HHHMMMMM...

So I'm taking a differnt approach to this than I had originally thought.

No worries, the next chapter had LOADS of Matthew and Alfred and Ivan, lots of sad and lots of happy and maybe even a twist.

This chapter was changed soooo many times, Im not even sure if I like, it, sorry if it sounds rushed, I just wasn't sure how to do it. *bows* I sweat the next one will be soo much better.

The second string that broke was when I sent a resignation letter to Brightvale. It was short and punctual, vague enough to skirt around the reason why I was turning down the most prestigious school, yet so detailed that I could pass with shying away from their attention. As I licked the envelope all I could think about was how I was going to tell my father, and then the feeling passed as quick as it came. It felt nice to buck against authority.

With a small smile, I made my way back into the house, only to confront my third string. She was sitting primly on the stool that faced the kitchen, entranced with painting her nails a deep, royal blue that shimmered under lamp light. Each stroke was meticulous and carful, her eyes faded from reality and swimming in some cold thought process as I walked by, suddenly gaining her attention.

"Sister is ironing a suit for you, why?" She was blunt with me, as she always had been since birth, eyes never leaving me as I rounder the bar and began to rummage through the cabinets.

"No reason," came my quipped, at my last straw voice. "It's really none of your concern."

I heard the soft rustle of her dress as she uncrossed her legs, and crossed them again. "My brother's business is always my concern." Natalia then stopped her painting, setting the bottle down with a displeased sigh, turning the heat of her gaze to me.

For a long moment, both of us stared at the other, as if to gauge the strength behind their facade. My sister might have been small and petite but the glare she was giving me chilled my marrow and I had to question on whether or not I could take her. She had been spying on my life, listening at my door with those wolfish ears, telling father about all that I had been doing with poor broken Alfred behind everyone's' back.

Her smile widened gently, looking like a shiny, sliver of an ice sickle against her white cheeks. "Come now, Ivan, why such disdain?" She crossed toward me without fear, unafraid of the powder keg that was packed tightly in my chest, waiting for the right time to light her match.

Her hands came to my cheeks, holding me softly and then gracing through my curls as she leaned up, lips pressing to my skin.

I felt absolutely sick.

I felt like I was freezing.

But something snapped inside of me, something that was weak and something that had been worn thin, that invisible knife not caring that she was blood and family.

Her yelp was pitiable, sharpened and startled after I had slapped her, those dagger of her eyes piercing at me, lips twisted with distaste. She hadn't suspected that I'd stand up against her affection.

"Don't touch me." My voice sounded like my father's, stern and marbled as I looked down at her, for the first time realizing how tall I could stand. "And don't you ever talk to father about me. Do you hear me?"

Natalia was nursing her reddened cheek with the backs of her curled fingers, stance like engraved granite as she stepped away from me, her expression mixing with fear of the unknown and with a sulking for her beaten pride.

"I asked, 'Do you understand me?'" The yell was unyielding, chest pulling in another breath just as she nodded her head slowly and retreated to her room.

There was something about how she looked at me, like she was seeing a different side to me, a dangerous side. I was elated that I had finally stood my ground against her, instead of playing the good bother and letting her have her way. This trickling happiness, this...twang of victory, was this how cutting a string felt?

With a deep sigh and inflated sense of life, I climbed the stairs to Katka's room, rapping twice before I entered.

And there she was.

Standing tall and timid, as she swept the iron over my dress shirt, the white pleats looking like smooth, candied crème.

"Oh! Ivan, I'm sorry, I'm not finished!" She gave a slight, panicked glance back at me, eyes looking like weeping periwinkles as she began to iron a bit faster.

"No, no, Kat don't worry, it's fine. I still have a few days before the funeral. It can wait."

The pause that settled in was long and discomfited, the iron steaming, letting out disgruntled puffs of hot air as she laid it aside and turned the sleeve over. I just sat on her bed, watching her with more detail than usual. I suddenly wondered about how she had grown so, how she was just as beautiful as Natalia, though her figure had more rolling curves, and her hair was clipped short and twisty at the blonding ends.

She was such an adult, and I felt like I had missed when this had happened. One day, she's have a husband and kids, she'd move out of the house and become someone else's entire world. But I'd always love her.

I loved my sister for her smiles and for her warm embraces. I loved her when she woke me from summer naps and offered me chilled tea, I loved her when she knit me sweaters in the winter and always made sure to be there when I accepted an award, playing such a good matriarchal figure while our mother was absent.

But she and I were headed down different paths, almost walking in two separate directions on a map. It was like I had turned around and she was so many miles away.

It was sad to think she was my fourth string.

But as she kissed my cheek, covering Natalia's mark with her plump, warming lips, I swallowed my tears and thanked her when she handed me the suit, finely pressed and ready to be worn.

"You are a good friend for doing this for him. It'll help pull Alfred together."

I began to ponder if one could do that, take hold of the loose, already severed strings and knot them back up.

Was that even possible?

-WW-

It was approaching midnight, so close to the cusp of another listless day that I was almost alarmed with how many were just passing me by, meaningless and trivial.

The house was quiet and creaking a little as it settled with the winds that blew with the sense of a coming storm. My nightmares were frequently stroking at me with devilishly hot fingers, and every night I'd stay up until my eyes were so deftly heavy and half lidded that I began to mix reality and dreaming, my head lolling back as I breathed in deep and slow through my nose.

I got another good drag of incense as it hung like a dense, ominous veil in my room. I had lit it in the faint hopes that it would keep me up a little longer, keep my senses sharp enough to cut against any on coming dreams.

No luck.

It just made me think of him more.

And the longer I stayed up, the more I thought of Alfred, and the more I thought of how I missed him at my window, and the more I tried to convince myself that maybe we were something.

He had kissed me.

We had stayed up at nights talking about nothing, and I had seen his father as a corpse, and he wrote me letters with stolen petals, so we had to be something, right?

My chest was aching as my sinuses throbbed. I had kept the window open again, more in hopes he might want to climb up my banister than to circulate clean air so I didn't suffocate, but it still wasn't enough for the filigreed smoke.

I ended up snuffing out the dimly glowing tip and laying back down on my bed, legs a little too long for the mattress, my room seeming so miserably empty. It was a Friday, which meant he should be in my room, Mc Donald's bag in his hands, music bubbling from his head phones and a smile on his round cheeks.

But there was only the lingering scent of Dragon's Blood, and clean, night air, and the noise of cicadas and my smothered coughs.

Against my door, the suit Katka had ironed was hanging, swaying ever so often if the wind picked up enough. I unexpectedly dreaded seeing Alfred in two days, because that meant being at the funeral.

I'd only been to one once, when I was still so little that I was clutched to my sister's chest as she tried to keep me from trouble as the family grieved the passing of my father's brother, a man whose picture hung in the living room with many other faceless, nameless relations.

But this funeral would be different.

I thought about all the contents of the letter, of the casket, poor, grieving Francis, and the roses, which I kept pressed in my biology text book between the pages about the human heart.

I ached for Alfred was in my room, whether he was sobbing or laughing, or quite or loud, I wanted him here so I could comfort him, or derail his thoughts from their dismal drowning in his father's suicide, and how this paper world was burning, or how we were all cutting strings.

And selfishly, I wanted him beside me, kissing at me and leaning against me, so I could feel him breathing and existing, and so alive that I could finally give a sigh of relief.

The old grandfather clock in the living room chimed two o'clock AM, and I dreamed that Alfred had come into my bedroom with a small smile on his lips, eyes a little highlighted red, and that Mc Donald's bag gripped in his hands.

And never had fast food tasted so good.

Please tell me what you think :)

Peace, love, cookies and hugs,

Suga Bee

P.S. those who comment with ideas mayb be suprised when I use them to the utmost advantage. :) I'm willing to write almost any couple doing anything so just PM me and we'll see what we can do... ;)