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One.
The number of brain cells between the three siblings were few and far between. That being said, they were finally able to put it together that they had spent their time trapped in a digital world with each other, not strangers. The initial shock of this had worn off quickly, and things returned to how they were before the revelation. Mostly.
The dim light streamed through their window. Their shared window. In their shared room.
Felix hated sharing a room. It wasn’t like Tava was a neat freak, they weren’t direct opposites like twins portrayed in the media. Tava did, however, care about their personal space. And Felix didn’t.
Their room was small, with some areas being shared, like the desk and the rug and the chair… basically everything was shared except for their beds. Which is why Felix struggled. He wasn’t sure what he could and couldn’t touch.
Felix sat on his bed for a while before he realised that Debbie was watching him.
He had forgotten about Debbie. She was a toy of the freaky donkey-dragon hybrids from Shrek 2, except the maker seemed to have put in a tortured soul inside the stuffing. She now had this whole personality that Tava had created. For some reason, Debbie loved Felix, which was worse than her hating him. Either way, she was sitting on the desk, looking at him with her crazed eyes and freaky smile. Felix shuddered. Tava must’ve found her in a draw somewhere and dug her out to irritate Felix. It was working.
Tava chose this moment to enter the room.
“I see you found Debbie.”
“Yep. And she’s so excited to see you again.”
Fuck, he hated that thing.
“Good to know.”
All he heard was Tava cackling before walking out the room again.
“Hey, where are you going? I want to go to bed?”
“Then go to bed. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m going out.”
“With your girlfriend?”
“Yeah.”
“... Is Mother okay with that?”
“She doesn’t need to know.”
“Fine. But don’t come back too late, I still want to go to bed.”
“You can go to bed without me you know.”
“...Fine. But don’t be loud when you come back.”
“I won’t. Or maybe I will. Oh, and don’t worry about the…. Soil” ah yes. The suspicious goodnight speeches. He had forgotten about that. It was something they used to do when they were younger. First Debbie, now this? Tava must be feeling nostalgic.
“Ignore the moisture in your bed.” He said as Tava climbed out the window, down the roof and dropped lightly onto the grass below.
They said he could go to bed.
But he couldn’t get comfortable.
Not without the knowledge that they were safe sleeping near him.
Felix knew that Tava could handle themself, but they were out in public, late at night, and Chloe wasn’t really the intimidating type.
It could’ve been 15 minutes or several hours before the window softly opened and shut.
Felix lay still and quieted his breathing, not wanting them to think he was worried. He would never hear the end of it, from Tava, Becka or Ris.
He heard Tava rummage around before nestling into bed. Eventually their breathing evened out and he could let go of the breath he didn’t know he was holding.
Not long after, he was asleep, calmed by the knowledge that his twin was safe.
Two.
Felix entered their room late. Well, later than usual. So like one in the morning.
He entered the room to find Tava sat on their bed, knees drawn up to their face, silent tears falling. A mirror was lying on the bed, the kind that people used to do their make-up with, which was odd because Felix used the bathroom mirror to do his eyeliner. They didn’t have mirrors in their room. Tava didn’t like them.
He sat down next to Tava, invading the space that was usually theirs and theirs only. He knew that they wouldn’t care this time as he pulled their head onto his shoulder. Their tears stained his hoodie, but that was the least of his concerns at the present moment.
“Hermane? You okay?” he asked. Felix knew the answer, but asking was the best way of finding out what was wrong.
They scoffed, “No.”
“Do you wanna talk about it?”
“You wouldn’t get it.”
“I know. But hey, we’re twins. Maybe I can use telepathy to understand.”
Tava almost smiled at that, but one glance at the mirror on the duvet and any notion of it was gone.
If he couldn’t cheer them up, then he’d try and find out what happened.
“Where did you get this?”
“Mother gave it to me. Said that I should start ‘caring about my appearance more’ and that I need to ‘pick a side. One or the other, not any of this “In between” nonsense.’”
“She’s wrong.”
“I know, it’s just…” They looked around empty space like it could provide the answers. “I’m stuck. And tired. Tired of feeling like this isn’t me. I could change parts in the circus, but now I’m stuck with just me and I didn’t realise I needed that change until it was gone.”
Felix didn’t know what to say to that. He wanted to make it better, but he knew he couldn’t. He could only support.
“Hey, no matter what you look like, human, abstract shapes, you’re still you. I can’t make it better, but I can try to make you feel better. Which right now, means removing this mirror and for you to go to sleep. It’s late, and nothing good happens after 1am. You might feel better in the morning, and if not, I’ll be an idiot until you do, okay?”
They sniffed.
“Okay.”
Felix climbed off the bed before locking the mirror in one of his draws. Maybe if Tava got more comfortable around mirrors, he could use it to do his eyeliner instead of leaning over the sink to see his waterline.
“You brushed your teeth?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Now, don’t worry about the triangles.”
Tava smiled for the first time in their interaction. “Ignore the ... soil.”
They turned the fairy lights off, and all was silent for a moment.
“Hey Jax?”
He stiffened at their choice of name. “Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
Three.
Tava was reading, and Felix was on his phone. Average before bed activities.
They both heard Mother come up that stairs. They had learnt her footsteps long before. They stopped outside the door before Mother cleared her throat and walked into her room.
This was normal. People clear their throats everyday. So why did both Tava and Felix’s shoulders tense the moment it happened? Why did their backs straighten and why did they become suddenly aware of their surroundings, including every exit and entrance to the room?
There was one thought on both their minds.
But Felix didn’t want to admit it.
“I know that look. We weren't abused. Our life is fine, we live in a safe home.” He whispered so as not to wake Mother.
Tava crossed the room and sat on his bed. “Then why can’t I remember half of our childhood?”
“That’s just… Caine in your head again.”
“No it’s not. Is life so mundane that there’s nothing to remember? Or is it so full of anguish that I have no choice but to forget?”
Felix was silent for a while.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how to make it better. I don’t know how to change it. But I’m here. I’m still fighting. Maybe, despite all her love, Mother didn’t do what was best for us. Maybe she tries so hard that she forgets the reason for it all. But I haven’t. The reason I am here is because I missed you. Two years in a digital hellscape, not remembering your existence, and then suddenly knowing you were out here somewhere, it tore me apart. I needed to know that you were okay. And if you weren’t, then I needed to try to make it better. But I can’t, because I don’t even know if something is wrong. It feels wrong, but admitting that would be the last crack in the dam. She loves us.”
“But does that excuse what she’s done? She guilt-trips us daily. She lashes out in frustration. There is a reason my body thinks being shouted at is the worst thing in the world, and that didn’t come from school. I love Mother, and I know she loves me. But at the end of the day, I can’t live like this for much longer.”
“Live like what?”
They looked down at their hands.
“Like nothing I do will ever be good enough.”
“I get that.”
“Sure you do.” they said snidely.
“I do! It's…. It’s like in school. People said that I was really smart. Don’t laugh at me, you were there too. But I never really wanted good grades. It was the pressure and expectations of the people around me that made me want them. I understand what it’s like to never be good enough. I can’t feel like she’s proud of me with the constant pressure to be more than I’m capable of.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
His bottom lips trembled like it did when he was younger, before the ideologies of masculinity were drilled into him. Tears started falling. Tava pulled him close, their eyes red and cheeks wet.
“If everything is fine, then why do I feel like this?”
“I don’t know.”
They stayed there, silent tears pouring until sleep stopped the otherwise eternal flow.
Four.
The sound of hand on skin echoed in their ears and throughout the room. Despite being separated by time and distance, the mark it left was as prevalent in their minds as it was on Becka’s skin.
Tava was sitting on their bed, Felix’s shoulder pressed against theirs. The constant pressure of it grounded their body in the present despite their mind constantly replaying the past.
Felix’s face flicked between being harshly still and contorted in rage. He was uncharacteristically silent.
So was Tava.
“Fuck this, we’re leaving.”
He turned to look at them. “What?”
“We’re going. Running away.”
“Tav, we’re over 18.”
“Then we are moving out. I can’t take this anymore. I can’t live in a place where she could just blow up on us at any time.”
“We can’t leave, not without Becka. I’m not leaving her behind again.”
Alone. With no one between her and Mother’s wrath.
Tava wondered why they’d all come back at all.
It was simple really. They’d had nowhere else to go.
“We won’t. She’s coming with us.”
“Where will we go?”
“We’ll figure that out later.”
Five.
By “figure it out later”, what Tava didn’t mean was to sit on a subway a day later with as many of their possessions as they could carry, with little money and nowhere to stay the night. To make matters worse, they were also soaked to the skin and freezing cold despite the hot, humid air of public transport. They had spent the earlier parts of last night shoving items in bags, the later part escaping through the twin’s window and the majority of the day going from public transport to public transport, anything that got them away from the place they could no longer call home.
Felix had to keep breathing to keep the lump in his throat from coming up.
Tava was nearing the edge.
Becka’s eyes were wet, small channels flowing across the still red mark on her cheek.
They sat there, Tava’s arm over Becka’s shoulder as their other hand was holding Felix’s as the train started, slowed and stopped over and over again until the seconds blended together. People came and went, until eventually Felix and Tava dropped off to sleep with the comfort that Becka could keep watch until dawn.
Plus One.
“Excuse me, but are you three okay?”
Tava and Felix startled awake at the sound of a woman’s voice. She was tall, with her dark hair in long braids and skin the colour of raw umber.
Felix had begun to say something along the lines of “We’re fine.” before he checked himself. They weren’t fine. They had run away from the one place they could turn to, and with no money or contact there was nowhere else for them to turn. Ris or Chlow couldn’t house all three of them, and they weren’t being split up. They were anything but fine.
“No…” Becka’s voice was weak and wet.
“Oh mtoto mtamu. It’ll be okay.” She sat beside Becka and pulled her close before calling out to a man near them.
“Nathan, I found them.”
The man, Nathan, looked at them with slight confusion before a soft smile broke out on his face.
“Jax, Ragatha, Zooble, it’s nice to see you again.”
“Kinger.” Tava sighed with relief.
“I’m Nathan, and this is my wife Avangeline.”
“Tava. And this is Felix and Becka. Turns out we’re siblings.”
Tava was questioning why Felix hadn’t said anything.
He was simply too busy thinking about their dumb luck.
“What are you doing on the subway this late?” Angie asked, to which all three of their faces fell.
“Home wasn’t safe anymore.” Felix answered.
Angie frowned, staring at all three and then her husband before saying
“Come. We have room.”
Becka looked up at her, eyes still wet and cheek still red.
“Are you sure?”
Angie simply smiled in return.
Three beds were made on the floor of Kinger and Queenie’s spare room. Debbie the monstrosity of a toy was sitting on the chest of drawers in the corner. No suspicious threats were made tonight. The only sound was soft snoring, all three finally feeling safe for the first time since they’d left the circus.