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"There's so much you don't know," Theo said, and Remus could nearly feel Sydney's heart freeze in her chest.
"Like what?" She asked, bracing herself for the answer.
Theo's watered down eyes looked up at Remus and Peter again and then back at Sydney. Sydney took a breath, breaking free from Theo's hold on her and looking to Peter.
"Um, Peter?" She said, her voice breaking slightly. "I'm, um, I'm a-"
"A mermaid," Peter finished with a soft smile. "I know," he said. "It's okay."
Sydney smiled slightly and then she turned to Remus. Her hand was still fitted into his and her eyes were a soft and deafening blue as she breathed out a quiet ball of air.
"You're okay," Remus whispered, forcing himself to smile slightly. Sydney nodded and then turned back to Theo.
"When I left last summer," Theo began. "I flew out here, to meet my dad."
Peter looked confusedly at Remus. Remus knew only the basics of Sydney's family history: she and Theo had different dads, Sydney's parents died and she and Theo were sent to live with her father's parents, Theo and the rest of her hometown friends abandoned her after a fight in the summer. He pieced together that it was her being a mermaid which drove Theo away.
All of this was too much to tell Peter wordlessly across the table, of course, so Remus simply shrugged again.
"Only, it wasn't just him I was living with," Theo continued, recollecting Remus's attention. "A woman was with him as well. She looked... Well, she looked like you."
Sydney's grip tightened on Remus's hand and Remus cupped his second hand around it again as an added measure of reassurance.
"How- How is that possible?" Sydney asked.
"That's what I said," Theo nodded. "At first I was so shocked that I forgot how much I was trained to hate her." - Remus didn't like that word choice. "Trained". It made it seem like Theo was trying to play off the years of hatred he had pushed onto Sydney. - "I just wanted to know what really happened," Theo insisted. "Do you remember what Granddad told us?"
"He said Mom and Dad took the boat out and got in an accident," Sydney said blandly. "But we always thought it had something to do with your father."
Theo nodded. "Last summer I pushed them for more answers," he said. "I wanted to know why they were hiding things. What my dad had to do with everything.
"They said that Mom wanted to find my Dad," Theo continued. "That she was really in love with him, but she was already married to Louis and they had you. By the time I was born, it was easier to just keep us together and stay in California."
"Ouch," Peter mouthed across the table with a sort of What the fuck? expression. Remus nodded.
