#dear lil hellspawn

Realisation, full and proper, is filling her from a rusted faucet that screamed its protests against its opening, but whose collection of aged oxide has fused the valve wide open. Its pressure is threatening the badly glued seams of her. She looks as desperate as I felt when I first realised I was never going to be accepted by them. It’s mirrored perfectly on a face that thankfully looks nothing like mine.

The sight is not as satisfying as I might have wished it to be. 

Sadism of this kind never suited me, no matter how hard our father tried to train it into me.

I take my time with my coffee, attempting to enjoy the relative skill of the barista behind the service counter that cramps him to an unkind degree, while the gifted food settles in my stomach. I watch as my matching gift gives Natalie emotional indigestion.

“They’ve never talked like that before.”

I just shrug, feeling anticlimactic and let down by some cosmic joke that never quite reached its punchline.

“He called me a dyke…” She sounds so hurt, torn up, and raw. A fair response, but one that was far too fresh for my liking right now. It was an emotion that would sit for days, and I was getting restless.

And it won’t even the worst they’d be willing to call her, if she falls as far as I did.

“I thought I was making progress. I thought he was changing-”

I finish the last third of my coffee in one large draught before placing the mug down onto the table a mite louder than I intended. It cuts off the end of Nat’s sentence and drags her eyes up from the spot on the table where my phone sat untouched. She stares at me, wide eyed, and for a second looks like a Miyazaki character. Chihiro facing down the bathhouse matron with eyes as big as saucers and some supernatural shiver that runs up her spine.

And then she melts.

She recognises it’s me, not some witch here to steal half her name, and she shows that innate trust once again. My heart clenches at the sight, torn asunder with anger and something more painful, and I ignore my suddenly bouncing, fidgety leg.

“Look, he’s not going to change unless you manipulate him into it,” I start soft, trying to settle the anxiety in me, but like the mug’s descent it comes out harsher than I intended. “You’ve given him a new script to follow with you, but he needs puppet strings to actually change. It’s what he’s done to us and mum.”

“It’s just- That was the only reason-” Natalie swallows hard, slouching in her chair and making herself look small. She pauses in the middle for a breath or two, realising the angle her sentence was heading towards. She backtracks while her voice grows shakier with every word. “I’m sorry I did this to you, Nina… I shouldn’t have done it with the reasons I had- the reason I had… But I thought it was a genuine reason. I thought I could bring you back.”

“I thought you would try.” My voice is hollow as it echoes over my tongue with stale air. “That’s why I showed you the texts.”

“…They’re never taking you back.”

The admission rings through Natalie’s mind like a bell, loud and clear enough I trick myself into hearing it on the outside. It cracks the shell of her hope and trust in our parents into dozens of little, ragged shards, each with an uneven razor edge sharp enough to do more harm if left unattended. The rock, that up until now she had been building her life on, reveals itself to be hollow; a paper mache facade that has been rotting at her feet for years. And it doesn’t help.

Maybe it helps her, but my mind is pacing back and forth while I’m stuck staring at the front door of the cafe and the street beyond.

“No, they aren’t.” It’s all I can say, but the hurt that seeps into the words is enough to carry a shadow of everything I’m feeling into the empty space between us.

I need to leave. I need to get out of this city. I have what few scraps of life Natalie was able to scavenge for me at my feet, and now every minute spent here feels wasted. I even have her on my side, more than I even desperately hoped for as I ran through different ways to handle the meeting with her while I struggled to not fall asleep in my seat as I waited. But I got the change handed to me, and now I need to leave.

But Natalie is immobile. She watches her faith in our- her parents crumble before her eyes.

A wax-wrought Damocles, staring up through blinked-away tears at the sword of candle flame; an Icarus of Paraffin tasked with holding up the weight of Helios’ chariot while he watches Atlas already crushed and discarded beneath Ouranoss’ corpse; a scared girl hesitating before the task of planning her escape.

I recognised the look.

The sun deserves my ire - my turbulent, painful anger - but only now do I realise it doesn’t deserve my fear any more. It holds the emotion close to its core, and will never let go - but it doesn’t deserve it. Making me more scared won’t achieve anything any more. 

But it does deserve Natalie’s.

My anger aches to stop my painful extrication from happening again, but all it can really achieve right now is to push me to leave.

Even if it thought it could make a difference, reaching out to rip Natalie from her Mercurial spot so close to the sun would only leave me splattered with porcelain droplets of her. It would hurt her while she begged me for freedom, she would bend and sag under the melting attention, and strain against my inadequate strength, and all I would be left with would be trails of wax down my forearms, quickly hardening in streaming paths that look like tears.

The pain wouldn’t even matter to me, but I would only make things worse for her. She would be spent beneath my fingers.

I look down at my arms and see the maladive green undertone of my blood beneath my skin. Instead of the temporary, ivory scars of my sister’s imagined need for me I see real, pallid lines running perpendicular, evidence of what I was running from. I rub my skin to crack the illusions free of my arms, feeling the texture of softly brittle candle wax shattering beneath my fingers more vividly than I would like. My arms are warmer than they should be.

I gently shiver the disturbing fantasy away.

My anger remains awake. The temptation to smother it is weak enough to ignore as I level a stare at Natalie and wrestle my heart back into normal ranges. I see too much of myself in her, but right now I wouldn’t even be able to save an older version of myself.

Natalie breaks me out of my internal cycle, either through very lucky timing or an understanding of how dramatic my mind can sometimes be, by gently kicking the bags that are still cramping our feet beneath the table. The gentle tinkling of zipper metal rings like wind chimes for a brief second and drags me wholeheartedly back to the front of my mind.

“I grabbed what I thought was important,” She said, “But I didn’t have much time. I didn’t know how long they’d be so I rushed.”

“What did you get?” I kept a grip on the conversation, using it like a harness to keep me from falling into the cavern of my mind. I sounded a little distracted.

“Everything off your desk.” Natalie’s immediate, utilitarian answer soothes the worst of my anxiety and I breathe out a sigh of relief, finding myself grounded in the cafe a little more. “Clothes, a handful from each drawer, plus the extras I saw when I grabbed your phone charger from beneath the bed.”

The experimental clothes, bought from amazon and tried once or twice before being hidden in a bundle strapped up between bed slats, was in one of the bags. It was comforting to know that it wasn’t in my bastard parents’ possession, and then actually having the clothes was a relief. They don’t really fit me, but I hadn’t realised how much losing them would have hurt before realising I now had them.

I smile at Nat, finding safety in expressing the inert happiness rather than the violent mood of despair shaken free that definitely would have ended in tears.

“Ah… Good.” My words feel dwarfed and inadequate, but I have nothing else to add.

“Apart from that I grabbed honestly kinda random stuff from the bathroom, and I think your razor is loose in the bag-”

“Makeup?”

Natalie cringes a little, “Oh… I didn’t think to look.”

That’s fine, it’s easy to replace, just, “You should probably find it before they do.” When Nat nods I get her back on track. “What else?”

“Uhm… I went through mum’s files and grabbed your folder.”

My shock was probably very visible because a flicker of pride passes through Natalie’s eyes. She thinks she’s done a good job, not fucked something up, and it’s all true because that folder is probably the most important thing for me to have gotten out of that house. Passport, birth certificate, insurance information, everything original when it comes to me is in that folder, with copies placed in others for ease of access. It was part of the way our mother kept some sense of control over her life, by being the gaoler of all the vital documents of everyone in the immediate family.

Hell, even the prescriptions for the meds she knew about are in the folder. And I have it now.

I can’t keep the smirk off my face, “Oh, you’re going to eat so much shit for that when they find out.”

“Yeah, well, I genuinely thought I was helping them out when I grabbed the folder for you, so there’s not much they can do without my guilt.” The threat of repercussions fills Natalie with accurately measured dread, but she keeps it out of her voice.

“Oh to be a fly far away from that wall…”

Natalie shrugs something akin to agreement to the sentiment, but doesn’t say anything.

I bring up the last vital member of the list that has yet to be mentioned. “Hormones?”

My hesitancy is rewarded with a sheepish, avoidant reaction from Natalie, and my mind immediately jumps to the expensive conclusion that I’d need to replace it all. But then Nat jumps in.

“I got them! I’ve got them! They’re in the bag… It’s just…” She shies away from my intense stare, the one trying to dig the events out of her reticent mind. “They might smell real bad. And they might not be okay any more.”

“What happened?” My anger influences my tone too late in the process of making the words for me to stop them, and the sight of Natalie shying away from my harsh tone etches itself into my mind. It will be a long time before I forget the hurt on display there.

“I- Um… I realised that I hadn’t found them when I was already out the door, and I was already running late,” Her voice picked up pace as she said each word, nervous about my reaction and wanting to avoid another impatient question. Shame at my lack of control makes my blood run hot. I don’t want to do this to her. “I couldn’t really check everywhere, that would have taken too long, and there was one very obvious place I hadn’t looked yet, and it was on the way out-”

The garbage bin, placed on the pathway from the front door to the driveway.

“They threw my meds in the trash?”

A tiny, apologetic nod comes from Natalie, relaxing slightly as we both process afterwards my relatively calmer voice.

“I- I have no idea when they did it, how long they were there. How hot they got. The sun hadn’t quite hit it yet, but it was already warm…”

“So they might be denatured… Shit.” So it was a coin toss whether it was the same expensive replacement as before. I didn’t like that.

“Sorry I didn’t look for them earlier…”

I shake the price tag from my head, “Better than nothing. Thank you.” 

The words are hard to swallow. They’re not exactly what I want to be saying. There’s a part of me that doesn’t like thanking her after what she put me through, but most of me just wants to be saying goodbye. Leaving. Getting away from here. Out, out now, before it’s too late-

My phone starts ringing, vibration against the metal table drumming with the resonant frequency of the tense surface to make it so much louder than it needed to be, and I jump so hard I have to scramble to stop my empty coffee mug from meeting the floor. Place it back down, take a breath, why is it so hard to breathe? Take a moment- The sound of the call gets quiet, the vibrations dulled, I see my phone in Natalie’s hands (now on silent) with its screen showing an unknown number facing me. I knew it wasn’t my parents already, their ringtones were set to an file of just silence, but I didn’t have any way of knowing who it was.

I swallow, place the mug right-way-up back on the saucer, and take the phone from my sister’s offering hand.

When I answer I am met with skinwalker, American Psycho charisma that writhes its way through the whorls of mobile service to curse my ear with its presence. It’s crisp and confident, and barely the right shape to mimic a professional kindness while not being offputting in an immediate sense, but I recognise the general shape of it and can feel out the shape of the man behind it. It’s also spoken through a terrible connection, and ends up horrendously compressed.

“Hello, this is Alexander Spence from Saint Dymphna Community Hospital,” It starts, masculine and optimistic, though pulled back to not scare off a jumpy animal, “Am I speaking to Sebastian Nikitovich?”

I wince away from my name, but keep myself focused on the task of the phone call and fall into my own script, calling up the response he’s fishing for, tweaked for my own purposes.

“Yeah, that’s me. You said you were from…” I make purposeful eye contact with Natalie and repeat the name he rattled off as best I could remember, “Saint Dymphna Community Hospital?”

Natalie jumps on the task, drawing her phone out and researching while the man - the fittingly-blandly named Mr Spence - continues his grease slicked drawl. I try not to curl up within myself.

“Ah, good, I’m glad you’ve picked up, Seb. Can I call you Seb?”

“No.”

“Now, Sebastian, I’ve heard from some concerned people close to you that you’re currently experiencing some difficulty - specifically housing.”

Nat is scowling at her phone, glaring at the screen like it would bulimically divulge its secrets if it just got intimidated enough. Her teeth worry at her obsidian lips, progressively staining her teeth, and her eyes dart around the screen. I rule her out as the source of Mr Spence’s concern. 

There’s two very obvious options left, and the concern someone they would reach out to is not something I think I would want.

“Son,” He barrels through my silence. “We try our best here to help those who come to us only with what, and who, we have in the room, but regrettably sometimes there are situations that require a different hand. After hearing parts of what you’ve been experiencing we decided it was warranted to reach out to you and offer you a place to stay. Practically indefinitely.”

“Practically?” I ask, falling for the trap.

The monologue on the other end changes subtly in tone, becoming more confident that he was being successful. “For your situation I’m sure it’ll feel indefinite. We, of course, have our upper limits for how long someone can stay with us, but most people get back on their feet long before that clause comes into effect.”

“How long?” I keep my voice flinty, stem the flow of his confidence.

“We can offer five years of accommodation in our long-term patient area.”

“But I’m not a patient.”

The tone shifts again, from carrot to stick. Honey to vinegar. “Mental health is a very serious thing, Sebastian. And homelessness only makes it worse. I’m sure you’ve been very stressed in this time - have you been couch surfing? Sleeping rough? We can take that stress off your shoulders. We can give you a bed and a roof that won’t be taken away. You don’t have to stay out there.”

“You’re trying to institutionalise me.” I study Natalie for more information as I accuse him, but she’s so absorbed in what she’s found that she doesn’t even see my silent question.

“No, Mr Nikitovich, we’re not a psychiatric ward. We’re a community hospital that focuses mostly on quality of life and of mind, with a focus on returning to wider society when the scale of it is less scary for you than it is right now.”

“He’s right.” Natalie speaks up, her search finding its answer, and her ears picking out the words from the phone speakers pressed against my ears.

“Who is that? Sebastian are you alone right now?” I barely acknowledge him.

“They’re not a psych ward - that would require medical approval. They’re a conversion therapy camp.”

“Ah, right.” I scoff and end the call.

* * *

The phone falls from my sister’s grip, hung up and discarded back to its no-man’s-land home in the middle of the table, before the scoff even halfway leaves her throat. She’s angry, bristling at the hackles and scowling at some middle distance, and I don’t even try to blame her. Something in me wants to, but that’s not me: it’s our parents; the eye hooks screwed into the wood of my puppet shell that the strings are attached to.

I place my own phone on the table, neatly stacked beside my keys and purse, and try and push the horror stories of Saint Dymphna out of my head. Once I found a place that wasn’t on the side of the ‘hospital’ it was very easy to figure out who they were. The thought of Nina going through that brought a spark of anger to the front of my mind, but the surge of dread I’ve been treading water in soon swallows it again.

It’s hard to stay focused. Today is about Nina! Nina, who is homeless and needs help from me! Who deserves all the effort I can offer her, and more!

But it’s not fair.

I hide my short and panicky breath from her, but I still feel it just as keenly. I can barely spend any attention to fix it, and my hands are fusing together in my lap from friction welding, and my world is falling apart beneath me.

It’s not fair! I did everything they asked of me!

A leviathan of fear and observation cracks its way out of my internal landscape, revealing its hiding spot beneath the mountain ranges of rationalisation and indoctrination that obscured the beast’s presence. It crumbles the earth as it wakes, demolishing the road networks of the hopes and plans I had laid brick by brick at its feet and over its thickened spine. It brings an apocalypse to a world that did not know of its presence, and it’s not going away now.

I had been perfect for them - perfect grades, perfect obedience! They never told me to not be gay because they clearly didn’t think their golden child was dyke material. But I was! And that tore up the pattern and made everything go tits up.

But this is about Nina, not me, I’ve got to suck it up and be better for her, because she needs that really badly right now.

I look up at my new sister and see every half-buried, flickering emotion on her face like they’re spelled out for me on a page. She’s angry, hurt, scared, restless, hopeful for a quick escape, dreading a painful one, unsure how to feel about me, and recognising everything that I’m letting slip onto my expression like she’s felt it all before.

It’s absurd. I’ve never felt so close to her, yet I the very last thing I did was get her kicked out, and I feel more sure with every passing moment that she’s about to run away.

She’s slightly reclining in sullen disappointment, legs slightly parted to accommodate her height and the bags beneath the table, and has her head cocked down so she can stare at me and the front door past her eyebrows like just glaring at us will make us part for her. The sight does something dangerous to my brain.

Rich skin, full of depth and definition, curls around her arms and graces the curves of her neck and her jaw before pulling upward to the warm slice of her lips twisting unconsciously as she watches me back. She looks like she’s being lit from within, and the light is slowly going out, filled with the cold glow of carbon-choked flame fed very, very little.

My heart aches at the thought of losing that flame.

My wringing hands in my lap bring my mind to back to my skin, exposed up my arms to the very top of my biceps where even at the thickest portion of my muscle there’s nothing but pallid, ghostly absence to be found. If her flame, so close to being snuffed out, is so still so colourful, how bad am I going to get before mine vanishes?

Maybe I should leave too?

I watch as Nina’s eyes gravitate to the cafe’s door. She twists around so her legs are in the walkway between tables, one step closer to leaving. One of her legs starts anxiously bouncing.

I could fall to my knees in front of her. I could beg and offer every hidden corner of my heart up to her, for her. I would place myself at the mercy of that glare, flood myself with sympathetic, nauseating hurt and hopeless fury to show that she is not alone. I’d stow myself in her bag, reduce myself to a trinket or arm candy to convince her to not discard me. I’d pull myself forward to the harbour of her hips, wrap my arms around the outside of her thighs, and apply the begging of my tongue any way she wishes.

I’d drag myself up to straddle Nina’s legs and free my shirt from my skin. I’d reach a hand behind her neck and offer everything I am up to her - including the motherly care I was keeping for some future child or promising partner - in an attempt to fill the ravenous hole our mother has left within her.

I would let her feed off me, if it pleased her, simply to be offered a chance to be by her side… To not have to go back home.

I would debase myself rather than return to the middle-class Bluebeards and the evidence of their previous victim that now is looted and scattered across a bedroom that will either never be touched again or have every little thing sold off in an online auction within the month for a fraction of its value.

I could offer everything up on a silver platter for her. I would. I’m about to…

But she barely has the strength to get herself away.

So I have to prepare to go back. Prepare for pretending that I haven’t seen their truth, like I’m still salvageable. Prepare to do and say ludicrous, hurtful things to convince them I’m still on the puppet strings while I plan my own escape.

But first I’ve got to help Nina’s.

Gods, how did she live like this? Already anxiety was eating away at my stomach like a bacterial ulcer, chewing my stomach lining and the bravery that relied on it staying intact. How long had she managed this, as well? Her meds had dates on them from months and months ago, prescribed to someone I’ve never met.

Not important. Ugh. This is so much to think about.

“What now?” I start, weaker than I should sound, and cringe at the waver in my voice. Whatever I set up for doesn’t follow, topics and suggestions second-guessed until they found shallow ditches of my mind to repurpose as graves. 

What could I even say? Well, what would even make a difference?

Make a gamble.

“Hey,” I restart, “At least that meant they were out of the house this morning. I don’t know how much I would’ve been able to grab if they weren’t gone.”

Can she see through my smile? It feels weak even in its apology, and like it’s fighting against its anchor points keeping it tied to my face. Nina takes in my words with well-earned cynicism, but there’s a ghost of something that passes behind her eyes and the response coils from gallows humour to a smile that fractionally fills some hole in my soul that had been running dangerously empty.

“Yeah, they’re their own undoing.” It’s a smile forged of tears that she talks through, the grain of genuine appreciation brought out of the white water and purposefully presented. Something between us repairs a little bit. Then Nina answers my original question. “What happens now is that I find my way to the train station and leave.”

Leave? The dread I had arrived with today comes back in it’s full-blooded, cold-sweat nature and tugs on my guilt with way too much strength. Once again I’m met with the thought that I’ve completely ruined Nina’s life, and each time it’s a little harder to fight off. I know now that she’s not able to come back home - and I wouldn’t subject her to that - but I thought at least she would be living in LA! Sleeping on couches for a while, yeah, which hurt my guilt already, but still here! Still within reach…

But she’s bailing on the city entirely. Giving up on her degree here, her friends here, on-

No, it’s not about me.

I swallow my distressed shock and just try to be supportive. I hope most of the emotion was invisible to Nina, but she knows me too well to have missed it and so she gives me time to process. It’s a kindness that I don’t deserve, that hurts to swallow, and that is interrupted by another ringtone buzzing against the table. 

It’s my phone this time, and I jump a little less than Nina when her phone lit up, but the glimpse of my mother’s face on my screen before I answer sets some gears turning in the back of my head before I even speak.

“Hi mum!” 

I plaster a mimicry of my usual, lighthearted tone across the speaker in the way that she never notices or cares about, and I pull on the strings that make me sound a little relieved at the chance to hear her voice on the other end. Start grateful, react to what she actually says, that way she can believe I like her on average. It comes so easily to me, I don’t really notice that I’m doing it. Just that I needed to.

“Natalie! What’s going on with you?” Outrage, sensationalist emotion, and a hint of deep, moral concern that justifies itself as it goes. “We’re trying to sort out this whole thing with Sebastian, thinking you were fine at home, and…”

I stop paying attention to her words and start to speak over her. “Okay? And? So am I. I think my strategy was working just fine until she got a call from a fucking conversion therapy camp.”

“Her? You’re don’t seriously think he’s-” A pause, a change in tactics. “The hospital wants to help, is able to help, but you got in the way of that. Why?”

Fuck, fuck fuck fuck, I hate this. This is making my guts churn like a dough hook is trying to knead all my different organs into one, homogeneous blob of stomach acid and internal bleeding. Why do I hate this so much? She’s saying terrible things, but this is otherwise a normal phone call and I’m freaking out like I’ve just been conscripted. I want to throw up.

“If you wanted to help,” Is what comes out instead, “You wouldn’t have gone there.”

I make very brief eye contact with Nina, but I’m too rushed in my own mind to process anything I see on her face. It would take too much, be too complex, and letting anything slip with my mother is a bad idea. Years of proof and practice pile into that opinion, convincing me of her inability to bend and then covering its tracks so I can pretend better.

I don’t think about it. I slide my car keys out of my purse and over to her side of the table.

“Put him on the phone.” Harsh, softened at the edges, showing the blade edge that could fall on me if I don’t hand Nina over to her.

“Mum…” I sigh the word, buying time. I turn in my seat to face an empty chair across the walkway between tables before answering. “Even if she was right in front of me, and I thought handing the phone over was a good idea, do you really think she’d pick up?”

“He will if he knows what’s good for him.” Bitter. Barely smothered to politeness. The blade edge turned just barely towards me.

I put as much condescension that the mindset of teaching a young and stupid kid will let me get away with into my voice, and then speak through the angry silences, “That’s not the point. The question is if she’ll even listen to you… Do you think so…? Because you haven’t really given her any reason to.”

“We’re her parents…!” A pause. “His! Fuck!”

She’s livid now, letting the mask slip a little too much, showing the fresh anger that was polite to let simmer for a few days before releasing. I glance at Nina who is holding the keys a little dumbly, still in plain sight. Awkwardly swap which hand is holding my phone just so I can reach over the gap and - quietly - swat her hand out of sight.

“And?” I say, full brunt force. “She already chose homelessness over you. If you want her back, give her more! But you’ve already chosen to give her less.”

I can hear the low whine of her mood change from anger to pleading desperation, and I pull the plug. I interrupt her before she can enact her new plan, however genuine the emotions she’s using for it may be.

“Look, mum, I-” Cut off mid sentence, put a quizzical tilt to my words. “I know you wanted to get to her through me but-” Cut off again, more confusion, turn back towards the table. “Shit.” Phone down, not on speaker, ignore the hints of her words that are coming through in the next silence. Play the partial truths. “I can’t see my keys… Fuck- I’m worried…” Shake my head at Nina who’s trying to gesture that she has my keys. Take my phone from my ear. “Mum, you’re on the table right now, I can’t hear what you’re saying, but I think-” Stumble over the name ‘Nina’ because I know she doesn’t want them to know her name. “I think Seb has my keys. I- uh- I gotta go! Talk later.” Slam the hangup button.

Sag. 

Breathe in air that feels too thin.. 

Shake like I just padded the bill for someone who will definitely find out, but who might not find out too early.

Recover. As best I can. Unpack how easy that was later. Unfold myself from the self hug that I can’t pin down the start of.

“I hated that…” My voice is distant and shaky, but present nonetheless. Doesn’t help me not be surprised by it, though.

The quiet that comes from Nina doesn’t feel like the calculating moments of silence I’m so used to in the family. It flows as dense air, cooled by its proximity to her, pooling as mist as it hits the ground. It’s not frigid, nor is it suffocating, but the presence of her hatred of our parents - of our mother - is almost visible.

The warm part of it is wonderful. It’s a breath of fresh air, an acknowledgement of what I actually have to deal with constantly, and it’s a knowing glint of empathy surpassing sympathy. But it slowly vanishes. It is smothered by the shared truth we reached in separate ways: the empathy can’t achieve anything.

“Yeah, that was rough.” The apology in her voice is worse. Wait, has she been voice training? She doesn’t sound how she did when I turned up. Maybe I just didn’t notice- “That was some wonderful lying, though.”

I let out a laugh - a hollow, dry expanse of an outlet that lets all my collapsing bravery escape before they try to tempt my tear ducts.

All I can manage in response is, “Thanks.”

“I should probably support your lie by driving somewhere.”

“Yeah, probably.” I’m so deflated… I can barely think. I vaguely hear her get up from her chair and extract the bags from underneath the table.

Then she pauses, expectantly.

“You coming? I’ve got a train to catch.”

The question is so innocuous, so childish in the need for company before something scary, so easily asked, framed in the casual familiarity we embodied just days ago, that it knocks some energy back into me.

I sit bolt upright, stare up at her, watch her brown eyes shimmer in the harsh sunlight with bolstered bravery and a small sliver of joy in the mischief, and my eyes catch on her smile. Who could ever hurt that smile?

Me. 

I did.

I nod and shake myself from my mood as best I can to follow my sister to our shared car that has been marinating in the early morning warmth of it’s twelfth Californian summer. I hope, based on memory, that the trip across the city will take a few hours. Enough to feel like things are somewhat normal. That I just have a sister, and nothing more dramatic is happening…

* * *

The hug is unbearable and horrendously kind. Natalie is soft and warm, pressing herself into me without reservation or overbearing concern, simply desire to hold me before I vanish from her life, and I feel tears start to ram at the barrier gate of my eyelids.

Following some desperate, lonely instinct I’m trying not to look to close at I run my hand through her hair. I grip the back of her head with all my strength and smell her conditioner mixing with the sweat of the humid day.

I feel the last vestiges of the family I wanted, the only fragment that ended up real, hold me back, and still the hurt over her betrayal rears its ugly head from the worm-hole it’s gnawed into my heart. It’s been beaten and bruised today, but it’s not dead yet. I wonder how long it’ll take to starve.

But I don’t let go. I don’t let it ruin the last moment of reprieve I’ll get before the long journey and new life I’ll have to manage alone. I hold my sister.

I hold her until the loneliness is going to steal my legs out form under me, trap me in a new cage of cold iron, and in a flash I’ve pulled away and I’m pretending the teeth of that looming bear trap don’t exist.

My heart has never been so strained before. I wonder if it’ll ever recover, or if it will stay malformed and scarred from the pressure of it all. I hide the arrhythmic panic from my mind as I climb onto the train. It stops threatening a heart attack when there’s glass between us, but my eyes struggle to leave her for any time at all.

I wish I had managed to look away, because the expression of tortured heartbreak on Natalie’s face makes me realise the mirrored one on mine.

I want to run out there and wipe it from her, to replace it and show her she doesn’t deserve to be sad. To show her all the secret ways of treading water while you yearn for anything else. Show her it’s not all permanent, not inescapable. That she deserves the type of love that they will never offer her.

The weight of it all makes it easy to push down. And the hollowness of the few days I’ve spent turning all the events over in my head makes everything desaturated.

Good.

Even panic, as my phone lights up with a message from someone I thought I’d never have to look at again, is a distant, sloughing landslide that barely rumbles along the horizon. I know the feeling is there, but my heart’s not really in it.

The text message announces an updated arrival time for the conversation I wish I wanted to avoid, but which I can’t bring myself to feel the indignation required to call off. She was bringing a bag with all the things I had been too upset to remember while I was being shouted out of home and warmth.

The thought is still there, though, that if I could bring myself to sink waist-deep into that slow-tidal swamp I could summon enough anger to still turn her away. I could plunge my arms into the depths of the freezing mud, brush past cold and rigid limbs of thoughts I’d yet to process, and pry open a vent wide enough to break the serenity I was currently sheltering in. I would scald myself in the process, breathe in who knew how many toxic compounds forged only in the abyssal depths of my soul-planet’s mantle, but I would be free of her. I would be feeling something.

And that would be worse than suffering through the coming meeting.

So I wait.

I study the wood grain of the cafe she chose, pushing the smell of coffee and pastries I suddenly can’t afford out of my nose, and put all my focus on the task of not letting my leg bounce. I don’t want her to see how stressed I am, because that might make her panic and run away, and I need my stuff. I need to be controlled, because she has so much power over me with no proof she wouldn’t misuse it. And after I trusted her so deeply three days ago.

I don’t think about it.

I’m pulled out of my thoughts as Natalie, a few minutes later than she said, very loudly struggles against the soft-close mechanism on the cafe’s front door. She’s stuck for so long, between the duffel bag so unevenly filled that it looks like it’s cosplaying a murder victim and the backpack so laden that it looks like a turtle shell threatening to smack into the side of the door frame, that the barista twists out from the cramped counter to pull the door open for her. She thanks him politely and quietly before looking for me.

I make myself emotionless as her eyes meet mine, because if I was to try and follow the script perfectly I would need to smile at her, like none of this is her fault and I’m genuinely happy to see her. If I tried I would start scowling or crying.

But Nat does smile. It’s twisted by guilt and shame, and the difficulty of not knocking anything over as she navigates the tiny cafe, but it’s a smile. Small but still there.

The air starts to feel thin. My panic gains more control. I smother it.

I watch as Natalie carefully places the bags at my feet, despite how heavy they are, and then proceeds to stand in the middle of the floor awkwardly. Dozens of emotions, hundreds of things to say, cross her face, but ultimately she turns to leave with an expression of sadness that is incredibly satisfying to see.

“You’re just going to leave?” My voice comes out hoarse and scratchy, too deep and heavy, and with too many little fragments of emotion stuck to it as it dragged itself through the trenches of my emotions. The words are chased by dozens more trying to tailgate through the gap the script has left, but I swallow them like glass shards and settle the ulcer of heartburn as Natalie turns back to be in surprise.

“You want me here?”

Want her here? Of course I don’t fucking want her here! She’s the reason all this happened in the first place! If she just didn’t tell our parents I wouldn’t be homeless right now, but that’s not the script. And I’m following the script so that if I want anything else out of that house I have someone to get it for me.

A flickering, breathy hope suffused her voice and I tried not to recoil from it as I drowned this new batch of anger.

I breathe, trying not to make it noticeably deep, and say, “I can’t talk with you if you leave.”

Natalie smiles at me like I’ve given her more grace than I have before drawing out the chair opposite me to start the task of squeezing herself in between the bags and the faded, wooden wall. She settles before growing anxious again, unsure of what to do next. Or, sure of what she needs to do but unsure of how it’ll be received. She worries with her sleeves underneath the table.

“I- Uh, I’m sorry,” She pauses, unknowingly giving me time to suffocate the rising tears at the apology I hadn’t let myself hope for while she processes something behind her thin-framed glasses and restless, brown eyes. She tries again, softly and delicately, like she’s expecting me to get angry at her, “What should I call you?”

I respond with silence for a moment.

“Just, um… I know I probably don’t deserve to,” She swallows so hard I almost trick myself into hearing the noise of it bobbing down her throat, “To know it, but- I just- I don’t want to keep calling you-”

“Nina!” I spit out the word, then repeat it softer. “Nina.”

The daunting, inevitable approach of my deadname made me blurt out the first name I could think up, but I despise the idea of our parents knowing it. It aches like a fresh burn blister in the sump of my heart where their love was supposed to be. It seeps watery pus and threatens to pop, but I cannot be out of control right now. I’ll probably change the name in a few days, but I’m stuck with it for this conversation.

But then she smiles, and her lips quirk like she wants to call it cute.

Getting to watch the anxious fear bleed from my sister is not something that happens very often. Even seeing her so anxious and hesitant to intrude on my space is strange, and caused me to force-correct the script. So, as the panic melts off her posture and that comfortable, steady expression starts to come back to her thin face, I can’t help but remember the previous times she’d let me see the unfinished side of her.

She had kept herself collected the whole way home, tears shed in tiny streams that barely touched her makeup and bare feet that braved the pavement for a quarter mile, but when she saw me it all fell apart. She had sent some messy texts which led me to sit out on the porch to wait for her to get home, but the sight of discarded stilettos and angry tears on my collected sister’s face was truly strange.

She never crumpled, her coherent anger was clear in the midnight silence, but it was a level of dishevelled that I had never seen from her before. I suspected that if our parents were anywhere nearby she would have closed off, so I gave her the space she needed to tell the story of a friendship betrayal that stank to high hell of breakup jealousy and didn’t tell the family about her being a lesbian the next day.

The minimum, for that level of trust.

I also didn’t tell them when she purposefully came out to me.

I didn’t tell them why she kept sneaking out or staying too late at her girlfriend’s place.

I didn’t let on when they wondered loudly if she would stop the strange, rebellious phase.

I didn’t out her.

But here she was, showing me the weird and shaky side to her, still letting me into this secluded part of her heart like I belonged there. Like it was all normal now.

“Nina,” She says the name and my heart betrays my head with a butterfly flip. “Nina, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I’m really sorry.”

She says it so earnestly, and I have no choice but to believe her. I know her too well, I know how she lies. But waiting for an apology was also not the issue. My anger and cloying hurt is not a result of Natalie not being sorry: I knew she didn’t want this to happen. The problem is she told them without knowing what the result would be.

I knew what they would say. I saw all the signs. It’s why I had started taking hormones in the closet, all black-market and self-monitored. I knew I’d get nothing close to help from them.

But I realised, after a few months of emotional changes, that I couldn’t do it alone. So I had told Natalie.

And Natalie had told our parents that night.

“What did you think would happen?” My words slip out before I can stop them while my heart hammers away at the half-beaten spot of my ribs just above it.

Dinner was forgotten immediately, the shouting and abuse sparked to full throttle. They tried their best to strong arm me back into someone they could stomach being around, but since the cat was already out of the bag I had no way of appeasing them that wouldn’t make my skin crawl. Oh, I could have tried, forced myself under the cookie cutter and let the blunt edge slice through my soul with all the oppressive force they knew how to apply so well. I could have made an attempt. But I would have killed myself very quickly.

They didn’t see my fear of death, though, they only saw me disobeying them. So they quickly cornered me, offering that same conditional existence or homelessness. I took the obvious way out.

“I don’t know,” Nat’s confidence had taken a hit, she had obviously expected the next part of the script I never voiced.

“Why did you out me?”

“I hated them saying Seb- Uh, your deadname. It hurt.”

I felt my anger slowly waking up from its smothered grave I had forced it into. “So you corrected them.”

“I thought it would go okay…”

“How the hell was it supposed to go okay? Why do you think I never told them?!”

The script was completely ruined, but I could feel the itch of sulphur in the back of my nostrils as I breathe out. There was no stopping this. My heart felt like the wound it took that night had been sewn shut with barbed wire.

“I’ve never heard them talk like that-”

“Because you’re the golden child!” I felt my voice rising. Everyone in the cafe would be able to listen in if they wanted to, but fuck it. “You’ve suited their image of you since day one! You excel at college, you have a thriving social network that behaves enough for them to let the socially-acceptable rebellions slide, and you have been the image of mum’s beauty since you hit high school. You’re her ego and dad’s dangling bait for a future, rich son-in-law because their actual son turned out to be an utter failure! They can’t risk your future by traumatising you.”

“That’s not very fair…” Natalie’s voice sat so quiet in the space between us. Her eyes were turned down to the table I was studying earlier, covered in part by her chestnut curls. They made it hard to see her expression, but I hoped it was miserable.

I drop my volume back to normal, “I’ve always been a failed project. Something to salvage for what little value I can still offer. What you heard then, Natalie, was what their disappointment sounds like, and they’ve never been disappointed in you.”

Nat was silent for a while, and the quiet let the nauseous weight of my bone-deep fear settle back in place, the weight of it enough to close the gaps that my outburst seeped through. The feeling that I had overdone it was just as heavy, but for that brief moment the cyclical feedback loop of confused anger and hopelessness had some way to escape. Relief and dread in equal parts filled me.

I wished I had said it to my parents instead, the full-body flinch I saw from Natalie quickly lost its satisfaction, but I had said it and some base, animalistic part of my brain was relieved it was no longer carrying some of the burden. The dread set in when I realised I was pushing Natalie away. Something equally instinctual hated the idea of turning my nose up at the olive branch she was extending.

I was probably silent for too long because Natalie shook off some of her wounded expression and began half-prying herself out of her spot. She was thin where it helped, and athletic and flexible where she really needed, but her coordination had taken a holiday as she still almost tripped over the tangle of bag straps and chair legs. I expected her to leave, but she took a steadying breath that was far more shaky than her outward coordination had already betrayed, and asked me something I truly didn’t expect.

“What do you want to drink?”

Her tone was as casual as anything, like I hadn’t said anything out of the ordinary in the past five minutes, and she was looking over at the counter of the cafe like I was something she was safe to not be constantly watching. It was weird, but very effective at getting under my guard.

I wished, when I responded, that I hadn’t sounded like I was halfway to tears.

“Uh… Whatever you’re getting.”

Nat studied me for a moment, worrying at her bottom lip in a way I knew would stain her teeth slightly with the black lipstick she never leaves the house without, but then suddenly moved away to order.

I thought about our mother while she was gone.

The woman is white as a sheet at her healthiest, cursed to always burn and never tan in the sun, and stares at the world through sharp features. She floods her face with colour and softens her sharp lines where she can. She dyes her hair to look light, she wears colours that make her stand out just enough to blend in, and she makes herself look soft and pliable in any way she can, because that’s how dad likes his women - manipulable.

Natalie is almost a carbon copy of her. But her hair curls and shines in a healthy way that contrasts the bleach-damaged, bright-blonde strands that have survived too much abuse, and desaturates her face with pale foundation and rich black accents to make her look sharp and observant. It’s a look that suits her, and in combination with her thin-wire, silver, round glasses and mostly-black outfits she makes herself visible in a group. She loves the attention.

Me on the other hand, I look like our dad, which hasn’t stopped hurting to think about since I noticed.

Heterozygous fuckery from genetics of Eastern European origin with some strong roots in the Mediterranean sun and Black Sea saltspray left me with tan skin, a square face, and an inclination to appear dangerously thin. I ate plenty as a teenager, but it all went to my height first, so I had been trying to eat enough to both getting some form around my skeleton and for HRT to make the form what I wanted it to be, but now that I’m not sure where my next meal is coming from that tactic is kinda screwed. I dodged some bullets, though. I got enough of mum’s face structure to avoid dad’s bio-coded scowl, and while his hair texture is a bitch to deal with I didn’t get his colour. I was grateful for any silver linings I got. And it made me look a little similar to Natalie, if you wish to squint.

If I looked more like her I would be stunning.

And I’d show off the freckles she got from dad and religiously covers with foundation.

My yearning for better genetics got interrupted by Natalie coming back with a table number and folding herself back into her spot with far more grace than she had while getting out of it. She sent a small smile my way before thinking better of it and stared at a random point in the cafe instead.

“Thank you, for the coffee.” My words made her flinch a little bit, though it seemed to have shaken free some of her sullen anxiety.

I couldn’t let her stay like that. The whole thing was hurting me a lot, but I had a chance to make her feel better. Something in me feels a little cleaner afterwards.

Nat took a breath and started forming thoughts several times, before finally, “I thought it would be different.”

“I don’t know how you thought that.” I spoke the same words as earlier, but I decided to be kind as I said them.

“They know I’m gay.”

I scoffed before I could stop myself. “As if. They’re probably just ignoring the obvious signs.”

“I told them months ago. They’re okay with it.”

Oh, that stung really badly. So they were fine with Natalie not fitting the mould, they’d change the conditions of their love for her, but for me? No, I was a failure already, falling outside of the painted lines on too many counts. They treated me being trans like a signal flare, a symptom of something too fundamentally wrong with me to fix.

“It’s been…” She sighed, “Work - and I probably should have seen that as the sign it was - but I’ve made progress. But they accepted what I taught them and seemed to absorb it. We’re working on undoing the anti-trans stuff.”

“This… doesn’t explain how you thought it would be okay to out me.” I didn’t know if I was getting angrier or feeling more isolated. It was a terrible mix. “This is honestly just evidence that you should have known better.”

Nat cringed away from my quiet scathing, almost choking on her words. “I- Yeah- Yeah… But they were willing to change for me. Willing to learn. I thought they’d be better than that, but I think they’ll come around. I can turn them around for you.”

“No. You can’t.”

My voice was steeped in painful confidence. The authority in my mind sat like an iron spike pierced through my spine, and weighed down my face into a copy of our dad’s immovable scowl. I glared at her without much hate to her, but with all the well-earned disdain our parents had put in me.

“They might…” Gods, her voice was so quiet. So unsure of itself. I make my expression and my voice softer for her while she dropped her gaze to her hands wringing around each other in her lap.

“No, Natalie, you can’t. As much as they want to be politically aligned with you, they don’t really know how to do that past performance. They want you to think they’re accepting, and to do that for how they’ve treated lesbians in the past they genuinely truly do need to change. If you believe they are accepting, then they are. But they aren’t accepting of anything else. They’re able to fake the rest without you noticing.”

“I- That’s-” She didn’t have the energy to continue her interruption.

“Let me put it another way,” I soften my voice further, “They aren’t being forced head-first into their biases against trans people the way their conditional love for you is forcing them to face the first half of the acronym. They’re bound by those conditions just as much as you are, though they have the ability to change them. Me? I’m already outside the bounds of what they can accept. They’ve been treating me like a burden and a financial drain for years. A charity case, from people who think charity is an unbeneficial investment instead of actual kindness.”

“I don’t want to think about them like that…”

“I know you don’t, but I have no choice.” I had no idea how I was keeping so calm.

“I could still try!”

Natalie looked up at me with eyes so wide and hopeful, wishing with all her heart that I could come back home with her. That I could still be in her life.

“It’s not going to work, Nat. They made it very clear in their texts who that spot at home was for.”

Before Nat could speak again we were interrupted by the very silently-apologetic barista, who clearly knew they were interrupting something important, who placed two mugs and a bacon and egg roll on the table before politely running away. I look at the items, confused, knowing I only asked to get the same as Natalie, but the drinks are clearly different.

Nat sniffed, fought off tears and a hysterical, badly-timed giggle, and slid the chai to her side while explicitly not touching the cappuccino or the roll. She mumbled something about messing up the order, but not having any room to eat.

I recognised the tactic, and it made my eyes sting with fierce and warm gratitude. I brought the food close and slid my unlocked phone across to Natalie.

“Take a look if you want.” I bit into the roll and enjoyed the taste of barbeque sauce and egg yolk that tasted a little muted. I knew the flavour was rich, but my stress wasn’t letting go. I still let the tiny pleasure seep into my voice, “Fuck, how did they produce you? You’re so nice…”

The omnipresent taste of tar and bog-mud that had been clinging onto the back of my throat, promising or threatening some violent purging of my stomach at all times, was slowly replaced by something genuinely soft and nice and still so vulnerable as I worked my way through the gifted food.

* * *

I put my mug down as gently as I can with my subtly shaking fingers and pick up the phone that was passed over to me. It feels wrong that I’m let into her secret world so easily, after what I had done to her, but I saw a side of our parents that I had never seen before last week, and I needed to know what was behind that mask.

I pulled up messages and was immediately met with the juxtaposition of me at the top with a normal photo from a few years ago and two conversations beneath with pitch-black profile pictures and the titles ‘bitchcunt’ and ‘dickheadsucker.’ I looked up at Nina for… I don’t know, awareness? Awareness of what she had called them in her contacts, but she was devouring the breakfast roll I got her with all the immaculate, hammer-space ability she has to inhale food at any given pace. My reflex to defend our parents was easily overridden by how grateful she clearly was to get fed.

I turned back to the texts, opening up our mum’s first. Dad could be harsh, and over reactive, so maybe if I started with mum I could still believe they were good people.

I’m not met with kindness.

Where have you gone? Come back. You don’t have anywhere to go. Why would you choose that over us? What did we do to you for you to choose this? What did I do wrong? I thought I raised you smarter than this. Come home, Sebastian. We can talk about this, find a way through. Please stop hurting your body. Is it because you couldn’t go to UW? If you come home we can figure out remote attendance. We can’t help you if you don’t come home. We can’t pay for your education if you leave. Please come back. Who did this to you? Who told you this would be okay to do to yourself?

The messages had all come in one quick flood, a few minutes after the argument I had felt was loud enough for the neighbours to listen in to, and it showed a level of disconnect with Nina that really hurt to see.

I really hated reading her deadname.

It was the same pain I had used for the mistake I desperately wished I could take back. It was that heartburn reflex that made me cringe.

But I had been trying so hard to get them to be better in the one way I knew they weren’t great, so I spoke before I thought and betrayed my new sister.

I kept reading.

There was a large gap in time before the next messages, and she came back with three links to various articles: a study into increased cancer risk for hormone replacement therapy; a news article about high suicide rates in the trans community; and a biographic article of a detransitioner talking about how difficult it was to deal with the long-term effects of HRT. The pie graph from the middle article had been conveniently taken from the article as well by our mother and sent after the links, all bright, dangerous colours and showing very little of the pie chart as ‘safe.’ I immediately knew the pitfalls she fell into, and knew that this collection was only convincing to her because she wanted it to be.

I felt so angry at her, but I still looked at the texts that followed.

You’re damaging your body. Irreparably. You’re taking on so much risk. It’s so hard to undo. So many people kill themselves rather than try. Please stop while you still can. You’re never going to look like a real woman, that will follow you everywhere you go. Why would you want that anyway? Being a woman is terrible. You never get anything you want easily, and no-one respects you. Natalie manages, but I grieve for her every day.

I almost put my phone down at the mention of me, used to try and get Nina to fold herself back into a box that would hurt her. I wanted to stop reading. But I owed my sister for how much I’d hurt her.

You had the chance she couldn’t get, and you’re trying to throw it away. Please come back. I wish I could have raised you better but there’s always still time. It’s never too late. I want my son back.

It wasn’t the tone she ever used with me. The coiling, backtracking bargaining was so alien. But the more I read the more I could clearly imagine the words falling from her lips.

And then it was done. Not a single message more since that night. Not an ounce more effort.

I swapped to ‘dickheadsucker.’

You’re not a girl. You can’t ever be, so stop pretending. You’re pathetic, running away like this… I’ve always tried hard to be your role model, to show you the kind of man you should be, but you’ve ignored each and every lesson I’ve tried to teach you. Your degree has been a waste. Mum has worked hard, struggled to help me pay for it since day one, and all it’s done is turn you into a

I stopped reading. The slur sits caught in the corner of my eye, burnt into the rods and cones that picked up the letters before my focus could catch up. I never want to think of Nina like that.

You’ve made your mother cry. She’s distraught. She’s always been too soft. Why would you do this to her - why are you pushing her away? She poured so much effort into you, despite how much you’ve disappointed her. You need to take responsibility for this. It’s your job, as our eldest, to set an example for Natalie. She’s already a dyke, she can’t think this is okay.

What the fuck? So even my effort into making them accept me was wasted? I couldn’t even change them?

No wonder Nina had no chance.

I sometimes wish she was older than you. Maybe that way you would have turned out closer to okay. We only have one daughter, and she’s so much better than you.

I look up to my sister across the table.

She’s finished the bacon and egg roll I ‘accidentally’ ordered and is halfway through her cappuccino. The comfort of the coffee, ordered that way because she can never quite trust most cafes to do anything else well, has drawn a weak, slight smile to her lips. Her rich brown eyes and expressive stare have been studying me as I read, and maybe the karma I was experiencing was entertaining. She had certainly earned the view.

“Finished?” Nina asked.

“Not quite.” My voice comes out pathetic and mumbled. She deserved better than that, better than my skimpy bravery could muster. But she wasn’t getting anything else. She deserved what she could get.

I took one last look at her face, trying not to see how the golden light streaming through the window was only made more beautiful by the gorgeous tan of her skin, and read the last message from our dad.

You can’t run away from this forever, Sebastian. We’ll have a space for you ready for when you’re willing to face this, once you’ve stopped taking those meds. We want to support you, son. Don’t turn your nose up at us.

I disagreed. She would run and run and never look back. I knew she’d be so much better off without them. I just wish I had been able to get her there in a safer way.