i just can't prove it | {holt/keelie}

[dars]

k e e l i e
f i e r

"If I ask you something, will you be honest with me?"

Walks home from school these days were a lot more quiet. Fiona finished early, Isobel walked alone, and usually Holt was busy with his friends. Ever since Jorden disappeared, it usually meant Keelie walking a couple paces behind Ginger in silence while Ginger made it abundantly clear that they were not friends, they were an older and younger sister. There was, indeed, a stark difference. A stronger, yet much more deeply resentful bond. But today, Ginger had practice and Holt's plans seemed to fall through, so now it was his turn to suffer through her existence.

This close back to home, she could always smell the tea on the wind. And in the distance, she could see the Alcott tower twisting into the air, and it always made her wonder:

"They did it, right?" She swallowed. There were no leads. There was no case. The kids at school all said it was a matter of time until Jorden skipped town, and lately she was starting to feel like she was the only one in the world who knew him better than that. And she had a feeling that whatever happened to him, the Alcotts must have had something to do with it.

"Whatever happened to J?"

It hurt, even saying his name out loud. Her family liked keeping her in the dark when it came to more serious stuff- it was entirely possible that Holt and the others had all met up and agreed not to talk about it with her, because the truth is that it was different. For reasons she couldn't gather. They all seemed to think they knew some secret about the world she wasn't privy to, but the truth was that they were all just as clueless and she happened to be the youngest. She sighed, the weight of her backpack straining her shoulders.

"I see Enoch around school... Weird kid. Looks like a biter."

[ᴥ]

holt fier.

"If I ask you something, will you be honest with me?" That is never a question Holt Fier wants to hear, least of all from his littlest sister. A sense of foreboding settles into his lungs, spreading like poison until he can feel the dread in his fingertips. He clenches his hands in his pockets, letting out a long breath and bemoaning Connor's hungover ass for bailing on their trip to the junkyard. Keelie was probably the most sane of his siblings, too young to have grown resentful of their father's preaching but smart enough not to buy into it wholly. It was a lot easier to justify to himself why he loved her as opposed to, say, Isobel. Still, Holt is not Jorden. Holt will never be Jorden - that much was made abundantly clear even before the kid went and got himself disappeared. Try as they might to pass the role of perfect, prodigal son to him, Holt's head isn't big enough to fit his brother's old crown. Complexes born of being outclassed by your younger sibling aside, at least there's been no expectation to be a good brother since he fucked it up so bad one of them is probably dead. It's a good thing Jorden's gone. Probably. Holt usually tries to find other things to think about. When the quiet in his mind has too much time to settle he starts feeling like he might actually miss him. As Keelie speaks, he brushes a thumb over the ink on his knuckles worn splotchy from time and poor technique. The J right above his pinky finger is barely visible now. "Oh yeah, Enoch looks like he'd try to eat someone." Though their families' history is steeped in hundred of years of rotten spite, Holt likes to think they'd find middle ground in agreeing that Enoch Alcott is a little psychopath in the making. "Maybe his siblings. In their sleep." He waggles his fingers at her playfully. "But I 'unno Keels." He slows his steps just enough to fall in beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and bringing her into his side. "I hate the Alcotts as much as the next guy. Elitist pigs." That might be betrayal if Holt was one for loyalty in the first place. Which, obviously, he isn't. "But you know as much as I do. Maybe they killed him, maybe we are just cursed." Isn't that what the altar is for? The blood, the guts, the gore. To feel like they're doing something other than being helpless and sad. She's warm against his skin and there it is, a sad little love that he wouldn't be burdened with if Connor could hold his fucking liquor. "What if I promised I'd look into it? I could go poach a few pigs and see if they squeal."

[dars]

k e e l i e
f i e r

She squinted while she listened, trying to decide whether or not she believed any of what she was hearing. By the end of it, she realized that basically all he'd said was what she suspected all along: he didn't know. She knew that, and it wasn't what she was asking. He couldn't be sure yet, fine, but did he know, as in did he feel it? Did he see the looks in their eyes when they passed in the hallways? Did he hear what the peacekeeper reports had to say? Did he walk past a now-vacant room every single night, knowing what he did know, and accept some answer to be true?

Because that's what she needed: answers. That's what would make her feel better. More than the months of loneliness, more than the quiet walks home from school being talkative again, and more than the sermons their father was convinced would save them.

"It's messed up. How did they find nothing when they were looking?"

Empty bed, no note, window closed and locked from the inside, no signs of forced entry on any of the exits. All that was left of him was a shoeprint in the backyard, a clear impression of the bottom of his new shoes pressed into a rain-soaked ant bed. That's all that there was of her brother, the full-fledged human being: a footprint. One that was pointing toward the Alcott place, for the record.

"And if he's-" she only mouths the next word, still unable to even comprehend the possibility: dead- "then why hasn't he been found by now? If he ran away, wouldn't they have caught that on camera? And where would he be?"

She supposed, technically, her brother was a well-trained survivalist expert with combat training. Even if he was only thirteen- fourteen. He was fourteen now. Her hand instinctively clung to the charm around her neck that'd originally been intended as a birthday gift for him. He was only fourteen, but even so, he was set to survive in the wilderness for just as long as any of them were. Just because it sounded inconceivably awful as a reality for Keelie- or the peacekeepers doing their investigation- didn't mean it was impossible for Jorden to do. Everyone else, she felt, had given up on him.

So it was her job to hold on no matter what. Until someone proved to her otherwise, Keelie would believe that Jorden Fier was alive somewhere.