Arc 7 | Chapter 271: This Fight, Part 2 (in one splintered and one combined parts)

✮ ✮ ✮ Leerin ✮ ✮ ✮

Keep going.

Keep pushing.

Don’t give up.

Things will get better, because, seriously? They can’t get worse.

Those are the words—mantras—I’ve lived by for so long.

They don’t feel like enough now, not after seeing the heartbreak—the betrayal—in Emilia’s eyes. Not after seeing that things could, in fact, get a whole lot fucking worse.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

I knew it would be hard. I mean, fuck, hadn’t I just been contemplating how much Emilia’s return to our lives would change everything? How she should come back and save Darrian while leaving me to my misery? To the life I’ve spent the last decade—more than the last decade—digging out for myself with empty acceptance of my family’s beliefs?

That acceptance—that tolerance—was bad enough—

despicable, unforgivable, disgusting

—but the reality of our reunion? For Emilia to come upon me actively supporting my cousins while they spit hatred at that syn?

At Emilia’s friend. At her maybe-something-else? At her definitely-something-else.

The way the syn had so gently lifted her off me, their eyes soft and caring… Ah, what I would give for someone to look at me like that—like I was the centre of their universe. Did Emilia realize they looked at her like that? Probably not. For as much as Emilia had always been so observant about other things—and certainly, she’d always been able to pin down every person in a room who wanted to get between her legs—she’d never been very good at spotting love in those same eyes.

Maybe if I told her—tried to find some way to press a solid form back into our frayed friendship—she would forgive me? Would offer me love where I didn’t deserve any?

✮ ✮ ✮ The Zentari Twins (Raven and Borien) ✮ ✮ ✮

Conrad and Darrian had the fight handled, leaving us to linger on the outskirts, watching as they fought—as the Free Colonier fought, and our cousin lingered in his periphery, watching, waiting, unnecessary and yet refusing to leave the man’s side.

“It’s cute. Darrian rarely shows an interest in anyone.”

“True. That will break our family. Korrin’s attraction as well, even if the object of her affection seems taken.”

“Breaking isn’t a bad thing.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Our family needed to break. Our parents—we—needed to leave. There were ties, however, keeping us stuck. Our parents, never quite willing to leave their siblings, nieces, nephews, to their fate of hatred, of drawing themselves further into that repulsive world—further into the eyes of The Black Knot, even if they didn’t realize the extent to which those monsters knew of their misdeeds.

They thought they’d gotten away with it all, with burying themselves in supposedly secret hatred and malice. They had not. Why they trust us, we have no idea. Our aunts and uncles, each of our obnoxious cousins, know we hate their hatred, yet, they let us learn, and we in turn tell on them. Perhaps they trusted because, as far as any of us can tell, Darrian and Leerin never told? They were far closer to the Laprise boys, the Baxters and Hyrat triplets than we are to the Hyrats our age, yet our cousins never told—never whispered of the meetings they were dragged to, the purist artwork our family bought for exuberant prices, the money funnelled away to support some malicious cause or another.

Cause

—that was the word they used for it, as though funding an assassin to hunt down activists with too powerful a following or voice were something worthy of fundraising, supporting, laughing over.

“We should leave as well.”

“I don’t think we’ll have much of a choice, after this.”

Would our parents come with us? Remove Korrin from the life our parents had allowed us to be raised within, simply because they were too loving to siblings who had long since lost their ability to love anyone who held beliefs different from their own?

We do not know, but we hope they will. If they don’t… what will become of Korrin?

Of our family, the single cousin who managed to leave our lives has no contact with us now. She has tried, reaching out through messages and even a physical letter once. Those words do not reach us, instead swiped up by relatives the moment they dare enter our estate, our minds. Not our parents, but the relatives who watch even their movements, lest any of us stray too far, reveal too much.

“Perhaps Emilia Starrberg will help.”

“Perhaps. It will not go unnoticed.”

No, her help would not go unnoticed. We manage to communicate—share secrets between our minds—due to a gift—a curse—from the clones. Our communication cannot be read, unlike every other thought, impulse, fact that floats through our collective mind. A small gift, back when Loren Hyrat first pulled us into {A Private Moment}, intent to figure out what was wrong, why we broke so profoundly after our Censors—after the functions that imprison us—were installed.

We doubt he had expected the truth: that our family had been increasingly drawn into purism over the last three, four, five decades, even daring to press control into the minds—Censors—of every family member save Leerin and Darrian—too far gone into their friendship with those our relatives seek to exterminate—seeking to control our everything.

Had we asked, he would have freed us. How, we do not know, but he would have.

Instead, we are what we are. One being—two—our minds connected in a way that is natural, unbreakable, and yet we know, isn’t right.

It shouldn’t have happened. It should not have been gifted to us, not for this long. Yet, the person who gave us this gift—and regardless of how much we know it is not correct, it is still a gift that has allowed us more freedom than other members of our family—did not know of the consequences for remaining connection for more than half our life now. Not a gift from Loren, but one of his charges. A gift become curse—a blight, not upon us, but the purists. A small hole, allowing us to remove ourselves from their influence, allowing us to reveal some of the horror of this world we were raised within—of the terrible plans—to the right people.

Even we could not reveal the plan of this wedding to The Black Knot, however—not without risking our secret. Now, as Darrian is a step away from finally leaving, as our parents will be forced to choose, as a woman known throughout The Penns for her

fuck you

attitude is mere metres away from us, that secret is crumbling.

Good. We are done living in this world simply because our parents refuse to leave. It was coming anyways—as much as we love our sister, we always knew that once we stepped foot into the real world, we would not be returning. Yet, even as our gap decade stretches around us, we fight that fate. We love our sister, and to leave her to these monsters—alone, if Darrian leaves—is a heavy, disgusting thing.

“Perhaps Emilia Starrberg will put us in touch with Olivier de la Rue.”

“Yes. If anyone could remove our sister from our parents, should they choose to stay—”

“Stupid.”

“Yes. Stupid.”

“He can remove her.”

“Perhaps.”

“Not to us.”

“We are young.”

“Broken.”

“In a way.”

“Perhaps to Darrian?”

“Perhaps.”

✮ ✮ ✮ Leerin ✮ ✮ ✮

“Hanalea can’t know about Emilia believing in the synat’s abilities?”

Darrian and the Free Colonier he was watching so closely—so weirdly—had the situation with both the people blocking the way and the cousins who were continuing to chase us handled, so I’d taken the chance to catch up on the messages I’d missed during my fight with the syn and then subsequent panic.

I’m still panicking, of course, I’ve just managed to force it down a bit. Focus on something else. Was that healthy? I don’t know. Half the research says you should face your feelings when they happen, half says you should wait until you’re in a better headspace to deal with your feelings.

I can’t even remember the last time I was in a good headspace; therefore, dealing with feelings later it is. Does that mean I never actually face the majority of my feelings, instead leaving them lingering on the edge of my mind, ready to explode over my heart and mind at any moment, only to be forced down once more? Yes, but I’ve been living like that for decades. No sense in stopping now.

So, distraction. Emilia suddenly believing in the synat’s fortune-telling was definitely a distraction, as was her messy breakup.

My heart had felt liable to explode out of me when I realized Sorvell had included me in that group message, Darrian having admitted to me that he, Wyren and Hanalea had been watching what unfolded between Emilia and me. None of them had messaged me directly—probably, they had just as little idea as to what to say to me as Darrian and were content to leave my fate to Emilia—but for Sorvell to include me in the massive group message of people organizing to go make Emilia’s ex and his friends’ lives miserable…

Well, at least I hadn’t been immediately excised from every part of their lives. That was something, small as it was.

Plus, watching everyone freak out in the thread was… amusing. Emilia was one of the strongest people any of us knew—and the fact that she had blown a hole in her asshole ex’s wall with brutal, surgical precision was proof of that—and yet, here were all her friends—people she hadn’t spoken to in close to a decade—fuming and demanding retribution on her behalf.

People who, despite largely being non-public members of our unit, weren’t hesitating to meet up with each other—with our public members as well, Boyd and his subunit already arranging to visit Piketown and Olivier, while also ruining the end of her ex’s season—and risk being outed.

My heart squeezed at that reality, because regardless of how much Emilia’s ex and his roommates should be made to suffer—should be made to understand they couldn’t treat Emilia or anyone else like that and not expect to face consequences—it was still, in the grand scheme of things, rather silly.

Emilia didn’t need protecting.

The triplets were already scaring the shit out of her ex, a handful more clones terrorizing the rest of the people they’d swiped up at Samina’s insistence.

Emilia was already protected—by them, by Samina, by her new, Free Colony friends. Yet, almost everyone was still willing to risk their privacy to offer her their protection as well.

Then, there was me, hiding behind my shame and guilt and my family’s threats. It wasn’t like my leaving them would stop their actions or words, of course. They would go on

donating

money to horrible causes. They would go on hating and planning for this or that atrocity even without me. Still, they’d out me. They’d out me, and they’d go on living as they always had, and I’d be left to pick up the pieces of my ruined life.

It was unfair. Unfair that my parents and relatives were removing the decision of how to live my life from me. Unfair that so many people were so obsessed with our unit—sometimes in love or admiration, other times in hatred and vengeance for the people we hadn’t been able to save—that none of us could live a normal life if we were publicly named. Unfair that we fought so hard to return Baalphoria and the continent as a whole to some semblance of normalcy, yet could never hope to find it ourselves.

Every soldier had fought so people could choose how to live their lives. Fucking stars, our unit in particular had fought so fucking hard just so people could choose whether they even wanted to join the war effort! There had never been a draft for the simple fact that so many of the people who volunteered in those first years of war, regardless of what unit they ended up in, had been monsters, capable of handling the load of dozens, if not hundreds, of soldiers through sheer force of will and thousands of hours spent training, that training compounding into hundreds of years, once the training system was operational.

To have come out of that war and been forced to choose between two lives I didn’t want? To be increasingly forced to choose and sacrifice—to watch my cousin choose me over his own wants and desires, over his own fucking conscience? To now see the physical proof of all our friends choosing to risk their privacy—their very way of life—for Emilia, the few comments about the risk being blown off because everyone knew it was just a matter of time before it all came out anyways, and what better reason to be outed than protecting someone we all loved?

What better reason, indeed.

Truly, I am a horrible person—

irredeemable, pathetic, unforgivable.

It was bad enough when I was silently supporting my family, but to stand by as they spouted vitriol at that syn? To have actively defended my cousins, then fought them? There was no excuse for that.

A reason for outing myself had come along, and I’d let it pass with barely a thought—not until the consequences of my pathetic, self-centred choices barrelled into me.

Pathetic. Hateful. Worthless.