Chapter Text
Nya knows she’s not normal.
Kids at school remind her constantly, for one, so it’s hard to overlook. She also knows her brother’s not normal, and clearly there are some genetics going on there, because she’s no better than he is when it comes to the things that make him weird.
For one, most kids her age don’t work. They help out with the farms and crops and they know a little more about doing chores than kids at the city, she guesses, but they don’t hold up a business on their own like Nya and Kai do. They also don’t have to compete with someone else over who’s in charge of said business. Most kids don’t have the authority to do so, but Nya doesn’t have anyone to tell her that.
Yet, Nya knows there’s more to their family than their “situation”, as the neighbors call it. It’s not only because they don’t have any parents that Kai keeps everyone away and makes sure they only have themselves to rely on. Like there’s something wrong with them, and he doesn’t want anybody to find out.
For example, there’s the fire. And the weather. And everything that comes with it.
Winter arrives early at Ignacia that year. Nya notices earlier than Kai, because he’s always locked up in the forge and spends so much time in the warmth of the fire that he feels like a furnace himself most of the time. She’s been telling him for a while that they need new coats because the old ones don’t fit anymore but he maintains that it “isn’t even that cold” and that they “need to save up for the actually important things”. And when it comes to him, she’d be inclined to believe him, because she never sees him shivering or blue, no matter how much the temperature drops or that the old lady Li who lives by the river keeps saying that snow is bound to start falling anytime this week.
Nya, however, is very sensitive to any changes in the temperature. Kai forbids her from working at the shop in the summer because the heat goes hard on her (not like she always listens to him when it comes to this stuff, and not like he can actually afford having one less pair of hands at the shop when things get bad), and he wraps her in coats when the snow starts falling, because she starts freezing so quickly. But besides reacting to the more immediate and urgent threats to her health (such as her passing out from heat exhaustion or losing mobility in any of her fingers from frostbite), he really doesn’t know how to take care of her before things get bad. Apparently, because his own body is completely indifferent to any of the things that affect Nya so much.
Nya knows this isn’t normal either.
Friday morning she wakes up with a headache and chills running down her spine, and a general inability to breathe through any of the usual respiratory conducts. Living with Kai, her reaction to this series of symptoms is always either Immediate Panic (because they need to work if they want to eat, and they can’t do that if they’re sick) or If No Dying, No Worries (because they need to work if they want to eat, and if they’re not dying then they can work normally), and in this case, she honestly doesn’t know which way to go.
On the one hand, she can easily blame the headache on the lack of sleep, and the rest of her symptoms on her imagination. On the other hand, if she’s got a cold (which, doesn’t take a genius to figure that out, unless that genius has Kai’s temperature regulation), right now, in winter, right before the upcoming first snow, that could be bad. Pretty bad. Because she’s probably not gonna be able to work, much less interact with the customers, and First Master knows Kai can’t be left in charge of that. And if she gets worse, then she’ll have to stay in bed, and she won’t be able to go to school, and everything Kai does is supposed to be so that she can stay in school, and if she gets even worse, then they’ll have to call a doctor and that—
A knock on their bedroom door takes her out of her train of thought, and it’s followed by Kai’s muffled screaming. “Nya, come on! You’re gonna be late!”
Yeah, fuck, they can’t have that.
She coughs in her elbow and jolts up from bed, the symptoms forgotten, and she resolves to figure this out in the brief minutes she gets to have breakfast before leaving the house.
Kai’s already up, and presumably has been for at least the past hour, busy with the cropping tools for the Long family and the swords for Mr Jeong and his son. She keeps telling him that he doesn’t need to open the shop that early, and that if he didn’t, he’d still be going to school, but he wants to get the most work done in the twenty four hours he gets each day. He’s been apparently too busy to make her breakfast, besides from the one half of a loaf of bread that’s lying on the table.
“Did you let me sleep in?” she asks, and winces at how strained her voice sounds.
“Of course not. Who do you take me for?” He has already started to work on Mrs Long’s broken rake, which he’s holding with a tighter grip than necessary, like it’s wronged him personally. “It’s not that late yet, if you hurry up you’ll have enough time to get your breakfast.”
She can’t help but notice the bags under his eyes and the new scar across his right arm from some accidental cut with something he was making. It’s not fair, she thinks, that he gets to stay up late working and stay by the warm forge on a winter’s night, while she has to sleep in their cold shared bedroom without his company. The cold doesn’t even affect him as much anyway. But also, he seems so tired he doesn’t look much better than she feels, and it’s hard for her to focus on her own discomfort when she sees him like this.
“You’ve eaten yet?”
“Mhm,” he says through a mouthful of bread. “Don’t worry about me. Just eat up yourself and don’t be late.”
So easy for him to say that. Always acting like their dad, always acting like he’s already an adult even though he’s just recently turned fourteen and he can’t even get time to make her breakfast even when she’s not perfectly on time.
Although, she doesn’t feel particularly hungry now, come to think of it. She has the common sense to take a bite out of the bread before doing anything like making herself some eggs, and therefore realizing that she’s not gonna be able to swallow up anything now.
“It’s fine,” she says, instead of I’m not hungry, because Kai’s just gonna think she’s being petty or that she’s bitching from waking up early and he’s gonna fuss all over her about a proper nutrition and the most important meal of the day, like that one school counselor did that one day he almost passed out during math class and the teacher called Nya because they couldn’t call their parents.
She puts down what’s left of the bread, feeling her stomach churn in a weird way; not like she’s about to throw up, fuck, no, please, Master, not that, but more like everything just tastes wrong in her tongue and she needs to spit it out. She manages not to do so, because they can’t waste food, especially in the winter, and she forces her body to swallow it down.
As she’s about to grab her stuff and get ready to leave, she sneezes loudly into her elbow. She looks down but she can feel Kai’s eyes piercing her face.
“Allergies bad today?” he asks.
Yeah, she could probably blame it on that. She feels her face hot all over, and her cheeks and nose are presumably red, from the congestion if not just the general cold air cutting against her skin. She could pass this as allergies and no big deal and nothing to worry about—nevermind they’re in the early beginning of a very cold winter, and most of the things that she’s allergic to (plants and pollen and such) are practically dead for the season.
That’s probably it. She’s probably not sick.
“Yeah. Must be.” She stifles a cough and frowns at how painful it feels. “I woke up feeling weird today.”
As soon as the words leave her mouth, she wants to kick herself. That’s probably the lack of sleep talking, and not the sickness, which she doesn’t have, because otherwise she would know better than to unnecessarily worry Kai about whether or not she will be able to work on the weekend and whether or not they’ll have to call a doctor, which Kai hates, to give her something expensive and gross that will only speed up the healing process by twenty four hours or so, taking away a full day’s payment in the process.
Kai frowns and gets up without a second thought, leaving the rake behind. She’s ready to come up with excuses and arguments and tell him to stop fussing over her like she’s a baby, because she’s not, she’s not a baby and she’s not sick and reasons why she shouldn’t miss school if she wants to eventually get a job at Ninjago City and give them a better life, because remember Kai, you won’t be able to do that for me, not since you drop—
But then he puts a hand to her forehead and she can sigh with relief.
Half because it actually feels a little bit nice and it helps with her increasingly throbbing headache. And half because she knows she’s not gonna have to fight him for this.
“You feel normal to me,” he says, which of course she does. He runs at 105 degrees Fahrenheit most of the time, a number that Nya has recently learned is not supposed to be a normal resting temperature for any human being her brother’s age. Ever since then, she’s been fussing over him about talking to a reliable doctor who can explain why he always has a fever without actually having a fever, but he has refused, of course, and turned a deaf ear to every single piece of evidence she has to offer that there’s something wrong with him. The most recent one being of course this.
He actually feels normal now. To her. As he touches her burning forehead. Which doesn’t feel burning to him. She’d dare to say he would even feel cold to her if he were a normal person. And if she were sick. Which she isn’t. She can’t be.
“You have those meds they gave you, right? Just in case it gets bad.”
“It’s not gonna get bad,” she says, stubbornly, because it can’t. What are they going to do if it does? The meds she got for her allergies (the last time they went to the doctor, about a year ago, and the last time ever, if Kai has anything to say about it) are certainly not gonna be enough. “But yeah. It’s fine.”
She goes through the bathroom cabinet to grab them and take them with her, if only to stop Kai from worrying any further. She considers taking some ibuprofen too for her headache, but ultimately decides against it, as it’s supposed to be for emergencies only and they don’t have that many left. Emergencies such as “I’m in so much pain I can’t focus right now and I need a pill so I can keep on working”. Not such as “I’m in so much pain I’ll be struggling to keep up with the ridiculously good grades I’ve been holding up for years now and I need a pill to do so”.
She can make it through one school day with a headache. She’s gone through worse before.
Luckily enough, Kai doesn’t seem any suspicious of her, having bought the excuse about the allergies. He does, however, call after her as she’s right about to leave, and she curses mentally for having her stand in the cold with the door open any minute longer.
“You didn’t eat.”
“I took an apple with me,” she lies, although he’s definitely gonna realize in about two minutes from now because they always count the food that’s left. It’s just no point to waste food on a sick person. Or somebody who’s feeling poorly even if they’re not sick. Somebody who just might not be able to keep it down. It’s no point anyway.
For now, he nods at her, seemingly satisfied. “Okay,” he says. “Take care now.”
Nya almost feels bad for lying to him.
He’s said it once (very sleep deprived on a particularly bad morning that was supposed to be their mom’s birthday) that it’s a relief she’s so smart and so capable that she can take care of herself even when he doesn’t have time to do everything for her. He’d feel so bad if she were to get sick. If she were to need him to take care of her. The guilt is enough to motivate her to actually put on all the proper layers before going out and then sit by the furnace once she gets to school, nevermind how many kids glare at her for taking the coveted spot.
The sky outside is grey and ugly, the way it is when it’s about to snow but not quite there yet. Nya can only hope it stays like that forever.
By the end of the day, the “allergies” that are most certainly allergies and therefore do not deserve the quoting marks, yes, those allergies, are not any better. If she were feeling particularly unwell, or maybe even sick, Nya would even say they’re getting worse.
She doesn’t take off any of her many many layers throughout the whole morning. She pays special attention to her gloves, because Kai’s always worried about that, ever since that winter she nearly lost a finger because of the cold. She steals a box of tissues offered to her by the teacher and keeps it for the rest of the day, probably for a bit longer than said teacher intended but she’s not about to waste money on such a stupid little thing.
She sways a little bit when she gets up from her seat at lunchtime and the teacher notices that too, so Nya ends up with a free apple along with the free tissues, neither of which she’s about to refuse. She actually eats the apple too, even if it tastes like dirt. She can’t afford to pass out from hunger anymore than she can afford to waste money.
The walk home feels a lot longer than the usual twenty minutes, and she’s shivering the whole way there, hugging herself and sinking into the big blue coat that used to be her mother’s. Despite the shop being open, she finds Kai asleep behind a table on his blacksmith clothes. Sadly, she doesn’t find this particularly surprising.
She doesn’t have it in her to be totally mad at him when she sees how peaceful he looks, even in such an uncomfortable position. All weird angles and furrows and old clothes that are near the point of rags but that he keeps around because they’re still practical and he says they don’t have enough money to buy him more. All about him screams tired and wary and broken and old, neither of which should fit a boy his age.
Or her age, probably. She’s twelve years old but she’s old enough to know that.
Not to say she’s completely not upset with him, who’s skipping school so that he can work and then ends up working overnight anyway and then falling asleep outside his bed. She finds one of the swords for the Jeongs lying on the table next to Kai’s limp body, but the cropping tools are nowhere to be seen. She assumes he must’ve given them back to the Longs already. There is still one sword left to make.
She makes the mistake to sigh, which sends her into a coughing fit. Somehow, the sound of it is not enough to wake up Kai, and she wonders how much sleep he was able to get last night.
There are charred lines on the table next to where the sword lies, and the metal’s still a little warm to the touch. Far from the burning heat it must’ve been a while ago but still. She can’t believe the idiot of her brother sometimes. Acting like he’s immune to fire itself besides being just weird.
Whatever. She can make the last sword herself. She is arguably better than her brother when it comes to crafting, and she is definitely better at building things rather than repairing them, which is the job Kai usually leaves for her. His excuse for that is that she is too little and should be focusing on other things, which screams so many different prejudices that she can’t even begin to argue with him (not that that keeps her trying… and not that she’s ever accomplished anything by that, because arguing with Kai is like arguing with a wall).
She looks out of the window, the sky still as grey as it was in the morning. Mercifully, snow hasn’t started falling yet, but the cold has still progressed enough that she is actually happy to be working, because it means more time near the forge (Kai at least had the common sense to put the fire out before choosing to pass out in the middle of the shop). So she puts on her own apron and starts making weapons.
Kai sleeps for the rest of the afternoon, and she doesn’t try to move him (despite the fact that it would probably be an easy task, as blacksmithing has not given Kai any extra muscles and he’s so small and thin that he looks closer to Nya’s twelve years and a half than his own age). She doesn’t have the energy to deal with more customers herself, even though that’s usually her job, but just in case, she keeps the shop open for the rest of the afternoon, ignoring Kai’s sleeping presence like she ignores the symptoms of her body.
As it turns out, that is not such an easy task as she thought.
Being near the fire helps at first, but at some point she goes all the way to the kitchen to get a glass of water and she realizes she’s sweating, despite walking a good distance away from the forge. Sweating. In winter. While feeling like she’s feeling. Almost a little bit sick. Can’t be a good sign.
Then, later, as she’s adding more wood into the fire, which is a normal and easy task and she should be able to fulfill it normally and easily, she’s faced with a small cloud of smoke that makes her cough. And then she just keeps coughing. And coughing. And she goes back into the kitchen for another glass and she needs to hold on to the counter not to sway.
Her skin hurts. Something stings inside her throat, like a worm crawling up. The metal feels heavier than it’s supposed to be. She feels like crying all the time and she’s not sure if it’s something physical or emotional.
Alright. So maybe she’s got a bit of a cold. And maybe it’s starting to get annoying as fuck.
Suffice to say, she’s not in the best of moods by the time Kai wakes up.
He rises from the table with the yawn, at least looking like he managed to make up for all the sleep he missed on the previous night. Not how things are supposed to be, she thinks bitterly. But that’s the way they make it work.
“What time is it?” he asks, groggily. The fact that he left a task unfinished and that she’s doing it for him (on a week’s day, no less) has probably not sinked in yet, or he’d be freaking out a little more and not looking as peaceful as he was when he was asleep.
“Little over six, I think.” She pulls loose strands of hair away from her eyes. She thinks vaguely that she should ask Kai to cut it sometime soon, as it’s starting to be a bother. Instead, she turns to him and gives him an icy glance. “Slept well?”
He seems to finally come to his senses, and he gets up with a jolt, so suddenly he almost trips with the table. “Shit. Sorry.” He casts a look around the shop, frantically. “The swords for—”
“Already on it.” Nya points to the still early stages of her work that lies on the corner of the shop and crosses her arms over her chest with a wince. That is also sore, but if Kai asks she’s gonna tell him it’s puberty or something. “You know, you dropped out so you could work. Not so you could sleep.”
Apparently she comes out sharper than she intended, because he looks at her like he does whenever she brings up their parents or whenever she calls him out on his breadwinner bullshit, because who does he think she is, or whenever she tells him that he’s not their dad and she’s not a baby so stop acting like you know fucking everything, will you.
“Well, fuck you too then,” he bites back, rubbing his eyes and actually looking like he doesn’t want to fight for a change. “Sorry, okay? I didn’t get much sleep last—”
“Night is when you’re supposed to sleep, Kai!” she yells, clenching her fists and furiously coughing in her elbow as her throat aches in protest. “That’s why you’re not—that’s why you’re not studying anymore, so that you can get more work done without—” she bends over and keeps coughing, everything hurting and stinging “—without getting tired—”
First Master, is so fucking ridiculous. Next thing she’s gonna start coughing up blood and swooning like that lady from that movie they watched in school. It’s not like it’s bad, fuck, she’s not gonna die. She’s not ill. She’s just—fuck.
And Kai has to go and squint at her and have the audacity to look surprised.
Because he’s not normal and he couldn’t see this coming like a normal person.
“Are you sick?”
“No!” she yells again. It’s a mistake. She clears her throat before speaking again. “No, I’m not. You’re the one who fell asleep on the job.”
“But I didn’t…” he says, and she knows he’s not thinking about falling asleep, because that’s just A Thing That Happens, and he’s instead thinking about how he took her temperature in the morning, like Miss Li said he was supposed to, and she felt normal to him, but only because he is not. “Stay here.”
The only reason why they own a thermometer is because their parents thought to buy one before dying and Kai mercifully didn’t sell it in those early years of being orphans in which he sold pretty much everything that wasn’t food to make more money. Nya remembers reading in school that the thermometer they have is an old type with dangerous chemicals and that they should change it for a better one, but neither she or Kai can bring themselves to care.
Kai comes out from the bathroom holding said thermometer and looking at it like he doesn’t know where he’s supposed to put it. Nya shoves it away before he remembers, pushing him back.
“Kai, I’m fine, seriously,” she swears, making an effort to keep her tone steady. “I can work tomorrow, I just need—”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He’s clenching his fists around the dangerous thermometer, looking halfway like he wants to punch something and halfway like he just wants to go to sleep again and cry. It’s a look she’s used to seeing on her brother and in the mirror. “Why did you just let me send you to—If I get sick, what happens then, huh? Who takes care of you?”
Me, she thinks but she doesn’t say it. Me, because I’m not too busy working overnight, because I actually know how to handle my schedule, because I have time to make my own breakfast and because you’re working hard so that I don’t have to, and I’m sorry, Kai, truly, I am, but that means a bunch of things and sometimes it means that you don’t have the time for me. I’m sorry. Me.
“Because it’s not that serious,” she says out loud, her voice suddenly so soft it’s almost a whisper. “I’m not dying, Kai. I just feel miserable.”
He shakes his head but at least he puts the thermometer away. If only because he doesn’t seem to know what to do with it or with the information it would give. “I can’t let you work like this,” he says, almost like he’s talking to himself.
Nya grips into the hem of her apron. “But tomorrow’s the weekend,” she complains. He’s clearly crazy. He’s weird and stupid and he’s crazy. “It’s when you rest. You can’t not rest.”
“I was resting a while ago, I’ll be fine.” Something that she can’t decipher crosses his eyes as he says it, and suddenly he’s pressing his lips and staring right at her and either he’s really, really tired, or she looks really, really awful. “I don’t have that much work to do anyway. And if you’re right and it’s not serious but I let you work and it gets worse, then… then I have to call someone, and I can’t… I can’t…”
He trails off, but she knows how this goes. The neighbors and the doctors and the well-intentioned people who aren’t their parents. He can’t let them come inside their house (he, because when it comes to this stuff, he is in charge), he can’t let them look at him and see everything that’s wrong with his body and his scars and the burning marks he doesn’t have, and he can’t leave them hold her and take her and say that she needs a better family, better than him, and just take her away because he can’t care for her.
Nya’s not about to say it to him. But. She doesn’t want that happening either.
She sighs. Swallows back a coughing fit. Nods.
“Okay,” she says, and Kai seems to relax a little. “Okay, but… but you do need me on the weekend. Please, just… let me sleep it off tonight. I’ll be fine. I wouldn’t lie to you about this.”
Kai scoffs at the last bit. “About this,” he mutters, but she knows he gets it.
She wouldn’t lie if she were about to drop dead on the shop’s floor. She wouldn’t lie if she needed supplies that he was keeping for himself. She wouldn’t lie if he had a reason to worry and she were to postpone it. That wouldn’t be practical. That would take out precious time that he could use to work and it would throw them all off schedule.
And. It would hurt him.
She doesn’t want to hurt him.
She just —
“Kai, please.”
— she just can’t be sick. Not like this. It can’t get bad.
What are they supposed to do if it does?
And Kai knows it. She knows he knows it.
“Okay,” he says. “But you go to sleep now. I’ll take care of the swords. And… and bundle up, yeah? Keep yourself warm.”
She rolls her eyes at him, but takes out her apron nevertheless. “You’re wearing short sleeves,” she points out with a sneeze.
“I’m never cold,” he states, and she hears him whispering to himself, again in that tone that she can’t quite decipher. “I’m never cold.”
It almost sounds like he’s resentful.
A while later, she is effectively bundled up in as many blankets as they have inside the house, and Kai has taken care of the last sword, and she’s—she’s still sore and tired and coughing and sneezing, but not as much? Maybe? She’s not sure how much she can compare being buried in blankets to working near a burning forge holding heavy pieces of hot metal.
She doesn’t miss the despair in her brother’s eyes as he tucks her in like she’s a little kid (she hisses at him as he does, an attempt at humor that only gains her a sad chuckle that makes him seem much older than he is). He’s not soft by nature, and neither is she. Two products of the house of fire and smoke. And even though she sees the effort he puts into being gentle with her sick body, the care with which he handles everything he touches around her, she knows it. The point of this is that she doesn’t get sicker. Because then, everything goes to absolute shit.
It’s dark outside when he shows up at their bedroom door again, and she can tell by his face he’s not about to get much sleep tonight either. That’s probably for the best actually, because they share a bedroom and he’s likely to get sick if he stays there next to her for the next eight hours.
She sniffs. “Did you close the shop?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he replies, even though he’s not good at masking the anxiety in his eyes. “Just meant to tell you I’m gonna keep the forge lit.”
He means so that you don’t catch cold any more than you already have.
She sits up on her bed, dumbfounded, ignoring the throbbing in the back of her head. “You told me to never do that.” It’s one of the few things she remembers about her dad. Things like the world works in mysterious ways and experience isn’t something you learn overnight and never keep the fire lit at night because the house could burn down while you sleep. It’s like monsters-under-the-bed but for blacksmith children. If such a thing exists.
“I’ll stay up and make sure nothing catches fire. We’ll be fine.” He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself, hence the plural in first person. “Did you have anything for dinner?”
“I’m not hungry,” she mutters. There’s no point in hiding it anymore.
He gives her a look of something like pity, which she hates, and comes out again, making a run for the kitchen. She gets to have a few minutes of interrupted sick sleep before he comes back with a bowl of rice, sprinkled over with the usual flavors. Kai’s actually a pretty decent cook, once one develops the same spice tolerance that he has seemingly naturally and that is required for at least half of his dishes. Nya hasn’t been affected by it since she was at least three, and both her and her brother will pretty much eat anything at this point in their lives, but right now, she can’t bring herself to put more than one grain of rice in her mouth.
“It’d be really stupid if you die of starvation when you said you weren’t hungry,” Kai says.
“You’re stupid,” she responds, shoving the bowl away, and she half means it. He didn’t bring any bowl for himself and he most certainly would’ve if he had the intention of eating. It would just save up more time that way.
“That’s kind of the point,” he mutters under his breath. “That’s why you’re the one in school.”
She doesn’t know what to say to that.
He only leaves once it’s evident that the only way she’ll ever finish the bowl will be if he shoves the rice down her throat and the prospect of her throwing up perfectly good food is enough to scare them both, although they don’t even mention the possibility. Nya sinks deeper under the covers, ready to fall asleep and wake up feeling like fucking sunshine, when she notices Kai’s still standing at the door.
He calls out, “Nya?”
She blinks at him, tiredly. “What?”
In a low voice, he says. “Take care.”
He means I love you.
Sometimes, she thinks it’d be nice if he actually said it. Sometimes, she thinks it would be weird as fuck.
Now, she shrugs. She’s not really thinking about anything, aside from how much her head hurts. “Sure. I guess.”
He nods and puts the light out. The bowl of rice is left in the corner.
At least Nya’s nightmares are normal.
When Kai was younger, she used to wake up to the sound of him weeping and calling out for their parents, mumbling nonsense about monsters and drowning and dragons and such. Things that seemed out of one of those stories their father used to tell them about creatures from other realms. And there’s that recurring dream he always has about their parents’ death that he refuses to tell her about. She’s gathered something about a fire and a lake, which doesn’t really make sense to her. Again. Weird.
Meanwhile, Nya dreams of things like being late to school or being naked in front of a large group of people. Or abstract monsters that are hidden in the shadows, instead of fantasy creatures that should not qualify for a nightmare for anyone who’s over three years old. You know. All normal stuff. Normal children stuff.
Tonight doesn’t seem to be the case.
Tonight, she dreams of the ocean.
She dreams of sailing on a big empty boat in the middle of a storm, wrapped in only her mother’s big blue coat, and desperately trying to reach the shore. The rain hits her in the face and she can’t breathe, any air that manages to get into her lungs feeling like sharp freezing needles pricking inside her. It’s stressful at first, but it doesn’t turn into a nightmare until the ocean turns into a person.
A face appears in the waves and it rises up, a literal body of water that stands as tall as a mountain, looking down on her as her ship gets sucked into the eye of the storm. She thinks the face looks a bit like hers, but older. She wonders if it might be her mother’s.
She doesn’t get to wonder much, because suddenly the ocean is sucking her in like a whirlpool and her ship is being torn to pieces and she’s in the water now and she tries to swim like Kai didn’t taught her, because Kai always said to stay away from the lake, but her mother’s coat is big and heavy and it’s weighing her down and the blue of the coat is blurring with the blue of the ocean and she’s sinking and running out of breath and she’s gonna drown—
“—can breathe, it’s okay, be okay, please, just hold on, I’m here—”
—she’s drowning and she’s sinking into the bottom of the ocean which looks like the lake near the school and she’s coughing up water, she’s coughing up a whole river, but if she’s coughing how could she be sinking into the bottom of the lake?
Her mother’s coat presses against her, wrapping her from behind like it’s her mother’s very arms, and pressing against her ribs to make her cough more and it fucking hurts. And what if it’s not the river that she’s coughing. What if it’s puke. She can’t waste food, she can’t. Food is supposed to keep her alive and it takes a lot of work, it costs a lot of money, to keep her alive, and if she’s going to die then what’s the fucking point, why’s Kai even doing this much, he might die as well and she doesn’t want him to die—
“Nya, please, don’t die. Please, breathe, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Just breathe. You can’t die. Please. Nya.”
She’s not gonna fucking die and she keeps trying to breathe, of course, she wants to fucking breathe, but somebody’s arms that are covered in fur (and maybe they’re her mother’s or maybe it’s just the coat that’s come to life) keep pressing against her like chains and it’s getting harder and harder to inhale and exhale. Her throat feels like it’s burning, like that time she accidentally hit her hand with the forge and Kai kept screaming at her and swearing as her arm went red and hurting and he looked frantically for the bucket of water that he never kept around for himself.
She’s not gonna die. That’s ridiculous. That’s just fucking stupid—
“Kai,” she rasps between coughs. “Kai.”
She wants to say a lot more than that but it’s all she manages with the million needles stabbing her in the neck. Her throat hurts and her chest hurts and her head’s throbbing and Kai is holding her from behind very tightly like he’s afraid she’s gonna slip through his fingers like sand.
For all she knows, that might as well be how their parents died.
She wouldn’t know. He doesn’t tell.
Nya realizes she’s breathing through her mouth. She looks up to the ceiling and still sees the faces in the waves. A woman who might be her mother. A man who might be her father but is most likely Kai, because every time she closes her eyes and tries to picture her dad all she sees is Kai. And she shouldn’t. Because Kai is a kid, only two years older than her, a year and seven months and two weeks, and he can’t even make her breakfast half the time and he holds onto her too tight and he’s afraid and he’s burning too.
If he’s a dad, he’s not a great one. If he’s a brother, he’s not normal.
She finds his eyes right above her head. They’ve been told they don’t look much like siblings and their eyes are one of the things that sets them apart. They’re both shades of brown, but his are a little darker than Nya’s, and she’s been told she gets hers from their father. Nya thinks that color is called amber. Kai says they’re hazel.
Kai’s eyes are dark brown. She can only guess it comes from their mom.
She has no memory of her. But she still sees her face in the waves. Looking at her from the ceiling.
“It hurts,” she says, her voice shaking like she’s about to cry. She’s not sure; the pain of speaking distracts her from knowing. “Mom.”
One moment, Kai’s face twists in an ugly way, and the next, it’s raining inside their bedroom. Raindrops fall on Nya’s face, and they feel cold. Freezing cold. Pricking on her skin.
“Don’t cry. Nya, I’m sorry,” Kai sobs over her, and she feels his hands stroking her hair with a touch too gentle to be his. “You need to breathe. Please don’t cry.”
It’s you, she thinks. She’s not crying at all, though she could. She could call for her mother, whom she knows it’s not coming, and wail as if the pain could be drained out of her through tears. She knows it can’t. Kai, kneeling next to her, holding her like she might die any second, doesn’t seem to.
She looks at him. His brown eyes are filled with tears.
It’s you.
She’s tired.
“Wanna sleep,” she says, turning around and curling up on herself. “Make it. Better.”
She means it will. She always feels better after she gets some rest.
He thinks she means do it.
“I’m trying. Just—No, Nya, wait. You have to eat something.” She feels his warm presence pulling away from her and she whimpers. There’s the sound of something hitting something (the bowl of ceramic being dragged across the bedroom floor) and then Kai is putting a bunch of rice right under her nose. “Please, eat something. You’re gonna pass out if you don’t.”
She whines, “Tired.” And not hungry. And headache. Overall, not in the mood to eat.
“It’s important,” he keeps pressing. “You have to eat.”
“Nooo.” She wraps herself up in the blankets, which are not as warm as her brother, but at least they don’t keep nagging her with food or whatever. She doesn’t think she can even taste anything right now. She can’t smell for one. She sniffs under the sheets, giving her back to Kai. “Sleep.”
There is a beat of silence, in which she almost manages to fall asleep. Usually, she can practically hear Kai’s thoughts, his anxiety surrounding her like a cloud of smoke every time he so much as looks at her. Right now, all she hears is her own uneven breathing as she inhales through her mouth. It’s the most relaxed she’s ever been and everything hurts.
“I’m… I’m gonna get help, I swear,” he says. There’s a frantic movement around the bedroom and the sound of the bowl of rice falling on the floor. “Just… hang on and wait for me.”
“Mhm.” She can’t really bring herself to care at this point.
She hears the faint sound of his steps as she feels him getting away. She can hear him now, standing still on their bedroom door, looking at her like he’s their dad, anguish in his voice and panic in his body.
“I’ll be right back, Nya,” he whispers. “I promise.”
“‘ts okay,” she replies as he runs away.
She’s used to it at this point.
She wakes up again and there’s a man poking at her throat with long, cold, bony fingers, and Kai’s leaning over her with absolutely no respect for her personal space and she coughs into the man’s face gasping for air.
“Kai, what the fuck,” she rasps.
The man backs away and stares at her through a pair of glasses, switching his gaze from her to Kai and then back to her. Nya faintly recalls his face from somewhere, maybe a farmer from the village or a regular client at the shop. She’s not sure. She looks back at him and sees a thermometer (different from theirs) and a bottle of pills lying next to him.
“Um,” he says.
Kai sniffs. “She… She gets like this when she’s upset.”
Which is a lie. If he’s talking about the swearing. She swears all the time, and so does Kai. Or maybe it isn’t a lie and they’re just always upset, because everything is shit all the fucking time.
“It’s okay,” the man says. “I’m glad you’re awake, Nya. How are you feeling?”
Nya blinks. She turns to look at her brother. She mouths the word doctor? with a perplexed look on her face but Kai just shakes his head.
What. The fuck.
Is he insane? After everything he said about money and secrets and how adults always ruin everything because they don’t get it and people taking her away from him and people saying that he’s wrong… After all that, he’s still calling a doctor to their own home? What is the guy gonna think when he realizes there are no adults living in this house? Who is he gonna call then?
Nya opens her mouth to speak but she erupts into another coughing fit, her throat dry and raw after a full night of sleeping with the sickness. Which looks like it was a little more than a night, giving the sun that is shining through their bedroom window. It’s definitely later than morning, and maybe even later than midday. Who is even running the shop?
She rasps the word “Water” between coughs, and the man nods, clicking his tongue. “I see. Don’t worry. I have a thing for that.”
He takes out a pill out of the flask and hands it to her. She shoves it away with the same good manners she uses to deal with particularly nice customers. The intention is also the same: to come out of this interaction with no less amount of money than she had before.
“No, it’s fine,” she says. “It’s fine. Just water will be okay.”
“It might suffice in the short term, but this will have a more lasting effect,” the man insists. He speaks with more fancy words than anyone she’s ever met on Ignacia, but he’s dressed normally, like somebody from the village, and not a city boy. Boy because he also seems pretty young, not much older than a teenager. “And this,” he adds, handing her a different pill, “will help with the fever.”
She’s ready to protest that she doesn’t have a fever, and that they don’t need medicine, and they don’t have the money, but she catches the look Kai’s casting towards her — something like the way she looks at him whenever he starts an argument with a customer that she’s trying to close a deal with — and she shuts up.
“Is that all?” he inquires anxiously. “What’s gonna happen to her?”
The man gives him a reassuring smile, the kind that was never enough to convince him, or her, when it came from the neighbors or the city people. “She will be okay. She just has a cold and a little bit of a temperature, but it’s nothing serious. No signs of infection in the throat or the lungs, or anything of the sort.”
Kai doesn’t reply to that, and neither does Nya. It feels as if they’re talking as if she wasn’t here. The soft look that crosses the man’s face is reserved for the worrying brother only, and not the sickly sister, who has nothing more than a cold.
“I can check again if that would make you feel better,” the guy says. “So you can tell your mother that everything is in order.”
Nya presses her lips.
Kai doesn’t say anything, which is for the best. Of the two of them, he’s the worst liar, and Nya knows she herself isn’t a strong contestant. It’s a miracle he hasn’t given them away with whatever he said before Nya woke up.
“It’s just…” Kai looks down, biting his lip. “Last night, she was coughing real bad. And it looked like she couldn’t breathe. And she wasn’t speaking, and she wasn’t listening to me, and I thought—”
“That’s a lie!” Nya cuts him. “I could hear you perfectly, I was just tired. It was f-freaking two in the morning, or something. And I was having a nightmare, not dying.”
Kai looks up and glares at her. As if it were her fault that she scared him so much for no reason at all.
“Right.” The man nods. “I imagine it would’ve been scary at such a late hour and after having a bad dream. But I promise you, it just looked scary. It wasn’t anything dangerous. All she needs is some pills — no more than two a day, but I imagine the cold could be gone by tomorrow — and maybe some good old fashioned chicken soup. Does your mother make that for you when you get sick?”
Nya doesn’t want to see the devastated look on her brother’s face. She has enough misery of her own right now. She speaks up before he starts crying again and gives away everything.
“Sometimes,” she says. “But my brother likes to cook a lot, and most of the time our mom lets him.”
That… might’ve been a mistake, cause Kai looks closer to crying right now than before. It always has to do with their parents or with her, whenever he does. Like that time she scraped her knee so badly and the blood kept coming out, and he was supposed to be working but instead he was crying as he bandaged her leg. Or that time years ago when he was the one sick and he feverishly held on to her in the middle of the night and he kept calling her Dad as he sobbed into her shoulder like she was the big sibling and the grownup for a change.
“Well, that’s nice. I do hope she gets back soon from that trip; being alone like this can’t be any fun. And in the winter, no less!”
The guy is so satisfied with his work that he doesn’t even insist on taking her temperature again, or double check that there’s a bedroom for the alleged mother that these kids seem to have, as Kai always fears that people will if they come into their house. He tells Kai again about what medicine she has to take and how often, and what to do and who to call if he gets scared again.
Just two men talking business as if she wasn’t in the room, or as if she was already dead.
Neither of them mention payment, and she’s too scared to ask.
Kai doesn’t talk to her for hours once he’s gone, and she doesn’t want him to.
At least they understand each other, in some way.
The next time he brings her food, she makes a real attempt to eat it. The last thing they need is him calling the doctor again.
She actually has some appetite to satisfy, so the medicine seems to be working at least. Not that she’s gonna tell Kai that. Not that she’s gonna say that he did the right thing by worrying and panicking when she was okay and it was just a cold and he shouldn’t have called a doctor because doctors are expensive.
He sits by her bedside as she eats, as if checking that nothing comes up. He eats something as well, in total silence until she’s finished with her bowl, nevermind how long it takes.
“He wasn’t a doctor,” he says, finally. His voice sounds as hoarse as hers. “He was Miss Li’s nephew from the city. Seeing his aunt for the winter.”
She wonders briefly if he might’ve caught whatever she has, but he doesn’t appear to be flushed or congested, so the voice could be just from getting little sleep again. Besides, it will do no good if she starts to panic as well. Who takes care of you then?
“And why,” she asks with all the sarcasm she can muster without being actually mean, because they’re both on the same boat of misery and hunger and fear, and Kai doesn’t deserve this, “was he seeing us?”
Kai’s expression, she thinks, is the closest she’s ever gonna get to an actual sorry from him.
“I panicked,” he says.
“I gathered that,” she says.
“I didn’t think you could breathe. I just… I came out running in the snow and called for whoever would answer, and Miss Li was there, and he was with her, and I said my baby sister was sick, and I couldn’t…”
He leaves the words hanging in the air. Nya didn’t even realize it had started snowing until he pointed it out.
“I’m not a baby,” she mutters, so quiet she doesn’t expect him to hear her.
Then again, she doesn’t expect that even when she’s shouting at him.
He’s always so focused. Always the man in charge. Always so busy taking care of her, he doesn’t have time for her. And she hates it. And it’s not his fault. And it’s all his fault. And she hates it.
Kai sits up straight, raising his chin. “He wouldn’t charge. If that makes you feel better.” He knows her so well. “I played my part well.”
Why do you think that is?, she thinks, thinking of poor kids and all alone and you should’ve taken Miss Li’s offer when you had the chance, when she said Mom and Dad weren’t coming back and better stay with me for this season at least. She thinks of that and she hates herself. She doesn’t want to be mean. She wants to be normal. She doesn’t want to be angry at her brother. It would help if he stopped taking charge of literally everything that happens, including the things that make her angry, but she’s not angry at him. She just doesn’t talk to anyone else.
Nobody else listens.
Nya feels her voice softening, despite herself, and buries herself deeper into the blankets. “He’s gonna realize you lied to him. When he tells Miss Li about our mom.”
He looks pale, and as sickly as her, when faced with the thought.
“He’s not gonna tell anyone,” he says still. “He’s just a student. Why would he care about what happens to two kids from Ignacia?”
“He wouldn’t charge,” Nya says.
Because she knows that, if anyone ever comes for them, if anyone finds out that they’re parentless and living on their own and state that this is not a way for two children to live, she knows it wouldn’t be out of malice or hatred that they’d take her away.
It would be out of compassion.
She knows this. She knows so much.
She knows him so well.
Something itchy and salty and watery threatens to slip between her eyes, and she blinks it away half-successfully.
“I’m sorry,” she sobs.
“For what?”
“For scaring the living daylights out of you.”
His knuckles go white with how tightly he’s holding onto himself, wrapping himself as if to be hugged, as if he were cold, as if he couldn’t be cold. He doesn’t reach out for a hug like he does sometimes, like he does less and less these days, because she’s sick and she might be contagious and if he gets sick, then who takes care of you?
“I wasn’t scared,” he says through gritted teeth. “I’m your big brother. I am not fucking scared, Nya, and you—you can’t ever be sorry for anything. You’re not…” He shakes his head, mindlessly. No point. All the same. He’s not looking at her anymore. “You’re not. You can’t.”
This conversation is the first time he’s speaking to her ever since the not-doctor left, and despite that, he hasn’t left their room in hours. He hasn’t left her side, or opened up the shop, or gotten the swords and the tools to whoever might need them, and he’s stayed by her side, and she’s all he’s got, and he looks so pained at the thought of her right now. So hurt.
It’s worse than their parents when they died.
She’s worse.
A thought occurs to her, and she voices it out loud without any malice, without anything more than an actual question.
“Did you show him around? I mean, the shop. You could’ve gotten him interested in something. A sword or something. Since he was already here.”
He looks up. He stares at her in silence for a full minute or two.
Then, he buries his head in his arms and she hears him taking a deep tearful breath.
“You idiot,” he grits. “You’re a little fucking idiot.”
“Language,” she replies, because it feels like there should be someone saying it to him. “Don’t cry. Kai, don’t cry.”
She’s telling it to herself now.
Because one of these days, he’s finally gonna lose it. He’s gonna grow tired of not sleeping and panicking and taking care of her and he’s gonna beg for somebody from the city to take her away to a better family, to a better home. He’s gonna be alone and he’ll be able to sleep and work only for himself and eat whatever he wants, maybe even go back to school, and he won’t have to worry about her anymore, and he’ll be happy. He won’t be scared. Running out into the snow like he’s invincible, like it couldn’t hurt him.
It’s all a lie. She knows he won’t.
But she’s better than her brother at telling lies.
And she wouldn’t blame him if made that choice.