Title: For clarifications
Summary: "I love her." "He loved me." How catastrophe might just work out. Wizards vs. Vampires drabble.
A/N: Yeah I'm on a roll for this fandom.
"You and me are the same
We don't know or care who's to blame
But we know whoever holds the reins
Nothing will change,
Our cause has gone insane."
- United States of Eurasia, Muse
She looks horrible, like someone threw a bucket of water on her face and left it there. But he knows who did this, who made her reduced to this hollow and love struck shell of his sister and his stomach clenches and the flash of fury nearly blinds himself- but he ignores it (the same way he ignored the way Juliet's eyes lit up when they saw Mason) and tries again.
"You know, Juliet told me something interesting today."
Her cherry nose scrunches up in genuine disgust, and her cheeks flinch. "Don't say her name."
He says nothing, hunched and staring at his palms, a painful sting in his chest. "I'm sorry." He says finally, in a voice too soft and filled with such meaning that he himself couldn't comprehend. "Neither of us saw it coming."
He hears an accepting sniff, which in Alex-speak might have been: I understand, I'm sorry too, you're hurt about this as much as I am- but knowing her that sniff would've just meant a parenthesis.
Both of them know that it wasn't his job to poke his nose into her affairs, but this was Alex, his baby sister. He won't give up on this; he was going to elicit a verbal response from her, even if he's going to hit the sore spots.
"She told me that she didn't believe that we're related." He continues, as if nothing took place at all. "She thought we were..." He trails off, coughing uncomfortably and pulling at his collar.
He hears expectant silence but he refuses to budge, his cheeks coloring and his wrists rubbing together nervously.
"Justin..." She whines, sounding much more like the Alex he knew. His lips curl, and he ducks his head down to hide his smile.
A shaky foot nudges his thigh. "Tell me, or I'll turn you into a turnip." She sounds serious, cranky, tired- but that widens his smile further.
"You wouldn't dare." She has an evil glint that he's only seen in the pictures of long-dead dictators such as Hitler and Stalin, and despite her faults, he's very, very frightened.
"Okay, okay, I'll tell you. Juliet thought we were... together."
There's awkward silence. Someone must have flashed her cue card because sure enough, there's an appalled "Eww"dragged from her corner of the room.
She's speaking, and normally he would listen to every syllable, each tilt in her chords and the slightest shift in her tone, (and people said she was the genius) and evaluate carefully what her next moves might be. But now, his eardrums are hammering so loudly in his ears that it drowns out her insults.
But he manages to hear something, a string of words that perks his ears - something about "type" and "not hers"- so he tries to reply.
Her laser-beam eyes zero on him, piercing right through him with irritation. "Dude, unless you're talking about scuba diving in the desert, I don't feel the hand signals."
He stares at her, with what he believed, an infuriated affection and sighs -his cheeks stretch a little but that doesn't mean he's going to smile.
"What did you say?"
"I… you suck at WizSpace Alien Invader?"
His teeth clamped. "I so do not. In fact, I beat my high score just yesterday- Wait a minute." He narrowed his eyes at her. "Nice deflection."
For a second her lips curled and the dimness in her eyes vanished- but in an instant her face was the same as what it was. He mentally whooped. Finally, this was getting somewhere. It wasn't much, but it was a start.
"No, you said something about me not being your type." He says indignantly, crossing his arms.
"Psh. Uh, no. Why would I say that?" She says just as aggressively, eyebrows arching upwards.
"Even if I did, you're still so not my type." She adds.
"Oh yeah? I wouldn't go for ignorant, lazy, selfish witches like someone I know." The tips of their feet were grazing each other, and he accidentally curls his toes with hers as he shivers.
"Huh, that's rich coming from a guy who dates lying freaks for girlfriends, heck Harper looks normal next to them." She spits out, edging nearer- blatantly defying the boundaries (set by him, him, always him), stepping past the invisible yellow and black tapes.
Her hands ghosts on his frame. "You date obnoxious jerks that only have pretty faces and don't give two cents about you." Past his ankle. (She growls.)
"And that's different from you, how?" Near his stomach. (He chuckles.)
"That means you'll date me, if you had the chance, right?" At his neck. (No response.)
His hand clutches hers. It breaks free. (Still no response.)
"I love her." He whispered. She was hovering over him now, her fingers barely grazing his cheekbones, the dictator glint flashing in her eyes.
"Asshole." She says, foreheads slanting together. He knows what's coming.
Wait for it.
Wait for it...
Nothing.
She just closes her eyes, and he resists the urge to trace the faint lines that cover her eyelids. Her skin is pale, translucent, brittle, old. He can see the tired, bluish veins pumping through the lines of her hand as she rubs it roughly against her temple.
It's silent, nothing (and everything) is happening.
Her frail hands slowly, slowly snake down his chest, past his pectorals and south to his abdomen, and bunching his shirt fiercely she begins to sob.
His arms slide to her back, rub circles. His mouth sighs, comforts her, kisses her fringe. His eyes, they're shut.
Because that was way too close.
(And then she disappears during Max's shift and really, he wasn't too surprised.)
The world is broken, halos fail to glisten
We try to make a difference but no one wants to listen
They'll dissipate like snowflakes in an ocean
"He loved me."
"I found her... and I lost her again."
It was over.
She's resting her head on his shoulder, with Mason's howls piercing through the darkness around them, a sweet mixture of vanilla and death lingering in the air.
He feels... empty.
He's pretty sure he's supposed to feel pain, hurt, sorrow- but that's it. Nothing.
He feels the tears wetting his eyes (but he feels no sorrow) his nose twitches at the amount of vanilla in the air (but he feels no hurt), his little sister's head is digging, digging into the nape of his neck (but he feels no pain).
All he can do is sit at the steps in the grimy ruins of a castle with his sister on his shoulder, waiting for it to be over.
But she speaks, her voice vibrating at the crook. "Justin?" She says softly.
He hums robotically in response, devoid of emotion.
"Here" She presses something against his palm, squeezing his thumb slightly as she lets go.
He looks down and sees, sees something that plants a seed of hope into his heart.
The necklace glows, radiates waves of warmth that crash against his soul and reflect the look in his sister's eyes. There is a faint twist to the corner of her lips, as she murmurs her answer to him.
"Maybe."
All he can do is blink wildly, as if he had woken from a dream, soaking it up like water on dry earth.
You know the part where Justin is all smug and forgets to comfort his poor, heartbroken sister? Yeah I hated that one. So I decided to please myself and write this piece.