September 1997

"Be good, little sister," Howie whispered, and his tone was heavy and ardently full of a dark knowing. "And watch him," he pointed to Heathcliff. "Watch he doesn't kill you all in your beds."

Heathcliff stood a few feet away, beside their Father, watching, as Cathy indignantly kissed her brother's cheek, and then stared over his shoulder. The sun was pale and tender and warm over the fields around them, sensuously dancing through the grass. Heathcliff found his fingers curling in his pocket, desperate to relish the sting of a punch against his knuckles. He held back. It wouldn't be long, and he would be gone.

Behind him, Howard's car, a red Peugeot 107, was packed up, fuelled up, and ready to leave. Howard had grown into a surprisingly tall eighteen-year-old young man, but nothing about him had changed – Heathcliff found him irresistibly repulsive, despite such an effort three years ago to befriend him, as he had Cathy. Howard's hatred was too far gone to ever bend him to Cathy's will, despite his obvious adoration of her. Howard would eternally hate him and wish him ill, but Heathcliff was sure he preferred it this way – he despised seeing Cathy kiss him and love him, because it was no different to kissing the snout of a soiled pig, in his mind; and so hate was simple.

"You're not going to give me a proper goodbye?" Howard was asking Cathy, leaning down to her slightly.

"I love you," she snapped. "Alright? And I'm proud of you." She kissed him again, kissed the pig, but Heathcliff knew that kiss, that resentful kiss, more teeth than lips. He smiled secretly to himself.

"And you'll come and visit me at Uni?" he pushed.

Cathy nodded, and Heathcliff marvelled at the sun shimmering off her hair, as it rolled and flowed down her back and over her small left breast.

"Like I said – be careful, or he'll kill you all in your beds."

Heathcliff this time could not conceal his conceit. He ducked his head, allowing the long, tight curls of his hair to sheath his expression, and smirked. It almost became laughter. He bit his lip and tugged it back into his mouth, choking the sound down. He would not kill Cathy in her bed.

He slept in Cathy's bed.

Howard still noticed. He demanded, "What are you laughing at, scum?"

Cathy smacked him half-heartedly on the arm, sighing. "Howie, please – can't we just be nice for the last minute you're here?"

Beside him, their Father nodded his head solemnly. "Howard, reign it in."

Heathcliff did his best to suck in his smile. He said, "I hope it all goes well for you, Howard."

Howard eyed him suspiciously. His mousy eyes took on the fast movement and shiny surface of the eyes of a bird of prey, for a moment. Somehow, it felt like a promise – a promise he would evolve. Howard nodded curtly. "Yeah," he said.

University for Howard was meant to be his redemption, his rebirth. He had been treated in hospital emergency departments countless times as a teenage boy, a teenage alcohol dependent, an embarrassment, a failure. Heathcliff remembered the panicked phone conversations and silent, plastic waiting rooms, an occasion they were in attendance of monthly at the very least. He remembered Cathy leaning against his arm, her face glittering with tears, her eyes discoloured by the pressure of crying, milky red webs rising around her irises. It was a cyclical phenomenon, Heathcliff knew, of Howard drinking himself to the brink of death, surviving, but then dying inside. He was truly a spectacle of self-damnation, and it was a spectacle that Heathcliff took great pleasure in observing. The dark power of it all turned a coil in his chest.

If there was one thing he had learnt as a child, it had been how to bleed the man that had drawn first blood. Heathcliff would curse him.

Vodka bottles were small. So were most people's eyes. He had managed to steal the bottle from a liquor store in the village quite easily, ensuring he bought a bar of chocolate, the cheapest thing he could find, to cover his tracks. He placed the bottle one of the rucksack's Howard had packed, ready for his move to University – along with a Polaroid photograph of his Mother, holding him as a child. He was running away to die somewhere – like a dog sensing the scent of cancer in its bowel.

Afterwards, he gave Cathy the chocolate, and she ate it delicately and quickly like a squirrel, he remembered, held to her face between her two little hands – she was a small, sweet animal, and some days he still could not believe he had coaxed trust from her. It won't be long, he had thought to himself, watching her eat, it won't be long at all.

Now Howard was in the car, and the engine growled. Cathy waved, her free hand clutching the fabric of her white cotton shirt, a forlorn smile on her face.

"Bye, Howie!" she called, and then the car began pushing away. Heathcliff walked to her through the gravel, hands in the pockets of his charcoal coloured hoodie, and then glanced down at her, watching the car turn to an ant on the horizon. Against her throat, the fine gold of the cross necklace she wore shone in the sunlight, turned the white flesh around it a honey-pale colour. He swallowed.

"He'll call when he arrives," their Father reassured her, and patted Cathy affectionately on the back, "don't worry. Come on, the horse's need tending to, Cath."

Cathy turned hurriedly and nodded again, and began bolting towards the stables, her open jacket flying out behind her like a cape. The breeze tussled her hair as she turned back to him, grinning. "Heathcliff, are you coming?" She held out her hand to him, her skin ethereal in the sunlight, and for a moment he did wonder if they had been right about angels and God all along. He walked to her and took it, and then went to the stables at the back of the house with her. She smiled at him again. Her eyes were misty blue and dancing at him, the colour of an ocean bathed in light, and he noticed through her shirt two small, raised buds.

He wondered when she would realise she was not a child anymore, that she had a woman's rounded fullness to her, rich and supple. She was starting to feel different when she lay in bed beside him. Softness now pressed against him in strange places, and she was wider, the area around her pelvis stretching to a pale prairie, fruitful land, all around the expanse of her hips.

As she walked, holding his hand, he could not deny that his feelings were beginning to change – or rather, something that had been lying dormant in him as a child was restless, and waking tearfully, and crying to be held.

She wriggled her hand free from his when they reached the stables.

Cathy kicked on some wellingtons and a grabbed thick, bristly brush to unfurl the mane of her favourite horse of the eleven her Father owned – this was Jack-Jack, a dark coloured Estonian breed, with a single white marking on his belly, almost like a third eye. Heathcliff watched her, and then after a moment left to fill a bucket of warm water, to wash his coat. Cathy was humming, and then he heard her distantly greeting the animal with the kind of childish delight that he hoped, despite his feelings, would never leave the sound of her voice. He closed his eyes for a moment, drinking in the sunny air, tasting the pollen and insects in the grass – Howard was gone, he reminded himself, they were free.

"Hi, Jack-Jack!" she called. "We've come to clean you."

He turned on the tap, moving his knuckles into the flow of water to test its temperature. It was warm, and so he allowed it to fill the bucket before returning to her. When he arrived, she was stood on a small stool, one hand gently caressing Jack-Jack's face with careful, rounded movements of her palm. Jack-Jack's heavily-lidded eyes, with straight, thick lashes, floated closed in contentment. With her other hand, she brushed his mane. Heathcliff soaked and sponge in the water and began rubbing it over the great, black expanse of Jack-Jack's chest, hot and glossy. He could feel one very thick vein running up to his throat, steadily pushing blood. For a while, they were quiet.

He had to break it, though it felt like crystalline glass.

"I'm glad he's gone, Cathy," he admitted.

She responded hastily, "I know you are."

She leaned forward. He saw the curves of her breasts, from the gap in her shirt, peak over the dark chasm between them, full and white. He gulped and tried to ignore it. "Are you angry at me?" he asked.

"No," she said, after a pause. "He treats you like dirt. Why would I be?"

"Because you love him."

"He's my brother."

"I'm your brother," he retorted, although especially now, over this past year, he was feeling less and less that this was the truth, more and more that a bond of blood was not, and had never been, what they shared – it something else, something thicker, heavier. They were both children with their souls halved, torn it two, ripped by agony, and there was something in the sense of completion he had, when he touched her, that told him he was right to believe these feelings coursed deeper than the vein.

"Yeah," she agreed, pointedly gazing at him, "and I love you, as well."

Heathcliff was feeling brash and brave today, now Howard was gone, now Howard was doomed.

He purred, imploring, "As a sister loves a brother?"

She simply gazed at him, unmoving, her hands pausing on the horse's coat. The animal exhaled deeply, blinking.

"No," she whispered.

Heathcliff stood, allowing the sponge to plop back into the bucket and splash the knees of his jeans.

"No," he repeated. Cathy blinked, and a translucent shade of rose coloured her cheeks. He said, "Don't you think things could change, now? Now he's gone?"

"How would they change?" she asked innocently. He watched her closely, hungrily.

"Cathy –"

"Cathy-eey," she imitated, and giggled. She resumed brushing the horse. "Stop being so serious, Heathcliff. Everything will be alright."

He would let her have this moment, he did not want to make her afraid. "Yes," he agreed. "We'll be alright."

Her head snapped up to look at him again. Her eyes had a tidal, languorous movement in them, a deep ocean, full of questioning. She seemed curious.

"Are you saying Howie won't be?" she pressed.

"He's cursed," Heathcliff said plainly. Her pain seemed to spike through him for a moment. Her brow furrowed.

"Don't speak like that," she commanded. Heathcliff shut his mouth instantly, and resumed smoothing the warm water over the dark coat of the horse. A little smile split his lips, however. He felt something he had scarcely known, all his life, suddenly ignite his bones – satisfaction.

A/N:

So, after years (literally, years) I've resumed writing. I'd like to thank each and every one of the individuals that reviewed under the huge hiatus, you wonderful people – Guest, Buzzigans, Michela, Kay H, but especially Priyanka – thank you so much for your lovely message. She has inspired me to continue writing again, and I'd like to dedicate this chapter to her!

I hope everyone enjoyed this. Yes, there's been a time skip here of three/four years, so to clarify, Cathy is now 14, and Heathcliff is 16.

Please let me know what you think!