My Sister's a Guardian (RotG Fanfiction)

Chapter 62: Our Ruin They Wield

(Content/trigger warnings for this chapter: anxiety, depression-like thing)

**Isabelle**

I stood in Zo's room. The butterflies had left for now. The air was cool, and five people, mostly girls, had spread out in the large, dark space. Zo slept in their bed with a sixth grader named Brooklyn. She was nearly falling off, while Zo's face was pressed against a wall the same shade of black as their hair. At the opposite end of the room, an open laptop glowing and whirring softly on a desk lit the faces of Cathey and an Asian girl named Paula, both sprawled on the floor. Cathey's blond curls were tangled, and she kicked in her sleep. I didn't know who the final girl was, for blue blankets completely covered her except for long red hair, but her sleep-mumbling sounded like a girl's voice.

In the center of the room was a space I could've gone, had I not been too scared to sleep with the light off. And had I not been a spirit.

"Guys," I said as loudly as I could, my voice raspy and whispering. "Zo? Cathey?" Yet, as I'd expected, no one woke up. I stepped across the room and tried to nudge Zo, but my fingers passed through them. When I tried Cathey, the same. They didn't believe in spirit-me. Mom had tried to call them and explain what had happened, but neither believed her. It was strange; if they could believe I had powers and a Guardian Angel, why couldn't they believe this? It had to be the soother. Yet, it didn't make it any less painful.

"I'm sorry," Jack said beside me.

My heart ached, and I sniffled. Memories of Zo's jokes and playing soccer with Cathey flitted through my mind. Zo trying to teach me about Minecraft redstone, and Cathey saying she'd fight a dangerous supernatural being for me. All of us laughing together at lunch on my good days.

If my anxiety hadn't been so bad, this never would have happened. I could have defeated Pitch without turning into a spirit, perhaps. I was worthless to myself and others, to my friends and the people who died from the Terror Storms. If my anxiety really wasn't my fault... No, I couldn't believe that.

Ranya got to go back to school. Since she would no longer be ostracizing people, she could make friends now, she had said. The Guardians had captured Caelum, so the school was safe. They didn't yet know how to remove the powers the Watcher had given her, but felt imprisoning her asleep on Sandy's Dreamsand island was safe for now.

Ranya got a second chance. I didn't.

"It's hard," Jack continued. "I know. I lost all my friends and family when becoming a spirit."

"But you could at least leave Burgess. I can't leave Windshallow." My powers had gone wild outside my town's borders. They had never done that before, but I had never used them there. Once Ranya had teleported me back home, the Echoes vanished. Dakota had joined us when we arrived, and said I likely had a similar curse to hers.

"I could always bring you people to make friends with. But this is hard. I'll give you time."

I looked away and watched sleeping chests rise and fall. The house creaked in the harsh wind, and the heater kicked in with its drone. The girl under all the blankets slipped farther under her covers.

"Do you think I could email them?" I asked.

"I tried before I became a Guardian; they can't see what we write," Jack said. Paula turned in her sleep. "But maybe... we could find Lotus. They're probably immortal, if they've been around for so long. That vision you told us about, I think that happened many years ago. You get along with Lotus, right?"

I thought about what I had seen back in the woods, the time out of balance. I'd sensed Lotus there. Where were they? "I'd have no idea where to begin."