Stick Together-- Dizznee Family

Awake

If you read the alternate ending, yes the beginning is the same.

Bex opened her eyes to a blurry figure hovering over her.

She shut them quick due to the blinding light before noticing voices. They sounded far away, but she could bet that if she'd just focus, they'd begin to make sense.

"She's a little... of it. It's... sedative... Wear off soon....... delicate... her."

Bex opened her eyes again despite the light above her. The voice was familiar and she needed to know where she was. What was happening.

The room seemed to fall silent as she blinked her eyes into focus, the blurry shapes becoming elves.

The first elf she noticed was Elwin. His hair was extraordinarily messy and if Bex was seeing things correctly, his glasses were crooked, like he hadn't had time to fix them between whatever he'd been doing before and then.

The next elf to come into view was Edaline. Her aunt. She watched them when they were little, but was closer to Dex.

Where was her older brother?

Her eyes searched the room, but the only other she could make out was Sophie, her cousin. Also closer to Dex.

And where were her twins?

"Whoa, don't sit up quite yet, Bex." Elwin said, putting a hand on her shoulder to push her back down onto the soft surface. A couch, perhaps?

"Where..." Bex mumbled. Her mouth was dry.

"Lex and Rex are right next to you."

Turning her head to the side with trouble - her neck hurt - she was, in fact, met with the sight of her sleeping brothers. Bex turned back to look at Elwin, Edaline, Sophie, and Grady who was also apparently in the room.

"Dex."

The adults, plus Sophie, exchanged a look before Edaline spoke up. "Why don't we talk after you take medicine?"

Bex shook her head despite the pain. She had to know where her third brother was and she was not taking a single sip of medication until then. "Where is Dex?"

Elwin looked at Grady and Edaline, carefully avoiding eye contact with Sophie, before his attention turned back to Bex. "We don't know where he is at this moment."

Bex felt her eyes go wide.

"Bex, honey, breathe." Edaline soothed, rushing to her side. Her hands were a bit rough and calloused, but with thin and nearly fragile fingers. It was an oddity to Bex who was doing her best to focus on them rather than the knowledge - or lack there of - of what was happening to and with Dex.

"We have troops looking for him at this very moment." A squeaky voice spoke up. Bex looked to it's source to find a goblin.

"Don't hurt him." She rasped. "He didn't do any-" Before Bex could say anything else she was coughing.

"Here," Elwin said, holding a vile up to her lips. Her head was lifted slightly by Edaline as she drank.

"That better not have been a sedative," she threatened once she'd down the bottle.

"That'd be... idiotic." Elwin said slowly. "Your body has had enough sleep in a three hour period to last a lifetime."

Bex's face must have shown her confusion because suddenly Sophie was speaking. "It was a warped version of sopordine." Wasn't that the sedative the Neverseen used?

"There was a negative chance of you waking up within three hours." Elwin explained. "Normally, you'd at most only want a zero percent chance, but whoever did this wasn't taking any odds of that happening."

"But who sedated me? Who brought me here?" Bex mumbled, her brain trying to piece everything together. "What about Dex?" The Dizznee girl would have asked more, but another coughing fit stopped her.

Sophie got on her knees next to Bex as Elwin scooted over to recheck Lex and Rex. "Do you think you could tell us the last thing you remember? Or let me look?"

Bex bit her lip. "Do you have to look?"

"It'd be a lot easier to understand, but no, no I don't. Why? Did something bad happen?"

Bex shook her head. "Dex just made us some dessert..."

Oh. Oh.

Edaline rubbed her thin fingers over Bex's palm again. "That's the last thing?"

"He'd... He'd been acting really weird that day. I mean, he had been for most of the week, but we thought he was just getting too stressed. He kept getting angry over the smallest things. But..."

"But what?" Sophie prompted gently.

Bex felt her throat tighten and her eyes sting. "He was being super weird the last day. Like, he called Lex Rex and forgot his own rules and wouldn't shut up about this bird. A few days... A few days earlier he even said that he thought I'd given him a cloth or something because he had a headache, but I never left the camp to go check on him. And... Oh God, is he okay? He kept saying he had a headache and was grabbing his head, but... but..."

Do you think he's gonna be okay?"  Bex mumbled.  Her grip tightened on Edaline's hand when Sophie looked away.

"I..."  Sophie swallowed, "I don't know.  I'll have to talk to Alden first."

"Why Alden?"

Edaline seemed to know what was going on.  "We don't want to make you worry more than you already are.  It's probably not at all what Sophie's imagining, however in this case, it is probably best to leave no stone upturned."

Bex's eyes shifted back and fourth from the two of them.  "Please just tell me-"

"Ugh...."  A croaky voice groaned as the soft surface shifted.

Bex's head whipped to the side as Elwin moved around her to get a better look at Lex.

Everyone in the room seemed to hold their breath as Elwin snapped a bright yellow orb into existence.  He waited a minute before he said anything.  "Lex, can you open your eyes?"

The boy moaned as his eyelids tightened before they opened up to reveal something along the lines of bloodshot eyes.  Under them were massive bags and his hair was rumpled.  He blinked a few times and Bex wondered if she looked like that too.

"Lex?"  Bex asked quietly.  She noticed her hands were shaking.

Her brother's eyes shifted to her.  "Be..."

"Drink this before you say anything else."  Elwin suggested, holing out a vile in front of his face.  "Bex, if you can, will you help me sit him up?  Edaline-"

"On it," Edaline said, pillow already in hand.

The tree of them slowly lifted the second Dizznee triplet up, propping him against the pillow before Elwin handed him the bottle.

He must have drank it all in one gulp.  "Bex?"

"Hey, bro." She said quietly, trying to give a small smile.

"What's going-" he coughed "-on?  Why..."  Lex looked around the room.

Bex looked to Edaline for help as Elwin began flashing lights around her brother.

"You were all..."  Edaline looked like for the first time that night, she didn't know what to say.

"Lex,"  Bex said, taking his hand, "why don't we talk about this once we're all woken up?"

Lex looked to his left where the last triplet was still asleep.  "Okay... but where's Dex?"

As he broke into a coughing fit, Bex silently thanked it.  It gave her time to think.  "Not here at the current moment."

"What do you mean?"

"Lex, we know about as much as you do."  Edaline said softly.  "And the parts that you don't know I promise we'll explain once your brother is awake and you've both had something to eat."

Bex nodded, casting her eyes down to her lap.  This was going to be a long night.  Or was it morning already?