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Arc F1.8 | Chapter 31: The Wedges Between Us

✮ ✮ ✮ Baylor ✮ ✮ ✮[Olivier:]

[Olivier:]

I blinked at the messages, come through in a new relay that included myself, my brothers, Olivier, and the still—still!—missing Emilia. Fuck did I hate that she was gone, her darkened name a never-ending horror within my mind and heart. I knew it bothered a number of us a lot—my brothers, most notably; Darrian had told me a while back that Emilia simply being in danger left a pinprick of tension within him. Rafe and Simeon were probably freaking out as well, although they weren’t the sort to say anything about it—Rafe already knew my brothers and I were pissed with him, due to whatever the fuck had led him to break Emilia’s heart. No, it didn’t matter that it had been years and had led Emilia into our bed: we would always be angry with him for what he did to her. Simeon, on the other hand, rarely spoke about his feeling to anyone Emilia. Fuck would the little Dyad break if Emilia actually died. It was impossible to care for Simeon, at least a bit, and I think that watching him fall apart would be something difficult to see, but…

But I wouldn’t be thinking about it, the reality of every terrible thing that would happen, were Emilia to—

Nope. Nope. Nope. Not going there! Going back to other things, like the people in our group who seemingly didn’t seem affected by Emilia’s Sure, we had almost immediately learned she was fine—although, it had taken a few minutes for her to get to her xphern and start messaging us.

Still, my mind slipped back to her first , back when we’d first been headed to Lüshan. Even back then, there had been a few people who seemed to barely care that Emilia might have been dead—and she’d been for far longer that time. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the fear that had flooded through me at the time, so overwhelming I felt liable to fall to my knees and shatter apart—scream and rage and then kill everyone.

Mostly, I’d been inclined to kill Leerin, who had seemed entirely unaffected—had dared to whine to Darrian about how

Fuck her. Fuck the bitch. Fuck her, fuck her, fuck her.

Glaring at the bitch’s vitals—and really, I wondered if she was aware of just how much could be gleaned from the information, if one knew what to look for—I could say only this: Leerin should be glad that she was far, far away from me at the moment. Considering that even Halen’s vitals were spiking with annoyance every time the girl opened her mouth, I could imagine she was being even more aggravating than usual. Emilia being her friend or not, my newfound friendship with Darrian or not, I don’t think I would be able to stop myself from snapping her neck, were we together at the moment.

It had been a long time coming. Really, it was too bad Taelor had refused to let me bash her head in back when we were teenagers and she had first started becoming so insufferable.

my older brother had said at the time, running his fingers through my hair—longer than it was now, grown out because Emilia had seen an older clone returning from a job with shaggy curls and made a comment about how nice they were.

The wild curls had constantly been a tumble of movement that summer, before I’d finally noticed Valor’s annoyance with how long it was getting and cut each of our hair back to a more manageable length. Now, it was on the longer side again—Emilia loved running her fingers through each of our hair—the bangs pulled back with clips she’d gotten us a few years ago, back when we’d first dragged her into our bed.

Soon, we’d have to cut our hair for work, and really, I fully expected it to feel like cutting my heart out, each curl that tumbled to the ground a piece of my soul crumbling to ashes.

I could remember asking, Valor snickering into my back and telling me that, if Leerin were still a miserable old lady still in our lives, he would help me kill her. Maybe—just maybe—the time to kill her had finally come?

[Taelor:]

Drat.

✮ ✮ ✮ Taelor ✮ ✮ ✮

Emilia would be better at this— would be better at this, at teaching Olivier how to use combat skills effectively in so brief an amount of time.

Baylor wouldn’t like it—I my middle brother wouldn’t like it. At the same time…

[Taelor has added Halen to the relay]

[Baylor:]

[Baylor:]

[Taelor:]

[Taelor:.]

[Halen:]

[Halen:]

[Halen:]

[Baylor:]

[Valor:]

[Baylor:]

I didn’t need to see my middle brother’s expression to know he was annoyed—really, while Baylor constantly claimed he hated Halen with his entire being, neither I nor Valor were ever sure what to make of his simultaneously full-bodied and half-hearted claims, and his reaction earlier? It was undeniable that Halen was beautiful, with his deep-black skin and perfect features, the smallest of woven through him, leaving him eye catching, rather than boring. For Baylor to have panicked so badly over some enthusiastic appreciation for Halen’s beauty that he almost killed Darrian…

about whatever had happened wasn’t right. Unfortunately, Baylor had refused to explain exactly what had happened inside his head. Eventually, I would force the truth out of him—tie the brat up with Valor’s help and pull the truth off his tongue with torture wrought by my own skilled tongue, by our baby brother’s skilled knots and fingers and patience.

Baylor would break and tell us the truth, eventually. Until then, I simply sent another message in our triplets-only relay, telling Baylor to chill.

[Taelor:]

It was a reiteration of reality, and the repetition earned me an exasperated sigh from Baylor, Darrian humming in question and earning himself both an explanation of the situation—annoyingly, my brother didn’t slip in any extra reason for his current ire at Halen being included in the group relay to his conversation with Darrian and Westrial, either.

Seriously, what was the problem? I know Baylor always takes holding grudges on Emilia’s behalf to an extreme, but his behaviour towards Halen has always been some mixture of overly hostile and… it was hard to explain. Really, part of it was that I swore Baylor probably would have killed Halen, had he ever been given a good enough reason; yet, the one time Emilia had freaked out and actually tried to kill our former classmate, Baylor had been the one to eventually stop her.

I could remember Baylor saying as he knelt before Emilia and smiled up at her.

It was only later that we realized Rafe had broken up with her only hours before, Halen’s prank hitting her when she was already heartbroken and confused and struggling to reconcile her memories of being happy with Rafe with the reality that he didn’t want her anymore. It was the perfect storm of circumstances, leaving her anger with one boy to overflow onto Halen until she was chasing him down, fully intent to kill him. At the time, neither I nor Valor had bothered asking questions—instead, we had simply assumed whatever Halen had done had been

In the grand scheme of all the pranks either had ever played on one another, this particular prank really had been quite high on the list of —an odd thing, the timing of the prank, if one bothered thinking about it. Baylor had been right to stop her, however—our love really would have been destroyed by the reality that she killed Halen with her misdirected anger.

Still, the reality remained that out of the three of us, our middle brother was the one anyone would assume to be the one who would step up to stop Emilia from exacting revenge on Halen of all people; yet, he was, and I could never quite shake the feeling that made Baylor killing Halen impossible—as impossible as Baylor killing Emilia would be, despite the seize of my heart whenever I realized they’d brought violence into the bedroom.

A small laugh bubbled out of my middle brother, Valor glancing up from the xphern he rarely removed his eyes from to look up at Baylor. A moment later, Darrian was being added to our relay with Olivier, Halen, and the dead-to-the-world Emilia was well.

[Valor:]

✮ ✮ ✮ Valor ✮ ✮ ✮

I asked, switching the relay over to audio.

the man replied, seeming shocked to suddenly find his internal voice striking through the relay.

Baylor added, a note of annoyance in his voice at the seeming slight of his new friend.

It was, at times, amazing the way in which we could easily see the delineation of D-Levels within Darrian. The other boy was skilled, but despite significant effort, he could never quite manage to catch up to us low-devs, the invisible line of that started at 9D somehow as meaningful as people often tried to argue it wasn’t.

In many ways, it really wasn’t. In many more, it really was, and I popped open my relay with Darrian to tell him I hadn’t meant it that way.

[Darrie:]

Did it matter that he knew I didn’t see him as despite the reality that, in some things, he always would be?

When my eyes shifted to Darrian, he was smiling softly down at Baylor, and it was clear that they were messaging privately as well—Baylor insisting that his new friend wasn’t any lesser for not being a low-dev, no doubt. He wasn’t, and in those brief seconds before Olivier replied that audio was fine, I added that Darrian was also capable of speaking through a relay while multitasking—really, only a few members of our various groups weren’t, and that was largely due to a lack of practice in such stressful situations. Really, the chances of BJ, Janie, or Leerin accidentally dying because they were distracted by their relays was so high that those of us in their groups were effectively left monitoring them near constantly.

It was… annoying, mostly. While it was impossible to not appreciate that they had come with us for Emilia’s sake, it was clear that BJ was in over his head, his body a constantly twitching, flinching thing, while there was a reason Halen kept trying to leave Leerin behind, and Janie…

Since grabbing hold of Halen, in order to stop him from bailing after Darrian, the two of us had been messaging a bit—not a lot, but occasionally, the other boy asked for my opinion on this or that with the implicit understanding that he wanted to know how my brothers and I viewed specific things and people without my brothers knowing we were communicating.

I couldn’t blame Halen for being nervous with Taelor and Baylor—especially with Baylor, whose relationship with Halen was strained enough that any potential relationship between Halen and Emilia might be stymied by Baylor’s hatred for the boy.

Regardless, I knew from Halen’s questions about Leerin that he had no idea Baylor hadn’t given in and killed the girl long ago—really, I thought Halen judged all of us for not kicking Leerin out of our friend group long ago, which seemed fair. Mostly, I told him we’d all gotten quite skilled at ignoring her moods.

In regards to Janie, Halen thought her acting strange—a sentiment I confirmed with Rafe and Simeon and even Leerin. was up with Janie, who while usually quiet and restrained, seemed even more so, her presence constantly fading away so entirely that even Leerin—who while often oblivious to the interpersonal dynamics of our friend group was fully aware Janie was her —was struggling to remember the girl was with them quite often.

Really, I could understand Janie had come: she would have felt as though she would be letting Emilia down, were she to stay back in Baalphoria. It was why BJ had come as well, but for as overwhelmed as he was, I didn’t get the sense that he wished he wasn’t there; rather, it simply felt as though he was aware he might be more of a burden, aware that he needed more training if he were to keep up with us.

Unfortunately, it was possible—and the people travelling with Janie agreed—that she regretted coming and not because she might be more of a hindrance than helpful.

Janie regretted coming for herself alone—regretted risking her life for Emilia, and really, despite Leerin’s complaints and whining, I was almost possible that, even if she could go back in time and remember how much she being here, Leerin wouldn’t have stayed home. Leerin might things were terrible and Emilia was causing problems and that everyone should have turned back, but there was a reason why we kept her as a friend: she complained, and often wasn’t the most useful member of our group, but she never abandoned us, so how were we to abandon her?

Actions meant more than words, in the end, and Janie’s disappearing into the shadows was an action—was something that, if she didn’t reappear when needed, might end up pressing a wedge between us and her.