Not My Brother

a/n: "The EPC is happy to announce the reunification of another family in New Los Angeles. We congratulate the Mimeosome Center for their continued efforts, and wish the very best to our new citizen. We appreciate our community's continued forbearance in the delay of the Organic Redemption."

Post game, all spoilers fair. WARNING: If you haven't finished Yelv's story line, GO DO THAT NOW, because that deserves to be played blind and I'm spoiling it hard before we're done. Swear free (see? I can do that).

All the good stuff belongs to the geniuses of Monolith Soft, but Rosalee and Diego are mine.

Lucky wasn't her brother. She knew that even before she met him.

"Come along, dear, and let's meet Diego," said the motherly woman leading her through the confusing and ugly corridors. Rosalee made a face, sticking out her tongue at the woman's back. She was speaking to Rosalee like she was some baby. It made Rosalee want to stomp and scream. But she wasn't the type to do that. Her mama always praised her, so proud. "Oh, my little Rosa, she's always so quiet, but she's no baby."

"I'm no baby, and I bet you're no nurse, you liar," muttered Rosalee to herself. Not out loud, but if the woman had bothered to look back, it would have been clear to read. Rosalee's mouth was in a pout, and her hands were tucked into fists, and she certainly wasn't following in a spritely and cheerful way. But she was following behind this nurse impersonator, keeping close because she did not want to get lost. The main corridor was straight, but there were too many doors, all looking the same, with only numbers on them, tucked between banks of recovery pods. Most pods were mercifully shuttered. Rosalee wasn't a scaredy-cat, but that didn't mean she wanted to see anything gruesome.

The officious woman, clipboard in one hand and key card in the other, stopped at a door almost at the end of the hall. "Here we are. I'll just check first." She paused and looked at Rosalee. "It'll only be a moment, sweetie. Do you want me to get someone to stay with you?"

Ooops, she'd been caught scowling. Rosalee put on her best church face. "No, thank you," she said clearly. Never mumble, her dad loved to say that. She looked the woman directly in the eyes and tried not to blink.

The fake nurse smiled a fake smile, knocked on the door, and opened it immediately. She doesn't even bother to see if anyone wants her to stay out, thought Rosalee. Everything about her is a lie. Her voice is a lie, her knock is a lie. Most of all, telling me about my brother. The door closed and she was left alone in the hall.

Rosalee shifted from foot to foot, nervously. She tugged on first one pigtail, then the other. Should she have put her hair in braids? Were the workers passing her giving her funny looks? Did they know why she was here? Or maybe they thought she was lost, and they'd send her away. The hall was too cool for her to be sweating, she never sweat, never, but she felt a little shiver starting along her back. The moment was taking longer than she expected.

Rosalee stood up tall. Time to stop acting like a kid, even if they were treating her like one. Time to get ready for what came next.

Then, for a split second, she saw herself, very clearly, from the outside. An anonymous woman in Interceptor gear, aged maybe 24, black hair in swinging tight pigtails, large black eyes in a round face, and a nose slanted like the ones worn by the nobility in glyphs, no mistaking that nose. Her dad always joked she could have walked straight off of a Mayan temple, which meant that she must be a princess. It had confused her when she was little, and enraged her when she hit her teens and wanted nothing more than to look normal. But "normal" just means average, which is the same as mediocre. Nothing special. She'd take princess any day of the week now. Especially today. Today, she could use some of that royal cool, to stare down this lying official from the Mim Repair Center, and take care of the problem of whoever she was about to meet. Somebody who was not her brother.

She was not a baby, this was not her brother, and she knew what she was going to do.

xcxcxcxcxc nxnxnxnxnx

Finally, the door opened again and the official (not! A! Nurse!) waved at her. "Come in, dear."

The room was large, and full of people, mostly sitting, a few talking in groups. Reminded Rosalee of a waiting room for the Motor Vehicles Department, boring plastic chairs in colors that didn't quite reach cheery, full of people listlessly checking comm devices. All men, all looking about the same age as Rosalee, all colors. None of them had hair as dark as Rosalee's, though. See, she thought, can't even be right about that. The nurse scanned the room and made a tut-tut sound. "Diego?" she called. "Diego Lopez?"

"He's getting some sleep, ma'am," said a young man with a mop of yellow blond hair. He pointed to anther door to the right. His face was mean, all glittering blue eyes and tattoos, but his voice was surprisingly sweet. Rosalee tried not to scowl at him. Never blame strangers for things that went wrong. Another of her father's sayings, one she had more trouble following. The nurse was the exception, but Rosalee had good cause to hate her. Fake. Baby talker. Liar.

"I see. We'll go wake him up. It'll be a nice surprise."

See? See?! You wanted proof they weren't going to see her brother? Diego never liked being woken up. Honestly, was there a person on Earth that liked that? Rosalee gave a silent hiss, because the answer was, no, there wasn't a person on Earth. At all. Never mind that, the point was, if this guy liked a wakeup call, he wasn't her brother and she didn't even need to meet him to know that.

The two women stepped into a smaller room, lined with empty bunk beds. Empty except for two of the last ones. One had a chubby Asian man, curled into a question mark. The other had Diego.

Not. Diego. The hair was dark, short all around except for a long lick of bangs, and the face was lean, with wicked slivers of eyebrows mocking everything even from a sleeping face. Arms flung all which way, leg half off the bed. But not. Diego. This was a copy, not even a copy. Something that sort of resembled her brother, superficially. Diego was dead, and this was not him.

"Diego, dear, wake up. Your sister is here."

The figure took a deep breath and his eyelids lifted open gently. He looked up at them, without moving. Then, slowly, a grin sliced across his face. He slid upright and looked at Rosalee. Sure, his eyes were as dark as hers, as narrow as hers were round, and that smile was just as knowing as she remembered. No. Not remembered, not as knowing, not like Diego at all. Not.

"Hey," said Rosalee, trying to keep any emotion from her voice. Don't scowl, she reminded herself, you've been caught once already.

"Hey," said the man. Ha! That voice was all off, too high and soft. Whenever Rosalee used to wake him up, when she needed a ride to school or help with chores, he'd be a barking howling monster before he'd rolled out of bed. "Hey," he said again, deeper. Closer. But still no Diego. "I'm lucky you came for me, sis."

"You're lucky, sure. Come on, let's get this done. Is there any paperwork, ma'am?" Rosalee channeled her best impersonation of Iron Akulov, not her normal style but she could fake it for the next few minutes.

If the not-nurse was disappointed by the lack of emotional reunion between not-sister and not-brother, Rosalee didn't care. If the not-brother was disappointed, she cared even less. Suffice it to say, there was paperwork, mostly electronic but a surprising amount physical, and it was filled, filed, and finished in the next hour. She was practically dying of impatience when the official led them towards the exit.

"Are you sure, dear? About this?" the official asked, not for the first time. "It's wonderful that Diego here has family that cares about him, but usually our subjects stay together, as a way of supporting each other. You may not always find it easy."

"Thank you, ma'am. I know I'll have the center's support, and I'm not afraid to ask for it." The day Pathfinders surpassed Interceptors, yeah, then it would happen. "But it's something we need to start doing ourselves." They made their last goodbyes and the two siblings (not. Siblings.) walked out of the building and onto the Administrative Alley.

They'd never been alone, still weren't, surrounded as they were with passing humans and xenos and skells even, but this was the first time that they didn't have some Mim Center staff breathing all over them. Rosalee shook her head wildly and shuddered. Done. She had pulled it off without yelling or snarling or even frowning much. She looked over at her companion. He was glancing at her, not quite smirking, when he wasn't looking up, down and all around.

"Come on."

"Like I said, I'm lucky to have you, sis."

"You're Lucky. And I'm not your sister. Remember that, and we'll do fine. Come on, Lucky." And just like that, problem solved, he had a handle that she could bear to call him. She led him past BLADE tower, towards the elevator that led to the Residential Sector.

a/n: I started wondering about Rosalee, from her brief appearance in "Twitch Tales of the Whale/Music", and ended up being even more curious about her brother. Then this happened. This is actually two chapters, but they are so short, I didn't want to split them. Making them not really two chapters, come to think of it.

Next up: The best tattoo job in New Los Angeles, and Rosalee loses it.