A/N: I am very sorry how long this took me. My granpa died a few backs and my writing has more or less been on halt since, but here it is.
Summary of the confusing kind for this chapter: Because sometimes, it simply wasn't that easy for Miss Peregrine
Millard Nullings
At Miss Avocet and Miss Bunting's academy, young women were trained to protect and care for young children with amazing and sometimes terrifying abilities. But how could you train these young persons to deal with abilities, that were as individual as the persons who possessed them? The answer was, you didn't.
Throughout the normally between five and seven year long education, Ymbrynes were taught about an assortment of the most common and uncommon peculiarities, hoping it'd give them a general idea of what to expect and how to act once sent out in the field.
Most Ymbrynes expected this to give them a general idea of what to expect and what to do when they were sent out in the field, but, as Alma Peregrine had soon come to learn, it was far from the truth.
It wasn't that any of the children Alma was used to encountering normally presented themselves as uncooperative or violent in their ability, but just the fact that the abilities were a constant surprise , and staring and gaping was something you'd better get used to hiding quick, or you'd have to chase after crying and terrified children with abilities beyond your wildest imagination.
These children counted on you to see them the way no one else would, and if the Ymbrynes didn't, the children would be uncomfortable and insecure. Thankfully, Alma was skilled in covering her emotions, and managed just fine. But it didn't make it any less of a pleasure to get away from the children and be on her own, completely open and without a facade for once.
This, is what Alma mused about as she entered her favourite cafe in Swansea, book in hand and order made up in her mind.
As soon as she entered, Alma ordered a strawberry tasting pastry and a cup of tea, oddly enough without milk, sugar or honey. As weird as it might sound, she had always found that it quit hid the taste of the actual tea, and preferred hers black, regardless of what others thought.
Sitting down on a nice spot by the window, where she could unsuspiciously do some people watching beside reading her book if she wished, she let a sigh escape her lips, her whole posture slumping and relaxing when she didn't have to pretend to be perfect and on guard for anybody.
This was her time dedicated to noone but herself.
"Millard! How many times do I have to tell you to stay in the kitchen where they can't see you! Go back there now!"
Turning her head slightly to the left, a redheaded woman in her thirties was standing and screaming at thin air, chewing out a boy that Alma presumed had already left the room, as there was no boy to be seen. Considering the woman's angry tone, it was no surprise if they boy ran as soon as she spotted her.
"No one notice me anyway! At least if you stop screaming!" A nasal boy voice suddenly came out of thin air next tot the woman, rebuking woth equal amount of anger that the woman had showed him, though she could not see him at all. As he finished, Alma swore she could hear feet stomping away to the back of the cafe, behind the counter.
But she was still not seeing anything.
Noticing her starring finally, the woman turned to Alma, a huge plastic smile glued upon her face. She was entierlty unfamiliar to Alma but considering how rarely she was around, they'd probably changed pwners since last time. "I'm so sorry if i disturbed you, Miss. My son's only ten, and a bit of rebel. You understand, don't you?" There was terror shinning in her eyes. Had she been anyone else, Alma would have assumed it was the woman being scared of loosing a customer, but as it was, Alma knew what she had seen - or more like hadn't seen, and she knew it was not just from loosing a customer that the woman's terror came. She was afraid Alma had seen something she shouldn't, something she couldn't explain, and it'd cause her to get the woman's family in trouble with the even in the twenty-first century still surprisingly superstitious welshmen who lived in Swansea.
Well adapted to social banter and how to innocently and unsuspiciously extract information from people, Alma let out a humourless laughter. "Oh trust me, I kniw. I am the headmisstres on this tiny island off the coust. Besode a few teenagers, most of my children is that age." She smiled sweetly, feeling mildly disgusted with herself and her behaviour.
"Oh, wow. I could never imagaine that. No, my little Millard and his sister is more than enough for me to handle." The woman blushed, giggling, and Alma giggled too, trying to keep up her sickingly sweet demeanour despit her shock.
Millard, the boy with the presumed peculiarity of invisibility (temporary or otherwise) had a sister. What if his sister was peculiare as well? Would they then be dealing with another case like Bronwyn and Victor Bruntley?
"So, how old is the girl? Older, or younger? Because let me tell you, I know about both." She rolled her eyes, Sighing with fake exhaustion.
"Oh, she's just two, a little toddler. Her father look after her while he wrote his articles and I take care of the cafe." Seemingly without even meaning to, the woman sank down on one of the chairs, placing the empty tray she'd had in her hands on a nearby table. "It's not easy, but it works."
Alma nodded understandingly, a serious expression that felt much more natural on her face instead. "Does Millard go to school here in town? I send my oldest to the school in Shell, but I keep them home schooled until they're eleven so that I don't have to worry about them when they take the ferry on their own."
The woman nodded, too, the terror once more showing in her eyes. "Well unfortunately...my Millard ain't entirely fit for school, so I homeschool him at night, after I close the cafe. His father does help too, but the newspaper take a lot of time, he's a reporter." There was sadness in her eyes, blending with the terror that appeared as she talked of her boy's schooling. Alma could tell the woman really loved her son, peculiare or not, and it made her heart ache to think of what she'd have to do. She'd have to take away her boy.
As the woman left to tend to some new customers that just came in, Alma sat where she was, book forgotten as she tried to suppress the tears threatening to fall and focus instead. She needed a plan.
But how was one supposed to pull a little boy, only ten years old, and perhaps a two year old girl as well, away from an entirely loving and supporting family? She could deal with children without families, children whose parents abused, and yes, even families who loved but didn't understand. But a loving and understanding family who did what they could to help? No.
Had it been any other time, where the boy wouldn't be so vulnerable and threatened, she would have argued the boy didn't need her protection and left him. But with all the Hollows and Wights and the coming war, it was impossible.
It wasn't fair to the family to take the boy, but it wasn't fair to the boy to leave him and subsequently put the lives of his family and himself in danger.
Two hours later, Alma left the cafe. By then she'd been there for all of three hours total, had five cups of tea and two pastries, but she'd only read fifty pages and was yet to make a decision regarding the most probably peculiar boy.
As she came out into the street, she was just about to take off down to the right to the loop entrance, when she heard a sudden noise from another slim alleyway close by.
"It's not fair! I always have to take out the trash! Ugh!" The young voice of a little boy shouted at the top of his lungs, the screaming accompanied by something heavy hitting the ground.
It was not hard for Alma to recognise the voice, and whilst she had first been moving closer to the small side street, she now wanted to turn back and run. Never had Alma felt such emotional distress over a case with one of her children.
She didn't know what to do.
Acting on sudden impulse, she fought herself and walked right on into the alley. She needed a good look at the boy, maybe talk to him a little, and then maybe it would become clear to her how she was to act... she hoped.
"Hey, Millard?" She whisper his name, hope she can catch his attention, because all she see in the dirty space between the two brick buildings are a big black garbage bag standing by the garbage cans in the corner.
"Who's there? Who ever you are, don't come close! I got a...a garbage bag!" Alarmed by Alma's Sudden presence, they boy lifted up the big bag to defend himself. Alma could only deduce this as the bag started to float in the air. A part of Alma's abilities did allow her to sense where any peculiare within a certain distance of her was, but it demanded a good relation between the Ymbryne and the peculiar, as well as a good idea of the outline of the space, none of which she had currently.
"Please, I don't want to hurt you. I saw you earlier in the cafe, talking to your mother, and I noticed that I couldn't see you. Are you always invisible?" She talked slowly, patiently, hands held up in front of her to show she meant no harm. She was rather sure she already knew the answer to her own question but decided it was easy to start with an easy question.
"Mom!" The boy screamed, garbage bag dropping to the ground, and Alma vinced internally. She didn't want this, at least not until she'd consulted with her sister Ymbryne and try to sort out if she really had to take him.
She didn't want to ruin a perfect family.
"Millard!" The woman from earlier came running, covered in flour and with a fully visible, tiny toddler in a grey dress on her arm. "What's wrong?"
"Momma, the old lady was trying to kidnap me!" The boy blatantly lied, soft pitter patter echoing against the walls as he rushed over to his mother, who wrapped her free arm around him.
"I most definitely did not!" Alma protested, indigenous. "I was kindly explaining to your son that I meant no harm and tried to ask him about his abilities as a syndrigast." Alma said, the words all too familiar on her tongue. Smooth talking was basically a required subject for Ymbrynes, and for good reasons at that.
"Syndri what? What do you want with my son?!" The woman was panicked, obviously believing her son's word over Alma's, and she could feel panic rising in her own chest, but she pushed it down.
"A syndrigast, or a peculiar in common language. It means that your boy has a genetic abnormality that gift him with seemingly out of worldly powers, such as for example invisibility. My own powers include transforming into a bird, and manipulating time." She sigh, finishing her long-winded explanation and feeling rather tired. It was never easy to fill in the blanks for these poor adults, and Alma could only hope the woman already having accepted the boy and his powers would aid her in her understanding.
"So you mean that this...that his invisibility is some kind of gift, and that you have it too?" The woman looked marginally less panicked, but her grip around the boy was still holding tight. For a moment, she seeme to be contemplating something, and Alma wait, seeing if there is something else she want to say before she answer. "You said you had an orphanage...the children...are they all like him?"
Alma swallows. The minute of truth was upon them, and she would have to tell the woman in front of her what she was intending to do. That she was intending to take her son away from her. Unintentionally, her eyes travel over to the girl Millard's mom was clutching in her arms, a perfectly ordinary little girl toddler. It almost hurt more to think that she'd have to leave the little girl behind, and that she would never really know of her amazing, peculiar brother.
"It's a gift indeed, a gamble where your son happened to emerge victorious. Or it is meant evolutionary. Adults tend to react badly to children with powers, and therefore some us, those with powers like me has been tasked with protecting them. We travel the country, gathering children and putting them in safety before they are forced to pay with their lives." A stray picture of a slayed peculiar, a child that they had not been quick enough to protect, appeared in her mind, and she can feel tears rising in her eyes. "Your son...he'll have to come with me, he'll be in danger if he stay with you. You all will."
Tears are streaming down Alma's face, mimicking those streaming down the face of the woman whose name she still didn't know, but was asking to give up her son. She was shaking her head, holding the boy closer than ever before.
"No, I don't mind if I can't seem him. I won't hurt him, I love him." The woman screamed at Alma, and Alma was about to explain why she had to do what she was about to do, bit the woman interrupted her. "PETER!"
It took but a moment, and a man appeared in the doorframe. As opposed to his wife, who was redhaired and brown eyed, he was dark haired and blue eyed. His entire statue was tall and intimidating, and once more, Alma swallowed. She couldn't and wouldn't forcefully take a child from a family like this.
"What is going on?" The man rumbled, peering at her with suspicious gaze, taking in her appearance from her raven hair to her prim and proper dark green dress. "Who are you?"
"Peter! She was in the cafe earlier, and accidentally saw Millard." Ignoring the angered glare from her husband at this statement, the mother moved closer to her spouse, directing the patch of thin air that was supposedly their son in between his two parents. "Now she says she has to take him to an orphanage for children with powers like his, that she run. Says he's in danger."
Terror and adrenaline mixed in Alma's blood stream, pushing her through tears and wishes to scream to continue to convince them to give her the boy. "He is in danger! There are monsters, as invisible as your son himself and absolutely lethal, who will kill you all if they picks up the scent of your son. None of you will be spared, I can guarantee that!" She didn't know what to do. She doubted the parents were actually going to relent, and she could still not decide if she wanted them to. It was being stuck between rock and a hard place, because neither could she take him nor could she leave him and it all just meant that she was stuck in the limbo between, waiting for someone else to call the shots.
"But if you are protected within your home, with your children, how would you possibly know of the danger these monsters possess?" The woman asked, more confused than anything, her grip of her child losing slightly. The man nodded sharply, agreeing.
Alma sigh again, more tears welling up in her eyes as she rolled up the sleeves of her dress to expose her arms, showing them to both the adults. "Because their leaders are my brothers, and I carry the proof of what my brothers will do to anyone who threatens them." She try to stop her tears, stop her rollercoaster of emotions, but it isn't working well. Instead, she just keep her eyes focused on the family standing infront of her, decidedly not facing the scars she knew covered her arms. She didn't think she could stand to face her past at the moment.
"How old were you when they did that to you?" The man wasn't sounding as suspicious, anymore, but more angered. She couldn't imagaine if it was directed to her or the men who hurted her. At his question, she glanced at her arms, seeing the layers of old faded scars piling ontop eachother, and feeling her breath catch in her throat. Hurt, pain, injuries she could never tell the other ymbrynes about, all of it came back to her.
When had it started? Had it ever really ended for her? She didn't know, but she needed to produce an answer for the people currently taking in her scars and the exact danger she'd been in for so long.
"Eight. I was eight when they first hurt me enough to leave a scar. It continued until I broke with them when I was ninteen, and these a jsut a fraction of all they do to me. Just, please, trust me when I say that I know how dangeorus they are, and I know that they won't spare anyone that comes in their path. I would have died years ago had I not been their sister" She didn't want to lay out her personal history for these people, and she didn't like the tears glistening on her cheeks for more reaosns than one, but she didn't have a choice, she had already decided what was right.
The only way to keep both the boy and the family safe, was to take him with him.
"You can have him. You can get him toorrow. As long as you promise you'll kepe him dressed, fed, safe and loved, you can have him. I will let you have him." Millard's mother spoke, sadness and understanding blending in her eyes, and Alma nodded, swallowing audiably.
"Tomorrow" She said, spoking slowly so her cracking voice wasn't oing to show. "I'll get your son out of here, and into safety. I promise, I'll look after him, I won't let anyone hurt him!"
She turn on her heels, run away while still walking and trying to pretend that she is composed okay, as okay as she'll fake being when she get back in the morning.
Because soemtimes being an Ymbrye wasn't easy. Sometimes they were forced to pull children awya form ogod families. And sometimes, when they got stuck in a rut or it was simply all too hard to do what they had to, they cried. She cried.
People could say what they want, but no Ymbryne was above crying.