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Out Flew The Web And Floated Wide [Felix/Jenna, M] [4/4]

[(Anonymous)]

They're in an inn, for once - a relative luxury. There was a time when she never would have dreamed that it would become a strange experience to sleep in a real bed. There was a time she would have never dreamed most of what's happened in recent days.

Regardless of that, this is her life now, and so, when Saturos pulls out a chair at a table and tells her to sit, she obeys. He sits down heavily in a chair opposite her and leans over the table, regarding her coolly.

"What is it?" she asks after a long silence; she feels like nothing so much as a small animal must feel when cornered by a snake.

Saturos seems to consider his words. "Venus Lighthouse requires a Venus Adept. You understand this, don't you?"

She hesitates, then nods. She's overheard the discussions with Kraden and Alex. "Yes, of course I do, but what does this have to do with..."

"We have no Venus Adepts who might be amenable to our purposes for..." Saturos casts his gaze upward. "...quite some distance. And I have no plans to sail back to Prox, drag your father onto our boat, and sail all the way back here, simply because..."

"But you have Felix...?"

Saturos's gaze sharpens and fixes on her, and suddenly she regrets speaking. "Yes. That's exactly it. We have Felix." He leans closer, hands curling into fists. "Which is why you are going to fix whatever's going on between you and your brother, and do it shortly. Am I understood?"

Her temper flares, and her muscles tighten; fix whatever's going on between her and her brother? Fix whatever's going on between her and her brother? Doesn't he think that, if she could - "I have no idea what Felix's problem is, and -"

"Look at me, little girl," he snarls, and she's well aware the only thing keeping him from reaching across the table and seizing her by the collar is the sight of the rest of the inn's guests. Which won't stop him for long, if he's angry enough. His eyes are the bright red of fresh blood. "I don't care about either of your reasons, whatever little spat you had, or any injury to your childish pride. I care only about you fixing this for long enough that your brother doesn't pitch himself into another raging river before Venus Lighthouse, because we may not be lucky enough to fish him out in time. Do I make myself clear?"

"What?" She sits back in disbelief. "What are you... Felix...?" Her heart clenches. "He... He wouldn't..."

Saturos makes a sound of disgust. "As I said," he says after a few moments, "I don't care about your petty drama. All I care about is having Felix cease to wallow in his misery until after he's opened Venus Lighthouse. So, if you would kindly just go to him and-"

"He doesn't want me to go to him," she says with a sudden lump in her throat. Blinking furiously and staring at the wood of the table rather than meeting Saturos's eyes, she adds, "He hates me-"

A sound of strangled fury comes from Saturos's throat. His fist bangs on the table, and her head jerks up; it draws attention from the other patrons, but he's past caring. "Spare me," he spits. "You are not, in any way, special. You are a whining little brat with hurt feelings, as is your brother, and the world will see many, many more of you in ages to come. Provided there are ages to come." He shoves his chair back with a clatter, getting to his feet, and leans over her, hands braced on the table; there are murmurs, but he's deaf to anything but rage. "We do not have time for your little lovers' quarrel. The world does not have time for your little lovers' quarrel. You will reconcile, and you will do it now. Do you understand me?"

"Lovers' quarrel?" erupts from her throat, the cry coming without conscious thought. "Lovers' quarrel? He's my-"

Her throat works. "My-"

The doom that's been hovering around her for so long comes crashing down all at once, and her face falls forward into her hands.

Several long seconds pass, with no thought or sensation save horror. Then there's a strong grip on her upper arm, yanking her to her feet. Saturos drags her out of the room; she sees brief, numb flashes of the other patrons' faces, bewildered and appalled but doing nothing to help. They don't want to get involved.

It doesn't matter. There is nothing they can do to help. Not when - When -

Why-

She stumbles as Saturos drags her up the stairs, her breath catching on a sob. He just snarls something about idiocy and continues hauling her along, rounding the corner and muttering under his breath as he goes past each door. Then he stops and bangs on one, so hard that he could wake the dead.

It comes open, and the voice of the person she least wants to see at the moment comes out. "Saturos, what-"

He throws her like a sack of grain, and she hits Felix's chest with a hard thump. "Neither of you are leaving this room until you resolve this," Saturos snarls, and the door swings shut with a slam. Felix lurches forward, and she distantly hears him rattling the handle; it doesn't budge. Saturos must be pulling it shut from the outside.

"Saturos?" Felix's voice is hard, angry, protective - and she doesn't deserve - "Saturos? What did you do to her?"

"I? Shouldn't you be asking that question of yourself?"

She's in her brother's arms again, even if he's probably not thinking about the movement, and she's never been so utterly miserable. Because he's not just her brother, and -

"No wonder you can't stand to look at me..." she manages in a weak voice, so threadbare that she feels it will just crumble away. It should. She shouldn't... She doesn't deserve... She... Why...

"What?" He looks down at her, then jerks his head up again, his expression fierce. "Saturos?"

"This is your quarrel," comes the voice from outside. "I have neither anything to do with it nor any desire to get involved. All I want is for the two of you to stop your miserable moping and fix it." A pause. "I'm willing to stay out here all night, so you'd better start talking."

"What..." Felix's breath catches, and Jenna feels like vomiting. He understands, doesn't he? He understands, and any moment, he'll shove her away and not want to touch her, not want to get near her, not ever look at her again - It's what she deserves, she deserves every bit of the way he's been treating her, she - "Saturos?" At the unexpected note in his voice, she looks up, blinking through his tears; what she hears makes no sense. She expected horror, not terror. "What do you - What did you tell her?"

Saturos laughs. It's an unpleasant sound. "That's a good question, Felix. Why don't you ask her?"

Felix looks down at her, and his face is a mask of pain and fear and grief - It startles her. That should be the look on her face, not his. Then he looks back at the door. "You - you don't understand," he says frantically. It doesn't sound like her brother's - oh, why - voice; she's never heard that tone of fear, of pleading. "I don't know what you think you - But it wasn't - I -"

Saturos gives a disgusted sigh. "Both of you need to understand this," he says through the door, his growl vibrating the wood. "What I think doesn't matter, any more than what you think matters. Nothing matters, save seeing the Lighthouses lit. Nothing." He lets out a short little laugh. "So I can think whatever I like. It doesn't matter. For all I know, this is normal for you Vale folk-"

"It's not normal!" Jenna cries, and regrets it in the same instant she speaks. "It's not normal - I -"

"Jenna-" His hands brush her shoulders, and she recoils; the stricken look on his face breaks her heart, but not as much as the disgust she knows must follow. "Jenna-" Felix's voice cracks. "I'm so sorry-"

"Why are you apologizing to me?" she asks with a half-laugh, half-sob. "It's - it's all my fault - it's my-"

She slides down the door, burying her face between her knees when she's on the floor. She can't bear to look at him. Not when she's...

She remembers the feeling of his arms around her, and the utter bliss she felt nestled into his warmth. Bile rises in her throat. No. She understands - as she should have understood then, as a part of her must have understood all along - that those weren't the feelings of a girl toward her brother. Not that happiness, that contentment, the faint heat she felt -

She gags, and her throat burns. Choking it down, she swallows it back and pushes her face into her knees. The pain is a distraction from her own mind. No wonder she repulses Felix, no wonder he went from the kindest brother alive to a stranger - she wasn't his sister, not in any way save blood, no sister would -

"Jenna? Jenna?" She hears the thunk of his knees hitting the wooden floor. She can't bear to look up. The mere thought makes the tears flow faster. "Jenna, please look at me - please -"

A glove brushes her temple, and, against her will, she raises her head. Through a sheen of tears, she sees Felix's desperate face, and it's enough to make her break down again. "Jenna-" She hears a sob, and her heart breaks a little more. "I'm sorry, I- I never wanted this. I -"

"I know you didn't," she says miserably. She wishes she were dead. If the Wise One was going to spare her family, why didn't he take her in exchange? They'd have hurt, but that would still be better than... Anything would be better than... "It's not your fault, Felix-" Her voice rises on a high note of pain, and she fights it down. "You did nothing wrong... I just..."

For what seems like an eternity, he just kneels there, his hand on her face. "It's my sickness," he says at last, his voice raw. "If I could have just been a brother to you, rather than..."

"Your sickness?" She gives a little laugh, bordering on hysteria. What he says is so incongruous that she can't make sense of it. "You're not sick. It's me who-" She breaks off, shaking her head, and looks away. It's easier to look at the corner of the room than at her brother's face - and the revulsion that, any moment now, he won't be able to repress any longer. Yet, despite herself, she leans into his hand, knowing that the gesture will only hasten it being yanked away - miserable in the prison of her own selfish need, a stupid child in the most horribly unchildlike of ways -

"What do you mean, you're the one who's sick?" Felix repeats, his voice rising. "Jenna, it's not you who - I'm the one who -"

She looks back to him, and their eyes meet. In that moment, there's a flash of recognition - of realization, dawning across both their faces, mirrored as perfectly as twins.

For what must be a second, but seems to be an eternity, they sit paralyzed, staring into each other's eyes. The doom that she felt crashing down upon her before was a phantasm; this is so much worse, a creeping fog that wraps itself around her shoulders and drifts up to smother her mouth, drive the air from her lungs. Suffocating, all-encompassing.

It's so much worse because she has no desire to resist it. Her hand comes up to cup the back of Felix's head; she sees it as though watching something in a dream, and her motions feel like those in a dream. But the soft hair under her hand is real. Her brother is real.

Her brother and her lover, why-

But there are no tears now - not when his hand, shaking uncontrollably, drops from her face to her back, his arm wrapping around her and bringing her closer as the other hand threads through her hair. The doom has come upon her, the doom she felt almost at once, the doom that, perhaps, began when the tall stranger at Sol Sanctum took off his mask, and she found herself staring into a handsome and foreign face that was somehow unmistakably her brother's -

And the worst part about it, the worst part of all, is that she doesn't mind and doesn't care. She's happy. Why is she happy? Some part of her, the same part that, in her brother - her brother, why - that, in her brother, turned his eyes from her and kept his embrace from her, in what now was unmistakably grievous guilt and shame - that same part is screaming, it's screaming uncontrollably and unendingly, perhaps it will never stop screaming -

And the rest of her is deaf to its screams. It's impossible to listen to its screams, when she's this happy. Whether it's her conscience or her better judgment or anything else, she's never felt happier than now, with Felix's mouth on hers, the pressure of his hand on the back of her head, the warmth of his arm -

"Felix," she sobs, and kisses him again before he can mistake her emotion. "Felix - brother-"

Somewhere, there's a sigh and the sound of footsteps heading away from the door, but she doesn't care. The world could burn down around them now, and she wouldn't care. It doesn't matter whether the world dies in fire or in ice. All that matters is the feeling of Felix's hands over her clothes, his mouth against her skin, his fingers fumbling with the laces of her clothing -

"Jenna-" he groans, half a moan, half a sob, and then she draws him down to her, and there's nothing in the world but the two of them at all.

Meanwhile, Next Door [coda/4]

[(Anonymous)]

And now for a completely different tone and POV.

---

The door swings open, then shuts again. Saturos throws himself down on his bed and regards the ceiling, hands behind his head.

"What is it?" Menardi asks from her bed, only half-interested. He inspects the rafters.

"Resolving..." He considers how to phrase it. "Fraternal disputes."

"I could have done that," Menardi scoffs. "There was no need for you to bother yourself with it. I have a sister-"

He takes a deep breath, then exhales through his nose. It's that or burst out laughing, and she wouldn't understand why. "I don't think that you have quite the same relationship."

"Not precisely, but it can't be that different between an older brother and an older sister," Menardi defends. "The same principles apply. A younger sister-"

She stops mid-sentence, and he looks over to see her regarding the wall strangely. Her head cocks, as if listening to... He bites his lip. The thought disgusts him, yes, but not nearly as badly as he wants to laugh at her look of perplexity, the confusion, the lack of comprehension...

After the moans grow to the point that even he can hear them, she turns to him with a disbelieving expression. "I'm sorry," she says, jerking her thumb at the wall, "but I must have misunderstood... The rooms we booked... I thought that was..."

He nods and raises his eyebrows as far as they'll go. She continues to stare at him, unwilling to understand, until one of the moans is quite audible as "Felix!"

Her head jerks around, and his breath comes out in a sharp exhalation that doesn't quite disguise that it's a chuckle. His tongue licks around his lip: the teeth drew blood. Ah well. It was worth keeping a straight face.

Menardi's mouth hangs open, disbelieving and appalled. He sits up, wanting to memorize the expression. It's the funniest thing he's seen in his life, and likely to remain that way, even if he lives for a hundred years.

"You know," he says once he's etched it into his memory, "they say that if you hold a face for that long, it might freeze that way."

She turns to him, her face still frozen in that expression of incredulity. Behind her, the moaning beyond the wall has now been joined by an unmistakable rhythmic thumping. She gestures spasmodically at the wall, then lets her hand fall to her side and stares at him. He arches an eyebrow and spreads his hands.

At last, she manages an appalled whisper. "I have a sister..."

He nods.

She gestures futilely towards the next room, then throws up her hands. She's really making a lot of expressions he's never seen before. It's interesting.

"How can you -" Her voice comes out in a strangled gasp. So does one of the voices from the neighboring room, come to think of it. "They're siblings!"

"We need a Venus Adept."

She sits and stares at him, the thumping behind her growing faster and rougher. "Until Venus Lighthouse," Saturos says in measured tones. "Only until Venus Lighthouse. After that..."

In mute shock, she turns back and stares at the wall, with no further reaction than a muscle in her cheek twitching every time there's a particularly loud moan or hard thump. He sits and watches her, torn between his amusement at her reaction and his own disgust, until there comes a high, piercing cry of "Oh, oh, oh, Felix, oh, brother, ohhhhhh-"

Menardi buries her face in her hands just as the pounding reaches a crescendo and comes to a merciful stop. Saturos can't quite disguise his snigger.

"It's not funny," she hisses at him, raising her head just enough to shoot a glare his way. "You don't understand, but I have a sister-"

"And you were going to help them with their problem, you said?"

Her hand moves in a blur, and a pillow takes him right in his grinning face. He flops down, waving a hand in defeat, but still letting out muffled snickers. She gives a disgusted sigh.

"Someday, you really are going to anger me to a point you'll regret..."

"Tch." He pulls the pillow off his face and sits up. "And what do you plan to do to me then, hmm?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," she says flatly. She glares at him, then drops her gaze. "How can you-" Glancing at the wall, she brings her hand to her mouth, as though to stifle a gag. "It's an abomination."

"Is it the worst abomination Vale has visited upon us?" he counters.

The room is silent for a few moments, and then she dips her head. "No."

"We do as we must," he says, leaning back against his own wall. At least that one will mercifully remain free of thumping, unless... Alex and Kraden... No, he doesn't think so. At least the only disconcerting thing there would be the age gap... "Until the Lighthouses are lit... nothing else matters until that time."

She begins to nod, then freezes and slowly turns to the wall behind her. He raises an eyebrow. As the distant creaking of a bed becomes audible even on his side of the room, he casts his gaze back up to the rafters. Hm. To think that he used to wonder if Felix was interested in girls at all. Must just have been the wrong sort of red-haired younger sister-

But best to not mention that to Menardi. He'd get something thrown at him that was harder than a pillow.

"Don't tell me they'll be at this all night-"

"You could always come over to my side," he offers, looking back down at her. "It's quieter."

For a moment, he wonders if he's pushed too far; then, she tosses him a calculating gaze, warming with more than anger, and he relaxes. "I do need to retrieve my pillow," she says, her gaze traveling down to where it rests on his lap.

"That you do," he agrees brightly, and she pushes off her bed.

Yes... they just have to endure until Venus Lighthouse. Only until Venus Lighthouse.

Everything will be different after that.