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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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."

"Then what happened, Misty?" he hisses back, in a fierce undertone, not to be overheard by everyone else in their back booth. He leans closer to her, still not eating his bite of pie. "It was magic. And your magic doesn't do that."

"Last I checked yours never did that either," she's quick to retort. "So unless you were somehow trying it seems equal odds either of us- I don't know, did something. Turned into a lightning rod for a second. I don't know."

And in the spirit of frustration and childish squabbling, she'll take the first bite and set to chewing.

"It was me the magic-- touched," he whispers angrily. As if "touched" was remotely appropriate to describe what happened. He still isn't sure he's remembering it right, but he knows this much. "Me it-- changed. Not you. Something happened, and it's because of me."

"That doesn't make it your fault," she's quick to retort, as quick as she can be with ice cream packed in a cheek. "If we can't control it and didn't intend something to happen, that's not just - suddenly on us. We stay level headed, and we think, and we'll- we'll fix it."

He shuts his mouth. She said they'll fix it.

That's good enough. For now. There's a promise, and she'll help, and-- and they'll fix this. He can't quite let go of the guilt, the terror that it might happen again and maybe this time Misty will be dead, too, but he can maybe... put it aside for a little while longer.

He finally eats some of the damn pie.

It's another two weeks before they can do anything about it, though. First there's the police coming to pick them up. There's the hospital. The will reading and the lawyers talking about trust funds and life insurance. The funeral. Through all of it, Chase just kind of wants to explode on the spot, surrounded by people who don't know it's his fault this happened. He has to make nice, be polite, keep the magic under his skin under control.

By the time the last guest leaves and the last paper is signed, once the car drops them off at home, all he can do is yank off his tie, kick off his hideously uncomfortable shoes, and flop back on the couch in the big house and stare at the ceiling. He hasn't forgotten that they're going to fix this. It's all that kept him going. He even has an idea for how, maybe. But god, he's so tired.

It's busy, dull and heavy busy that only compounds as time goes on. In a way she's grateful, the more there is to look at and reply to is more between her and needing to dig into the meat of their problem and the tauntingly vague prospect of solutions. But Chase is withering in front of everyone, so when it's all said and done and they can rest without some scheduled interruption down the line it's almost a relief to see him sink into himself. Express something, even minutely.

She makes rounds - waters houseplants, starts laundry, further sweet busywork that they've been too busy to attend - and finally cycles back t the living room. He's had a minute undisturbed.

She sets down a glass of water, nudges a throw blanket his way, and falls onto the couch beside him.

"What're you thinking?"

He shifts so he can put his head in her lap, instead of just on the couch cushion. "That I want to sleep for a week. But I don't know if I'm actually going to be able to sleep at all." He feels like he hasn't slept enough since the crash.

Undoubtedly he hasn't. His hair will receive the customary ruffle, intended more to comfort than to tease than on average. He's mulling serious things, she knows. She is too. But those little human needs pile up and will only make their lot worse, so she moves down the normal checklist.

"I think there's melatonin, somewhere?"

Dad used it.

"Probably," he replies dully. He has no idea if it will work properly, but he supposes it's worth a shot. Part of his problem is the magic, part of it is the grief, and what's remaining is mostly the guilt. He doesn't deserve decent sleep.

Which means, laying there with his head in his sister's lap, he suggests, "We should find our parents. The birth ones. They might have some idea what happened."

Her eyes fly open.

"How do we do that, exactly?"

Nobody present has magic all that helpful to that endeavor, unless he's really been holding out.

"There's got to be adoption records, right?" he says, prodding her bicep with one finger. "Even if we've never seen them. If I've got a name...." He looks away, maybe a tiny bit guiltily. He's never told Misty about the weird, creepy ghost thing he pulled up a year ago, and he'd never done it again. He hadn't wanted to admit he was a little afraid of it. Afraid of what it said about his power. Besides, it had completely wiped him out, at the time, and he hated feeling that drained and empty.

(He also hasn't tried to pull up a creepy ghost thing of their parents. Adopted parents. Partly he just hasn't had time, but mostly he's even more afraid of that. What they might say. What they'd look like, dead and spooky.)

But if either of their birth parents are dead, he's pretty sure he can pull their creepy ghost thing, and get some information out of them. With the amount of power he's got now, he's sure he could do it again without passing out. "If I have their names, and one of them are dead, I think I can talk to them."

"That's a thing?"

Her focus intensifies tenfold, gaze all but boring through him while he averts his eyes. It sounds worrisome, dangerous, and in part adjacent enough sounding to her own powers that it nearly sounds soothing.

"We- there has to be records, sure, but how do you do that? Why did I never hear about it?"

"I only did it once. And it made me pass out then. Remember that night I was out all night and I got grounded for the next week?" And then got out of being grounded two days in because their parents are bleeding hearts.

Were bleeding hearts.

"Dad thought I was out smoking pot, I looked so bad. That's why. I thought. You now. I didn't want my power to be nothing but spiders, ghosting, and summoning the dead, you know? It was creepy." He likes his spiders, most of the time, but they're still not exactly fluffy bunnies. "So I didn't tell you. Like that would make it not real."

'Out all night' hardly rings bells, but the grounding narrows it down handily.

Worrying to think he's been worried. Doubly that he didn't think he could tell her, when they've already been in as deep as they are. When it's her job to look after him, be it an outside force giving him trouble or his own damn self.

"Sit up, I can't hug you like this."

And this is clearly the most important thing.

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