Chapter Sixteen: The way we were

(a/n: A chapter dedicated to Neeka and her brother Khan)

Quote

"I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright, and when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up DOES rejoice. Still, the place you live is that much more drab and empty when they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend"

- Red from The Shawskank Redemption.

Are there ever times in your life where you try to remember certain memories of your past but it all remains very vague to you like smoke and mirrors, shadow and mist?

It's the memories you can almost grasp but never quite.

It's the missing frame of the movie, the missing page of the book, or the broken key to the lock.

Memories of the time dad lived with us has become very disconnected from my life. It hasn't been necessary to remember them anymore.

These thoughts all started earlier today

As I have no boyfriend and no brother to harass, I had really had nothing to do anymore except sit in front of the SphereVision.

It had one of those sappy shows on where they find someone who's had an interesting life and get them to tell the audience their tragic woes for ratings, pull out a few photos and dig up some people from the past in a wonderful teary reunion.

I believe it was called "This is your Spiran Life"

That got me thinking about my life, if I were on that show what would I have to say about my life?

That I messed it up?

That my parents are almost divorced/separated/probably sleeping with each other?

That I have 9 scars on my body from machina accidents?

I am not saying my life has been meaningless, but all these people have traveled, have seen things that I couldn't even imagine or comprehend.

They have lived

I haven't done anything miraculous with my life, like saving the world or inventing the CommSphere, but I still wanted to remember what I had done with it, so I walked outside to the old shed full of rusty old machinery, broken engines and tattered blueprints and opened the dusty old chest full of photographs from a life we used to know.

There were pictures of me with little blonde ringlets, hanging of Khans arms as I smiled shyly at the camera.

Others showed Khan with his face black with soot, screwdriver swinging of his tool belt and proudly showing off his latest work.

Another showed dad smirking with satisfaction as the re-construction of the Yevonite Temple begun.

A few were wedding photos. Mum looking as gorgeous as I had ever seen her, glowing with pride and happiness, and there was dad, handsome in his suit while looking a little out of place in it.

My favorites though were the casual ones like me sitting on dads lap eating ice-cream or Khan and dad going into their Blitzball trances when the Al Bhed would play.

I laughed as I remembered no-one could ever get a word in to them while they were watching the Blitzball.

I must have spent all day looking at them, glorifying my old memories, laughing, crying and most of all remembering.

We weren't the perfect family, but is there really a perfect family?

We all loved each other, even when we made the most devastating of decisions and suffered the most heartbreaking of consequences.

I loved these photos almost as much as I loved my family.

I yearned for my family, to be together as we once were, a team instead of four broken people waging a silent war against each other.

These photos helped me remember, and I thought maybe they would help mum remember also so I did the seemingly innocent thing and placed them all over the house and waited for her to come home from work and watched SphereVision.

When mum came home from work that night she glanced at the wedding photos of her and dad plastered on the fridge door.

She held the photo in her hands but she had her back turned so there was no way that I could read the expression on her face.

"Neeks you are pathetically unsubtle" Mum told me as she turned around, placing the photo on them table.

She didn't seem angry, just a little tired

"I think we need more pictures around the house … to brighten it up?" I suggested

"At least get frames for them, I don't want the desert sun fading the color away, and that's why I kept them in the box"

I may be the worst example of a "princess". I am stubborn and clumsy. I have an incurable skill of making really impulsive bad decisions at the worst possible times, I eat too much ice-cream and have more bad karma heading my way then I can handle but you cant really call me stupid.

I knew that wasn't really the reason.

I mean the sun is pretty strong but who hides their family photos over it?

I know my mother, and she is no where near the cautious about anything. I suppose having family photos plastered over the walls would be hard, not just for mum but for me and Khan.

Even as I looked at those photos I wondered if dad was thinking about Aera as he twirled mum around or if he was going to see Aera as he was pushing me off his lap or if he wanted to see Aera as he helped Khan with his machina.

Mum didn't want to wonder and either did I.

Sometimes your own mind is the hardest thing to live with.

Dad's affair is over, but I still think about it a lot really, even though the whole thing just seems so tedious and stretched now

If I had the answers to the questions I'd just look for more questions and more answers to those questions.

It's a cycle I need to stop, and that means moving on and concentrating on something else, whatever it may be.

My cousin Leia once CommSphered me and asked if I wanted my parents to get back together, of course the obvious answer would be a strong dedicated yes, of course without doubt and that's exactly what I told her

I want to tell you a secret now

I do want my parents to get back together, I really do but the truth is sometimes, in the early light of morning I don't believe I could ever get used to having dad live back here again.

What I am looking for is to go back to the way we were, but I know that isn't possible.

If I can't have that then I don't think I want anything else.

That's the truth, but it's something I'll never admit, to realize that would be to give up my hope that everything can be fine again.

I am starting to see that life doesn't work that way.

Khan was on the news that night.

The Al Bhed golden boy, as I have affectionately called him because that's exactly what he has become.

Khan was doing amazingly well at the faction, a kind of prodigy if you will. I had never doubted that would become of him. Machina and Khan go hand it hand, it's just the way it's always been.

Khan programmed some sort of artificial intelligence chip that's meant to lock the Machina down if it begins to malfunction dangerously.

I suppose he made it because a rogue machina claw impaled our grandmother right though her heart a few years after mum was born.

I couldn't help but smile as he nervously explained the intricate details of his new creation to the Lucan reporters; of course they were more interested in his love life then his safety chip.

The mortified look on his face when they asked him if his fiancé was pregnant was enough to burst out laughing.

Khan mumbled he didn't even have a girlfriend and went back to pointing at his blueprints.

In that strange second, I wasn't angry anymore.

I tried to think of a reason to be angry at him, I really did, I tried to tell myself that he abandoned me and that he didn't care but I didn't feel the anger, only the bubbling laughter inside of me as I tried to imagine Khan with a child.

This was just one of those things that I had gradually gotten over.

Sanubia Desert is my home, and D'Jose Temple is Khans.

It comes down to that.

I did want to call him but it just seemed so awkward.

It's like that time Khan was harassing me to give back his screwdriver for ages and I just ignored him because I couldn't be bothered looking for it, eventually Khan forgot about it and I found the screwdriver stuffed in my wardrobe but I still never gave it back to him because too much time had passed and it felt too awkward.

I hoped he'd call me, but I had no idea if he would or not.

Then I blinked slowly and realized that Khan was my brother, he had been there for me my entire life, with or without my support.

Khan was my brother and I could sphere in on him anytime I wanted to, and that was exactly what I was going to do.

So I picked up the CommSphere and dialed D'Jose temple.

The screen showed a sleepy looking Karka squinting at the screen in annoyance

"You have Sphered D'Jose Temple, how may I be of service?" Karfka asked with a bored tone suggesting he desperately wanted to get back to sleeping on the job.

"Can you please connect me to Khan" I asked him

"No, NO reporters, none, goodnight" Karka replied swiftly

"I'm his sister!" I argued

Karfka's eyes widened with humiliating realization and stuttered "Oh of course, of course Lady … Lady Noobie … I hadn't recognized you … much older … young lady you have become"

"It's Neeka" I hissed

"Of course, I apologize … long night it's been … connecting you to Khan now"

I rolled my eyes, still wallowing in annoyance of being called Lady Noobie but relishing the fact "I looked older".

I could hear the dialing of the CommSphere in my ears, and I started to feel a nervous tingle start inside of me.

I had never thought of what the word brother actually meant until this day, but I hoped it meant forgiveness.

Khan answered the commSphere and I felt my stomach lurch.

"Hi, saw you on the news" I told him shyly

"Neeka?" He questioned with a kind of happy desperation in his voice.

"It's me" I smiled, and for good this time I added to my own thoughts.

I don't remember for how long we talked that night, maybe just over 6 hours but either way it went into the early hours of the morning.

He told me he liked a girl named Vanji who didn't notice his existence but managed to speak more to Jame in a day then she had ever spoke to Khan in all the time he had been at D'Jose.

"Jame was at D'Jose?" I had questioned quickly, my ears perking up out of interest rather then sympathy.

"Yeah he visits every now and then" Khan told me quickly

Noticing my crestfallen face he told me in a cuttingly honest voice "Get over him Neeks, he's almost 18 and he'll be leaving home soon"

Khan, probably feeling as though he had been a bit too honest told me to cheer up, and that we weren't running out of boys in Spira, there would be more after Jame.

We finished the conversation on a light note, laughing about Mishaai's arrest and how he had just been arrested and indicted back to Bevelle.

Talking to him again was like hearing music again for the first time in years. It's a kind of beauty you can't explain. I had my brother back again and it was the most beautiful thing in the world.