"Hmm. What are you doing here, may I ask?" Ian Kabra inquired, his voice just past the point of dangerous.
Lounging on a couch next to his sister, Ian flicked his eyes up to his guests for just a moment. Just one moment. He then returned to his book.
So. Amy Cahill and her imbecile of a brother. Did they not know they were unwelcome?
"What…an unexpected surprise." drawled Natalie. She raised her glass of freshly squeezed cherry and pomegranate extract to them, relishing how the dark color looked like blood. Why were they here? Here to gloat at their win, perchance? Here to feel pity for them as they tried to crawl out of the dark, deep, damp place they used to call their mother's arms?
"It's a beautiful day," her brother continued. And indeed it was a beautiful day. Nimbus clouds big but white, a rare occurrence, and shocking patches of blue peeking out from behind them, like shattered glass. Birds chirping and flowers at their prime, wonderfully contrasting against the green, green grass. The wind tickling you as it fluttered by, and air smelling sweet, like blueberries and honeysuckle and roses. The sun white with wisps of orange, yellow, and some color similar to silver falling from it like shooting stars. A beautiful day. A perfect day. And yet, they were in front of them, looking nervous and ruining their view from the huge window that was previously open to view. "Why don't you two run back outside?" It wasn't a question. It wasn't a request. It was an order.
Ian flipped a page, ignoring his unwanted guests.
"Well." Amy piped up, obviously intimidated.
Ian snapped his book shut, intentionally startling her. Natalie sipped her drink, and placed it soundlessly on the polished wooden table next to her, something Amy could never have accomplished.
"What?" Ian growled. He was staring at her, and she shivered as she felt her mind almost being read. "You're ruining our view, so be quick with it."
"Oh! Er…" Amy and Dan moved aside quickly, not wanting to be on the Kabra's bad side.
"Okay, listen, you guys." Dan said. At this point, both the Kabras were looking at them with half-closed eyelids, looking both bored and annoyed at once. "We just came to give—and get—" Dan arched his eyebrows meaningfully, "apologies for things we've done in the clue hunt. We've become different, that's for sure, and—"
"So what you're saying is," Natalie interrupted, "is that you're rubbing in our faces that you've won, and not only that, you want to truce with us, now that you know that we don't have any power, and the money and small house we have is from our four million dollars."
"No!" Amy exclaimed shrilly, and all eyes turned to her. Ian looked vaguely surprised, and rested his head on one hand. "W-we're not here t-to truce. We already h-have a truce b-between us!" She stuttered, her voice cracking.
Ian almost smiled. How naïve.
"Don't you understand that the 'truce', as you two have mentioned, was nothing more than a desperate compression of minds due to a common enemy, our previous mother?" he asked.
"But Uncle Fiske said—"
"That we may have reunited?" Natalie supplied. "And now we are apart again. As you Americans say, 'too bad, so sad.'"
"But we're family, no matter how much I want to deny it, and I so want to deny it, by the way." Said Dan irritably. "Yeah, we're Madrigals, former clue ingredient stealers, present peacekeepers, blah, blah, blah. And that—go figure!—apparently gives us lifetime duties to make peace between the families. So what we want is to give apologies, talk to each other, get apologies, and forget this hunt ever happened."
This time, Ian actually smiled. Ridiculous; almost crazy. "You absolute imbecile. Don't you understand? Some of us will never forget what this hunt did to our minds, our families, our homes. You two may get along jolly well in that mansion, but us? We'll have to seriously downgrade our lives. We'll have to get used to so many things, while you two only have to gain. And we've lost our mother. Not that she was always particularly there, but she still played a role, you see.
"We can, and never will forget the hunt for the 39 clues. So it's pointless to try and make us."
"So selfish." Amy whispered then, just passing everyone's ears before she ducked her head. A mane of auburn hair closed around her face like a curtain, blocking her face from sight. Everyone turned to her, because it was the kind of statement that you couldn't ignore.
"You two are just so selfish." She mumbled again, her words coming our slightly blurred, as if covered in a mist of emotion. "Your mother killed our parents, you know. And she tried to kill us several times. You two knew what she was doing. You knew that she was evil, a…a dictator. And what did you do? You watched. Or you actually helped her. Do you remember the yacht in Venice? We could have caught pneumonia when you very unceremoniously threw us off. Or when you shot a dart gun into the back of my neck, Natalie? And how did I pay you back? Oh, I remember. I saved your brother's life, didn't I, Ian, when you happened to tap the wrong key in a certain booby-trapped piano. Or maybe the cave? I wanted to kick your stupid faces when you left us and Alistair behind. And I saw your expression before the boulder slid into place, Ian. You were regretting it, weren't you? I could feel it. Maybe I'm more Cahill than I thought I was. And more. Remember the sharks? I remember, you helped your mother, didn't you? Or maybe the time you wrongly boasted about one of the clues being diamond—it isn't, by the way—you pushed Dan towards a spinning razor. Or maybe the time you almost killed Nellie with your poison, after impersonating us on that plane. I think that you got 'schmutz on your faces', or whatever. Or that time when you threw spiders and taipan snakes down at us in a cave, even though Dan was already suffering from asthma down there. And all those times you just followed Dan and me around because we were better than you at finding clues, even when we had had to start from scratch. So, I'd just like to say, that you fully deserve anything and everything that your poor souls are coping with now!" She almost shouted the last few words, absolutely furious with their injustice, their selfishness, the way that they only thought about their own miseries, the way that they just couldn't get over something that seemed small compared to what they had faced. She knew that they had lost their parents, their power, and their money, but right now, she was lapsed in her own absolute fury that had once propelled her and her brother throughout the hunt. A tear streaked down her face, and two, and three.
"Hey, sis." Dan spoke, breaking the icy silence that engulfed them.
"Amy…" Dan tried again.
Ian must have been crazy. For a second, he had actually felt bad for her. Absolutely bonkers. She was the one who had insulted them, she the one who had mercilessly said those words so carelessly; he shouldn't have cared less about what the pathetic girl was saying. But somehow, they felt like barbs being inserted into his skin. Beside him, Natalie was pale. He felt bad for her. She was a better person. The better sibling among the two. Their façade of coolness, of indifference, and of cockiness was crashing down. He realized that he still felt bad about something. But what?
Then he realized what.
He felt bad for what they had done. He felt bad for cheating, felt bad for trying to hurt them, felt bad for threatening them, and he felt the sense of debt left unpaid. The times Amy had saved his life, even risking her own…Images flashed in front of him. Mount Everest. The booby trapped piano in the museum. He was almost in a trance.
"—uys? Guys? Are you okay?" Dan asked. Ian blinked. He was waving a very annoying hand in front of their faces. Ian pushed it away. "We're fi—"he stopped talking. "Fine, tha—"Again. His voice was cracking, and if he went any further, he would have started—horror of horrors—crying. He looked down at his closed book, terrified.
All was silent for at least a minute.
And suddenly, awkwardly, he felt a small hand softly patting his shoulder, trying to reassure him. At first, he thought it was Natalie, but he saw the same hand rubbing her back as his sister desperately tried to control the tears slowly, reluctantly dripping down her face. Amy…? Dan stood back, hands in pockets, staring wide eyed at the pair.
"Amy?" he asked, voice a bit higher than usual, "Should I make hot chocolate or something?"
"Yes, just don't burn it."
Ian laughed at his, causing the small hand to freeze for a second, then continue its repetitive beats against his shoulder. "How…how can you burn hot chocolate?" he laughed and almost choked.
"Believe me, it's been done by Dan the Dweeb." Amy smiled.
"LET THAT GO, AMY!" Dan yelled from the kitchen, where a wonderful aroma was already seeping from the door.
And the awkward four sat for a moment on the comfortable couches, all looking out at the beautiful day before them, cups of hot chocolate clasped in their hands as they looked out at the view in front of them.
…indeed it was a beautiful day. Nimbus clouds big but white, a rare occurrence, and shocking patches of blue peeking out from behind them, like shattered glass. Birds chirping and flowers at their prime, wonderfully contrasting against the green, green grass. The wind tickling you as it fluttered by, and air smelling sweet, like blueberries and honeysuckle and roses. The sun white with wisps of orange, yellow, and some color similar to silver falling from it like shooting stars. A beautiful day. A perfect day. And so, they were next to each other, looking nervous and henceforth making their view from the huge window even more dreamlike and magical than usual...
Thank you.