Hello guys, this is my Christmas chapter to you! Enjoy it, y'all! Also, for the ones that feel as through this story is a little too dark, I've planned a lighthearted chapter soon!

"Promises are worse than lies."

He was staring at the TV, his brow furrowed and his mouth agape. He didn't understand the label that had been just said. Why would anyone make a movie out of this? A bad one to boot?

"Oh, you're watching that." Matt's head snapped towards the sound as his mother sat on the couch, beside him. "Did you do your homework?"

Here we go again… "Due in a week. Me and Jake are gonna do it together." Matt answered automatically, his eyes once again glued to the screen which depicted quite a different thing that he'd assumed when he had decided to watch it.

His mother smiled indulgently at him before inquiring once again, "Has Vale been taking his medicine?" Immediately after that Matt chortled loudly, earning a raised eyebrow from his mother and a look of confusion of the aforementioned boy, hell-bent on finishing his own homework before the hour was up.

"He has but he doesn't like it one bit." Matt said with a smirking voice. "You should see his face when he drinks it! What does Batch flowers do anyway?" why does he need medicine?

"It's supposed to soothe nerves, help him sleep better." Marie explained, recalling how her husband had taken it once or twice.

"Ah." Her eldest child answered, before moving on to what had confused him in the first place. "What is this movie anyways?"

His mother huffed a bit. "It's an old movie, from my times. These kind of movies were made before the Kaiju War…they did it for fun. We weren't even aware that there was a whole race trying to destroy us. The very same race that we would stick in movies, books, us always, always winning. There were a lot of movies like that. Godzilla, Pacific Rim… After the war they stopped making them."

Wow. He didn't know how else to describe it. He and his siblings had lived all their lives with the knowledge that Kaiju were real, if distant at the time. But his parents, his grandparents…hadn't.

What would have been like, to wake up one day and realize that beings that were supposed to be fantasy actually existed? Dangerous, nearby, and unlike movies, with a very big chance of actually winning.

And now, history repeating itself, just like they had always known, but not acknowledged. The board was ready, he thought, there were only the pieces missing. Members of two races that despised one another. A dance of living, breathing chess pieces. Roaming, observing, calculating, every one of their motions so precise.

Who were the Pawns, the Rooks? Where were the Bishops? Were all Knights present or just the one? Who was going to overthrow the King? The Queen? Who was going to be the winner when the sun came up?

He didn't know, and he wasn't sure he wanted to.

Even if the odd-looking frog wasn't what you would call a friend, at least she would have a new pet. Lea smiled as she heard Mee squawking softly in the top of her head, wondering once more just what was that thing.

Opening her backpack, the girl grabbed the green animal and would have placed it, him, inside had it not been for the fact that Mee didn't seem to like being confined to such a small space. Lea struggled with the small animal –it didn't seem to want to go away, it appeared to simply not want to be put in there.

"Please, Mee, it will only be for a few minutes-ow!" Lea yelped, finally grabbing the frog from where it had stopped to scratch her. 'I thought frogs didn't have claws.'

The task complete, she zipped her backpack before opening the door, not even pausing to look at the injury. She had the feeling Mee wouldn't be well-received in her household.

It did break the skin, Lea thought in surprise, eyeing the angry red gash in her arm. There was a first aid kit in her parents' bathroom. If she was quick, she could go and treat herself before her family noticed she was home.

And, she was met by her father's smile.

"I'm home, dad." She smiled back.

"How was school?" Julian had been talking to his middle child about what happened, but he wanted Lea's version of the events. That way he could do something, call the teachers maybe.

"It was good." Lea answered. "I just have a lot of homework." She sighed as they neared the table.

"Well, Mom's already helping me with mine so don't worry," Vale said as a greeting, writing the answer to the problem as Marie kissed her daughter hello.

Julian's eyes had wandered to the gash in her arm. He frowned.

Absently rubbing her injured arm, Lea caught the sudden frown out of the corner of her eye and froze. "Dad?"

Julian's frown twisted into a scowl. "What happened?"

Lea forced down a surge of nerves and let her hand fall away from her arm. "Nothing happened."

Lea bit back a groan as her mother sat in the chair in front of her. "Vale," Marie pointedly said. Said boy was on the verge of protesting, but he understood this was a conversation between his parents and her sister.

As she watched her brother leave, Lea's heart got stuck in her throat.

"Vale told us what happened today," Marie started. She couldn't get out more than that, Lea was already interrupting.

"I-It was nothing! I just slipped from the chair!" the girl said, surprising even herself with the force it came out. Julian was crossing his arms. "I'm serious! They just laughed because they're jerks! It happens every day!" she was immediately cursing herself when she realized what she said.

"Your classmates making fun of you is a general occurrence?" It was a statement, not a question coming from her mother's lips.

"Not…not always." The girl admitted. She couldn't keep lying to them. It didn't feel right with her. Besides it wasn't that bad. "They mostly ignore me. But it isn't that bad, really! I'm used to it."

Unreadable expressions were on her parents' faces. "You shouldn't be."

"Can I go? I really need to do my homework." Lea said, suddenly overwhelmed. Julian and Marie seemed to have taken pity of her. It wasn't like there was anything else to say.

"Okay. But if anything like that happens again, you tell either Dad or me." Lea nodded, relieved that this conversation was over for now.

She was starting on the stairs when she heard Marie's voice calling her. "And Lea? Tell your brother he doesn't need to beat those people up. I talked to him but I don't think it did much."

Lea didn't have a chance to laugh it off when she the aforementioned boy cornered her on the way to her room. For a split second, Lea thought he had appeared out of thin air, he was so quiet. That didn't stop her for jumping back. Her heart was thumping in her chest. She was certain Vale could hear it beating louder, louder, louder still, until it was a drum beating insistently in his ears, impossible to ignore.

"Don't. Ever. Do. That. Again. Please." The girl gasped, ignoring the way Vale grinned, having successfully scared her.

"Yes ma'am." The fair-haired boy's expression changed once again. "I don't want to sound like Mom and Dad, but what happened?"

"Didn't you hear-?"

"I thought I had healed that gash." He bluntly stated, gaze wandering downwards where a small patch of red resided. "Is everything okay?" her brother asked, eyes concerned and angry at the same time. "Did somebody hurt you?"

Lea's eyes widened. "I..." She fumbled for an excuse. Anything to get Vale -and later Matt- out of Vengeful Older Brother Mode. "No! I slipped and—" Vale was crossing his arms. "Really! It reopened."

Vale looked at the girl in growing alarm. She was frightened, he could tell. She didn't give it away, best she could. But there was this little hitch in her breath now and then. Had something happened to her on her way home? Maybe she had been hurt; maybe she had seen something she shouldn't. But if that was the case, why wasn't Lea telling him?

He squeezed his eyes shut for a long moment, drawing in some kind of false security. For a split second he felt so odd and disconnected that he couldn't even tell if his heart was still working, forcing him to focus in on the noise that it should have been making. The soft thumping met his ears, allowing him a hint of relaxation at the knowledge that it was working despite his momentary doubts. It shook slightly, beating far too quickly with anticipation and apprehension, but it was steady despite the overwhelming embers that had settled in his chest.

Something wasn't right, yet he still continued with his questioning, trying to ignore the heat that was becoming too much.

"It isn't in the same spot. This one's lower." The boy insisted. "Lea, do not lie to me."

The girl tried to pinpoint exactly what was about that statement that bothered her. Maybe it was how he had said it, almost like an order. Perhaps the way he said 'do not lie to me' instead of 'don't lie to me'. Or maybe because he had suddenly looked at her, as if she was something lower than him, beneath him.

He had never done something like that.

And she noticed…why should she tell him anyway? Vale was the one keeping secrets in the first place. Contrasting her secret and what she thought was his, hers was a simple thing that had all the right to keep secret. Why would her brother care for her new pet anyways?

"Let me pass." Lea growled through gritted teeth, and walked past the boy, but the moment she was an inch away from him, Vale grabbed her wrist.

Lea gasped. Vale's thumb was placed under the bundle of carpal bones at the base of her hand. She could feel the bones threatening to disconnect from her wrist. She stared wide-eyed at the way it was twisted in a matter of seconds as her brother's eyes flashed green.

Vale was vaguely aware that he was doing something that felt simply wrong. His head swam, his heart lurching and jumping into his throat once more. The taste of blood seeped into his mouth. His lungs twisted and burned, and then something inside of him snapped.

Violently.

It felt like a dam had broken to pieces inside of his mind. A barrier vanished in a splintering pain with a noise akin to glass breaking and glistening, hitting the ground and cutting his skin. He swore his heart took a shard through it, got clipped. It bled into the space between them as desperation and fear and shattered reality, splinters of horror and pain and darkness swept through him. First his mind and then his being and then it burned. Something sizzled beneath his skin and ate at his conscious, seared through his being and left him wanting to scream.

But he hardly cared now as his mind started to splinter off into different directions.

For once in his life, the teen couldn't tell where he—his desires, his emotions, his mind, everything that made him himself—ended and he began. It was as if they held a disjointed connection that had formed between them and grown too strong in too short a time. Vale realized that he felt like an extension of his own body, joined in different places, awkward places, in clumsy yet powerful ways, desperate and only partially restrained by something that he couldn't name. His mind felt strained, dazed.

Lea had screamed. Once. A call. And then it was all over and he could process the scene before him. He released her as if burnt. As soon as she was released Lea brought the wrist close to her chest as one foot inched back.

Her brother was looking at her with none of the ferocity he had been displaying a second ago. "…What happened?" he asked, but seemed to guess the majority of it when he took notice of Lea's expression, which in turn caused him to change his. His eyes were wide, and brown again. "Sorry…" he choked out, and now he was the one retreating. "I'm…I'm sorry."

"I..." Lea wavered. She had never had to lie like this before. This was different. And, caught between emotional exhaustion, the terror that she had experienced, and sudden guilt, words simply wouldn't come.

The brother could only stare as Lea dashed to her room before neither of them had realized it.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me. I swear I don't know. I'm sorry? Did I… Did I hurt you? Are you okay?" do you want me to heal it, went unsaid. Vale knew that suggestion wouldn't be welcomed.

Trying to peek through the keyhole, he found out Lea had redecorated her room in his absence. The walls were a deep red that pulsed in the light, sprinkled with her own creations and various posters, mostly of strange Japanese shows. Vale doubted she could read whatever was written on the posters. Her comforter was pulled over her bed, even though she hadn't cleaned it. The result was lumps of varying sizes and shapes and the comforter was weighed down by her sketchbook. A desk sat in one corner, littered with wadded up pieces of paper and pens.

It was odd, it was odd that even if he wanted to distance himself from his sister, it hurt. They had always had a trusting relationship, golden, golden, like the sun, golden, like the ray of light that joined them together. He missed the times when they were little and knew that no matter what was said the other would say the truth, always always always.

Vale said, 'Jump!', and Lea said, 'How high?' And she always jumped higher than Vale wanted her to. She went soaring. She went shooting for the sky. She went airborne.

And even with real wings he couldn't reach her.

Later, much later, Vale entered the room he shared with his brother. He had decided to wait a bit before going to apologize to his sister, though now a different thought occupied his mind. He was over the moon because of the fact they were to take advantage of the long weekend and go to a resort.

"Be careful that Mom and Dad don't see you with that…" Vale mumbled as he flopped on the bed. The fifteen-year-old startled and dropped both the book and the magazine it was concealing.

"What are you- I don't know what you're-" he continued trying to babble but stopped. ""It's really hard to talk when I'm trying to say things." He muttered, making Vale snort. "You won't tell on me, will you?" Matt asked anxiously.

"That my brother's reading porn? I may need a little convincing…" he saw Matt's wide eyed look. "It's my night to do the dishes…tell you what, you do the dishes today and I don't tell on you." Vale suggested.

"Okay…"

"Remember it's your night helping Mom with dinner…"

"Damn! I need to start the rice!" Matt exclaimed slamming his book shut.

"I think I'll watch," Vale said. "I want to see if Mom's managed to teach you to boil water yet."

"It wasn't that funny," Matt grumbled. "I was studying, I forgot I had the pot on, it could have happened to anyone."

"Sure it could, bro."

In her room, Lea was half-tempted to answer, to let her brother know that she wouldn't talk.

No. No means no.

And she heard his brother fiddling with the doorknob, twisting, turning, playing, like a child. The apologies that came from a mouth, his mouth, but she couldn't be sure, she had thought she had seen someone else in the hallway, someone she didn't want to meet.

And he had hurt her.

Who had hurt her wasn't her brother, and that scared her. And yet, Valentine still was, hours after the incident (had he waited until she wasn't so scared, confused, had he waited for him instead? Did he even know what had happened?

Let me be angry a few more minutes. Stop being such a good brother.

Stop being so good.

Stop being.

Her hands were twitching, twitching, twitching, and Mee and Kobu seemed to be having a staring contest down her bed. Why were her hands twitching? Her hands were supposed to be steady, to paint and draw and create.

She felt something brushing against her cheek. Maybe he was soothing her. Maybe he was trying to lull her into something warmer than all this, take her away, make her forget. Maybe he was trying to make a point 'I'm here, it's me.' Not the other one. Valen, her brother.

"It's okay," her hands stopped twitching.

That was odd. She had been in slight pain, and accepting her brother's apology had stopped a bit of it. It was instinct. It was human nature. She belonged to a species that possessed a natural aversion to pain. By definition, pain was unpleasant.

Aversion to pain - an evolutionary response, an evolutionary advantage.

No one could function properly whilst in pain. No one.

And it had faded when they were again in good terms.

"It's okay, just don't pressure me anymore when I don't want to tell you something." Mee had crawled onto the desk and was listening attentively. Really, why did she have to tell everything when her brother wouldn't?

There was a pause outside the door. "Le, you're my sister, you can't expect me not to worry about you."

Lea didn't provide him with an answer.

"Look, look, you let me pass and…and I'll consider eating up all the food in my plate today and ask for a second helping." He bribed, completely aware that his sister took that issue very seriously.

"Deal." As Lea said the word she felt an odd sensation chase down her spine, like keys turning in a lock.

"K'so!" Vale cursed as he tripped over his blanket and landed on his bed.

"Dude, you suck!" his brother laughed as he undressed, helping him up. "Did you took your medicine?" the elder brother asked, watching as the other boy carefully did as he was told.

Whatever snarky remark the blond boy was going to say died in his lips. He turned to his own bed and snickered. "Wow. Either you're really excited or your underwear is on too tight." He laughed as he turned off the lights.

"I'm going to ignore that… We're going to the beach!" Matt quietly cheered in the darkness of his room, turning to bid his brother goodnight. Then he noticed that Vale's eyes were burning, the green irises glowed eerily in the darkened room.

Vale grinned, the interior of his mouth was also glowing, illuminating his toothy smile. "Pretty cool huh?"

"Cut that out," Matt groaned throwing a pillow at Vale. "You look like a demented jack-o-lantern."

"I'm just having a bit of fun at your expense…" the hybrid child laughed.

"Cut that out, I don't wanna have nightmares!"

Okay, guys, this is the latest chapter! REVIEW! And happy Holidays!

H. E. B.