Matthew lay with his eyes shut as he willed himself asleep, painfully aware that it was closer to the morning than he'd liked and having not yet adjusted to the time zone only made him more anxious at the urgency of acclimating. But no matter how much willpower he possessed, he couldn't fall asleep. He knew Alfred couldn't either because his brother kept shuffling and tossing every few minutes. Matthew felt like snapping at him for it but he knew his brother was just trying to fall asleep too, if only very inconsiderately. Plus Matthew was paranoid that by moving or speaking at all he'd lose what little progress he'd made towards getting to sleep.
But he gave up on that when a finger poked his cheek and brotherly instinct had him roll over to lick it. Alfred's shriek was so worth it.
"Dude! That's so gross!" Alfred said as he wiped it back onto Matthew's cheek much to his annoyance.
"Well don't poke me!" He protested. "Use your words."
"I can't sleep and if you're awake I'm guessing you can't either-" Alfred pointed the obvious as he propped himself up against the headboard. "So we might as well scheme."
"Now?"
"Yeah, why not?" Alfred shrugged.
"We should try to sleep," Matthew suggested. "Or we might sleep in tomorrow and miss out on time with Arthur."
"Yeah, I guess that's reasonable but we can't sleep anyway so we might as well scheme. Plus we left the curtains open so we're definitely going to be up in the morning... yay..."
"Okay," Matthew sighed as he propped himself up beside his brother. Because of the party, it was all too easy to keep his eyes open instead of fighting off sleepiness. Through the open window, he could see the gardens bathed in bright moonlight, looking very soft and whimsically inviting. It seemed too bright.
"Great! So here's what's on the agenda for today's- well, tonight's meeting-"
"-This morning's-" Matthew corrected.
"Yeah yeah, anyway, we have to talk about the evil stepmother because even if she hasn't reaaaally done anything to us yet like Clarissa has- well, the suits she gave us were ugly as fuck. But we don't know if it was intentional or not so that means if it was then she's good at hiding her evilness but the fact that Lady Kirkland thinks she's bad means that she's definitely bad, right?"
"Yeah, Lady Kirkland would know what to look for so I'd trust her judgement. She said that Glynnis' father was like that too, which makes me think that's why she turned out that way."
"Yeeeeesh, so the whole family's fucked then huh," Alfred said callously. "Plus they're all cringe and classist."
"Yeah, Glynnis and her dad are just better at hiding it," Matthew said as he thought about how to phrase his controversial thoughts. A normal person would just voice their points but Matthew was fluent in the language of Alfred (who thrived on cultural references and jokes) and to make his brother understand something you had to phrase it in a way he could connect to.
"You know how in Megamind he was raised to be evil even though he was really good and a decent person? What if Clarissa was just being influenced by her Mum telling her what she should care about in life?"
Alfred looked completely aghast at the suggestion but Matthew carried on.
"Think about it. She doesn't have a dad and we know what it's like to want one. Maybe she doesn't have stories about her real dad and so she doesn't have anyone to yearn for until Arthur came into the picture. I don't know, maybe she felt threatened because clearly she and Arthur don't know each other very well because of how Arthur described her and so she thinks maybe that because we're here she'll have less time with Arthur. So she decided to go nuclear because she felt like she deserved him more - for whatever reason. I'm finding it hard to pull all the threads in on this theory but I'm sure if it was true her motive and reasoning would be easy to figure out-"
"She doesn't care about Arthur!" Alfred finally exploded. "She only cares about power and money just like her gold-digging Mum and grandpa!"
"Okay, fine. That is a possibility. I was just entertaining more angles," Matthew said. He'd been brainstorming that theory during the party. If he found a plausible angle that made Clarissa empathetic, then maybe he could believe it too. As much as he hated to think it, there was an equal part that Alfred was right. Or maybe they were both right, just to complicate things. Humans were complicated, after all. Maybe he'd have to suggest digging for more information, but that could be difficult with his stubborn brother.
"You do know that she tried to sabotage us right? She made us look like idiots and made us late to the fashion show which meant that we humiliated ourselves-"
"Clearly, she was doing all of that because she was threatened but if we can figure out the why then maybe we can act."
"The why is that she's stuck up and selfish just like her Mummy and she benefits from Arthur just like they all would because he's rich and powerful and all. Really, it's not that hard. She wants to be important and her Mum marrying our Dad would make that happen."
"We're still going to have to stop Glynnis. I don't want Arthur being used either, even if he's too proud to see it or stop it," Matthew added because his brother's tone was getting too defensive. "So either way Clarissa will be stopped, don't worry. But I just have a hunch. Because even if she is partly bad, I think it's not too late to make her good. Think like... a Zuko redemption arc."
"Are you serious?" Alfred snorted, but Matthew could see he was listening. "That's not happening. Can't we just scheme how to get rid of Glynnis so we don't have to put up with step cyst-er anymore?"
"To be honest, I don't really like her either but the more I think about it, the more I think she may be just been misled. She could think that her extreme measures are okay because her Mum and grandpa use them. Actually, we don't know if she's working by herself or if her Mum's actually encouraging her so she's the one who takes the fall if she fails. I think we should figure that out. I even have a theory on why she's classist. Well, I have two. She could be relentless about us not belonging here because she feels like she doesn't either... or because she actually believes she does-"
"It's that one-"
"-BUT because we're here it contradicts what she was told to believe growing up that you have to deserve to be here, otherwise you wouldn't be kept around for any other reason."
"You've really thought this out, huh?" Alfred sighed. "I don't know about saving her because I don't think there's anything to save but I think you're just obsessed. You just wanna see what makes her tick, right? Please tell me that's just it. Dude, I know you're a really nice person and everything, but you gotta stop being nice to everyone."
Maybe he was on an impossible mission. At least by gathering more information, he'd be able to make the right call. And if he was right, Alfred would see it. Maybe if he found the right angle, he could lean into his brother's desire to play the hero and help everyone.
"Yeah, I'm just curious about what's motivating her. How about this? I'm sure we can orchestrate some situations where we'll be able to see her true nature and if we do it right, so will Arthur and she'll out herself."
"Um, what about Glynnis? Like, I'd love to out Clarissa as a plonker-twit or whatever, but if we get rid of Glynnis we get rid of both on them."
"Our main focus will be on Glynnis," Matthew sighed, "but there's more than just her. Don't forget about her dad. How are we going to get rid of one of Arthur's most trusted advisors?"
"Oh yeah, I forgot about him. I guess we haven't even spoken to him at all. What's the bet that he hates us too and wants us gone?"
"High. Do you really think it's a coincidence that his daughter is now Arthur's fiance? When he's Arthur's main advisor - or whatever he does. He has the motive of wanting power but he hasn't shown what measures he'd take against us... maybe he doesn't see us as a threat? I think it's stupid that they all see us as 'threats'. Us existing shouldn't really shake a happy relationship, right? This is the modern world and there's lots of different types of families so why would they think that us being here would stop them from-"
"Okay, but they're fancy pants Bri'ish and classist so maybe they think that blood is thicker than water or something."
"That's not even the full saying-"
"The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb, yeah yeah, you told me when Mum broke the news to us that Kiku and Yao aren't actually our real cousins."
"What do you mean 'broke' the news? You were 15! You already knew!"
"Yeah but so?" Alfred said stubbornly. "They are our cousins!"
"Yeah of course they are but nevermind that. We need to focus. How about we just ignore Clarissa and I'll see if we have any opportunities to investigate why she's-"
"A twit-plonker?"
"Yeah. Best case scenario maybe we could get her to realise there's more to life than being conceited and then we never have to see her again. I don't think we need to do anything about Glynnis' dad because his position got Glynnis in but if we get Glynnis out, what more can he do? What else could he do to use Arthur for?"
Besides prestige and employment, with his daughter out of the picture, there would be no inside getting into Arthur's family.
"So we should focus on Glynnis. From what we've seen she knows about Amelia but doesn't like to be reminded of her," Matthew paused as he thought about it. "Maybe we could talk about our Mum in front of her and Arthur to test the waters and see if her own obsessive insecurity takes her out. Because clearly Arthur still has a fondness for Amelia, which might still be romantic interest considering the questions he asked us and how he asked them... or it could just be they were close once kinda thing so it's like... nostalgia? But he wouldn't like it if Glynnis tried to overcompensate her insecurity by putting Amelia down and it would cause conflict. Or something like that."
"Hey, that's better than my idea!" Alfred sounded impressed. "I was just gonna say, have you seen the parent trap? You know that part where they just bully the fuck outta the gold digger and she gives up and storms off? We could do that as plan B!"
"And if Arthur catches us? We'd look like instigators and we'd be less likely to get away with things later."
"True, true," Alfred agreed. "So we'll just make Glynnis really insecure?"
"Well, that's just one idea," Matthew shrugged. "If anything else comes up we'll have to snatch any opportunity to make Glynnis look bad. We'll just have to see what we could do and what's possible."
"So we've just gotta be scouting for opportunities," Alfred mused. "I reckon we've got this."