fandomhigh | Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part II

The picnics were always a good time to mingle and watch hot guys take their shirts off. She thoroughly approved of both. So she was going to pop in, grab some snacks off the table, and --

And her heart stopped.

That girl, over there. In the suit. The suit that looked so damn much like a Turks uniform, and the bobbed hair ...

Elena shook her head quickly. Funny the connections your mind could make. This was just some girl who happened to look from behind like R-- ... like someone she used to know, once.

So she was going to walk up to the newbie, who was going to turn around and have a different face entirely, and she'd be relieved and make small talk and find a hot guy to watch. Really.

Elena cleared her throat as she approached, reminding herself how ridiculous she was being.

"Excuse me?"

That was a voice that pinged as mostly unfamiliar though there was something... probably a passing similarity to someone she'd heard before. Rosalind turned her head, blue-green eyes taking in the other blonde.

"Yes?" A bit short, a bit impatient. A bit curious too, if you were listening. "Can I help you?"

Oh ShivaIfritHolyMeteorfallMeteorfallMeteorfall. The ground was crumbling under her feet and her mouth wouldn't work. She tried to open it, only to discover she couldn't close it once she did.

Her sister's eyes were staring back at her as if she was a stranger.

Holy, she was young. And alive. And here.

"You ... you can't." Be here. She couldn't.

Was it just her, or was this whole picnic getting a little swimmy? Kind of fuzzy around the edges?

Her first retort to that--what was it that she couldn't be or do?--died on her lips as the other girl went alarmingly pale.

Rosalind grit her teeth and forced herself out of her chair. "You shouldn't be here if you're not feeling well." It came out waspishly (did no one know how to take care of themselves?) but the hand that reached to try and steady the girl by the elbow was firm but not angry.

She just hoped the girl didn't fall and take her down as well. Rosalind was well aware of how precarious her own balance was at the moment.

Ugh, why was Rosalind always so damn bossy? Nag nag nag and now she was going to lecture Elena about taking proper care of herself.

Her temper flared, and so did a ball of homesickness, right in the pit of her stomach. She hadn't realized until this moment how much she'd missed her sister.

She was fighting back tears and hoping that Rosalind really was going to chew her out. Except she also wanted to stomp her foot and say rude things. All mixed up into a weird mish-mash that was making it harder for her to say anything at all.

When Rosalind's hand clasped around her elbow, she didn't think. She instinctively pulled the other girl into a viselike death-grip. She was never, ever letting go.

"..."

Rosalind's silence was eloquent as she found herself caught up in a hug she couldn't even begin to figure out had be warranted. A stranger was hugging her.

Clinging like there was nothing else in the world. Carefully, with years old skill in holding Elena, back before things had gotten--confused--Rosalind wrapped her arms around the shorter girl, her fingers moving to brush the blonde hair gently.

She didn't know what was going on. "You little idiot," she said, half a laugh, half a huff. "You're not well enough to be outside at this rate." A fever? Some sort of cold? Was she delusional or crazy?

It really was her. Smoothing Elena's hair back and calling her a little idiot, that same mix of affection and reprimand in her voice, please excuse Elena, that was absolutely not a sniffly little hiccup.

"I'm fine," she insisted, stubbornly. "It's you, isn't it? It's really you."

Most of the time, she had wanted to see her sister again so she could chew her out and yell. She had not expected "cling like a life preserver" to outrank that.

"You're not fine," she scolded, absently checking the girl's temperature with the back of one hand. "You're pale as a ghost." No fever though, that was something.

The sniffly little hiccup was alarming. As was the fact that the girl was still clinging and insisting on nonsense being spouted.

"My name is Rosalind," she said evenly, fingers gentle in the other girl's hair. Meant to be soothing, like she was dealing with a very upset child.

Well, you are one. That would not help matters, Elena. She was going to straighten up and nod. And wipe at her eyes. And pretend that, somewhere, she was a Turk and not a nine-year-old who missed climbing onto her sister's lap.

"I know that," she said huffily. Sounding very much like an upset child. Rosalind always did that to her. Dammit.

She cleared her throat and tried to ignore the fact that she wanted to scream or cry or hug Rosalind again. Mostly that one. "I ... know you. Y-you just don't ....... recognize me, right now. Do you?"

That last bit had such an odd twinge of hopefulness to it. Maybe Rosalind would blink and realize exactly who she was and they could chat, and laugh, and catch up on old times.

Not fucking likely.

As soon as the girl had started pulling away, Rosalind had let her go. She wasn't going to cling to some stranger for a moment longer than she had to.

The girl's words had her equal parts disturbed and confused. There was an odd note in her voice as Rosalind took the moment to study her, try and match features up. Place that nagging familiarity about the voice.

Was this the person Jacob had mentioned he knew from Gaia? It had to be, didn't it?

Rosalind frowned, reaching out to tug a stray piece of the girl's blonde hair into order as she considered the eyes that regarded her with a painful swirl of emotions in them. "Stand up straight," she ordered, using the words to cover her confusion as she ran down facial features and began coming up with… what was an impossibility.

Those eyes. That nose. The set of her jaw and the curve of the mouth. The guarded way she stood, yet sounded almost hopeful. Do you have time to help me with that kick I told you about? A million memories, just like that. That hair.

Rosalind fingered that hair. "I thought you were growing it out," she said finally, absolutely bewildered and, suddenly, rather desperately needing to sit. She wavered on her feet—legs unsteady both from disuse and from shock of her own.

Welcome to Fandom, Rosalind.

"Sit," Elena said quickly, pushing her sister into the chair behind her. "You're the one who's going to fall over, now." So there.

This was not a competition, Elena.

"I ..." She cleared her throat and tears were welling up again and Rosalind knew her. Recognized her. Really, really did. A giddy laugh slipped out. "I d-did grow it out. Some. Then I cut it. I'm ... growing it ... out again? I wanted ......."

Why was she talking about her hair?

Because that was so much easier than talking about, well. This.

"What are you doing here?" she breathed.

(ooc: elena is her normal self and not weetiny for this ping, obviously, but the icon seemed appropriate dammit so I am going with it.)

Sitting. The hard plastic warm through the seat of her pants and her hands almost shaking as she wrapped slender fingers around the other girl's--Elena's--wrist. Proof she was real.

Could you touch an illusion? One that talked and stared and asked questions like she couldn't believe she got to ask them. Something in that, distantly, niggled at her, struck her as wrong. Rosalind ignored that for now.

She had a little sister all grown up in front of her. Waiting for an answer, any answer.

Rosalind doubted her sister would care for the answer. She never had. "I'm here for work," she said, giving that much of the truth. Leaving out the part where she was here because Tseng had wanted her out of danger, as much as any Turk could be, while she recovered. Too much of a target. "How are you… you're nine back home."

Just that morning she'd left a note for her father and Elena, saying she had a long-term assignment and likely wouldn't be back for awhile.

"I should have guessed," Elena said, unable to keep a bitter note out of her voice.

She, herself, was a Turk. She did not get to resent them for being the evil people who had stolen her sister. So she absolutely wasn't doing that. For the record.

"I ... grew up," she said, swallowing past a lump in her throat. Examining every inch of her sister's face. "I think I'm older than you. How am I older than you? It doesn't work like that. I'm not ..."

"Elena." Warningly. They have had this argument far too many times. Luckily, Elena went on, talking.

… in broken incoherent sentences.

Rosalind stared back at her sister, trying to wrap her mind around this Elena and her Elena.

"I'm sixteen," she said briskly. "And you're still younger than me, no matter how many birthdays you've had."

So there. Elena was her little sister.

"Besides," she continued, a tiny edge in her voice as Rosalind tried to convince herself that this was fine. "You're still shorter than I am."

And Elena had clung to her like she was the only solid thing on The Planet.

Edited 2010-05-08 21:20 (UTC)

"I'm nineteen," Elena said, a touch primly. "Three years older. I graduated from the academy and from this school, just now. Everyone's going to think you're my little sister."

Why she always had to antagonize Rosalind, she would never know. It probably had to do with their father.

"Did Tseng send you here?"

No reason.

But Elena was very glad her sister wasn't a mind-reader, suddenly.

Eyebrows? Definitely raised.

"My orders are none of your business." Coolly even as her eyes narrowed slightly. "Only idiots would think that and I won't have time to engage them in pointless chatter."

"Right, Turks first, family second," Elena said darkly. "No, really, it's Turks first, Dad second, and me when you don't have something more important come up."

Which was unfair and cruel, and Elena knew it.

"I'm not sure how someone would have to be an idiot to think I'm the older sister when I'm older than you. Or are you just so amazing that people wouldn't dare to think anything less of you?"

"You still act like a child," she snapped back, wishing to get up and stand and not yet daring. "If you wish to be thought of as older then act it." That was equally unfair and cruel considering why Elena had reacted as she did... but Rosalind didn't know that.

Her lips thinned.

"Do not presume to dictate my priorities to me."

Elena flinched, quickly, as if she'd been slapped. When she opened her eyes again, they were hard, and her jaw was firm, even if hurt was swimming in her eyes, too.

"I forgot," she said, coolly. "Excuse me. Caring about your own fucking sister is something only children do. I'll be more adult in the future and only watch out for myself. Maybe then I can live up to your shining example, Rosalind."

Unfair, hurtful, and wrong, but Rosalind (which wasn't her fucking real name, it was her fake name and a stupid fucking lame one at that) had left her there, with dad, so she could flit off and be a Turk and think she was the most special thing ever. Fuck Rosalind.

Edited 2010-05-08 22:09 (UTC)

In contrast, Rosalind went remoter. Colder. Harder to reach and she almost visibly drew a wall around her.

"And you have the nerve to call me self-centered?" Rosalind said softly. Dangerously. "You have no idea where my priorities are."

Number one priority: Elena. Always had been from the moment her little sister had been born. Life just... had a way of putting distance in.

"Get a hold of yourself and stop spouting nonsense."

Elena closed her eyes and stopped shaking. Willed herself not to. Rosalind wanted cold? Fine. She would stop being childish.

"Fine." Elena was now as detached as she could make herself, ignoring the knot twisting in her stomach and pretending this girl was a stranger. "Reno's here. Older. I'm sure he counts as enough of a Turk that you can coordinate your plans effectively."

It had not dawned on Elena that Rosalind didn't know she was a Turk, and would have no reason to suspect it, either.

"I'll leave you to your priorities. Welcome to Fandom. I'll try not to be in your way."

And that was Elena leaving. Before she hugged the other girl again, or started crying, or made things even worse. Although that last one seemed like it was nearly impossible.

Rosalind stared after Elena for a long while, still watching even after the crowds had swallowed her sister and there was nothing to be seen but unfamiliar faces.

Elena was a Turk? It sounded ludicrous but that's what it seemed like her words had been implying.

The fact that Reno was apparently here—older?—took a far second to the raging headache she had. Rosalind fumbled for a glass of water and leaned back in her chair.

Family was complicated.

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part II

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