their happiness over mine

Julia was undoubtedly startled when a young woman suddenly planted herself in the path of the thief, only to be forcefully pushed aside by him. The fae forgot about her stolen purse momentarily, frozen in shock by the violence she’d just witnessed. “Am I…? Are you alright?” she asked. Not that she could do much if the woman wasn’t well, but it was the polite thing to ask. Julia was still trying to catch up with her current situation, having just been robbed, having seen the awful way in which the woman was shoved towards that railing… and now hearing her suggest they be there when the police caught him? “What? No, I don’t- I should just go in and ask to borrow their phone” she mentioned as she pointed towards the coffee shop at the end of the block. Surely they wouldn’t mind letting her call the police. The woman started doing something… weird and Julia watched, confused and a tiny bit wary. She found herself even taking a little step back. “Why do you need a necklace?” she asked, her hand immediately going to the pretty white gold chain around her neck, her palm pressing against the delicate pendant. No one in their right mind just handed a Bvlgari pendant to a stranger. She could assume what a locator spell was, but she had no clue how those worked -if they were even a real thing- or if this woman was just trying to swindle her now. Julia was from Mexico City, so she was no stranger to elaborate scams and ‘helpful’ people being part of a larger scheme to steal from you.

“I’ll live, I can put ice on the bruise I’ll have later.” Her head tilts, sympathy crossing her face as she takes in the woman’s startled expression. Hm, borrow a phone? She glances at the button, frowning, trying to gauge how long something this small can hold power. A few minutes at most, and who knows how far away he is now, she can’t wait for someone else to handle it if they have a lead right here in their hands. “You are welcome to call them, but he stole something from my work that is irreplaceable, I am honor bound to get it back.” It’s the archeologist in her, or the historian, or the person who just can’t stand people getting away with their crimes as her family did with theirs. Jo watches the woman touch the pendant and her own eyes widen. “Beautiful! It’s a Bvlgari pendant, isn’t it? Is it a real one? No, wait, sorry, I will have to ask about it later. The necklace is a, ah, focus point. I hold it above the button, I pour magic in it, and it’ll pull in the direction we need to go,” she explains swiftly, curling her fingers around the button, pouring magic into it to keep the trail strong as she can. “A bigger object wouldn’t need one, but this is the only thing I can pry loose.” It’s a short notice plan, she vows to return to the shop and attach better quality tracking spells on everything after this. Jo shakes it off and offers her a smile. “If you are wary about my stealing it - Bvlgari pendants are expensive last I checked, I sold my own when I booked passage to the Americas - you may hold it. Dangle it above the button until it’s glowing and then hold it in front of you, it will tug and point.”

She doesn’t understand. Of course she doesn’t – for full clarity, Evi will have to divulge further details. The thought makes her feel sick. “He was such a strong witch. Stronger than I’ll ever be.” It’s quiet, and Evi hates how jealous it sounds. But that’d been the problem, hadn’t it? Her brother could have bested them both in magic with a hand tied behind his back. “It wasn’t…” Not accidental magic, at least not like that. “It wasn’t that kind of accident.” She doesn’t want to divulge. Doesn’t want to pull names from hats that are better left unsaid nowadays, their sick illusion put to rest. If only. “No, Jo, you can’t – can you stop being this nice for a second? You should blame me. Who else is there to blame?” She’s standing now, hands clenching and unclenching, knowing fair and well that her anger is misdirected. It’s not at Jo. Not really. But it all comes rushing out, hot and teary and red, though if that’s from memory or emotion, she’s not sure. “My brother walked into where I made and sold drugs, Jo. If that wasn’t bad enough, he never walked out. He grabbed me by the shirt, and I hexed him off of me and…” The laugh she lets out is so bitter she can practically taste it. “Pushed him right into the lion’s den.” Her bottom lip quivers and her nose wrinkles, scared and shaken and beyond mad. 

“I didn’t do anything. I just stood there. I let it happen. And then I ran. We ran. I wasn’t doing anything noble, Jo. I wasn’t seeking some higher road out, okay? Not like you. I’m not like you. I let my brother die so I could keep on doing what I was doing, and then I turned away like a coward. So…” What does she want? To get it over with, mostly. She remembers too many nights of childhood spent knowing a scolding, a punishment, a hit was coming. The dread of waiting for hours. If she’s bound toward something like that with her cousin, she can’t wait. “So you can blame me. You should blame me. You should – you should be angry with me, okay? Just do it now. Tell me how you feel, not what you want me to hear. Please just – you don’t… you don’t owe me anything, but if you could just… just get it over with.” What bitter irony that this is the moment a vase shatters behind her, sending Evi whirling around to see the damage. When she looks back to her cousin, it’s with a mix of trepidation and acceptance. “Fok. Okay. Okay. You’re angry. It’s fine. It’s good. B-Be angry. Go ahead.”

Power is everything wrong with their family, twisting them into shadows of what they could be, and she sees the marks of it in Evi’s sharp words. She has no ability to heal them, or any light to shed upon the darkest spots. “Do you want me to blame you? Would that make this easier?” she asks, fighting back tears, her emotions always so quick to spike at the pain of others. Helpless, Jo watches Evi shoot up to her feet, the painting forming in Jo’s eyes breaking as she does so. This is, after all, not something she can fix by dumping different colors on it, no matter how much easier it would be. She doesn’t rise with her, head tilted back to look up at this older cousin of hers, cracking in front of her. They haven’t spoken of the drugs littering the pieces of Evi’s past, an unfortunate mess Jo had long thought she picked up on the run, but-- “Evi--” No, she bites her lip hard, Evi still talking, and Jo feels as though she can no more interrupt them than she can halt the sun from rising in the window behind Evi, illuminating her in shades of red and orange. The sunrise feels like a wasted beauty on the ugliness of Evi’s words. Cas is dead, and Evi is the reason why, her thoughts summarize unhelpfully. “Is that all?” she states, purposely bland, swallowing back anything that might give her away. Control, she’s good at that, she’s always been polite. Polite. Good. That’s what Evi thinks of her, too. She grimaces. Evi deserves... something, but Jo doesn’t know what to give her or what to tell her. She promised a selfish acceptance for the only person she has left, but she isn’t sure how. Not yet. Still, Jo needs to speak and she looks up at Evi thoughtfully, trying to make her tone soothing in a way that the questions aren’t. “Did he try to hurt you? Did he threaten you? Could you have played along? Cas is... He could have played the hero like he always wanted and you could have come home." At what price? Jo doesn’t finish her sentence, a scowl on her face, unable to find a solution that doesn’t end with Evi hurt either way.

The first spark of anger isn’t from what Evi tells her. She can’t... She can’t find it in her to be angry at her cousin’s death. Not when there’s a distinct possibility that the alternative is Evi, trapped with their family, withering under their attention as Anton and Frederik did without anyone to care or notice. The anger comes from the idea that Jo will blame her. “Don’t tell me what to do,” she says, more snappish than she intends, defeating the purpose of her words. Her palm presses hard into her eyes once more, needing the near spark of pain to stabilize her thoughts. The vase shatters, and for half a heartbeat, wariness hits her. “I am not like them. I am not.” Her eyes land on the vase. Evi, or her? Which is worse, she wonders? Her fingers are clenched in her lap, tight enough for the knuckles to be white. “You can’t tell me someone hurt you - family or not - or threatened you and you, on a whim, decided to let them die. You aren’t a coward for saving yourself. What were you options? Truly, tell me, what could you have done? You said it yourself, he was a better witch than you both. And--” And. Jo fumbles, unsure, but fumbles on still. If anyone deserves a mess of an answer, but a genuine one, it’s Evi. “Are you upset that he died, or upset that you witnessed it?” This is where the territory is tricky, where she isn’t sure what to say or how to say it, and her anger is trickling away like a faucet turned off. She’s always run strong and then off. "I promised honesty, didn’t I? I think... I think you were doomed from the start. A life spent running, or a life spent trapped.”

Date: Tuesday, May 11th, 2021 Time: 11:20 am Location: Downtown Lethe  

“No, no, dile a Diego que es urgente que entregue esas telas para el jueves a más tardar. Ya te mandé los patrones y necesitamos que las costureras empiecen con la base del vestido ya, si no ni de broma va a estar listo para el evento” Julia spoke fast and determinedly as she walked. Staying busy and on top of her work had proven to be an efficient way to cut off from the outside noise. A noise that happened to be other people’s unwanted, interfering, pesky emotions. Even though she was miles away from her business, the fashion designer had technology to thank for letting her stay in touch with her employees and still be able to direct everything from a distance. “Okay, te marco mañana para ver cómo va todo. Y sabes, cualquier cosa, tengo el celular a la mano siempre”. She ended the call without another word and slipped her AirPods back into their case and into her purse. And just as she was putting her phone inside of it as well, someone reached to grab it and make a run for it. “Hey!”.

She’s followed him for the last block, regretting the phone she left in the shop, but having no time to grab it when the thief stole an antique olifant off and sprinted out the door. The shout catches her attention not a moment too soon and Jo plants herself in his path. He attempts to veer around her, but decides it’s too much effort and shoves her out of his way. Jo grabs his arm, digging her fingers into the fabric and ripping off a button as she hits the railing on the steps behind her and lands on the ground. He’s gone in a blink, sprinting across the street. When he disappears, she blinks, using the rail to hoist herself up. “Are you alright?” she asks the woman, wincing as she rubs the bruise on her hip from hitting the rail. “I’m not sure what he was. Do you want to call the police? I haven’t got my phone on me and I’d like them to be there when we get him.” Jo holds out the black button with an annoyed sigh, magic pulsing on her palm and wrapping around the item. It warms in her hand and she abruptly frowns when her fingers brush her neck to find no jewelry resting there. Ah, right, she isn’t in Pretoria. “Have you got a necklace? The button is just the anchor, I need the guide. Locator spells are finicky without one, the necklace will point us in the right direction, and I don’t want him getting away. That’s the oldest enchanted olifant in the states!”

It’d be too easy to look at her, to give it all away like that. No, Evi can’t do that, and so she keeps her eyes forward like a coward. Gaze on the wall, jaw squared, like she’d look when she knew she was in for a scolding. She’s not sure what she’ll get from Jo – scorn or scolding or otherwise. No way to know what she’ll get or what she deserves. Evi simply gives a mute nod at the mention of the funeral, swallowing hard around the words that beg to escape but also tie knots in her stomach. What will the consequences be? Jo’s more righteous than Evi has ever been. Will she think justice should be served? Maybe she’s right. It’s almost a relief to hear those words escape from her cousin, and Evi can’t help but laugh, a tight and breathless thing. Panicked. “Can’t say I blame you.” Jo of all people – of all living people, anyway – has the right to hate her. She’d escaped the confines that had kept them both in a chokehold for so long. But it isn’t that simple. “I didn’t want to leave you. I just… wanted to leave all that. Needed to leave all that. Didn’t have a choice, um–” A trembling exhale, then, and she’s about to dive headlong into new words when Jo’s hands catch hers. Evi takes a moment to look at her cousin full on despite that way it makes nausea spin her stomach. “Fokenwil, Jo, how did we come from the same place?” It’s something like wonder. Almost. “I mean, look at you. Look at how good you are. I mean, really. And I… I–” Here it is, then, delivered by a woman with watery eyes and a quivering bottom lip. Pathetic.  “I’m not dead. I’m not dead, but he is. Cas is. W-We… He found us out, and he was… he was making all these threats, and angrier than I’d ever s-seen, and…” What is there to say? There’s so much she’s tried to forget, the finer details forced into fog so she can keep on living. But forgetting? That wouldn’t be fair. “We didn’t mean to. It was an accident.” Said like a petulant child. What a disgrace. “And we had to run. We had to go. I didn’t want to leave you, but… there was no choice. You know what they would’ve done to me. He… he was terrible. Cas was terrible. But I regret it every day, Jo. I’m sorry for it every single day. I-I need you to know that, okay? I’m really sorry.”

All the options she once considered for Evi’s flight seem silly in the face of her cousin’s evident pain. She’s never been the type of person to show emotion easily - oh, Jo has seen her in all the shades of angry and the pale shades of guilt or fear, but never this. “I don’t blame you for finding freedom,” she says softly, the realization glossing over the hurt. Not healing it, but saying it had cleared some of the haze. “I could no more leave Frederik or Anton than you could take all three of us. This... Us meeting here. This was meant to be, no matter the circumstances that brought us here.” Easier to say when she doesn’t know the truth, and Jo fears what feels like an inevitable plummet. Evi’s lips quiver, and Jo has to bite her own to hold back the urge to sweep her cousin into a hug. They’ll never talk if she does. “Evi, he’s been dead a long time ago now, what are you...” she murmurs, confused at how Evi and Ricus connect to Cas at all. If she had to paint realization, it would be red. Like Evi’s hair, like the splotches of red on her cheeks from crying, like the way the world looks as Jo’s clenches her eyes closed. Her fingers loosen on Evi’s, palm pressing against her face, trying to reconcile the Cas she knew with the one Evi describes. Threatening Evi. Scaring Evi. Terrible. It isn’t how she remembers him - but she’s long known her family is capable of atrocities. “I don’t understand, he... and you... It was an accident? Evi, I thought you haven’t done accidental magic since you were a kid and Cas was a strong witch, how can you kill him on accident?” Jo asks, opening her eyes, feeling as though she were still several steps behind, unable to connect one point from the next. “I don’t... I don’t know if I remember Cas the way you do, but I don’t disbelief you. I would not blame you if you killed him outright.” Startling, even to her. Jo is uncomfortable thinking it, but she spent long enough wishing a bolt of lightning might hit their family. Wishing herself strong enough to break fingers if it meant being free, so how can she judge Evi if she did the same? No, wait. We, Evi said. Her eyes shoot to Evi, looking struck. “Fok. You both killed him. All this time, I thought he went with you, or you went with him.” Not premeditated then, but arguably worse. Much, much worse. “Evi, do they know? How much does our family know?”

“Just Seiha is fine!” She moved around a table as she approached the front, careful not to knock anything over. “I don’t even let my students call me Doctor or Professor Takanashi. No need for the formalities. I’m Seiha first before all other things.” She stopped when she noticed a beautiful blade, resting between them. She tapped the edge of the counter. As much as she wanted to pick up the sword and swing it around, she still had her manners. “Very cool. How good are you at enchanting things? I’ve got this.” From underneath her baggy clothing, she brandished a tipless tanto, before placing it next to the fae sword. 

“I want an enchantment for the tip… just the tip~” Not everyone in her family shared her enthusiasm for shifting, even if they were skilled at the art, so it was common for them to carry their weapons when conducting business. Normally, according to tradition, the next clan head would get access to the family arsenal, but they decided not to let her touch any of the enchanted items. Maybe it was her temperament, and she if was being completely honest, she probably wouldn’t let someone like her touch the family jewels either. “My attendant tells me to carry more often. I suppose they get tired of chasing after me.

“If you say so. I’m Johanna Koning, but if we are going for no formalities, Jo is a great deal easier to say.” Baffled, she watched Seiha procure a weapon from seemingly nowhere and placed it on the counter. “Ah, I forget Lethe treats these things as normal accessories,” she admits with a rueful shake of her head, shifting around the counter to examine the blade, curious for a moment. “A tanto? Unusual choice for around here, I’ll grant you that, I haven’t see one in a while. Or ever, actually, I’m not much of a weapon-smith.” They have a fair few weapons in the shop, but she admits to never giving them much of a look beyond cursory, preferring something a little less bloodied.

Maybe this is what having an older sibling is supposed to feel like. Not barbed words and glancing blows and the constant competition, but genuine care. Someone to look up to. It feels like only a technicality, really, that Johanna is the younger one. She’s definitely more respectable, more caring. This much is clear as a cup of water is forced into Evi’s clammy hands. She doesn’t protest, immediately lifting the glass to her lips to quell any further orders. Once she’s downed a decent portion of it, Evi allows herself to lean against her cousin. Her assumption is made and affirmed from her cousin’s tone alone, though Jo is kind enough to grant her some mercy. Little does she know. “Yeah, maybe,” the elder Koning offers weakly, meeting her cousin’s eyes for what surely is meant to be a shared smile. But she can’t seem to reflect it. She buys herself some more time by taking another drink, though this time the water sinks like a stone in her stomach. Or maybe that’s just the dread. No time like the present, right? As the sun begins to rise, illuminating things. She could contemplate illumination now, but a term like that that feels far too generous for something this ugly. “Did they tell you? I mean…” She’s giving it away already, this awful thing she’s tied so tight for so long spilling at the seams the second she gives it the chance. “At Cas’s funeral. Did they go into much detail about what happened to him?”  If she was more selfish, she would ask about what they said of her. But she isn’t, and besides, it’d undoubtedly be a disappointment. Their darling boy and their twisted girl. A mistake from beginning to supposed end. “I wish I could guarantee that you wouldn’t hate me after this. But I wouldn’t blame you. Really. Especially considering how much you already tolerate.” She’s not sure when she put some distance between them, but she is sure that it was her doing. It doesn’t feel right, to be held so close while saying something so horrible. “And you don’t have to tell me that you like putting up with me, or that you could never hate me. Let’s do ourselves the favor of skipping that part, okay?”

“They didn’t want to encourage false rumors so they said nothing at all. People talked, no matter what they did, from his own hand to someone else’s, but never anything substantial. At times, it was like they thought you would both turn up again and everything would go back to normal,” she tells her slowly, watching her face for a sign of when her words become too much. If she’ll even know what such a face looks like on Evi. Will she hate her? The idea brings her to a pause. Sometimes when sitting around Evi brings back memories pleasant and very much not so, Jo tries to imagine what single moment drove her away. It wasn’t like her, she thinks, because Jo sent her brothers away the way a mother bird sends her chicks from the nest and found herself the only one under the eyes of vipers. Did she fling herself against the bars of a cage as Jo did? Did she escape and fail, over and over again, until the bars grew too thick to squeeze between as Jo did? She wonders if it was easy for Evi to speed away, or hard to escape their far-reaching clutches. There’s more, too, that she questions when the night is dark and everything in her life feels like the misty edges of a dream, but with the answers so close in hand, Jo isn’t sure what she wants to hear. Jo rubs her forehead, weary and worried, hit with a selfish uncertainty. The space between them feels vast, and she lifts her head, gazing at her. “Sometimes, while you were gone-- while everyone was gone and it was just me, I did hate you,” she says, blunt, so unlike the careful tones she’s tried to take, but the gulf between them stings a small, fragile part of her. She feels as though she’ll always be stuck on land while the people she cares for sail away. Her brothers. Her friends. Liam. Evi, too. Jo lets out a breath, slowly, exhaling the emotions trying to clog her throat. This isn’t the time. “So I could hate you. It would even be easier sometimes, but I won’t because I want you in my life. If I cannot guarantee anything else, I can guarantee that.” Jo scoots closer again, catching Evi’s hands in her own for a moment and she smiles gently. “Tell me what you can.”

@takancshi​

“Council woman, I wasn’t expecting you,” Jo blurts out, scrambling up from her seat. Or expecting anyone, really. The stool scraps across the stone of her shop, but she ignores it in favor of smoothing a hand down her sun dress, feeling out of place next to her. No, wait, this isn’t home, no matter how her mind had wandered to the heavy formalities whenever she drifted. Jo tilts her head, smile faltering with confusion. “Ah, what do I owe the pleasure? I’m afraid Greer is out today if you had an order with him, or was this something else?” It is very like Greer to not mention he has someone coming in, she thinks, annoyed and somewhat resigned. Her eyes flicker to the sword on the counter and she pauses, wondering how she could explain that. It’s not illegal to have, though, so she only offers a smile. “I’m studying the enchantments on it. It’s fae made so there’s little chance of me causing harm to anyone with it,” she ventures, just in case she notices it, eyes darting up to her.

Date: April 25th 2021 Time: 5:10 AM Location: Jo and Evi’s home

@johannakoning​

Not like it’s the first time. No, it’s a semi-regular occurrence, waking with a start like this. Thanks to memories more so than dreams, one could argue, though the more years that pass the more the finer details fog. Always the same scenario though, played plenty of times over. Not the first time in general, and not the first time in front of – “Fok.” Johanna, who stares at her with cousinly concern, because of course she does. “Sorry, sorry. I’m fine.” Her shaking hands and the sweat plastering her hair to her skin say otherwise, but Evi doesn’t stick around to be refuted. Instead, she shucks her tangled blankets and heads hastily toward the bathroom. A splash of cold water on her face helps some, as does pulling her hair into some semblance of a bun, though her own reflection makes her wince, her grip white-knuckled on the sink. Looking like a nightmare in and of herself. Kak. Checking her phone reveals the time, the date (seventy-two days sober), and some notifications (mainly from her insomniac of an AA sponsor). But those don’t deserve her attention right now. Not as much as her cousin does, watching her with a blown-wide pair of the blue eyes they share. Evi sidles up next to Jo, allowing their shoulders to lean into each other as she pulls the blankets onto both of them. “Bad dream.” She explains shortly, finger still drumming an anxious pattern on her own knee. “Didn’t mean to wake you. Sorry.” After a moment, and with her head now resting on the younger woman’s shoulder, Evi sighs, looking up at Jo’s present expression. “I feel like maybe I owe you the details, considering I keep waking you up like this. But also I know for a fact that even if you think you want to know, you don’t. Trust me.”

She’s not a heavy sleeper these days. It seemed too much like tempting fate to let herself relax when she first left Pretoria, and now Jo thinks its been too long. With the creakiness of Evi’s home and the way her cousin often wakes in the night with starts, she’s hard pressed to find the time. No big deal. She’s more concerned about what keeps Evi waking up like this, and she lingers in her doorway for a long moment. “Evi, this isn’t the first time, I’m getting worried,” she says, concerned. Evi heads for the bathroom, turning on the sink, no doubt assembling the pieces to a mask Jo hasn’t yet broken through. Jo heads to the kitchen, flicking a hand at the cabinet to draw out a glass while she fills it up with water and brings it back to Evi, sinking herself onto her cousin’s bed. She won’t be shooed away, not so easily, and she holds out the water, gaze firm. “Drink. Slowly so you aren’t sick, but all of it,” she orders, feeling a bit like she’s talking to one of her brothers. Anton has eyes just like Evi, just like Jo, and it makes her all the more determined to figure out what has Evi tied up in knots. She waits, patient, head leaning on Evi’s and her fingers fiddling with the blanket bunched up in her lap. "No, you don’t owe me anything, you don’t have to explain your pain to me. Some things are private.” She wants to know. Jo can feel the itch to ask for answers at her fingertips, but for once, she isn’t sure what the right answer is. Jo looks down at Evi and offers her a smile. “I don’t think you bottling this - whatever this is - up inside of you will help either. You should tell someone. I want it to be me, but whatever you decide, I’m with you.”