veryroundbirdfics | Arknights

Rating: Piquant
Words: 1953
Characters: Ch'en, Talulah, Koschei, Wei Yenwu, Fumizuki, Swire, Lin Yüshia
Relationships: Gen
Summary: Koschei doesn't kidnap Talulah; Talulah and Hui-chieh grow up together. Sometimes, discovering the crimes of your forefathers on your own is worse.
Notes: Pride Month 2021 request for Friend Tara

Even her father's estate wasn't this fancy, she thinks, as she balls her hands in her lap, sitting stiff-backed up in her chair and doing her best to look like someone not to be fucked with.

A servant pours her a glass of wine, and her host tilts his head at her across the table, and smiles. "I don't know if you have a preference," he says, "but I've been waiting to uncork this vintage for years. I'm glad to have a companion for it."

She levels her gaze at him. "My sister—" she starts, but the man waves a hand.

"There's time enough for everything," he says. "But she is safe. That's what matters, is it not?"

That's what matters. She bites the inside of her lip. "Yes," she says, flatly. "That's what matters."

"I'm glad we agree," he says, and raises his glass of wine. "Now. You were saying—"

At ten years old, she is a stoic, serious presence in her tidy white dress at this funeral; her father stands beside her, in his own funeral whites. A whole crowd surrounds them, though Hui-chieh cannot remember ever seeing her mother with friends.

She has never felt so alone.

Maybe it'd be easier if Tal was here, but that was never an option. She knows Tal kicked Uncle Wei in the shins over it, though, because Tal told her that, on one of the nights she managed to slip her minders to throw rocks at Hui-chieh's window.

On the other hand—

—the secret Hui-chieh will never tell her sister hangs heavy in her chest. In a way, her mother's death is a relief, as much as she already cried so many tears over it. The way that whenever she looked at Hui-chieh, it always felt clear that she wished it were Talulah instead, up until the point that it hardly seemed like she saw anything in front of her at all. And having that relief, she will feel forever guilty.

"Don't be such a nerd, Hui-chieh; doesn't your dad just buy your grades in the exams like every other dad like him does?"

"Shut the fuck up, Bea," Hui-chieh says, and chucks one of her highlighters at Bea's head before going back to her civics textbook. "Uncle Wei would have my ass if I cheated. And besides, I want to do this right. It's important to know all of this. If I'm going into politics someday, I want to be more than some rich shithead with more backers than sense; I want to be able to actually do something."

Yuhsia snorts, and Talulah cracks a wry smile—but Talulah, not for the first time, starts to wonder whether she really belongs here. She's seated next to Hui-chieh, at the Swire family's third-best dining table, for group study time, but she's the only one here who doesn't attend Lungmen's most prestigious prep school.

Not that she lacks for good education—Uncle Wei has gotten her the best tutors money could buy—but it's one more thing that's not for her. Even if it's not strictly a secret that his sister had a bastard, there's a difference between that being true and parading it in front of the world at large, she supposes.

She and Uncle Wei don't talk much at all, really. He's always at political or business dinners, and when he's around, he asks about her studies, blandly. Aunt Fumi cares, she thinks, but for Uncle Wei, it always seems like Talulah is too painful to look at directly, like a blazing sun.

Still, though—she leans across the table, casually, and jots a quick correction to Bea's pre-trig homework, prompting an an affronted "Hey! I was working on that—"

Yuhsia takes the opportunity of the distraction to doodle an angry little caricature of Bea's face in the margins in red pen.

...it's not all bad. But eventually, they'll all have their places; Talulah has to find her own.

Hui-chieh isn't surprised, per se, to hear the sound of rocks hitting her window; nor is she surprised when Talulah tumbles in. What is surprising that her face is slick with blood, and Hui-chieh is sure the rest of her doesn't look bloodied only because she's wearing a black coat.

"Fuck," is the first thing Talulah says, and Hui-chieh could say the same, really, as she bolts across the room to catch her as she falls.

And then Talulah laughs, wild and—is she excited? Hui-chieh's hand comes away bloody.

"How much of this blood is yours, Tal?" she says.

"Not all," says Talulah, laughing weakly. "But—listen, I might need some bandages?"

Hui-chieh gets the story while patching her up with antiseptics and gauze; Yuhsia tipped her off to something going on in the slums—Infected getting disappeared off the streets—and Tal's been investigating.

Of course that doesn't mean anyone automatically likes her—in fact, all of this is from a gang that thought she looked suspicious.

"You look incredibly suspicious," says Hui-chieh, and flicks her on the nose. "I'm surprised you made any progress at all. You've never been subtle."

"Help me out, then," says Talulah, and gives that absolutely winning smile of hers. "I can't promise great scenery or pretty women, like in your novels—"

Hui-chieh snorts. "Oh, stop!"

"—but it'll definitely be an adventure."

She sits back on her haunches, and crosses her arms, tail swishing back and forth. "Uncle Wei will kick both our asses if he finds out..."

Talulah leans in, face suddenly very serious. "Hui-chieh," she says. "Uncle Wei might be behind this. Yuhsia thinks her father's involved, and they're thick as thieves, along with Bea's grandfather. Think of what this means for Lungmen."

"For Lungmen" is such a big phrase, the kind that Tal uses all the time—the kind of grand thing that Hui-chieh is always skeptical about being able to boil down to anything actionable. But there's always been a part of her that wanted to be able to do something rather than wait, and learn, and stay in line, while feeling like something's been wrong all around her for all her life.

She pinches the bridge of her nose. "What can I even do?" she says, which is not a no.

"Run interference. And hasn't Uncle Wei been making you train with the sword?"

"Like I could even fight you."

"I think you could fight anyone, if you put your mind to it, Hui-chieh," she says. "Although I think it's one of your best qualities that you don't."

Talulah always thinks the best of her, somehow. She's never sure she's deserved it; she's always felt like she's been in her debt for a cost she's never been able to fully sum.

"Yeah," she says. "Sure. Let's go for it. But first—" Hui-chieh adds, "sit the fuck down and let me finish patching you up, or it's going to hurt worse."

Since Uncle Wei was appointed chairman of the city, he's been around less and less. Talulah asks Aunt Fumizuki about it—

She purses her lips, and makes a clucking tut-tut sound with her tongue. "That husband of mine," she says. "He's really too much, sometimes. But he's doing everything he can to make sure there's a future for you and Hui-chieh in this city, Tal, I promise."

Talulah frowns at her. "Just for me and Hui-chieh, though?"

"And everyone," she adds, her mouth thinning. "But there's a lot of negotiations that keep a city like Lungmen running."

Right. Compromise. Everyone tells her to compromise; even Hui-chieh, whose version at least is just insistence that she take care of herself—that she's only one girl against a whole city. But so many people die every single day; Talulah has never functioned under the illusion that she matters any more than any of them, because for so much of her life her acceptance has been conditional. At any point, she can become disposable, as much as Auntie Fumizuki cares for her; as much as Uncle Wei has invested in her education.

Hui-chieh is the one who has a path prepared for her, making connections at school, training with Uncle Wei's famous sword. Hui-chieh is the one who will dictate the future of this city—so Talulah will do her best, as her loving sister, to make sure that the city she inherits is deserving of the hidden gentleness that no one allows her.

"Shit. Shit, Tal, I came as fast as I could, but—"

Talulah laughs, weakly, when Hui-chieh finds her, tucked into the corner of an abandoned building in the slums, one hand clapped over her bleeding thigh. "You found me. That's enough. Have you even been out here, before?"

Hui-chieh rolls her eyes, and makes an exasperated sound. "If you're going to ask me to come to your rescue, I'm going to do it properly and know where your safehouse is. Come on."

"No." Talulah shakes her head. "I called you, because—listen. This is goodbye. I have to disappear—they're going to be after me. This isn't just gangs or scuffles with the L.G.D., those black raincoats were assassins. And if I die, I die, but at least—"

"Don't say that," hisses Hui-chieh, fiercely. "There has to be something I can do. I'm not just leaving you, Tal. Even if they're Uncle Wei's men—especially if he's abandoned you—I'm not leaving you. We can get you out of the city—"

"And go where?"

Hui-chieh shakes her head, her mouth set in an grimace belied by the tears rimming her eyes. "Anywhere where we can live, Talulah. Or do you not want to look at me anymore, either?" She runs a hand backwards through her hair, shaking her head angrily. "Why do you think I do anything I do, Tal? I want to be able to do something for the people of this city, but you've always been a part of that!"

"Hui-chieh," says Talulah, quietly.

She just threads her arm under her sister's, hauling Talulah to her feet. "I don't know what we're doing. But I can do something, this time. If he's done with you, he's going to have to go through me."

Between the two of them, Talulah knows the ways to get around, and Hui-chieh's got an offroader stashed for weekends; they can get out of here. Hui-chieh knows it's far from a foolproof plan. They're two new twentysomethings, not survivalists, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that they might be escaping the city. So when they make temporary camp for the night, and she lets Talulah sleep while she takes watch, it's not surprising to her when lights approach.

What is surprising is who shows up, and what he says to her.

"Ah," says her host. "You were right not to trust Wei Yenwu, girl; the tales I could tell you about what he's done to make his power in Lungmen nigh-unassailable. You and your sister have just been scratching the surface. But if you really want to make Lungmen a place where both you and your sister can live—there's still plenty that can be done."

She knows she's being manipulated. Cornered, even. But what he told her, about her uncle—she can believe it, and that's the worst part. She knows, deep down, every bit of it is true.

She's spent so much of her life waiting; so much time swallowing down her anger and her sadness because it was inconvenient to all the best laid plans of everyone around her, made on her behalf. But now it's time for her to make her own plans, she thinks.

"Right," says Ch'en Hui-chieh. "What do I have to do?"

Arknights | Ourobouros