Savage Siblings: “We were supposed to look out for each other!”
Merry Christmas, I brought you sibling trauma ;)
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“Why did you keep this?”
Gary turns around, looking at his sister Scandal picking up a picture from the top of his old Bureau desk. He sighed. “It’s the only picture I have of us.”
The picture was of a very young Gary, glasses almost too big for his face, sitting on the stairs of his old house (which one? Probably the one in Tuscany, yes, that was it, the old marble statues giving it away) and smiling at the camera.
Bishop leaned over from across the desk, in Scandal’s eye view so she didn’t panic. “Wow, my hair looks awful here.”
Sitting beside a young Gary was a younger Bishop, also smiling at the camera, a textbook open in his lap that was in danger of slipping out of his hands.
And behind both of them was a younger Scandal, an arm around both of her brothers’ shoulders, a smile full of teeth focused on something just behind the camera.
Scandal, lean down. Put your arms around your brother. And smile. Scandal, I told you to smile.
It’s difficult to tell in the picture, but the knuckles on her hands were white.
Scandal let the picture fall back on the desk. “Don’t understand why you would keep it, though,” she told Gary, offhand, like it just another of his many desk trinkets.
Gary shrugged, setting it back up. “It’s our family.”
“We’re not a family,” Scandal said, almost too quickly. “We’re related. There’s a difference.”
“Happy birthday, Scandal.”
Birthdays are supposed to be happy, fun, joyous occasions. There’s always cake and presents. Even if nobody gets a toy anymore, it’s still exciting to rip open beautiful wrapping and let the mess fill up the spotlessly clean living room. The bright streamers and even confetti are welcome distractions from the constant monotony of the Savage family home.
And Scandal’s been sad lately, her brothers knew. Her birthday will cheer her up, and they had already gotten here their own present, a journal with magazine pictures pasted all over it.
But when Scandal got home, and the lights were turned on, and everyone yelled out surprise, and Father told her happy birthday, Scandal covered her mouth like she was about to throw up.
“Wh-what is this?’
Father even gave her a hug. Father never did things like that, except for Scandal. Scandal didn’t hug him back, just stared at the chocolate cake with vanilla icing, candle wax threatening to blotch the spotless surface.
“How old are you, Scandal?” Bishop asked. He and Gary, well, they were barely out of elementary age, and they had only known their sister for a year. Before, it had just been them.
The look on Scandal’s face could have cracked stone. She never answered his question.
She never finished her cake, she opened one present from Father, a new pair of boots. She didn’t touch any of the other presents. As soon as she had finished every birthday obligation, she was gone.
Gary and Bishop found her on the roof that night, smoking and staring out at the forest around them. She turned around sharply when she heard a sound, her blade flicking out of her glove. She let out a tobacco-laced sigh when she saw it was just them. “Go back to bed, you have training in the morning.”
“But it’s still your birthday,” Gary told her, as he and Bishop took seats beside her. They had a piece of cake wrapped in tinfoil and the present from them that she hadn’t opened. “It’s still your birthday until midnight, those are the rules.”
“Yeah! We can celebrate up here, it’s quieter,” Bishop added. “It was too loud downstairs, I couldn’t focus during your party.”
It took time for Scandal to smoke a second cigarette, telling both of them not to start smoking, before she finally accepted the cake and opened the present. She told them that Father, for all his kindness to her that he never showed with anyone else, had gotten it wrong. She liked vanilla cake, and chocolate icing.
They told her they hoped she had a good birthday, she didn’t give a reply, but smiled and ruffled their hair. When the clock ticked past midnight, she told them to go back to bed. They were happy to, at least Scandal smiled that day. She didn’t smile a lot.
The next morning, at Father’s direction, Scandal hunted them both down with her blades and was disappointed neither of them could pull the trigger on her.
“It’s not going to make any difference. Do it. Do it. DO IT!”
Scandal ran away three months later, before either Bishop or Gary’s next birthday. They never saw her again.
“One orange juice, one kale smoothie, and one caramel latte,” the waiter counted off, smiling as he passed out the drinks to each of them. “Your food will be out soon.”
Gary thanked him for the table, stirring his latte until he walked away. He looked back at Scandal with her stolen papers spread out over the table. Bishop managed to sneak one to look at. “How did Gary get recruited for the Bureau? I had better tech skills.”
“Hunter asked me first,” Scandal said, not bothering to look up as she flipped through pages. “I told him he should have asked me before he killed Dad. I would’ve liked to be a part of that.”
“I didn’t even get a phonecall! Or an email. Did he send an email?”
“Yeah, a chain email. ‘Are you related to Vandal Savage? Condolences. Second, do I have a job offer for you!’”
“Okay, you didn’t need to be sarcastic.”
“How would you know? You didn’t get the email.”
“There wasn’t an email!” Gary finally cut in. “It was- that’s not important right now. Scandal, did you, um, did you find where the card is?”
“I’m looking. I thought you would know, Gary, being possessed by Neron and all.”
“Scandal…”
“Wait, Gary got possessed by a demon? I didn’t think those were real.”
“Of course they are, Dad was always doing weird magic stuff.”
“I’m a man of science.”
“Wow, you’ve never mentioned that in 70 years.”
“I-”
“Can we stop?” Gary pleaded. “We - we haven’t had a family dinner in a long time. I wanted to-”
“We’re not a family! Stop saying that,” Scandal punctuated her words with a pointed finger, before rubbing her temple.
“But we are!”
“I have to agree with Scandal,” Bishop said, wiping off his smoothie glass while giving her a look. “She’s the one that left.”
“If you want me to feel bad about that, good luck.”
“You could’ve taken us with you.”
“You would have slowed me down.”
“We were supposed to look out for each other!”
Scandal slapped her folder back on the table, making the glasses clink. “No, we weren’t! He only told us that to LIE to us, Bishop. You know that. Gary knows that. We were never supposed to bond with each other so it wouldn’t hurt when we had to step on each other to get ahead.”
“You never HAD to do that, Scandal. You were always Dad’s favorite. We - we did whatever he wanted, we got locked in our rooms or hurt during training or - or worse and we never even spilled a glass of water when he was around. You - you swore at him, you tried to kill him at least four times, and you still GOT a cake for your birthday and didn’t even eat it.”
Scandal glared at him. “If you think my life has been any easier because I was his favorite, you are even stupider than I thought you were.”
“Guys, guys, can’t we just-“
“I’m a GENIUS, Scandal, I built a whole life for myself ALONE and you always had Dad behind you!”
“I WISH that Dad hated me as much as he hated both of you!” Scandal hissed, loud enough that the other patrons sitting outside looked uncomfortable. “My life would be so much easier that way.”
“He didn’t hate-“
“If either of you had failed you would be a spare kidney and then lights out,” Scandal snapped. The table got quiet, she scrubbed her temple again. Nobody could speak up.
Gary always broke the silence. “If you needed us, Scandal, any time before this, Time Bureau or not, we - we would’ve done anything for you.”
Scandal didn’t say anything, rubbing the back of her neck, the orange juice glow clashing with the red in her hair.
“I couldn’t stay there,” Scandal admitted to them both. “Dad didn’t want me to be - myself - and I had to go.”
“Why couldn’t you take us with you?” Bishop finally asked. The smoothie was coagulating in the bottom of the glass.
Scandal took a long sip of her juice. “I didn’t want you to be like me.”
“Scandal… you were better than either of us.”
“I was so much worse,” she corrected him. “I don’t - I don’t keep regrets, I can’t, or I’d go insane. But I… I do wish that you could have come with me. I’m just glad you’re with a real family now, those - Legends. Not our pasted-together family.”
The food got to the table, Bishop’s salad, Scandal’s burrito bowl, Gary’s cheeseburger. Nobody said anything as they ate. Bishop left for the bathroom to brush his teeth with his ridiculously small toothbrush, Scandal left to call Liana and listen to Kay’s voicemail before hanging up before she had to leave a message. Gary flagged the waiter down.
When everyone got back to the table, there were three slices of vanilla cake with chocolate frosting and a single candle at each place setting.
“Maybe we should celebrate - all of our birthdays at once,” Gary suggested, “since we never got the chance before.”
Finally, all of them shared the smallest of smiles and blew out the candles at the same time.
