This Little Mage Went to Auction... [open!]

[Rhindeer]

"What?" Pepper's head whipped up, and she stared at Elena with wide green eyes, expression changing to something between panic and pain. Her face paled and she dropped the spoon into her bowl.

Calm down. Might not even be the same guy. Lotsa folk can be named Soren...

Yet what Elena had said about her premonitions? That made Pepper think that wasn't the case, and the stricken look on Elena's face only confirmed it.

"Black hair?" she asked, meeting Elena's eyes. "Brown eyes? Turns into a wolf?"

[kleineklementine]

Elena didn't know what to say. She just watched Pepper with big, pained eyes. She felt sick, and even... dirty thinking that she it was her brother, her Soren, her blood who had done this to the girl

And how many others?

But the idea sent Elena's head spinning. And now she had to take care of this one. Elena wanted to look away from Pepper in shame, but she forced herself to keep the girl's gaze, but her face was tight with emotion.

"Yes," she said, nodding slowly. Elena looked like she might burst into tears, but she kept her voice  controlled, definitive, speaking slowly. She wouldn't pretend. "Yes. My brother Soren is cursed, and takes the form of a wolf. I haven't seen him in a long time. He left us... five years ago. He stopped being the brother I loved before then, but I..."

Then Elena finally broke Pepper's gaze, squeezing her eyes shut. She couldn't believe it. But she could. She knew it was true. And knowing it made her physically sick. Suddenly, she felt that she could kill him. She couldn't believe that she had to protect this girl, to save her, because of Soren. But that's what she needed to focus on, and she looked back up at Pepper, her eyes pleading.

"Pepper, please don't go. I-... I know this might change how you feel, about me, but... Please. Stay until it's safe for you to leave here, at least. And then please leave with Mallor. He'll take you. I-" Elena swallowed, her urgent plea stopping mid-sentence. What could she say?

[Rhindeer]

"Huh? No! Oh, no, Elena!" Pepper said, and reached out, taking the woman's hands in hers. She met her eyes and held them.

"It ain't changed nothin' 'bout how I feel toward ya. Ya saved me. If it weren't fer ya, I woulda been..." She trailed off, not wanting to speak it. She knew the sorts of horrors that befell girls sold into slavery. What street urchin hadn't heard the stories? What street urchin didn't have a friend that vanished one day, never to be seen again? Those were the sorts of cautionary tales passed around her little gang of misfits, the sorts of stories she grew up having nightmares about, and she'd just about lived it. She shuddered and tightened her hands on Elena's.

"Ya ain't yer brother. Yer...yer wonderful. Ya been nothin' but sweet to me, and didn't have to, and..."

Elena was starting to blur, and she realized that her eyes were filling with tears. The betrayal hurt. Goddammit, it still hurt. And then to be here, with his sister of all people...

Kia, what a small world.

She reached up and wiped at her eyes, dropping her gaze. "I was real stupid," she said, sniffing.

[kleineklementine]

"Pepper, I..." she looked up and met the girl's gaze, then smiled. A very genuine smile, and squeezed Pepper's hands. "Thank you."

But she was wrong. She had had to save her. Elena hadn't felt for a moment that it had really been a choice. Not that she didn't want to! She would have wanted to save every one of those girls, every one, but... But no, this one she had to. And now she knew why. Elena scooted on the bed so that she was sitting beside Pepper, and leaned back, tilting her head back until it bumped against the hard wood of the headboard.

"Oh, Soren," she muttered, probably to herself. "I always hoped that he'd one day come home. But not like this. Not if..."

Elena leaned forward now so that she could look at Pepper. Even if she knew what had drawn her to the girl, what had made her responsible for getting her out of the slave market, Elena still felt an inexplicable closeness to her. "Pepper," she said earnestly, "you must let me help you. Whenever you need anything. If there's ever anything I can do... Please let me. You're so sweet," she said, and meant it. After all, she didn't think many would be so open with her now after learning who she was, or who she was in relation to the girl's captor. "I wish you were my sister."

Elena bit her lip then, clearly Not Asking something. The truth was, she wanted to know what had happened. She didn't, but she did. But she couldn't dare ask her to relive that. What good would it do?

[Rhindeer]

Pepper was no longer eating, for talking about this made her lose her appetite--even if it was also cathartic. But though the subject was dark, it was peppered by Elena's sincerity, her genuineness, and that took away a lot of the edge. Pepper turned her head to look at Elena and managed a real smile that touched her eyes, and she reached out to cover Elena's hand with her own.

"We can still be sisters in a sense, ya know," she said. "Blood be damned." For the kids she'd run with on the street had not been related to her, but that had made them no less family. Her own blood had abandoned her when she was too young to remember their faces.

Pepper fell silent then. Just as Elena was Not Asking (and it was obvious she had things she wanted to say; the bitten lip and sudden silence was a clear tell), Pepper was...well, she was Holding Back. And not because she wanted to. She had never been the sort of person to bottle things up; she had always been blunt, and that went for her feelings, too. Growing up, she and the other kids had always talked about everything, because it was a way to cope, and there was no sense hiding your fears when they were the same ones every other kid had. It always made her feel less alone--and less frightened.

But things were different at the university; it was an entirely different social dynamic, one she didn't always fit in with. And here, she wasn't sure, either. Estranged or not, she wasn't sure if Elena would want to know what her brother had done.

She looked at Elena, and then back down at her knees. "If ya wanna ask me anything, ya can."

[kleineklementine]

Elena smiled at Pepper's offer that they could still be sisters, in a sense. She thought of her own sisters, who she loved, of course, but... Well, they were very different than Pepper. Very different than Elena, for that matter. "You're probably no more younger than me than I am with my own sisters," she said with a smile, squeezing Pepper's hand. "Deal."

But Elena's smile, as genuine as it had been, didn't last, and her gaze drifted to the distance. She wasn't thinking of the sister she'd just gained, but of the brother who she was now sure she'd lost. Perhaps it had always been a dream, thinking that she hadn't lost Soren the same day as Kirnan. Two brothers, gone. And Soren... Soren had been more than just a brother to her. They'd been best friends. But now...

Elena looked back up at Pepper, frowning. "I... I honestly don't even know what I would want to ask. Or what I want to know." Her voice sounded more tired than anything, but maybe a little resigned. She wanted to know everything, and at the same time she didn't want to know any of it. And what more did she need to know than she already did? What good would it do her? "What more can I need to know?"

[Rhindeer]

"I dunno," Pepper said, and shrugged awkwardly, her cheeks coloring a little. Maybe she shouldn't have pressed. People told her she could be too blunt! "Just...throwin' it out there. I know it's, uh, gotta be awkward. That it's yer brother and all. Um..."

She shifted a little where sat and spooned more porridge into her mouth. She let it sit in her mouth for a moment, not really tasting it, as her own head flooded with questions she wasn't sure she should ask, but that she was curious about. Would it be too forward? Too insensitive?

After a moment's thought, she swallowed down the bite, washed it down with tea, and looked at Elena.

"Was he always like this?"

[kleineklementine]

"What?"

Elena had been lost in her own thoughts. Her own worrying thoughts about what Pepper had told her, what it meant for her brother. Whether or want she wanted to know anything about what had happened to Pepper, and what it would be if she did. And if she would really be ready to hear the truth. Pepper's question took her by surprise. She looked up suddenly, her big maroon eyes focusing on Pepper.

"Oh." The realization of Pepper's question hit her. After a moment, she answered, "No."

Elena let out a long sigh, brushing back her long hair unconsciously as she wondered what else to say. "No, he wasn't," she said more certainly. "I suppose he always had trouble. I mean, our mother - well, my mother - and some of our older siblings, they never really liked him. I think that's hard to live down. But for me, he was my best friend. When we were young we were thick as thieves, and I think we were mostly happy and carefree. We're both a lot younger than the rest of the family, and were more or less left to our own devises. But..." Elena frowned, remembering. "Things changed a lot when his curse set in. He wasn't allowed to leave the house anymore; for years I was his only real connection to the rest of the world. Our mother and some of our siblings were convinced he was possessed, or that he had tainted blood. I think it was harder for him to not believe them when he had all that time alone with his thoughts, and the physical reality of his life - the wolf, I mean - seemed so much to agree with them. Everything became much darker during those years, and I think Soren internalized a lot of it..."

Suddenly Elena stopped. "Oh!" She looked anew at Pepper, her expression surprised and a little guilty. "Oh, I don't mean to sound like I'm making excuses for him," she said quickly. Elena had become so used to being her brother's defender in their family, but now was certainly not the time to defend Soren. "Sorry."

[Rhindeer]

"Oh, no! It's okay!" Pepper said quickly, snapping her head back up from where she'd been focusing on her porridge, stirring it absently as Elena spoke.

"Naw, it didn't sound like ya were! I was just, well...I was just curious, I guess."

With a sigh, she pushed her tray away, her appetite diminished. "Guess I'm just tryin' to make sense of everything, is all. Figure out how much of what he told me was bullshit versus true. Y'know? I guess it don't matter...it doesn't change anything, I just..."

She bit her lip and took a deep breath. "I just can't believe he did that to me."