Who Are We?
by No one specific
Chapter 21: The life that owns Zepp

They stood there. Helia watched as she turned, walked away, and walked back. She shifted awkwardly, wanting something.

"It's always been my place to protect you."

Helia was sort of surprised by that statement.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I was the older sister, even though I'm the younger of twins," Zepp said. "It's just the role I have. Besides, a part of me liked it. Liked helping people, you know?"

Helia nodded, remembering the way he had saved Flora's life, even though he didn't know her.

"You're stepping around the question," he said. "Just explain to me."

"It's long."

"I don't care," Helia said. "I want to know something about my sister. You seem to know everything about me."

Zepp cracked a smile. She cast her eyes down, and whispered something to herself. Briefly he remembered what it was that Lynn had told him about Zepp all that time ago, that she probably would have preffered if it were she who no longer remembered everything.

"When...after the whole incident with Mom, we were still only seven," she said. "You stopped talking for a year. You got all depressed and stuff. And scared. Because we were seven and seven-year-olds should have to watch... Anyway, you stopped talking, and I was lonely.

"I needed my brother back, and I needed someone to look out for me. I needed there to be a mother figure in the family, because a mother would help you and make it all better. And it wasn't going to be Ada'Mi or Lorn or Lynn, and Grandpa wasn't going to help us with the whole 'loving family' crap, because he was a part of the community, not a part of the family life."

Helia walked closer to Zepp, but she took a step back. She pushed her hair over her shoulder.

"So it was you, wasn't it?" Helia guessed. His eyes softened as he looked at her kindly.

"Yeah," she sneered. "I needed that. That was how I decided I'd deal with it. I'd take the responsibility onto myself to try to fill that empty part. And don't talk, let me finish. Don't talk until I'm done, promise?"

"Yeah, sure," Helia said, unsure why she'd say that.

"Well, anyway," Zepp took a deep breath. "It was like that for a year. We were trying to put our frickin' lives back together! And surprisingly, it was you who got better first. I mean, started to get better. You woke up one day and said, 'Zepp, I'm hungry,' and I was so shocked that all I could do was get you some cereal. You decided that you didn't want to be this little kid who watched his mom... You didn't want to be so pathetic. You wanted your life back. So you got it back.

"But this wasn't the same as you were before. After...the incident... everyone was changed. It was like there was a point in your life where stuff stopped being the same as it was before, and you start to see the world differently. Like..." she searched for something. "Like Glass. Glass. You can see through it, but it can become dirty or broken or distorted, and you can't see through it that well anymore. You didn't see the world the same way as you had before, so you wanted to figure that out. You were confused, and you didn't have a parent to help you. You only had someone who was trying to fill that role, and a family who didn't know what the fuck they were doing!

"So yeah, I took care of you. And then you started to ask things of me. You wanted control. And the only person who gave you control was me; I didn't object to you taking advantage of me, because I wanted to feel needed and to feel important, and like I said, that was how I dealt with things."

Helia didn't say anything. He didn't know what he wanted to say anymore. When Zepp explained it like this, it made his past self seem not evil or cruel or bad, but like a little kid who just couldn't grow up. Which, he almost laughed, was exactly the way he was.

He didn't interrupt Zepp, as was her request.

"So, anyway," she took a breath, "I helped you. I let you take advantage of me. And parents don't do that, and good parents wouldn't let one sibling take advantage of the other for so long. It was like that for a long time. I protected you from everything. At first it was for my sake, because I wanted to be part of something and to do something good, and because I didn't mind. Then you changed and became all...manipulative and stuff. And I let you.

"And then I started to move on, later rather than sooner, but by then, it had become such a part of me to protect you, and it had become such a part of you to have me, that I decided to just... let it keep growing.

"And then, as I grew up and what not, I realized that you'd become so used to me being there to protect you, that you couldn't take care of yourself. And the only way that you could ever learn how to protect yourself from all this stuff that had happened before and to protect your heart...the only way you could learn that was to throw you out there in the open, and I wans't going to do it. I was going to keep protecting you, because I felt sorry for you."

Zepp stopped talking again, and she turned around. "I felt sorry for you. For all these years, I've just felt sorry. Sorry for me and for you and for our dad... and do you know what? I still do. When you woke up, I felt sorry that you just almost drowned yourself trying to save some slutty bitch's purse!"

Zepp finally stopped and just glared ahead of her.

"You did everything for me, ever, not because you love me, but because you felt sorry for yourself?" Helia asked, rephrasing everything that Zepp had said into a simple sentance.

"Yes!" Zepp cried.

Helia nodded. "Amber once told me that you were one of the worst people in the world, because you let yourself be miserable because you thought it made you better-"

"That's a lie," Zepp snapped. "Don't listen to what Amber said."

"She was right," Helia said. "She just, twisted the facts around. She said I was the worst person for taking advantage of you." But she had twisted the facts around, just like Lorn had said she had.

"You were a little kid who never grew up," Zepp said. "You're grown up now."

Helia stood there and looked at her. Something had changed. The way she looked at him, it wasn't love. It was pity. And love. But she didn't do things because she loved him. She did things because she felt sorry for him. Sorry that he never learned how to do things for himself.

"Yes, I have grown up," he said, desperate to listen to her say that Amber was wrong. "But tell me one more thing. Deny this thing that Amber told me."

"Sure," Zepp said. "Let me clear up any other misunderstandings that she might have put into your head."

"That you make yourself miserable. She said that you make everyone else's life good, and you expect people to make your life perfect," Helia said calmly. "Can you explain where she got that idea from?"

Zepp looked up at him. She was about to say something to him, but then changed her mind just as things were about to come out of her mouth.

A gentle breeze came, and her hair seemed to frame her face. "Well, you know... I do things for people, and yeah, I want people to do things back for me, but... I don't expect it to be perfect."

"Good," Helia said. "I'm glad that's sorted out."

He smiled at her gently, and suddenly he realized that her eyes held hurt in them. Something was wrong. Something that he said had bothered her. Something to make her mind go blank for a moment...

"What's wrong, Zepp?"

Zepp jumped back to herself. "Nothing, Helia."

Helia nodded. "Are you sure?"

"It just bothers me that she'd say that," she said. She looked up and smiled a fake, hollow, empty lie, "It bothers me that the only person to realize that I wanted something was her."

"What's wrong, Zepp?" he asked again.

"Nothing," she said. "Noth-" Tears jumped into her eyes, and she doubled over as though she'd just been punched. "The only person to realize that something was wrong was Amber! I did want something to be perfect! I didn't want to turn out like this! I didn't want to replace my mother, even if it was my own fantasy!"

"You did your best, like you had said," Helia told her. "We both did. I'm sorry that my best wasn't good enough, but we tried."

"We shouldn't have had to do our best!" Zepp shouted. "We were seven years old! We did our best, sure, and I kept doing my best! And it's not right that we were put in that situation to begin with. Seven year olds aren't supposed to watch their mothers rape and maim and murder their dads! It's not fair!"

Zepp's weight pushed her onto her knees and she collapsed onto her knees, still doubled over. She shreiked from something that Helia hadn't seen in her.

He walked over to his sister.

Glass, he thought. It can be foggy or deformed, and that changes how you see it. You can see through it if it lets you, or it can distort everything in its vision. It can be thin and easily shattered, easily broken. It can just break in half. Glass can be thick and hard to break, but if it's dropped to high, it still does fall and break. You can glue it together, but it'll still show marks where it's been broken. And it can cut you when it's broken. Cut whoever has to carry it around, whoever steps in it, and whoever carries it inside them. It tears their inside to shreds; broken glass will do that.

Ooh, boy, I've had references and follow-ups to a lot of chapters. Just because I haven't updated in about a year, then I'm going to put the cheat-sheet right down there. If you want to figure it out for yourself, skip this part.

In chapter 9, Helia sees Zepp's hair blown around her face while they stand near a forest and he'll see that hurt look in her eyes, mixed with defiance. There are references to that here.

Chapters 15-16 have Amber insulting them and telling Helia how terrible he is and how terrible Zepp is, and then either chapter 16 or 17 Lorn explains that Amber just twists her facts around. These are basically the untwisted facts, if you will.

Those were the basic things that I wanted to notice and include.

Ok, so I've got Zepp's situation out of the way.

Now we only have to figure out 'what the hell's the deal with Lynn' (because I included enought stuff about her relationship with Helia and she's unique enough to have her own problems, although it won't be as extensive as Zepp) and then we can move on to the Flora lovin', AKA the end. ^.^

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