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[gooddefense]

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early november, after her spar-turned-brawl with carolina

[ownperson]

When South drags her sorry ass back to to Juniper Drive in the early evening, she hasn't decided yet if she's hoping North is home or not. On one hand, she could really do with the help patching herself up, on the other, he'll have questions, and several of them have answers she really doesn't want to have to give. Maybe it'd be simpler if she can just haul herself into the bathroom and handle it on her own.

But then he'd still see all the bruising later, so— ugh, it's lose-lose. He's gonna fuss sooner or later.

She shoulders the front door open out of habit and regrets it immediately, hissing as fresh pain sparks through the battered joint. Re-set or not, it still hurts like a bitch. That's gonna suck.

A mental coin toss and she decides, at least, to try and make for the bathroom before North maybe realises she's back. Maybe he's not here and it won't matter, maybe he is and he already knows like his fucking twin sense has gone off, but she's gonna try anyway.

[gooddefense]

North is absolutely here.

He's in the kitchen, setting up his newly acquired basic items in his new home, deciding where things ought to go while some kind of simple soup boils on the stove.

"South? That you?" His voice echoes from the next room. Busted.

[ownperson]

South freezes mid-step and winces—godfuckingdammit, okay, fine. Fine! Fuck this is going to be embarrassing. "No, it's a fucking cat burglar. Yeah, it's me. Gimme a sec, I— need a piss?"

Not convincing. Sometimes it's easy to forget the managed to lie to him for two years straight without getting totally busted, because she can't seem to fucking manage it now. The sound of her gait as she moves won't even sound quite right, after the beating she took.

[gooddefense]

"I dunno, South, you tell me if you need a piss. Why are you saying it like a question?"

North sticks his head into the room, and right away his expression switches from quizzical to alarmed. "Jesus Christ!"

[ownperson]

"Okay I know it looks bad—"

And it does. Most of the left side of her face is awash with fresh, blooming bruises, matched by the shoulder on the same side where the skin peeks out from her shirt. She's cleaned most of the blood off, but her nose is still visibly busted and so are her knuckles. She's favouring one side of her ribcage.

"—but I swear to fucking god, I'm fine. Just— need a bit of patching up, that's all."

Mid-December, the morning after South arrives

[cyansoldier]

She hopes this isn't too soon. That she isn't crossing any lines or being presumptuous or overbearing. It's weird, still, navigating her relationship with the Freelancers outside of the MOI's steel jaws. Doesn't want to slip back into old boss habits— but these are people she cares about. This is important.

She wakes up early, digs around in her fridge and throws together a bowl of yogurt, strawberries, some granola. A sweat breakfast— something easy to get down— and more importantly, something North won't have to get up and labor for. Covering it with a cloth, she heads out.

The walk is cold, windy. She doesn't shiver, just glares into the flat blankets of white on all sides. Some time later, there's a knock at his door.

"Hey. Said I'd check in. Aaaand— I brought breakfast."

[gooddefense]

North objectively looks like shit.

How hair that short can get so fucked up is impossible to say, and the bags under his eyes are deep and heavy. He answers the door with the wobble of someone who just woke up, and is dressed accordingly. But even so, he manages to pick up his spirits enough to seem presentable.

"Hey, sorry for my stupid face. I overslept. C'mon in. What's for breakfast?"

[cyansoldier]

God. It's like watching a stage actor be spat out through a wood chipper, then attempt to piece himself back together to keep the play going. Carolina ins't buying it for a second. It's painful to watch. More painful that he really, truly believes it's necessary.

"Parfait. Unpasteurized, so you get a disease."

She walks inside, pulls the cloth off and hand him the bowl.

"Thought it might be nice if you didn't have to cook. Can we sit?"

[gooddefense]

"Oh, cool, free disease," North jokes taking the bowl as he lets her in. "Yeah, no, I really appreciate it. Dining room's through here."

North leads her back into the rear of the ground floor. The entry room is more hallway than not, so he leads her past the kitchen archway and into a space with a small, round table, nabbing a spoon from the china cabinet drawer before plopping down.

"How goes it?"

[cyansoldier]

She sits down across from him and shrugs off the question. Nope, not going to happen. "I was going to ask you the same thing."

dated whenever works best post-south leaving

[liesdontfindyou]

CT's been keeping a bit of an Eye on things with South, since the whole 'drunk call at 3am' and 'picking a fight with her girlfriend' thing. Not too closely—no, she's not trying to be intrusive, doesn't want to peer into the ins and outs of South's life and thereby North's too, but a little. Enough to get a feel for how things are going and to know that South is no longer living at the farm on Juniper Drive.

It means something has happened. And she can take a guess as to what.

And for a while, CT does nothing with this information. She's already had to have one conversation with North about South, after the whole thing with Valdis, and that was productive, but if the revelation she thinks has come out has come out then... this is a lot more personal, and maybe less her business. So, she gives North some time, and waits to see if it resolves quickly. Only when it doesn't does she consider otherwise, and by then, she's had some time to think herself.

There's... things North should know. That both twins should know.

And so one day, she turns up at the farm wrapped up in a winter coat and carrying a small bag of garden tools she dug out from the back of a cupboard during a clean-out (moving your girlfriend into your house requires a lot of that).

"North, hey. Is now a bad time?"

[gooddefense]

The door opens to a burst of warmth, the sound of a crackling fire. North looks perfectly cozy in his purple cable-knit that he shelled out for at the winter market, and smiles when he sees CT. But under the surface, there's something wrong. He looks... really tired, for some reason. Maybe CT already knows.

"Oh, hey! Not at all, c'mon in. You want some coffee?" He stands aside to let her in, and chirping Pumpkaboo almost immediately invades her personal space to squawk at her and sniff her clothes and figure out if she's a friend. North chuckles. "Theta, let her be! She's not here to steal your breakfast."

[liesdontfindyou]

She has a pretty damn good guess.

"I will never say no to coffee." Really, she won't, she survives on the stuff. Went from Connie, the kind of person who turned her nose up at the smell, to CT who drank it all the time by the end of the program.

She huffs a quiet laugh at the little creature and crouches, offering her hand to sniff and letting him investigate the bag if he wants. "I probably smell like my girlfriend's cat right now, but I promise I'm not bringing any interlopers or here to take anything. Just here to talk to North, okay little guy?"

[gooddefense]

Chuckling, North passes her a handful of unsalted peanuts. "Here, give him that and he'll love you forever. I'll go get the coffee."

It takes him about the same amount of time that it takes Theta to scarf down the treat to come back with two steaming mugs. "There's cream and stuff on that coffee table by the fireplace. How's it going?"

christmas presents

[ownperson]

South agonises for multiple days about if doing this counts as breaking the rules, before Carolina cuts through the bullshit. South. You're spiralling, again. Well of fucking course she is, this is the first year in thirty-two she's spent the holidays away from her brother, but— the point is taken, and she goes ahead and gets the stupid presents.

They've always gotten each other something. Always. No matter how dire everything else is, how little they had, they find a way. Rough years, years like when they were struggling kids or strained defectors on the run, could be as little as a packet of sweets or a bottle of shitty alcohol stolen from a store, but it's the thought. Just one of those unspoken traditions.

This time, she at least has actual money to spare.

So she sends Carolina over with a box containing a good quality chef's knife and a solid hand-crank mixer, plus an unboxed, belated addition of a new axe. (She asks Carolina for updates sometimes, okay.) The only note says merry christmas, di x in her scrawly handwriting, not good enough with words to find something longer and more personal that doesn't feel somehow at risk of guilting him.

(She just hopes he can tell that she tried, that this is genuine and not for some reward. Really, with things as they are, she doesn't expect anything in return at all.)

[gooddefense]

North thanks Carolina, giving her a small gift as well--- a macabre pewter jawbone ring "so that she can match with her man". Then he sends her with a simple, polished wooden box for South, containing a chisel set and a note for his sister.

Have a good Christmas, Tash. Love you.

There's a doodle of a Christmas tree and a compass rose underneath, with the Northern and Southern points labeled.

[ownperson]

On top of from her genuine surprise and delight at the gift itself, that note ends up tucked into her pocket for at least the next week.

Late December

[redlightgreenlight]

It had taken time for Valdis to feel up to interacting with anyone except her closest friends and those she trusted. Exhausting as it is to rebuild a life brick by brick, she feels as if she might finally be headed in the right direction, even if it is a direction that meant leaving everything that came before behind.

That still doesn't mean she's ready to leave her house, but luckily sending stones are enough these days, and she has a name. North.

"Hey, it's Valdis, I heard you were looking for me."

[gooddefense]

North still isn't used to his talking chunk of hematite, and tenses slightly at the sudden voice. Valdis---- he knows the name from CT, since South hadn't known it. Guess CT passed the message along. That's kind of her.

"Ah, yeah, I was." She's caught him at a weird time. He does still want to talk to her about what happened with South, but currently he and South are taking some time apart after... everything. "I heard you had a bit of a run-in with my twin sister. Tall, blonde with purple tips, says 'fuck' every other word?"

[redlightgreenlight]

Valdis bites her lip when she hears the name and remembers the encounter. Not her finest moment, treating someone who was hurting as an enemy. Her throat tightens, it felt more like a train wreck than a run-in."

"I...yes, I do recall her. Is she feeling better?"

[gooddefense]

"Uh, y'know, not really. It's her business more than it is mine," (this is a lie,) "but it's been a rocky couple of months. That's kinda why I wanted to talk to you about what happened, if you don't mind hearing me out for a minute."

North sighs. Gathers his thoughts. There'd been all manner of things he'd had to say when he made his way down to the constabulary a month or so ago. Not necessarily to tell Valdis off so much as to straighten things out with her--- a refined blade of clever points, in the shape of a working knife rather than a weapon, tempered carefully in the flame of righteous sibling fury. Enough time between now and then, plus enough events, has quelled that a bit.

Probably for the best.

"Listen, I know how South can be. She's--- big, and loud, and messy, and she lashes out when she's hurt. And I also wasn't there, so I'll admit I might be missing some pieces. But I am pretty good at getting my own intel. And by the sounds of things, it seemed like you came in to supposedly de-escalate the situation as a public servant, but then were more concerned with 'winning' the argument and one-upping her than you were about the de-escalating part."

"It seems like you're going through some stuff, too, and I can empathize. And my sister... she definitely didn't have the language at the time to explain what she was going through. But if it's not too presumptuous to say, in my rather storied experience with her and people like her, very, very rarely does it help to lecture someone for how they're processing something. Or rile them up about their 'bad reputation'. I know you don't know her, but those are both some pretty deep pain points for South. So---- if it's too much trouble to try and go easy on her or empathetic with her when she's acting like that, or, I dunno, she just pisses you off too much, just--- do me a favor and call me next time and I'll handle it. I'm the one she's grieving anyway."

He'll explain if Valdis asks, of course, but he's already gone on enough of a ramble at this point. He makes space for her to respond.

After Pokey's deliveries [Late January]

[ownperson]

In immediate hindsight, South probably didn't explain what's going on all that well to Lina on her way out. Too distracted. Ran back inside, babbled mostly incoherently, thanked her a bunch while hugging her tight enough she might've hurt her ribs, and then started throwing her stuff back into her bag to leave, waving once more to the returning Pokey on her way out. Hopefully she got the idea. Hopefully the fact South was finally, genuinely, smiling again told her this wasn't a strange repeat of that night back in December.

But she just couldn't wait long enough to explain.

The nerves only start nipping at her heels once she make it onto the porch at North's place (their place?), but she's moving too quick to let them catch up to her just yet. (So much to talk about, still, but that's a good thing, right, because it mean they're actually talking. She has to look at it that way.)

Still, she does take a big, steadying breath before she knocks hard on the front door, and shifts from foot-to-foot in the snow underfoot as she waits.

[gooddefense]

"Come in!" He calls back. "Sorry, dealing with the stove!"

[ownperson]

Something about the casualness of it is both reassuring and nerve-wracking at the same time, but another breath takes care of that and she pushes the door open, dropping her bag by the door and kicking off her boots like she's just come home from the store, and not an entire month away.

(He's already cooking—because of what she wrote on her response?)

It feels so strange, being back in the house, but it's still the same. Signs of life scattered around and everything where she broadly remembers it being. Her couch, through the archway, but he said something about a bed. And the smell of food cooking through the other arch into the kitchen.

She steps through and— there he is, right where he said, dealing with the stove. It takes all her restraint not to risk burning one of them by immediately hugging him.

"...hey, asshole." She still somehow manages to make it sound like the most affectionate thing she could say.

[gooddefense]

(It was part her response, part because he's hungry. What's a better excuse for a big breakfast?)

Once all the pancakes are flipped, North practically tosses his spatula onto the counter and throws his arms around her. "Hey, dumbass," he says back, hugging the absolute hell out of her. "Welcome home."