so...you owe me. ;; remy

"I wonder if she's been fucking him," Lysander mused. "She's gotta be ancient by now, I wonder if the overloridian digs old chicks."

Layla shrugged her foxy shoulders as she kept pace with her clio. The two of them had made their way to Earalas to meet Lysander's biological mother. She didn't think he should have been speaking about his mother that way, but he would have just brushed her scolding off anyway. She also didn't blame him for feeling this way toward his mother. She had been living in the overloridian's estate, while Lysander had been thrown from one welfare shack to the next. So yeah, he did sort of deserve something from her.

"Gods," he sighed, when they finally reached the estate. It could fit like, a million of his apartments in there. Fuck, one bedroom in that place was probably bigger than his apartment alone. He stopped to gawk at the giant home the overloridian lived in before shaking his head. "Yeah, she owes me."

He and his daemon made their way to the gigantic, intricate front door, and knocked. He put on his best, 'please mommy help me' face, as a clio opened the door. She had a fucking doorman! "Hello," he said politely. "I'm looking for Elisabeth Monroe?"

With a frown on his face, the doorman nodded and lead Lysander to the living room where he was told to sit and wait. That was weird. Why did that doorman seem so, sullen?

Remy was sitting in the living room waiting for Hadley to finish up with some sort of paperwork (he was reading the papers with the braille that he and Remy had learned together) so that they could go do something that didn't involve sitting around in their giant house they lived in for free because of privilege.

Suddenly Humbert the doorman led in a guy. "Remy? I think this gentleman is here to talk to you," Humbert said.

Remy sat down the book she was skimming and stood up. "Can I help you?" she asked. Humbert trailed away back to the door sadly, because the life of a door man is probably really boring.

Lysander was eventually led to a different room, attractive chick was sitting. She looked sort of familiar, though he couldn't figure out why.

Remy wrote:"Can I help you?"

Lysander's brow furrowed. The doorman could have at least told her what he was there for. "Well," he replied, while reaching into his back pocket for the folded up details of his life. "I'm looking for Elisabeth Monroe. Is she here?"

Remy's face fell. "Elisabeth Monroe?" she asked. Elisabeth had been her mother's name. Was it possible that this guy had known her? Remy thought it wasn't very likely--he looked even younger than her, and besides that, anyone her mom had known, Remy had known.

"That's my middle name," Remy told him, assuming that someone had accidentally swapped her first and middle names on some paperwork or something. "Maybe are you looking for a Remy?"

Was this girl stupid or something? Lysander didn't care what her name was. He was looking for Elisabeth, not some girl named Remy. "No," he replied. "I'm definitely looking for an Elisabeth." The girl named Remy still looked confused so he decided to elaborate. "Look she's my mother okay?" He said. "Is she here or not?"

What was this? Some sort of joke?

"Listen," Remy told him, "I'm not sure what you're here for, but Elisabeth Monroe was my mother. Maybe there is someone else with the same name. I'm sorry--are you sure you're in the right place?"

What an odd thing to happen. It made Remy sad. If her mom was here they would have laughed about this together.

What an interesting turn of events. Lysander grinned despite himself. "That makes us siblings!" He said, sort of excitedly. His papers in hand, he walked closer to Remy and handed them to her. "These are the documents they had at the orphanage." He reached over and pointed at the bottom of the page. "See here? That's her signature." After the excitement quickly wore off, he realized then that his mother, their mother, had kept her and not him. What was so bad about him? Did he cry a lot when he was born? Was his shitty diapers too nasty? What the fuck? "So where is she?"

"I'm sorry--I'm--" Paisley took a look down at the papers. "Lysander..." she let her eyes trail down to the bottom. Elisabeth Monroe. Remy's mother's name was printed clearly, and underneath was her undeniable signature.

"This is her." Her voice was barely a whisper. Her stomach had dropped into her feet. What the hell was this? She continued to stare at the paper, unmoving.

"Yeah," Lysander replied. "Sure is!" Now what? Where was his mother? Why wasn't she taking him to her? He stood there awkwardly for a moment, staring at the papers he's read so many times in Remy's hands. "Soo..." he finally spoke, straightening out his back. "Can I meet her?"

Hadley had been in his office, completely unaware of the drama bomb that had gone off in his living room. He was getting frustrated because it turned out that braille took about ten times longer to read than normal words, especially since he wasn't very good at it yet and kept mixing up letters. Eventually he just went back to his old strategy of having Nila read him things for the time being, because he wanted to get his work over with and go hang out with Remy. Who he was sort of, uh, with now. Which was weird.

When he finally finished his work, he got up to go find her. "Remy?" he called from the hallway. He stopped for a second when he heard Remy's voice from the direction of the living room, talking to someone else whose voice he didn't recognize at all. A staff member he didn't interact with often, maybe?

I don't think so, Nila said when they entered the living room. He doesn't look familiar to me.

"Who's this?" he asked.

Remy was still staring at the papers, completely dumbfounded. She'd barely heard Lysander's question, because she was so busy wondering what the hell this form meant. It was a surrender form from the orphanage in Dahlin. Remy's mother had given up a baby boy for adoption twenty one years ago when Remy was two.

And this baby boy was... "You're my brother?" Remy finally looked back up at Lysander.

Lysander never got to respond, though, because then Hadley walked in. Remy looked over at him.

She wished more than anything that Hadley could read her face right now--her panicked expression, especially. "This is my brother," she told him breathlessly.

Lysander was about to speak until a guy he could only assume was the overloridian walked into the room. His vacant stare indicated that he must be blind. That sucks.

Remy wrote:"This is my brother,"

"Hey," Lysander said toward the overloridian.

"Um, hi," Hadley said distractedly to the guy who was supposedly Remy's brother...? What?

"You have a brother?" he asked Remy, thinking back to everything he knew about her, which was a lot. Unless he had somehow forgotten this little detail, she had never once mentioned having a brother.

She looks kinda surprised about it herself, Nila noted, watching Remy's freaked out expression.

"How did you find me?" Remy asked, turning back around to look at Lysander. How had her mom never told her she had a brother? How had her brother have been taken to the orphanage? Why?

None of this made any sense. How could her mom have hidden a baby from her?

Well, we were only two when he was born, Vex said. You wouldn't remember that even if you knew.

This was her brother. She had thought she was alone in the world and she had a brother.

Remy wrote:"How did you find me?"

"I wasn't looking for you," Lysander replied. "I was looking for our mother." He pointed over Remy's shoulder, showing what Elisabeth's current address had been. "Thinking about it now, I guess it was dumb of me to just show up," he shrugged. "But I figured it was a start."

The "I wasn't looking for you" comment was a little off-putting but Remy brushed it off. How was she supposed to tell Lysander that her mother--their mother--was dead? Had died before he could ever meet her, the most wonderful woman in the world? It made her hands sweat. She remembered how she had felt during that time. Would Lysander be upset too?

"I'm sorry to tell you this, but she passed away a few years ago," she said, heart in her throat. Her voice was soft and un-Remylike.

During this exchange Hadley slowly made his way over to a chair and sat, knowing full well that he didn't belong in this conversation, but too curious about what was going on to leave them to their privacy or anything. He listened back and forth as a pieces came together. He was actually pretty surprised that Elisabeth had never told Remy about the child she apparently gave up. Her and Remy had been so close, it was hard to believe she had kept such a big secret from her. How interesting.

He remembered how hard Remy had taken her death. She still sounded upset about it now, three years later. He thought maybe he should say something comforting, but couldn't think of anything so just kept his mouth shut instead.

Remy wrote:"I'm sorry to tell you this, but she passed away a few years ago,"

"Oh..." was all Lysander could say. He wasn't sure what to think now. He wasn't necessarily sad, he had never met her before. But it wasn't like he was completely unaffected. He was a selfish bastard but he wasn't inhumane. He had her DNA, her blood flowed through his veins, but she was gone. All wasn't lost though, at least he found his sister. "I'm not sure what I should say now."

His selfishness made it's way back into his brain. Maybe I could get something out of this girl. Layla only shook her head.

"I'm so sorry," Remy said, not sure what to say either. She felt a million conflicting emotions, and wasn't able to settle on a single one. Just shock edged with a twinge of sadness she knew would never truly go away.

She still couldn't wrap her head around that fact that her mom had kept this from her all those years. Her mom, her best friend, who had been with her through everything? And how had she given him up? She and Remy had been so close--how could she have given another child away? How was any of this possible?

"Where do you live?" Remy asked. Where had he grown up? Who did he consider his family?

Remy wrote:"I'm so sorry,"

It was sort of weird to hear her say that. Like Lysander was the only one who lost his mother. He didn't even know who she was. He would never admit it, nor would he ever acknowledge the emotion, but deep down he felt really sad. Remy got to grow up with a mother, Lysander got to grow up with several detached foster mothers. He was too proud to ever admit that in a million years.

Remy wrote:"Where do you live?"

"Oh, just some smelly apartment in Dahlin," he said. "Nothing fancy, definitely not as fancy as this place."

"What made you suddenly decide to look for Elisabeth?" Hadley asked out of curiosity. Of course it was perfectly plausible that this guy could have just been curious about his biological mother. That would be normal. But a more cynical part of him was wondering if maybe the fact that said biological mother lived in a nice mansion with an overloridian might have had something to do with it, too.

"Where is your family?" Remy asked. "Do they live in Dahlin too?" Where did you grow up? Did you know about my our mom your entire life? There were so many things Remy needed to know.

Haddles wrote:"What made you suddenly decide to look for Elisabeth?"

That was a good question to add to the mix! Remy waited, not realizing she was holding onto the paper so tightly it was bunching up.

Hadley wrote:"What made you suddenly decide to look for Elisabeth?"

"Honestly," Lysander replied, turning toward the overloridian as he spoke. "I was curious." He shrugged.

Remy wrote:"Where is your family?" Remy asked. "Do they live in Dahlin too?"

"That actually adds on to my explanation," he said while turning back toward Remy. "I don't have a family, before I settled, I bounced around from one foster home to the next." He shrugged again, like it didn't bother him though it really did. "I grew up resenting my biological family, and for years I just didn't care to know them, but curiosity got the best of me."

Remy's heart dropped, not for the first time this conversation. "What?" she asked. That was possible? He hadn't been adopted? How could he not have been adopted? How had her mother given him up?

It didn't matter how many questions Lysander answered, immediately after more took their place, bouncing around Remy's skull like tiny rubber balls.

She was a teenager, Vex reminded her. She would have been seventeen with two children, Remy.

But--but she had taken care of Remy! She'd done all she could to take care of Remy her entire life. She'd given Remy everything, no matter what it took.

But could she have done that if she had taken care of Lysander too? Instead of shock and sadness, Remy suddenly also felt guilty. Her mother had chosen her.

"I was never adopted," Lysander explained to Remy's, 'what'. "Although I almost was." He went on to explain the Sparkes family, how he was with them for years until the father passed away. "I was five when Mrs. Sparkes brought me back," he said. "I remember feeling so confused and sad, I didn't want to go back to the orphanage." He was going to play this sad foster child act till it killed him. "I didn't understand why she didn't want me...nobody wanted me."