his drinks, it was her visage that he saw in his mind’s eye when he choked down the stinking, burning liquor that he would buy in thick glass bottles.

Her hands shake as she tucks her hair behind her ear. She blinks, scouring her brain for the right thing to say as she tries to string together an explanation that would properly emphasize the degree of her personal culpability in the deaths of both of their parents.

She swallows, clearing her mother’s memory from her thoughts, unable to visualize her without ruminating on how she had been nothing more than collateral damage, in the long run. “I miss him,” she whispers after the silence between her and her sister has stretched into something that feels like it will suffocate them both. 

Powder wrinkles her nose, staring at Vi in blatant befuddlement. “Why?” She asks, her eyes boring holes into Vi’s very skull. 

“He wasn’t always like…that,” Vi says, her throat clicking as she swallows fruitlessly, her tongue feeling papery. “You remember how it was, when he used to be better.”

Her sister nods, then picks at a loose thread on her pajama pants. “I miss the way it used to be, I guess,” Powder mumbles as she roughly wipes away the tears staining her cheeks. “I miss it when he was nice to you.”

Sorrowful pangs shoot through her chest and straight into what she is fairly sure is her heart as she reminisces about the family she once had; she closes her eyes and pictures her mother’s smile and her father’s laugh, but those warm memories now feel like they are distant and untouchable, like they no longer belong to her. “I do, too,” Vi croaks, her throat feeling like it is going to close up completely. She lays back, lifting her arm up as her sister crushes herself against her side; hot tears bleed through her sleep shirt within seconds, her sister’s sobs silent but brutal as they wrack her slender form.

There is nothing that she can do to fix the absolute disaster that their lives have somehow become, and there is nothing that she can say that will soothe the suffocating heartbreak that the two of them must share. Vi hates feeling so helpless, especially when she is stranded in the stormy sea of her sister’s distress, and it makes her hands shake in enervated frustration as she holds Powder while she shakes, resting her cheek on top of the girl’s head as she rubs her back. 

It doesn’t take very long for her sister to tire herself out and Vi finally relaxes as the hitching, muffled whimpers fade into soft snores. Exhaling in relief, Vi closes her eyes as well, forcing her breathing to slow as she tries to follow her sister down into peaceful, restful slumber.