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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE runs in the family
⋆*✧･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:
EVEN WHEN THEY WERE younger, Kadence and Ben had never gotten along. When they were toddlers, Ben had been the sweet one—which was hard to believe now, but it really had once been the case—while Kadence had been mischievous, and those two personalities simply hadn't meshed. When Kadence turned Ben's toys into stone too heavy for his little hands—or for even the baby version of the Horror—to pick up, he didn't laugh; he cried. When Ben went crawling to their father to wail about her, Kadence wasn't amused; she was livid. Before they'd even reached four years old, before the hierarchy had even been established, they began to split apart. And, of course, this got even worse when their numbers began to dictate who they were.
By the time they were ten years old, they were getting into regular, often violent, squabbles. Oh, sure, Kadence had started to morph into a more muted version of her younger self, and Ben's gentle demeanour was beginning to be sucked away, but neither of these changes prevented the animosity they held towards each other. Ben, who was learning that he was more rewarded when he was an asshole than when he was kind, often made fun of her for being at the lowest rung of the ladder. And Kadence's spark had just about been snuffed out, but that didn't prevent her from enacting her revenge. Whether it was lizards in his bedroom or stealing the eyes of his stuffed animals, Kadence refused to simply bow down—and the best part was, no one could trace any of the misdemeanours back to her.
Well, Ben knew it was her. But since she was never caught setting free the butterflies he kept on his windowsill or cutting the bristles off his paintbrushes, he couldn't get her in trouble for it. Instead, he settled for hitting her extra hard during training or teasing her until she was barely holding back tears. And thus, the cycle continued.
Nineteen years later, the two of them still weren't friends. They hated each other—and yet, they cared for each other in only the ways siblings could. They both wanted to see the other knocked off their pedestal, but they didn't want them dead. Especially not after losing three of their other siblings.
Still, Kadence had been surprised when Ben had been so insistent that she get her rest after the kugelblitz-prompted-migraine (apparently, that was the official name for it—a kugelblitz. Kadence liked 'devourer' better. It was far more accurate). Oh, he was still himself—he didn't gently prompt her into bed; he snapped at her to get her ass to the infirmary—but Kadence could really see the legitimacy beneath those angry eyes. He wanted her to get better. He didn't want to see her in pain.
It was so fucking weird.
When the Sparrow-Umbrellas (as Luther had started calling them) realized that they needed Viktor in order to even have a chance against the kugelblitz, the question of who would go to fetch him had inevitably cropped up. This had led to a lot of averted eyes, as if they were still in school and trying to avoid the teacher calling on them (Kadence assumed. That was what had happened with her tutors, anyway). Even that little shit Five had shrunk back like a scolded puppy. No one was keen on facing the person—well, people. It was almost guaranteed that Nadine was with Viktor—that had opposed Allison. Especially since Allison's eyes narrowed whenever either of their names was mentioned.
