To The Fairies They Draw Near
SYNOPSIS: You erase your sister in small, careful ways.
At first it’s just easier that way. A harmless omission. When the girls ask about siblings, you say you don’t have any. When interviews come, when cameras start rolling, when fans begin reaching for pieces of you that were never meant to belong to them—you keep saying it. Only child.
It makes sense, because fame eats everything it touches. Better that she stays outside the noise, outside the stories strangers will write about your life. Better that the world only ever gets half of you.
Until a phone call comes and changes everything. Because suddenly the sister you hid so carefully from the world is gone from it entirely.
PAIRINGS: sophia x reader, OT6 x platonic!7th member!reader,
WARNINGS: allusions to character death, grief, hurt/comfort. Just sad shit, man.
It was never meant to be a secret.
You can’t hide a life, after all.
But you tried. Not willingly or consciously. At least not the first time.
It was a random day during training, weeks after Dani had joined you and the others. You were all sitting in a circle during break, one of the few moments where no staff was hovering or expecting something. Which was the main reason you were wary of the girls as a whole.
Because even without cameras around, they were still pretending.
Like this was just another dance rehearsal. Like you were all friends who happened to train together every day. Like if you all sat close enough, laughed at the right jokes, and held eye contact long enough, something real might grow out of it.
It bothered you more than you liked admitting—even now—how quickly everyone had agreed to play along. There was this quiet understanding: smile, bond, form little alliances.
Pretend this wasn’t a competition designed to leave most of you behind. Pretend there wouldn’t only be six girls standing at the end.
So, naturally, when Ezrela asked a very innocent "Do you have any siblings?” you only swallowed and chose, "No."
Because no amount of media training or etiquette lessons or whatever new bullshit they invented that week would take her from you. Maybe it was irrational. But you knew there was a chance they would select you. Why would they scout you if not?
That’s what your sister always said, anyway.
“I’m just saying." The phone was propped on the counter as she chopped an onion. The phone was close enough that you could hear her clearly, but she was almost yelling. Loud, as she always has been. "They came to Casablanca just to talk to you. In person. They even sent someone just to convince Baba.”
You picked at a loose thread of your sweater. “They also scouted Manon. And Lara. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Hbiba,” she sighed, placing the knife down. “You know that’s not the same.”
She picks up the phone, and her face is too close to the camera. “I’m serious,” she said. “You’re incredible. Like—scary good. Generational talent. And no, I’m not just saying that because we have the same gorgeous face.”
You’d smiled, and it made her smile too. You met her eyes through the phone screen, almost six thousand miles away.
“I’ll never understand why you can’t see yourself the way I do." Her smile is soft and genuine. “But I’ll always be there to remind you how awesome you are. Trust me, the world will see it too.”
That’s how you knew that if or when you were selected, everything would change.
The fans would feel entitled to every piece of your life; the company would frame any narrative the way they saw fit. You were prepared for the hate and the scrutiny and the parasocial madness. There was no reason she had to go through it too.
So, it’d been a simple lie at the time. But then you kept choosing, again and again. No, I don’t have any siblings. Yeah, I’m an only child.
There were the ones that had siblings, and there were the ones that didn’t. Apparently you were the latter.
Your sister had laughed over the phone when you told her one night.
“Can you imagine I visited one day?” She'd rolled her eyes at the camera. “They would pass out, dude.”
You scoffed. “That’s why you’re not visiting.”
Dramatic as ever, she’d rolled over on your bed, pouting at the camera. “You don’t want to see me? Do you not miss me?”
“Then why are you hiding in the closet—pun intended—like I’m your sneaky link?”
It’d made you laugh, your shoulder pressed against the cool metal of one of the brooms. The space was tiny, the only light coming from your screen, blue from the LEDs in your room.
You were hiding in a closet because you didn’t want the most important thing of your life to be touched by the noise. She was in your room, on your bed, because she missed you.
That’s how you’d always been, really: you hiding, her reaching.
You kept choosing the same thing because, to you, you were protecting her.
And maybe that first choice had been wrong. The omission that turned to lying that turned her into a secret. Because when the call came, your father sobbing on the phone until your mother had to take over, there was nowhere for you to put the sound of it.
Your mother’s voice had been thin in a way you’d never said before. When she said it was a car accident, sudden, you’d laughed into your hands. Because your sister hated driving.
She would always complain about traffic, gripping the steering wheel as she yelled in the quiet of her car with you laughing over the phone. She’d rant about bad drivers and how the whole concept of cars was stupid when walking existed.
What do Americans think we ride in Africa? Donkeys? One day I’m going to sell this car and buy a donkey.
You’d laughed again, a small, breathless sound that scraped the inside of your throat.
Your mother had stopped talking for a moment.
“Are you there?” she’d asked.
Then your brain decided to make sense of it. A mistake, maybe. This woman had called the wrong number. The wrong person. Someone else’s daughter.
Because it couldn’t be yours.
Because she’d existed six minutes earlier in life, and you had always assumed she would exist six minutes after you died too. That was the agreement.
She wouldn’t break her promise.
When your hands shook and your face paled so badly, Sophia had rushed to you, asking—begging—what was wrong, but you couldn’t say. My sister is dead. Your mouth couldn’t sound it out.
You’d shaken your head instead and packed your bags. It didn’t matter what was in the bag. It didn’t matter what excuse you gave to HYBE. It didn’t matter that thirteen hours on a plane happened in seconds.
Just the silence in your chest.
You’d faced your mother until she couldn’t look at you anymore, because your face was everything she’d lost, and she didn’t know how to hold you without seeing her.
You’d missed the ghusl, but you didn’t mind. The women of your family gathered for the ritual washing, but you couldn’t imagine seeing her face like that. You missed the prayer at the mosque.
When you landed, your father was waiting. And you knew, before he even spoke, that you’d missed the burial. That the plane hadn’t been faster than culture.
Because he looked like something had hollowed him out from the inside. Because when he hugged you his hands trembled so badly you could feel it through your jacket.
“Forgive us. We had to bury her.”
Because tradition mattered more than saying goodbye.
Your baba had held your hand, tears in his eyes, and said, "Come. Let’s go see her.”
So you’d stood at the grave. A life turned to dirt and rocks. You hadn’t seen her, part of you was relieved. The idea of seeing her like that—still, wrapped in silk, fragile—made your stomach twist violently.
But another part of you kept imagining it anyway. The women in your family washing her a final time. Strangers touching her hair. Your mother closing her eyes. Your father folding her hands together.
You stared for a long time. Waiting, you think. As if your mind were expecting movement, a voice from somewhere saying there had been a mistake. But nothing moved. The wind passed quietly over the cemetery. Cars drove by the highway. The clouds moved above. Life continued.
And all you could think about was the last time you spoke to her, your brain hanging on to every useless detail.
You were on break from rehearsal, so you’d gone out to the rooftop. It was cold in Los Angeles, almost night. She had been lying on her bed, phone propped up against a pillow, the ceiling fan spinning slowly above her.
“You look tired,” she had said immediately.
You’d roll your eyes, as you always did. “I just finished rehearsal.”
“Rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal,” she’d mocked, waving her hand dramatically. “You’re becoming unbearable.”
You remember the way her hair fell over her face when she turned to reach for something on the nightstand.
She had asked about Sophia at one point. Nothing serious, just teasing as she always did.
“Your little leader friend,” she’d said with a grin. “You still staring at her like a lost puppy?”
She had laughed at you .Just the way she always did when she knew she had guessed something right.
The conversation drifted the way your conversations always did—jumping between subjects without landing anywhere important. University classes. Your rehearsal schedule. A stupid fight she had gotten into with your baba earlier that day.
“He wanted to drive me,” she complained. “Like I’m twelve.”
You told her to let him. She made a face.
“I’m not giving him the satisfaction.”
You remember telling her to text you when she got to campus.
It was such a normal sentence. Something you’d said a thousand times before without thinking about it.
She didn’t hang up until you looked at her, always.
“Six minutes,” she’d say.
I came first, she meant. I’m right behind you, you’d promise.
You don't remember falling, just the stinging under your knees and open palms as if something could reach for you. You tilted your head back at a godless sky and screamed.
There was no choice anymore.
It was never meant to be a secret. Not really.
But when you came back to Los Angeles and the girls asked how home was, you smiled and said it was fine. My parents said hello; you’d lied, because your parents couldn’t say much on the days that followed. When Sophia looked at you, suspicious, you kissed her cheek and headed up to bed.
Not over interviews and performance and fan meets. Not when a fan leans closer than security would like to thank you for saving their life. Not even when the company suggests you take a few more days off. Not at night, half-drunk with Lara and Megan on the couch, and they ask what the fairy tattoo on your forearm means. Not when you meant to say, I have a twin. We got matching tattoos.
But the line between meaning to and actually doing is a lot less a line and a lot more a slope. One you find yourself stumbling down more often these days.
So, when the girls get all excited about your birthday one of those mornings it's raining and you are all unnecessarily sharing a couch in the apartment you share with Manon, you can’t lie again.
They know something's wrong.
You tell them you’re not feeling it, which doesn’t go well.
“Baby,” Dani holds your face, squeezing your cheeks to bring you inches from hers. “We absolutely cannot let your twentieth birthday go by without a big celebration.”
Yoonchae nods from the floor, “Like a big party. Or normal party. You know, a party.”
You smile. “Or… we could just stay here and have cake?”
They all talk over themselves, a flurry of complaints and plans that overlap until they’re fighting each other. It’s the closest you’ve felt to home in the past eight weeks Then, Sophia leans in close, her breath next to your ear making goosebumps rise on your neck.
You nod, not trusting your voice for much when she’s around.
“We just want to celebrate you. They can be a bit crazy about it, but she smiles. “You deserve to be celebrated. Always, mahal.”
That’s how you ended up here, anyway.
Sitting on the kitchen counter, the apartment filled to its capacity with friends and friends of friends, was a blue cake with a Mamma Mia reference that would have made her crack up. The candles are tilted, halfway melting into the cake because Manon decided everyone should sing it in Arabic despite no one actually knowing what Google Translate says.
It makes you laugh. A full-bellied laugh that has Sophia leaning into you, and Yoonchae swinging her arm around your shoulder so you’re all squeezed on your side of the counter.
You’re not sure when it changes.
One second they’re all looking at you, waiting for you to blow the candles, with laughter still spilling from your dimples. And then the next, you can’t breathe. It’s a laugh that turns into a sob, and before you can control it, you’re covering your eyes with your hands as tears spill faster than you can hold.
There’s a stutter in the room.
No one knows what to do. No one knows what happened.
The girls hold you, tentatively, because they don’t know either. There are whispers, the room shrinking around you until you can’t feel the chair under you.
The room is quiet, and you realize it’s the ringing in your ears.
Lara whispers, “It’s going to be okay.” Manon starts herding people out of the apartment with Yoonchae. Sophia never lets go. Dani’s rubbing your hair, and Megan kneels in front of you, fingers tracing circles on your thigh.
You’re not sure how long you sit there, hiding. But once you start, you can’t stop.
Because there should be pink and blue candles. Having a twin means your parents master the art of compromise, so it’s never either blue for you or pink for her—but both for each of you.
It was never meant to be a secret.
“I had a sister.” Your voice is rough and your eyes dead. They think you’re crazy. “A twin sister.”
note: this one was hard to write, so i just want to say i don't take grief lightly. writing has become the only and best way to cope with my own grief so this meant a lot to me. as with everything i do, this is for the person that made sense to my world. i hope you guys like it 🤍
