do i suffocate or let go? / letos.

[✨ zozo.]

CALYPSO.

 

She halted in her place, hand hovering against the handle of the door, and did a double-take.

"Brentley?"

The Keeper guarding the door froze, eyes looking anywhere but at the girl to his left. 

"How ironic," she chortled at her sister's ex-lover. "Seen Roland yet?" 

A name she had just begun to get used to rolling off of her tongue, it had never sat quite right in Calypso's mouth - she supposed she'd never have to say it again. What a goddamn relief.

The Keeper, Brentley Grey, set his jaw and stared straight ahead at the wall. 

Caly just laughed, amused at the sight one of her worst enemies who'd stolen away her sister only for her to come running back home, now ready to escort her to her death. They'd shaved his hair, given him a bath, ironed his shirts, hidden his tattoos. Stripped him of his anger, or at least bottled it up somewhere deep. It would take more than a prod of a fire to stoke his flames, and she didn't have that time. Not now.

Unlike her sister, she'd have all the time in the world to keep torturing Brentley Grey.

"Guess she wasn't kidding when she said she wasn't going back to you," she added, running her eyes up and down the crisp white uniform clinging to his body. Gesturing what it stood for. What it meant.

No family. No wife. No Perdita.

"Pity," she added, drifting her attention back to the door. "I thought maybe you would be enough for her selfish self. Apparently not..."

Brentley said nothing. Just stared, and stared, and stared - and when Calypso walked through the door and shut it behind her he clenched his fists and gasped, blinking back tears.

How so very far away the last time she stood in this room felt. Caly felt so distant from that girl who demanded why the boy she'd thought she loved had left her - and in time, she'd grown to understand why. She had Nico now. And he filled that gap up without her realising it, much like the boy from before, until it was too late. But when she looked at her sister, her narcissistic, selfish, rotten big sister, she felt hollow and empty - absent of love.

Absent of reason. Of care. Of change and growth. She was just a little girl who thought she knew what was best for everyone - even her sister.

"You'll never believe who they've got guarding your door," a little huff of a laugh on the last syllable. God, she can't help but be awful. Even now, the last time she'd ever see her sister, Calypso couldn't quite manage to be kind. Because she was angry, and furious - why, exactly, she wasn't sure. Maybe because she was choosing to her, like he did - and that made her heart scream, but her head told her not to cry. Not to care. Not after Perdita had gone and done this.

Whatever this was.

It didn't matter, she told herself, Mom would cry enough tears for the both of them. Perhaps she'd gift hers to the sea. But not to Perdita. Never, ever to Perdita.

To her sister, she gave her worst self.

"Suicide," her gaze flicks up from under a scowl, furrowed brows with her cheeks sour and concave, "and he'd still follow you there. How pathetic."

Her own fists ball up at her sides, the ghosts of Perdita's throat wrapped around her white-hot fingers and the boy she loved on her lips.

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

He'd always been in no man's land: an area that was neither safe nor unsafe; here nor there. He was a place where Calypso's biting, unforgiving words were free to gnash down on the jugular. He was a place where Perdita could toss blame and fault and accusation: a filter that their hatred for one another always passed through to lessen the blow.

He knew what this would be from the moment she volunteered, chest heaving and falling. He was, in reality, probably getting too much air, but it still felt like his lungs were holding out on him. Perdita, runner at heart, had finally found a place to hide where she would never be found. And she was going to leave very soon headed straight for it, and she might not ever come back.

Arty was sure that for Calypso this was the product of a lifetime of omens. This was not the thunder warning of a storm incoming, but the rain she'd been waiting for. He wondered if maybe she'd practiced what she would say to their sister in the mirror, if she'd listed all the hurtful things she could say as a farewell, crossed out the ones with the least amount of venom.

For her, it was a storm she'd been waiting on. For Arty, it was the storm that had ruined their home all those years ago. It was the storm that kept coming back when he least expected it to break them all down and start them all over from scratch over and over and over again. Like a wave breaching the shore, it was always erased. Every step forward he managed to pull them, the tide sent them flying five feet back.

He was never ready, and as he followed Calypso in the the Justice Building, he had absolutely no idea what he would say. He wasn't as calculated as either of his sisters, and rarely was he in the know of what the hell was going on. When Calypso saw Brentley, she only looked pleased while Arty looked surprised.

He was the one who'd taken Perdita the first time: that final wedge that had separated her from them, and Arty resented him for it. But, on the other hand, at least when she was with him she wasn't here, doing this- no. Roland was good. Great, even. Arty had even spent the night a couple times, played board games with Giselle, felt genuinely warm because somehow, somehow Perdita had found the kind of happiness that could have lasted. That would have lasted if she'd only let it.

Once Calypso was done dragging Brentley through the mud, she'd walked on without ever looking back. Arty gave pause, lingered next to the boy. It's complicated, he thought, as if Brentley of all people wouldn't have known.

"I, uh-"

He tucked his hands behind himself, not realizing that he was mimicking Brentley's posture exactly.

"I'm sorry. About..." he looked over his shoulder to make sure Calypso wasn't waiting for him, but mostly to make sure she was too far to hear- "About both of them. You're... probably a good guy."

With that, he hustled to catch up with Caly, only a few moments after she entered the room where their sister was being kept.

"-cide. And he'd still follow you there. How pathetic."

He cleared his throat, assuming the position. This meant consciously putting himself between them. Not directly, but in a way that meant they were both closer to him than to each other. He willed them to, just this once, be sisters. To love while they had the chance. Just this once. But there was a part of himself- the largest part- that knew it was impossible. Sometimes the blood shared isn't enough to makeup for the blood shed. He kept his gaze cast downward and his mouth pinched shut, and waited for their home to be wrecked again so that he could start picking up the pieces.

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

She is so tired of this dance.

And that's not why she's running — or maybe it is — but she always finds her way back to this moment. With her hands clasped with her sister's, knuckles white and fingers shaking, with their gowns stained with blood and tears and all of their regrets. And they waltz, and they scream, and nothing ever really changes.

The music keeps playing. The chandelier keeps crashing.

They die, and stand back up again. Forever.

But this is the record scratch, the silence before the gunshot. And Perdita looks up at her sister as she enters the room, like a plague. Like a predator stalking out of the woods. But she's so tired of being afraid, of fighting. They're both monsters, and they're both victims. They were all of these things before they were sisters.

And they're still not, and now they never will be. Because when Calypso speaks her venom, "Suicide, and he'd still follow you there," all Perdita can do is rise up to her feet. She ignores the taunts, the memories cutting at her body from every angle. Three lovers, two siblings, one fate.

She has no patience left to give.

So she pulls the door open slowly, and gently, refusing to look at Calypso and forcing herself to meet the gaze of the ghost waiting outside. "There's been a mistake. She's not welcome here." There is power in being damned, in having nothing to your name but a grave waiting to be filled. She will get her way, as she always has.

They escort Calypso from the room, and Perdita offers nothing. No anger, no peace, not a single emotion. But the door closes, and her brother is still there, and she reaches for him because there is some horrible part of her that knows what this means. This is the end, in some sense of the word, and she does not want to leave him like this.

Not again. Not after all the promises she made him.

That she would be better, that she would stay.

He's a sweet boy, in a terrible home. And it's her fault, and it's their fault, but there's no need for blame here. She pulls him into her arms, and she starts crying because now she understands just how tall he is, because her head only reaches his shoulder, and he wears the same cologne as their father, and he's wearing a jacket their mother made.

"I love you."

Not well enough, never kindly.

She moves away, running a hand through his hair and resting it against his cheek. He's a stranger, but he's good, and he's alive, and there's hope. He is the only hopeful thing she has left in her life. "Get out of that house as soon as you turn eighteen. Graduate the academy, top of your class. Ask Brentley to help you. Because he will."

Because he promised her that he would, before she fired that gun.

"Roland will find you a place to stay. It's not charity, I know you hate that. Mom and Dad will survive, Calypso will be fine on her own. And I—" she pauses there, tilting her head to the side and smiling, too much like her mother than she has a right to be. "Live your life for you, Artemus. Stop standing in the middle of everything."

The embrace is broken, a careful step back. She finds her chair, and sits back down, sighing with the shadow of a tear rolling down her cheek. "Okay. It's your turn now." She leans back, folds her hands in her lap and bites the inside of her cheek. Her brother has always been trapped between two armies, silenced by the explosions. But not anymore.

Not as the white flag is waving, and the war is over.

"I'm listening." 'I'm sorry.'

it feels like there's oceans
between you and me once again

we hide our emotions
under the surface and try to pretend

but it feels like there's oceans

between you and me

[✨ zozo.]

CALYPSO.

 

When her sister reaches for the door Calypso laughs.

How pathetic. Perdita trying to escape in the arms of those she doesn't really love.

"There's been a mistake."

How utterly predictable. Perdita running back to her boys when she can't handle the truth.

"She's not welcome here."

"What?!"

And then Calypso explodes.

Brentley steps into the room with eyes as dead as her sister's and grabs her by the arm, long fingers clasped over the sleeve fabric of her Academy uniform. She attempts to shrug him off but his grip tightens, and before she knows it she's struggling against the pull of Brentley Grey's tide - this wasn't right. Perdita was supposed to be the one he dragged into the sea.

"You'll regret this!" she screams at her sister, hair streaming across her face as wild as her widened eyes. "You- you're gonna hate yourself, Perdita!"

Venom and pain, hatred and insult, she is mortified and broken but Calypso will never admit that she's not struggling to break free of her prison of arms, she's struggling to reach her sister one last time.

They finish as they started: sisters at war.

"You're going to die alone," Calypso spits, "and I'm going to be someone! Someone great! And you'll just be another dead kid in a cOFFIN-!"

The door slams in her face and as it locks Brentley releases her. Her boot finds the wood and kicks it over and over and over again, then her clenched fists slam and pound and rage and she screams one last time as her chest breaks and the damn spills over. Screams turn into sobs, not caring Brentley Gray was standing right there. It didn't fucking matter. He didn't fucking matter, and neither did Perdita, and maybe he did deserve her after all.

Not that it matters anymore. She lets out one last shaking sob, pressing her forehead to the cool kiss of stained wood, sliding her knuckles now red and raw and bruised until her hand falls to her side - defeated.

A heaved breath of oxygen, she'd never see her sister again.

And maybe it was her fault, and maybe she didn't care, and maybe she was crying because this was how he had left her and she'd thought that was penance for killing her sister's first love - but no. This, this betrayal, was the ultimate price for her sin.

Calypso turns to look at Brentley, who's back to staring at the wall, and thinks about saying something. Anything.

But she wasn't built to be kind. That was Arty's specialty, now walking towards her from the end of the hall. He could say what she could not - to Brentley, to their parents, to their sister. So she collects herself, straightens up her posture, hurriedly wipes her tears from her cheeks and walks past her brother without saying a word.

the bwitch has LEFT the building!!