wonderful life

hamish's mask

“Which is perfectly fine when you’re in a social space, or alone, but I’m a professor in a classroom, with students who need to listen to me.” Bathsheda sighed heavily, shaking her head. “What grades do you use?” She asked, curiously. “T stands for Troll and it’s the worst of the fail grades. Luckily there weren’t many, but I still had several D's… that stands for Dreadful, by the way.”

--

“Oh, I always had problems paying attention in class. My sister usually had to kick me, when our schedules overlapped.” Hamish blinked in surprise. “Troll? That seems awfully harsh. Our lowest grade is an F, but it doesn’t stand for anything. Except maybe Fail? We had D’s too, but they definitely didn’t stand for Dreadful.”

“now I don’t really like to, like, call anything stupid, but I really can’t think of a better word.” poppy almost winced. “I think that, like, no one is stopping until someone wins and everyone else loses.”

--

“Oh, many ideas I’ve had have been called stupid, you can call my ideas stupid any time.” Hamish told her sincerely. “Maybe Perce is right and we should move to Korea. Though I’m not sure I could convince Kat to leave all her family.”

She sits outside in the sunshine, though she can barely see the sun as her thick, dark hair slips over her face, which is bent over the pieces of parchment in front of her. Sighing softly, she marks the top of the parchment with a T and places it face down on the ‘marked’ pile. She knows she’s left it late, but summer was always hard with Bellona gone. “I must have been talking to myself all year, because this is abysmal.”

--

“I talk to myself all the time.” Hamish said happily, glancing down at the papers. “What’s the ‘T’ mean? I knew grades were different in the States but I didn’t think they’re that different.”

…

Twins against the world… until Hamish chose someone else over him. She hated the thought and the train tracks it started sending her thoughts in, but the music she was playing suddenly picked up to match the heightened anxiety that was swirling through her. “I don’t care for Bruce.” She admitted it with a little smirk, eyes darting up to look at her brother before dropping again. “And I think we should also consider… us against the world as individuals, too. It won’t always be the two of us, you know.”

--

“Woah, what’s with the notes?” He asked, looking at her cello. Perce hadn’t played like that in ages. Or at least not around him. Was she tense or something? It was gonna make him tense. “Next you’re gonna say you don’t like,” he cast around in his head for a good musician from back home, “Donna Summers.”

Then his thoughts skidded to a halt and he reached out to cover the strings on her cello, pausing the music. “What do you mean as individuals? Of course it will always be the two of us.”

poppy nodded solemnly. she was sporting her favorite denim jacket today that was littered with pins on every cause you could imagine, especially anti-war sentiments. “are you serious? where have you been? it’s, like, really bad.”

--

It felt very silly to say it out loud to someone who wasn’t Percy, but Hamish went ahead and opened his mouth, “I had... just sort of hoped... Everyone had just, decided that one big fight was enough, y’know? That it was all finished after that.”

…

“Why should I cozy up to someone when there’s no guarantee of a future?” It was a cruel thing to say, especially to her own brother, but it was getting harder to contain that feeling, the feeling that Hamish was growing up and away, that she was sitting in a limbo of her own making while he thrived and experienced something so pure and wonderful. She hated it. She wanted to be angry with him, but instead found her ire directed at the girl. 

Her eyes darted up again and the slightest shake of her head was the only indication she gave at all to his question for a moment as she let her fingers dance with the music. “Picking sides immediately makes us targets. As soon as we’re targets, things get worse. The only people we should be standing behind in all of this is ourselves.”

--

"Don’t be like that Perce.” He said softly. Hamish hated seeing her in full porcupine mode. Sure he’d rather she fill him full of pins than someone less equipped to handle it, but he didn’t enjoy it. “She makes me happy. You make me happy. It’d be nice if two of my favorite people were friends. That’s all.”

Hamish relaxed just slightly. “Twins against the world it is.” This was more familiar territory at least. He knew how to handle this. If she wasn’t busy playing he’d offer her a fist bump. “We can be like a Bruce Springsteen song! Can’t believe he’s not caught on over here.”

…

“We’re not taking your fair weather girlfriend to Grandad’s house.” Her voice was sharp and possibly a little cold, but Percy wasn’t going to admit that it was jealousy lacing her tone, not something harsher. She had never kept it a huge secret that she didn’t like Hamish’s fling, but she had also thought that it would have burned itself out by now. “I’m not translating for her and your accent sucks.”

She hit a sour note, and, frustrated, Percy shuffled the music in front of her and started over from the beginning. “People don’t just move on from being assholes, Rocky. Or did you not learn that lesson in school? Until one side or the other… or the third, I guess in this case, win, everyone loses.”

--

“Hey!” Hamish protested, both on behalf of Kat and his Korean accent (which was, admittedly, horrid). Maybe he didn’t always play at the whole ‘absent-minded idiot’ act, but he knew his sister. Perce wasn’t normally this prickly. “She’s really not that bad, Perce. Not like some of the other ones, really. You two would get along if you gave her a chance.”

He winced more at the frustration than the note and put down the bear to fidget with his sleeves. “Sometimes they do. Sometimes they... grow as people.” It sounded naive even to his own ears. “Do you think we should pick sides?”

“We’re trust fund kids, Rocky, we don’t have to get involved. We can just move to Busan and live with Grandad for a while if you’re that worried about it.” Percy’s eyes only lifted for a moment from the sheet music in front of her before dropping again, letting out a slow, steady breath. “Besides, its all a bit gummy for us, innit it? I mean, we’re muggleborn. The empire we’re set to inherit is not magical. We shouldn’t be sticking our noses in things that get them hacked off at the tip.”

--

“Only if we can take Kat with us.” God, their mom would probably love that. He’d seen the Burke’s house, there was no way they didn’t come from money. “I don’t think she speaks Korean though.” 

Hamish knew better than to mess with her sheet music but the urge to fidget with something bigger than the origami was growing stronger. “I’m not sticking my nose in anything for once, honest. I just... kind of had hoped they’d all just... moved on?”