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Dimension 20 Alphabet: A, Alone (Ruby and Jet, ACOC)

One of the things no one tells you about being a twin, is that you’re never really alone. You spend your whole life as part of a matched set. It's not always bad, most of the time it’s kind of nice- you have a built in best friend (no matter how cliche that is), someone who’ll almost always take your side on things (except when they won’t). Even when you fight and spit at each other over big things and small things; like how mom puts more pressure on Jet because she’s technically first in line, or how you always get away with more because you’re faster in a chase. You’re always paired together, even when your sister is halfway across the castle and uncle Cal runs into you, you see him hesitate for a second, his eyes sliding off of you and down the hall, around the corner, you can see the split second question: where’s her sister? before his eyes snap back with a grin and a greeting. When you’re twins, you’re always Jet-and-Ruby, Ruby-and-Jet, even when all you want to be is your own person. And the only person who really gets that feeling, that hunger for individualism and autonomy, is your sister.

Life’s funny like that.

Most of the time, though, it’s nice. You always have someone to share a stifled laugh with when Lapin says something unintentionally dirty during lessons, or to lean against when you hear mom and dad in another screaming match down the hall. You always know how to give each other space when you need it, know not to take it personal (even when it feels like it is). Because the expectations people put on twins can be stifling, exhausting; and it’s double that when you’re princesses. When the pressure of the crown compounds on the pressure of matching up to your sister compounds with matching up to your perfect, dead aunts.

There are lots of ghosts in Castle Candy, and it's hard to find a place that isn’t steeped in the kingdom’s history or drowned in your parents’ grief or boiling over with the empire’s impossible future. It’s a hard place to grow up, for two twin princesses duty bound to uphold their parents’ and their aunts’ and their kingdom’s legacy. It’s an even harder place to be alone, with Calroy and Theo around every corner, Lapin in your quarters, your mother in court, and your father hiding in the training hall.

Sometimes, when you couldn’t find peace and quiet in the castle- or, more often, when you couldn't stand the pressure anymore- you would escape and run off into Dulcington, if only to dream for a few moments about what you lives could be if you joined the circus and Jet joined the army and you both could escape your lives, together and separate.

One of the good things about having a twin (having a good twin, the best twin, the best sister) is that you learn how to be alone together. How to sit in silence, side by side, and be alone in your own heads.

One of the worst things about being one twin, is that you don’t know how to be alone anymore. Is that even in a hall filled with people, people you love, you can still manage to feel like an island, isolated and cold.

You’ve been alone plenty of times in your life, but you’ve never felt lonely.

In the days after the last battle; before Saccharina’s coronation and your father’s journey to Calorum to be crowned Emperor, you found yourself standing on the ramparts of the castle, looking out over Candia. Dulcington in the distance, already rebuilding. The town looked gold in the late evening sun, and if you squinted, you could swear it looked like it was up in flames. Again. There were scars across the landscape, tears in the castle foundations and huge swaths of scorched land from Cinnamon. A huge crater in the ground, directly below where you stood on the ramparts, left from where your father plummeted to the ground, alone. On the night where you fled Dulcington, alone. Where you left-

Where Jet died. Her body left alone and cold in that fucking shop.

There were a lot of ghosts in Castle Candy. You didn’t know whether that made you feel more or less alone, anymore.

There was another sister in Castle Candy, too. You didn’t know how you felt about that, either.

Saccharina wouldn’t replace Jet, couldn’t, no one could. You would walk around with a hole in your chest for the rest of your life. But maybe you could learn how to have a sister that wasn’t part of you. How to be a sister to someone separate from yourself. Maybe alongside your cousin and your friends and your new sister, you could learn how to feel less lonely in a crowded room.

Because being a twin meant you weren’t ever alone, not really. There was always a licorice-scented shadow at your shoulder, watching over you.

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