Discover Top Posts Tagged with #entanglement

Mar 2

Entanglement - Chapter 1: The Walk

Casey and Eleanor go for a walk on Christmas Eve. [AO3 link]

Casey Ward stares out at the snow covered street and inhales a deep lungful of air. She's just the right amount of drunk for this, this picture-perfect Christmas Eve-ning. Large, fluffy snowflakes drift lazily down from the slate gray sky above, continuing their endless task of draping the world in crystallized water. The air is still and windless, and the ground is already covered in a couple inches of powdery, pristine snow, unmarred by tire tracks. Up and down the road, streetlights cast bright cones of light onto the snow, illuminating the snowflakes falling under them like swarms of fluorescent insects.

Casey idly hums to herself. She's three large mugs of spiked eggnog deep, and still able to convince herself that the third one was a good idea. The halo of holiday cheer has not yet faded from her vision.

The wind chime hanging from the porch ceiling sounds a few notes as the screen door rattles open, quickly drowned out by Mariah Carey. Casey's older sister Eleanor steps out onto the porch, her glasses fogging immediately in the cold. She looks tired. Casey had suggested they go for a walk as a way to get her out from under their parents' scrutiny - they meant well, she knew, but she had been watching Eleanor's walls steadily go up over the course of dinner as they peppered her with questions about her first semester of college. Something was eating at her, and Casey was the only one who seemed to realize it.

But for a moment as she steps outside, all that is forgotten, and it's like she never left. Like she hasn't spent the past four-and-a-half months a full day's drive away, accessible only by text message and too infrequent video calls. Like there hasn't been a dull, unnameable ache in Casey's chest since mid-August. Together again.

A smile comes to her lips more easily than it has in six months. "C'mon." She jumps off the porch, passing the steps down and landing with a soft thump in the snow on the front walk. The sound is almost immediately muffled, swallowed up by the soft wintry blanket covering the world. She can hear Eleanor chuckling behind her. Her smile gets a little wider.

Automatically, they begin moving down the street on their usual route. They didn't usually walk in the middle of the road, though. "I love fresh snow! It's like the whole world is asleep and it's just ours." The words bubble cheerfully from Casey's lips, carried by the social adjuvant of alcohol. Eleanor rewards her with a warm smile, then takes a deep breath and a long sigh.

"Yeah, it's nice to be back. I've... really missed you guys."

"Same. It just hasn't been the same without you here."

"Yeah." Eleanor opens her mouth as if to continue, twists her lips, and presses them shut again.

Several moments pass, the only sound the crunching of snow under their boots and the plasticy zip-zip-zip of synthetic fabrics brushing together.

Casey speaks softly. "Soooo... how is school? Really?" A skeptical eyebrow, the picture of polite incomprehension. Mom and Dad might buy it, but Casey knows better. She matches it.

"What do you mean?"

"C'mon. They're incapable of reading a room, but I'm not."

"Hah." Her laugh is ragged enough that it barely qualifies for the term. "Yeah." A beat. "Mom and Dad are... Mom and Dad. Jason picked up on it, though, I think. He's quieter now?"

Their younger brother Jason's much more obvious moodiness has been the subject of much consternation in the Ward household recently, which Casey entirely fails to convey with an aimless wave of her bemittened hands.

"Yeah, he's been kinda- withdrawn, I guess? Grumpy. Mom and Dad are all concerned but y'know. So was I at that age, and they didn't make such a fuss." She shrugs. "Teenage boy stuff?"

"Hmmm. Maybe he just missed his big sister."

Casey pretends to consider the idea. "Nah."

"Rude."

"Don't change the subject. School."

Eleanor sighs again. "It's not like it's awful or anything. It's just..." She falls silent again, and Casey lets her think. Her head is starting to feel a bit fuzzy now, drinks are really kicking in... But no, she's got to focus. Gotta be present for Ellie. Familiar patterns, grooves worn in the bedroom floor.

Eleanor takes a quick breath. Her voice is quiet, and Casey's anxiety ratchets up a few degrees - that's her 'holding back tears' voice. "I'm having trouble adjusting, I guess. I haven't- haven't made any friends? And I want to go and meet people, I do, but I'm- I- I'm scared. Anxious." She's twisting her hands together. Casey reaches out and takes one, clasping it between two of her own. "And I know it's stupid because it's college, t-there's so many ways to meet people, I j-just-" They've stopped under one of the streetlights, and Eleanor is looking away, blinking rapidly. Casey gives her a moment to recover her composure, swaying slightly, marvelling at how beautiful she is framed by the falling sn- careful.

Casey blinks. Hard. Rubs her thumbs over her sister's gloved knuckles. Familiar motions; old sense memories bubble to the surface. Panic attacks and gingerbread and Imogen Heap. Seconds or maybe minutes pass. Eleanor finally meets her eyes again, and smiles. Small, but genuine. It neutralizes some of the acid tension settled in Casey's heart. "I'm okay. Really," Eleanor murmurs. "I think the eggnog's hitting me all at once."

"Lush."

"Bitch."

"Butch."

"Touché."

The moment passes, and they keep moving up the street. Casey's thumbs tingle and she shoves her hands in her pockets. She watches her sister from behind and to the side for a moment. Five years of Eleanor's anxiety attacks, of cuddled comforts and reassurances whispered under soft indie pop. She had been hoping that college would give Eleanor a new environment to thrive in, someplace she could spread her wings away from their parents. Instead the image of her sister off at college, anxious and alone, has injected itself like an icy thorn into her heart.

"Soooo what is going on with Jason?" Eleanor's voice has acquired a fluttery chirpiness that Casey thinks of as her 'two drinks' voice. "Besides 'grumpy', that doesn't tell me anything. He seemed fine to me."

Casey smiles in spite of herself. "Yeah, he likes you."

Eleanor waggles her hand. "Ehh, he tolerates me."

"Whatever." Casey falls silent, considering. It's harder than usual to get her thoughts in order, between the drinks and her sister's eyes on her, patient yet searching. Eleanor always seems to know just when she needs time to think before speaking.

"I think... something's bothering him." She sighs, attempting to distill her thoughts on what she had, last month, begun thinking of as the Jason Situation. "I don't think he's getting bullied; I asked around." Eleanor smiles at that, then frowns.

"It's not-" the words practically burst from her before she breaks off, reconsiders, and finally finishes the sentence. Casey tracks the familiar patterns on her face. "It's not Mom and Dad, is it?"

Casey frowns. "I don't think so? You know me, if I thought it was their fault, I'd be first in line, but. Like, Dad's solution is, y'know, leaning on him extra hard to 'be a man' and all that," synchronized eyeroll, "and you know Mom won't say anything about it. But no, I think it started even before that. He quit swimming like a month into the semester."

"He quit swimming?" There's genuine alarm in her tone, and Casey can't disagree. Jason giving up swimming was like her giving up lacrosse.

"Yeah."

"Has he said anything to you about it?"

She sighs, recalling her less than successful attempts to coax Jason into speaking to her about whatever it is that's been following him around like a cartoon raincloud. "No, not really. He's been cryptic about it, even for him. Once he just said he had a lot on his mind. He's said even less than that to Mom and Dad." She shrugs. "I've let him know he can come to me, but. You know how he is."

Eleanor nods. Both of them had learned long ago that prying questions just made their brother clam up harder. "Do you think I should talk to him?"

"I would say... just be near him and offer a listening ear? I think, he's always found talking to you a bit easier than to me."

"Yeah, that's because I'm not a judgy beeyotch-oop!" Her sister takes a step closer, moving as if to poke Casey in the shoulder, but she slips and almost shoves into her instead, grabbing onto her to stay upright. Casey manages to keep from falling, barely; if she was in any worse shape she might not have been able to hold them up. Eleanor has wrapped herself around Casey's arm, so she pulls herself upright, interlocks their fingers and beams at her. "Always there to catch me."

Casey sways a little, her head swimming and buzzing like... some kind of aquatic bee. Maybe the third drink was a bad idea. She feels hot and sweaty, sickly pinpricks sweeping across her skin. Dry heat lightning sparks at every point of contact between her and- Stop.

Gotta focus. It's the alcohol. Just focus on the walk. She extricates her hand from Eleanor's and gestures vaguely forward. "I- uh, I keep forgetting we don't need to rush past the corner house with the chihuahua."

Eleanor lets out a loud snort, then claps her hands over her mouth. "Oh yeah, she did not like Carrot." Still snickering, she picks her way across the street and up to the mouth of the trail. "Y'know, I really thought she was just gonna bark herself to an aneurysm one day."

"That's dark, Ellie," Casey chuckles. "College has changed you."

"Pffffft." Eleanor makes a noise somewhere between a scoff and a raspberry. She really was going hard on the eggnog if she's at the 'silly noises' stage already. "I've got plenty of dark thoughts. Real dark."

"Uh-huh. The darkest, I'm sure."

"Yeah! It's important to... being an artist." she fixes Casey with one of her Looks, which she puts on when she is being Serious about Serious Things. And occasionally when she's drunk.

It's honestly really hard to resist winding her up when she gets like this. "That's nice, sweetie."

"Fuck off."

"Hah."

Then, casually: "I wrote a story about a girl who eats herself."

"Je-sus."

"Yeah, see. Dark."

Casey's grin gets wider. Eleanor was often the only one that seemed to be on her wavelength when it came to humor. Their parents didn't seem to get sarcasm sometimes, and their mother would have a conniption over anything racier than a knock-knock joke. Jason was fine, but a bit too online for Casey's taste. And she didn't have the same easy simpatico with any of her friends, not the way she had it with Eleanor.

They're on the trail proper now. The trail isn't really a trail so much as a footpath, worn down by use and erosion, winding twice around the circumference of the hill. It threads across roads and through copses of trees and between the extremely expensive properties hidden in those trees. You can get to the top faster by just going straight up the road, but this is the scenic route.

The snow covers everything, falling in clumps and powdery waves through the tree canopy. She knows they're a sixty second walk from the nearest cross street, but for just a minute, the trees are dense enough that it feels like they're alone in the woods, traipsing through the snow in that eerie sunless twilight.

Eleanor stops in the path. Casey follows suit, and watches Eleanor as she simply stands and breathes, drinking in that feeling of isolation. At some point this little ritual became a part of their walks with Carrot.

"I really missed this spot," Eleanor murmurs. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "As long as we're right here, it's like the rest of the world doesn't exist. Just us in the woods."

"Like Calvin and Hobbes."

Eleanor opens one eye. "You know you're Calvin, right?"

Casey sticks her tongue out at her sister. "Philistine. I'm voting you out of the spot."

Eleanor raises her head haughtily and begins moving again. "You can't hold votes without your vice chairwoman pro tempura." She staggers slightly and giggles. "Vice chairwoman for fried fish!"

A giddy laugh bursts from Casey's mouth. "How much eggnog did you have?"

Eleanor turns around, looking over her glasses at Casey. She holds up three fingers, her lips forming a silent pout. An electric heat ignites in Casey's chest, and she forces a smile onto her face with a shake of her head.

They reach the single file section that cuts through a row of trees planted just a tad too close together. Wordlessly, she stands to the side to allow Eleanor to enter first. Another old habit. Another warm smile as she passes, another bloom of warmth. Casey wobbles slightly as she follows. Just drunk. That's all.

Another one of those things. Common experiences, shared scars laid by the same blade. An Ames window, a ritual that can be enacted only in a single reference frame, with the two of them at this point in space. Necessary components, chemical precursors. A catalyst. Casey and Eleanor had walked this route together, almost every day, for almost seven years. Until Carrot died. A temporal boundary. No return to the original state, no reversing entropy.

Fuck, I'm really drunk.

Giving voice to (some of) her thoughts, Eleanor speaks. "Weird to be doing this without Carrot."

"Yeah." She can't quite keep the sadness out of her voice. Carrot had ostensibly been her dog, named as she was by Casey at age 8, who thought that 'Carrot' was a great name for a black lab. No matter how possessive Mom got, Casey still thought of Carrot that way, and the loss was still sharp even a year and a half later.

Wordlessly, her sister closes the gap between them and gives Casey a one-armed hug around her shoulders, all without breaking stride. Typical Eleanor, all elegance. She's wearing the rose perfume Casey got her for her birthday, and her hair- No.

Casey shakes herself as Eleanor withdraws. Alcohol has wrapped her body in warmth and her brain in cotton, and a corner of her mind is becoming dimly aware that this is Dangerous - but even that warning seems far off, muted, reduced to a lonely aerial blinking against a black sky.

Sometimes she worries about what might happen if she were injured in a car accident and brought in for emergency surgery, placed under anesthesia - people said things under anesthesia, right? Confessed secrets? It was a plot point on Breaking Bad and everything. She'd lost more than one night of sleep worrying it out, following the black oozing paths of caustic probability to their inevitable destinations.

Fuck. The third drink was definitely a bad idea.

Casey is so absorbed in her thoughts that she barely realizes that they've reached the top of the hill. The footpath terminates in a small clearing, with two picnic tables placed around a central firepit. To their left, the edge of the clearing runs right up to a wooden deck, protruding horizontally out of the hill. Between its place at the very top of the hill and the careful removal of any trees that would otherwise block the sightline, you can see the entire south side of town - the mall, Silver Row, the movie theater where she and Eleanor watched pretty much every movie they'd ever seen in their lives. And right now, that view is one of the most romantic things she's ever seen.

The hill, trees, buildings, roads, and landscapes beyond are blanketed in pristine white snow. A glittering grid of lights traces the city's streets, a phosphorescent network of veins pulsing just under its snowy skin. The light cones cast by streetlamps and windows illuminate the large, fluffy snowflakes that continue to drift gently down from the deep gray clouds, stretching unbroken from horizon to horizon. The air is crisp and clear, full of the peculiar non-scent of snow. It's so quiet, that as Casey brushes off the railing and leans against it, becoming still, she can hear the soft pattering of the snowflakes landing.

Even so, they're barely audible over her heart, pounding out a drumline in her thoracic cavity. She takes a deep breath of cold air. That's normal, she's just amped up from the walk. Alcohol is a laminar flow of warmth to her limbs, biological hydraulics, warm pumping fluid networks broadcasting the pulsing of her heart, resonating in her chest and wrists and head and neck and thighs and betwe- You need to stop

"Gorgeous!" Eleanor's voice is bright, there's a spark in it that Casey hasn't heard since she came back. Her heart feels like it's about to cramp up. Yeah. Gorgeous.

Another deep breath. Focus. Look at the city. Look at the snow. Look at anything but her sister. Her sister.

Casey had never intended to fall in love with her sister. It had just... happened. She probably could pinpoint exactly when it was, if she cared to dredge through those memories. But suppressing them had become such second nature to her that she didn't even think about it anymore. It wasn't something she chose to do, any more than she chose not to look at the sun. It was just survival instinct. Don't go near snakes. Don't put your hand on a hot burner. Don't think about your crush on your sister.

Together, they stare out at the city. Seconds or maybe years pass. There's no referent, no way to gauge time with the snow covering everything and deadening every sound but her heart thundering in her ears.

Casey has never entertained any expectation that her sister might return her feelings. Not really. She's never shown any sign of being interested in her in that way, and there's absolutely no reason to believe otherwise. None at all. Nothing about that calculus has changed in four long years. Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea.

But her heart, her traitorous heart. It continues to cling to that absurd hope, that irreconcilable spark that, against all reason, she just can't bear to snuff out.

"So. How was your semester? Really?" Eleanor is looking at her, really Looking, and Casey knows her thoughts might as well be carved into her forehead. She's never been able to keep a secret from her sister.

Almost never.

Eleanor's pale green eyes are luminous in the diffuse half-light. Magnetic. Casey pulls her gaze away and leans out on the railing, fixing her eyes on the city. Her heart is so loud. She can't hear that, right?

"What makes you think it wasn't fine?" she quavers. Oh yes, very convincing.

Eleanor joins her at the railing. "Please. I know you. I've been back just over 24 hours and I haven't received a single play-by-play of one of your games. Something's up." Her smile is audible and soft. The luminous grid of the city below is visible in miniature, twinkling in her glasses. A few snowflakes have caught on the curly blossoms of her hair.

"You know me too well." Their parents hadn't realized anything was wrong, and it'd been six months.

"What are sisters for?"

A weak chuckle. Casey steadies herself on the rail. The view is breathtaking. it's not fair

"C'mon. I told you a little bit of my shit, you tell me yours."

"It's not like it's, any one thing, really. Just, it's just been a hard year so far."

"...yeah."

"I missed you."

"I missed you too, Casey."

"God, I missed you so much!" Casey's voice breaks, a surge of anguish rising up through her throat to pour out her mouth. Eleanor moves to hug her. be careful

"Oh, honey..." Eleanor holds her while she cries, wrapping her in warmth and the scent of roses. She feels her sister's hand on the back of her head, stroking her hair, and for a while, she loses herself. The embrace is a balm to her bruised soul, but her mind is chaos, casting off thoughtlines and ideas and half-imagined conversations before rubberbanding back to Eleanor's arms.

Finally, regretfully, she pulls away from the embrace, but her arms remain in place. Tears etch cold streaks down her face. She meets her sister's eyes, and this time, she's locked in place, caught by that magnetic pull. She's so beautiful. Her eyes, so bright under her glasses. Her curly red hair, dusted with snow, framing her cute little nose and her full, curvy lips. God, her lips.

Her brain catches up to her body far too late. By the time her frontal lobe has assembled the thought what the fuck are you DOING and fired it at her motor cortex, she's already leaned in and pressed her lips to Eleanor's. Her lips are cold but soft, so so soft. Casey's heart is beating so fast that a distant, uninvolved corner of her mind is worried she's got some kind of cardiac condition. She's raised her hands to clasp her sister's face, gently, as tenderly as she possibly can. Every point of contact with her sister's body feels electric.

She tastes like gingerbread.

Then she realizes what she's done. That electric warmth where their lips meet becomes a hot coal. She wrenches herself back, pressing her hands to her lips as if she can somehow recapture the secret that they've let slip. Amazing, how the warm blanket of alcohol and desire can flash-freeze like that, her temperature integer overflowing to just over absolute zero; suddenly she feels very cold and very pathetic.

Eleanor is staring at her with - what? Shock? Disgust? Fear? Her mouth is slightly open, her brow knitted, but she can't read her, can't meet her eyes, can't think, there's a high-pitched whining noise in her ears and her brain has turned to slush and she can't intuit her sister's emotions with slush, she can't decipher her expressions and figure out just how badly she's fucked her life and her family and her future with slush.

All she can do is stare out at the city. She should say something, do damage control, give some kind of explanation, but she's frozen. Saying anything, doing anything, will start that chain of dominos that leads to her losing her sister and her family and everything she cares about. As long as she stays still, well. She can put it off a little longer.

"Casey." Her sister's voice is flat, and if it's not terribly warm, at least it's not disgust.

She forces her head up to look at her sister's face; she can't meet her eyes yet. Her expression is... concerned?

"Look, I, uhh... I'm not really sure what to say," Eleanor begins haltingly, and more than anything, the fact that her response might be anything but immediate condemnation fills Casey's heart with a terrible nauseous sense of hope. Words are dripping from her mouth before she can stop them.

"Fuck, I- I- I'm so sorry, I shit shit fuck I'm so fuckin drunk but that's no excuse god I'm so sorry Ellie please, I I I can't- I know I'm a freak, and I don't I I don't expect you to feel the same way or anything but I I just I needed to oh god why why would I do that," she's sobbing now, tears running freely down her face.

Her sister steps forward and places her hands on Casey's shoulders. Arm's length. "Oh s- sweetie, look, I'm... flattered? But I don't, uh- feel the same way, obviously." The spark winks out. You were a fucking idiot for expecting anything different.

Her eyes are kind. So, so kind. Casey briefly entertains the idea of hurtling herself over the deck railing, but the fall isn't nearly long enough to kill her. Shit. Eleanor's voice is soft. "How long?" She's so smart. She's already figured it out.

Gulp. Even so, even here, she can't just admit it. Can't just admit how long she's been a fucking freak. The alcohol's heat is twisting sickly in her stomach now. She chokes out an utterly unconvincing deflection. "What do you mean?"

Eleanor raises two fingers to touch her lips for a moment, her eyes fixed on the ground between them. Then she looks up at Casey again. "You... you kissed me like you love me." Her voice falters for a moment, but her tone betrays no uncertainty.

That's all it takes to make fresh tears begin to fall from Casey's eyes. There's a lump in her throat that won't go away, no matter how many times she swallows. Her lips are trembling, but she forces out the truth that Eleanor deserves. "F-four years!" Eleanor makes a little noise in her throat - might have been a gasp, maybe a murmur - and her hands grip Casey's shoulders a little tighter. "I-I-I am so sorry, I never meant to- I never wanted- I-I-I just," she's sputtering now, choking out her words in between sobs, but she can't stop, she has to expel this vile poison once and for all-

"Shhh, shh shh shh. It's okay. It's okay," Eleanor murmurs, pulling Casey into her arms again. She whispers into her hair. "I don't think you're a freak. I think- I think I understand why you didn't tell me. You've been carrying this a long time, haven't you." It's as if she's choosing each word carefully, with the utmost precision, all to maximise the pain she's inflicting.

She's so kind and so smart and so loving. She's wonderful. And she will never feel the same way.

Eleanor holds Casey while she cries. Seconds or maybe centuries pass. Eventually, she just feels empty. Drained. She can barely even cry anymore.

Eleanor looks at her, into her and through her. She has nothing left to hide. No fight left to fight. She lived her greatest fear and her greatest wish in the same five-minute span and what's left? What's left in her life?

"Are you okay?" Her voice is soft, tentative. Casey chokes down another sob. What can she say?

"I- I guess. All things considered." She hiccups. "I'm still so sorry."

Eleanor fixes her with a wan smile. "It's okay. I think." She turns to look out over the railing.

"Are... are you okay?" Casey almost can't make herself say it, can't bear to know what the answer is.

Eleanor looks at her. Looks right at her and lies. "Yeah. I'm okay." Casey can see her walls going up. The tension in her shoulders, the enforced control of her expression. Fuck. Her chest constricts painfully around her broken heart.

A long pause. "Want to head back?" Eleanor's voice is uncertain, tinged with awkwardness.

"You go on ahead? I wanna look at the city a bit more." She barely manages to keep her voice level.

"Oh... yeah, okay. See you soon." The crunching of her sister's boots in the snow echoes across the snow, quickly fading into the trees. Only then does Casey again let her tears start to fall in earnest.

#entanglement #mara writes #siscon #yuricest #sibcest #consang

marassong