pennysheets | Sibling AU: Misty

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Sibling AU: Misty

They're heading out to dinner for his birthday, all four of them. He's laughing at some dumb dad joke, but later he won't even remember what the joke was, because he doesn't actually remember anything for several minutes before and after it happens. It. Because he has no idea what it is, only that one minute they're driving along like normal, and the next there's light and heat and something that isn't quite pain but does a damn good job pretending like it is. It's magic, he knows, but it's magic unlike anything he's felt before.

And then the next there's a smoking wreck of the family car and an overturned semi truck, and he's curled over their mother sobbing, unable to remember exactly how he got there, but feeling like his blood is singing with more power than he's ever had before. It doesn't make her get up. He knows his eyes are pitch black, the air is warping around his hands, but nothing he's pushing into her body is making her get up.

Then suddenly Misty's there, and they're stumbling away together from the smoke and the blood. "I don't know what happened," is all he can say, the panic gone but now feeling numb, shocky. The magic is draining out of him as they weave along the side of the road. The police can find them later, probably, but for now it's just them. "Misty, I don't know what happened."

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Her ears are ringing. She's fine, and then hear ears are ringing, and there is the most chilling, pervasive absence. Like two black holes suspended in front of her on the road, sucking up gravel and burned rubber and everything familiar, everything safe. Two bodies if they can be called that, sinking into themselves. Into nothing. They teeter dangerously in her vision as she frees herself from the car - thank god for seatbelts - and finds her footing less than sure. Balance is lost soon after and she takes a knee, feebly trying to take stock of herself. Head hurts. Chest hurts. Ears hurt. Ready to be sick.

Two sinkholes, but not three, and she can cling to that. Focus on that. The smaller form huddling is still very much alive.

She can't bring herself to move again. Focuses on catching her breath and flexing various muscles waiting for pangs to come and greedily taking pleasure in finding she has them still. Only when Chase's panicked breathing, the raggedness of his sobs hurts too much, does she rise. Plod awkwardly over and wrap her arms around his shoulders to gently and insistently pull him back. They have to get to a house, she thinks. They have to call someone. That this is technically her new responsibility chills her. Easy to focus on walking then.

"Crash," she mumbles, her own kind of numb. Not all there. That's an oversimplification, something else must have happened to char them like that, surely, but there's no sense making it worse with speculating. A crash. One arm is still around his shoulder, as much seeking support as supporting. "Are you okay?"

"I'm okay." He's not okay. He's shaking a little under her arm, clinging to her side. But he's not... hurt. There's nothing bleeding, there's nothing broken, nothing burnt. "I'm okay. I'm-- I feel weird. Something happened."

Something that wasn't a crash. He doesn't actually know what a car crash should feel like, but this can't be it. This-- this thrumming in his veins. It's not pain. It still feels like magic. But magic is for fun things, like teleporting his sister to the other side of the house or sliding a cup just out of Dad's reach when he's not looking. It's for bringing a bird back to life.

He stops, tries to shrug free and look back. "Misty. Misty. Mom and Dad--"

Her arm tightens, gently urging him onward. They're gone. This she knows, and lingering is going to make it worse. It'll be too easy to blame themselves.

But she can feel the energy coming off of him, and it isn't necessarily a comfort given the circumstances. She nods, finally, to his unfinished point.

"We need to call people, if they don't see the smoke and come first." They need a goal, and a straightforward one will help. "Send people and..." And? "Straighten things out. We're supposed to be calm."

Supposed.

"They can't-- we can't--" He actually struggles to get out from under her arm, flailing wildly in the direction they came from. There's a horrible realization coming to him. That power, that lightning, that's what happened. It came into the car and struck him, but he's still here. "I have to fix it!"

"Chase," she interjects, lacking in aggression but with force. "You can't, this isn't-- they're already gone, there's just - nothing."

The absence doesn't fade as they walk. It aches, like lost teeth. It couldn't be less like the bird, and that wasn't his forte. "We need a hospital, we need...to think."

He makes a pained whine in the back of his throat, but stops at the sound of his name, hanging from her hand. "It's my fault, I did it, it came from me-- to me-- I think I killed them--"

"Don't." Exactly what she doesn't want and exactly what he comes to in under two minutes. Same as ever. "Don't say that. You wouldn't've."

"Then what was it. Did you see-- did you feel it? I feel different Misty, there's-- there's something different." He's breathing too fast, panicking again (still), and his eyes are filming over with black again on instinct. It's right there, the power, easier to grasp than it ever was and-- and it wants to be used. He wants to use it. He needs to fix this.

"I feel it, Chase." And the disappointment is clear; they don't dovetail, his energy and those drafts. Those are holes he can't fill, material he won't be able to pull back. "It's different. You're not-- this is too much for one person."

"But. Then." He swallows, the air warping around his fists again, but none of the power lets loose yet. "I have to fix it," he pleads. "What if it happens again."

"You have to breathe," she insists, "We can't freak out, it's just - it's just gonna be more likely shit goes wrong. And if someone saw, we'd-- we just can't." Not so open, not now, not with her ears ringing and the world wavering dangerously. "It's done, I can't feel anything."

Chase is not good at not freaking out. Chase runs on high emotion the best of times. And right now is definitely not the best of times.

Fortunately, maybe, his emotion also switches at the drop of a hat, and the power vibrates down into the ground as he stumbles back to her side to throw his arms around her and cling. "I'm sorry-- I'm sorry, Misty, I-- I don't know what to do or how to-- I'm--" Scared. He's terrified, but even now, he's still an eighteen year old kid and that's hard to say.

The cling is both comforting and stabilizing, so she couldn't say she was anything less than grateful. She mirrors it.

"Breathe. It's okay, you didn't do anything, it's not your fault." Regardless of actual occurrence she's going to keep to that like a mantra, like a prayer. "It's okay to freak out, just try and keep calm. I'm still here, I've still got you."

And she'll take care of him, best she can. Always.

For a long moment, he can't speak or breathe, choking into her shoulder and shuddering. But he finally gets some veneer of control back. "Okay. Okay. You're sure nobody will--" Will know it was him. He still can't believe that it's not his fault, but he's willing to not say it, at least.

Because they can't just... disappear. There's going to be police reports. Doctors checking to make sure they're okay. Lawyers. Arrangements. They're both old enough to inherit without having to hold anything in trust, now-- as of today, exactly. The thought nearly sets him off again, but he wipes his face viciously and lets Misty go.

They certainly can't figure out what the hell happened from here.

What would they think, she doesn't say. What the fuck would they be able to prove? Nobody will be blaming him (but maybe, she fears, himself) and nobody will, for reasons legitimate or invented, separate them. Her arms hang limp in the air once he steps back, aloft with sentiment and because every thought has to fight through a fog.

"No." She then says, firmly, that finally breaching said fog. "Nobody. We're going to find a house and call this in, and I might need a doctor, and then we're going to....think."

His eyes get bigger, and he holds her at arm's length, looking her up and down. "Where are you hurt? Shit, Misty, you should've-- you should've said something." Because yes, he's leaping right to "I hurt my sister" on top of "I killed my parents".

He's keeping it to himself, now, though. There's problems immediately in front of him, and Misty doesn't need to hear it, if she's hurt. God. If only he had power like hers, he has no idea how to fix an injury on a person.

"Dunno, head?" Not quite a slur, which bodes...not terribly. "I don't think I'm dying. Sure I'm not dying. We just need to get this...sorted, and I need to sit down."

At a hospital, because she's not certain how to go about repairing potential internal damage. They've been fortunate enough to not need the effort. She feels almost sheltered now, that it hadn't crossed her mind.

"I'm gonna be fine, Chase. It's okay. Maybe-- bring us a little further up the road, if you can?"

"Sure," he says. "Sure, I can." He's ghosted himself places loads of times, and he ghosted her by herself once, so he knows he can. It's just doing them both at once now.

With this much power, he's sure he can do it.

"Just hold onto me, okay?" He wraps her up again, this time protective, and sinks into the magic, taking them away into smoke, reforming up a whole mile up the road. He knows this stretch of higheway, he knows where the houses start up, where the dumpy little diner is. They're a handful of steps from hitting the diner's parking lot, just within the trees.

Hold she does, secure and still to ensure she complicates it as little as she can. A slow inhale and closed eyes, air shifting around them, and a peek confirms they're intact and where they ought to be. Her grip tightens a moment, affectionate, more hug than groping for support.

"I'm proud," she can say honestly. A tall order under considerable pressure. "No details to anybody inside, alright? Just in, 'we had an accident', and the phone." Tempting as it may be to include our parents didn't make it, she doesn't want to provide any potential to tip their hand.

Same page. A team. She takes the first, mostly-steady step forward.

It's not hard to get somebody to pass along a phone, with two shell-shocked teenaged kids (or, well, one teenaged kid and one just-barely-not-teenaged) who clearly just went through something. The call to the police is... hard, but it happens, and then one of the waitresses sets pie in front of them, and it's just waiting.

Chase keeps a hand on Misty at all times, whether holding one of hers, or on her shoulder. It's only contact that helps him keep the magic from surging again, in public.

The eldest, she feels it's her responsibility to endure the call. It's almost reassuring, when the shift in tone from the officer on the other end doesn't signal the end of questioning. He's kind enough to permit her to dance around saying it aloud - our parents just died - and the rest is good to get out now just in case anything in her head stays scrambled. (Hell, reassuring that she can recount it, that she can answer all questions asked.)

Chase's presence is a boon she'd be much less functional without, gripping his hand through the call so hard she's surprised it's offered at all again afterward. Her head slumps against his when all is said and done, she shifts against the cheap upholstery under them, and she sighs. Almost an insulting reminder, being here, of what the evening was supposed to be.

"You should eat," she nudges, and doesn't dare point out it's his birthday. "Gonna be a long couple of days, plenty of time to forget then. Hospital food won't be as good."

"You should eat," he says back dully, distracted. Between the aftermath of the crash, the aftermath of the magic, and the whole goddamn phone call that he could only hear half of-- mixed with the way his power still rumbles in him like too much food already-- he's hardly hungry. The fact that it's his birthday hasn't come back into his head since the crash. "You're the one hurt."

"Good point. Would hate to miss all the nutritional benefit of pie crust, whipped cream, and ice cream." She dearly wants it to be a joke, though she can't put quite as much energy into it the tone should carry. "Grab a spoon, match me bite-for-bite. We're gonna be stubborn, we split it."

A beat, and more softly: "It's going to be okay."

He pouts a little, but picks up a fork anyway. He just kind of stares at the bite he took off, though. "It's not. It's not gonna be okay, Misty. They're. They're gone." If Misty can't get them back, who could? His magic clearly doesn't work that way.

Which brings him around to the quiet reiteration: "And it's my fault." Because something had happened. His magic did he, he knows it.

"We'll think about it, we can't- too much is going on, we can't make any calls. Right now we calm down, think later."

And a bite is taken to punctuate that.

"And it is not your fault."

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