you're alive :: petra

Breathing was hard.

Pia hadn't quite caught the breath she had lost when officials from Nadar arrived on Martha's Vineyard and told her something she never thought she would hear: her sister had been found. Petra was alive.

She couldn't believe it. Her big sister was alive. The girl who had taught her to ride a bike, to catch lightening bugs, how to climb a tree... she was alive. Most of Pia's happy childhood memories involved Petra. All the memories after her were twinged by sadness, and most of them weren't worth remembering, anyway. She'd spent years feeling that part of her was missing; the sisters were just over a year apart, and she'd followed Petra around religiously as a child.

In the years Petra had been gone Pia had gone through a million emotions. Sadness, guilt, resentment, agony. But now none of that mattered. Now she was back.

The trip to Nadar and the walk to the estate, and then to Petra's room, was a blur. The overloridian had said something to Pia as she walked her through the halls, but Pia couldn't pay attention.

And now here she was, with only a door separating her from someone she'd spent her entire life missing/resenting/loving. She let herself in, and somehow found the courage to say, "Petra?"

Petra wondered how she was supposed to be feeling right now. Excited? Scared? Upset? That's probably how most clio would feel when they were about to reunite with the sister they hadn't seen since they'd been kidnapped fifteen years ago, but Petra wasn't feeling any of those things. She'd closed herself off to any feelings, deciding it would be best just to treat this whole thing like meeting any other stranger. Because that's all Pia was to her now. A stranger.

She hoped Pia didn't have any high hopes for this whole thing. If that idiot Paisley had any sense at all, she'd probably warned Pia about the kind of clio Petra had become. Then again, she never really got the impression that Paisley had much sense.

She was sitting at the kitchen table keeping her mind busy by designing a potential new tattoo. Maybe something for her back. She actually managed to get a bit lost in it, because all of the sudden there was an unfamiliar voice behind her saying her name.

She turned around to see a blonde girl standing there. Just as she'd thought, she felt like she was just looking at a stranger she'd never met before rather than someone who was supposed to be her sister. "I'm guessing you're Pia?"

Despite her long, drawn out, inner monologue on the way to Nadar, part of Pia must have thought that this was all some sick joke, because when she finally laid eyes on Petra it felt like a thousand pounds fell of her shoulders.

"You're alive." She couldn't say anything else right away, couldn't even answer Petra's question, though the answer would have been a simple yes. A million thoughts ran through her mind--hundreds of memories, only half of them probably her own. But the woman standing in front of her, the one Pia had given up for dead years and years ago, only slightly resembled the picture she had in her memory. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Long gone was the kind smile, the childhood freckles, the bows and dresses.

The blue eyes staring at her were steely, empty of any emotion. Age wasn't the only change Petra had gone through. Tattoos covered her pale skin and her mouth was set in an expression Pia had never once imagined her sister with.

What happened to you?

"Uh, yeah. You knew you were coming to see me, right?" Petra asked dryly with a raised eyebrow. For whatever reason she had agreed to let Paisley tell her family about her, so it wasn't as though this was some kind of sick surprise. Although she could almost imagine Paisley being stupid and naive enough to think it would have been a nice surprise. That wasn't the case though, she knew.

She took a second to look Pia up and down, trying to see if any memories would flood back or whatever. She couldn't really picture seven-year-old Pia anymore. She just sort of saw a generic little blonde girl in her head. With two generic parents and a normal life and childhood. The girl in front of her fit with that image; just a normal, nice-looking girl with a fairly dumb expression on her face.

"I--well, yeah, I just..." I just can't believe it's really you and you're really here and "I've thought you were dead for almost my whole life."

Smooth, Fray told her.

But it was true. Their parents had never given up hope, but for Pia it was easier to just let go. She wasn't sure when she'd stopped wishing for Petra to show up alive and when she'd started wishing for her body to be found, but somehow it had happened. It wasn't something she was proud of, especially now that Petra was standing here in front of her, but it was the truth. You could only take so much of your parents' heartache before you just wished for it to be over no matter what it would take.

"Told Paisley you'd be happier thinking that. She didn't believe me, but whatever." Petra gave a shrug. She was sure Pia would deny it, and hell, maybe even right at this moment the denial would be truthful. But once she talked to her some more, spent some time with her, she'd be wishing she'd never met her. She wondered how much Paisley had even told her about Petra's past and the crimes she'd committed.

"What'd Paisley tell you, anyway?" she asked, pulling out a cigarette and her lighter. Pia looked pretty tense and stressed, so she held one out to her, silently asking if she wanted it. It was about as polite as Petra ever got.

Pia furrowed her brow. "I wasn't happier thinking that." What a thing to say. "I just found it hard to believe that someone who had been gone for over ten years could possibly still be alive."

She looked down at the cigarette Petra held out to her. "No thank you," she said, giving a slight shake of her head. "I don't smoke. And I wasn't really listening when Paisley was talking to me. All I knew was that you were alive and here, and I just had to see you with my own eyes."

And here she was. The glorified older sister who had magically returned after years of disappearance.

"I didn't say you were happier, I said that you would be, compared to knowing what actually happened," Petra shot back. Though Pia claimed she hadn't been listening, Petra got the idea that Paisley had probably sugar-coated the truth. After all, saying something like "your sister is a murderer" probably would have gotten Pia's attention.

"Well if you don't know, I guess I can fill you in since you're here and all," she said. She sure as hell wasn't gonna sugarcoat anything. "I guess you'd call it a crime ring, the guys who took us. They had us work for them. Easy stuff at first; theft, prostitution once we were a little older. If you were good at it you could work your way up to fun things like killing for hire. If you sucked at it you were pretty much fucked."

Petra's nonchalant attitude made Pia feel sick. She hadn't known what had happened to Petra in the years she had been gone, and hearing about it this way made her stomach turn. What had broken inside her that she was able to say it all with such a straight face? It didn't seem to phase her at all. She got the feeling that Petra was trying to make her feel uncomfortable. It was working.

She took a moment to mull over what Petra had just told her. She was still alive, which meant she was good at whatever they'd forced her to do. Which in turn meant that she was a murderer. A trained murderer that got paid for killing.

It was very jarring, talking to this grownup Petra who had been molded into what Pia would normally consider a monster. Nothing about her compared to the eight year old girl who had once told her stories to help get rid of nightmares.

She swallowed and let a hand rest on the couch in front of her, giving her a little support. "I'm sorry," she fumbled. It was impossible to find the right words to say, mostly because there weren't any. She got the impression Petra didn't really want to be talking to her. That the officials had been blurring the truth when they said she'd wanted to speak to her. They'd told her she'd asked for Pia specifically, and that their parents hadn't yet been informed. She was sure her mom didn't know yet or she'd already be here, but Pia found it hard to believe that Petra had asked for her. Ugh, her mom. Their mother wasn't ready for this.

Pia looked like she was about to pass out. Wouldn't that be hilarious to tell Paisley: "Yeah, I told her everything and she fainted. Guess you were wrong about her being glad to meet me." To her credit, though, Pia did not pass out, but instead mumbled out an apology because she clearly didn't know how else to react.

"Sorry? Why?" Petra asked. "Paisley pardoned me so it's not like I have to go to prison for any of it or anything."

"That you were taken," Pia said. "That I wasn't there. I don't know." It wasn't as if Pia could have protected Petra, being seven, but she had gone through long stages of guilt as the years passed. The girl next door, Jenna, was Pia's friend too, but she'd had a fever and was unable to spend the night with Petra on the day the kidnapping had happened. It was irrational, but part of Pia blamed herself for not being there.

She looked at Petra and imagined herself in the same way. What would have happened if she had been there too? Would she have turned out like Petra? Or would she be dead like Jenna?

Instead she'd spent every night in a warm, safe bed. It hadn't been a happy childhood, but at least she'd gotten one. Guilt flowed around her in waves.

Petra rolled her eyes. "Not like it was your fault," she said. "You being sorry isn't gonna help or change anything."

Petra just wasn't the type who could or even wanted to just go on and pretend her past had never happened. It had made her who she was, and she wasn't ashamed of it. She didn't really care if Pia thought she was a monster, or felt sorry for her, or whatever. As long as she wasn't a condescending moron about it like Paisley.

"I know it can't change anything, but I can't help how I feel," Pia told her. She'd been trying to tell herself it wasn't her fault for years but sometimes she still couldn't sleep at night, replaying how different it would have been if she hadn't complained about her throat.

"I was mad you got to go, and then you were just gone. I struggled with that for a long time." It wasn't anything compared to what Petra had to struggle through, she imagined, but that didn't change how the years had effected Pia, too. She'd accepted the guilt long ago, but it still paralyzed her body whenever she thought about it too hard.

"But I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you made it." She was changed, hardened, but she was here. And Pia was infinitely grateful.

Petra was about to make a sarcastic comment about Pia's so-called "struggles", but she was caught off-guard and stopped when Pia said she was glad Petra had made it. And Petra, who considered herself pretty good at telling when clio were lying or not, was pretty sure Pia was actually being sincere.

Well, fuck. If Paisley tries to fucking say "I told you so," I'm gonna hit her.

"So am I," she said finally. In a way she was actually proud of the things she had survived, and the things she'd done to survive. She'd come out of it all stronger than most would have, and she'd even gotten to get revenge on her captors in the end.

Petra's eyes flashed, and Pia was half expecting a comment fired to make her feel uncomfortable again, but instead was met with something she thought might have meant that she got through, even if only for a moment. For a second it didn't seem like she hated Pia, at least. That was something, right?

"Mom's just gonna die, ya know?" Pia said, finally allowing herself to think about what what would come next. "Her whole life's purpose was, like, searching for you." Pia could hardly remember a time when the focus of the household wasn't on locating Petra. It was still like that. It was why Pia had gotten the hell out.

Petra eyed Pia. "You gonna warn her about me?" she asked. Pia had taken the whole hardened criminal thing pretty well surprisingly, but she wasn't sure their mom--who was apparently a cop, according to Paisley--would too. Petra probably knew and was maybe even friends with some of the clio her mom had arrested in her career. But she had been wrong about Pia's reaction, so maybe she'd be wrong about their mom's too.

"I honestly have no idea what to do," Pia confided. "Like, she has to have some idea. She's been involved with placing the children that have family in Ughdarras. It's why she asked Paisley to check for you in the first place. A lot of their stories were similar to ours." Families slaughtered in the dead of night, homes ransacked and sometimes destroyed, children missing. Pia had no idea why her mother had held out such hope for Petra-- it seemed like such a horrible dead ended thing. Yet 15 years had passed and she was still working on the case. But, to her credit, she'd been right.

"It's not gonna be pretty," Pia said truthfully. The guilt Pia felt didn't compare to even a fraction of what their mother did. Fifteen years with no trace, even though she'd solved countless other cases. "But she loves you. She'll come around."

Petra shrugged. "I honestly don't care if she comes around or not," she said. She was way beyond the point of needing a mother to love her. "I'm just curious how the whole thing'll play out. Most of my experiences with cops haven't exactly been great, but we'll see." She'd never had too much issue evading the police in the past, either through violence or cunning or, when in doubt, a good bribe. She didn't exactly have a high opinion of them.

Pia didn't know how to feel. Petra might not care about their mom, but she did. She knew her mom would love Petra no matter how she treated her, but Pia was afraid it would make her not like Petra.

Despite herself, she laughed slightly. "Mom before cop," she said, mimicking what her mother had said to her countless times as she grew up. Pia hadn't believed it for one second, of course. Mom and cop were one and the same thing when you were talking about Selene Lovison. And whatever she said, she still spent way more time being a cop mom to her missing daughter than she did being a "mom before cop" mom to the daughter she actually saw every day.

Even though they'd been talking for awhile now it still didn't seem real that the Petra was standing right in front of her. She had always seemed like some deity or something, the way Mom idolized her. It was odd.

For the first time since she'd been here, Pia took a moment to look around the room. She'd never been inside an overloridian's estate. It was nice, but it looked like it was only half lived in. "So this is where you've been staying, huh?" she asked, her eyes trailing over the things that must have been Petra's.

Petra scoffed at Pia's "mom before cop" comment. Her mom might not want to arrest her or anything, but she imagined being a cop would make the whole "your daughter is a criminal and a murderer" blow even harder. Whatever.

Pia wrote:"So this is where you've been staying, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess," Petra replied. Sometimes she stayed here, sometimes she left Nadar to wander aimlessly around Amelia. "I don't always stick around though. Nadar gets pretty dull."

Pia nodded. This was actually the first time she'd been here, but she knew that half of the island was just uninhabited jungle.

Then a thought came to her. "Well, if you wanted, I wouldn't hate it if you came to Martha's Vineyard sometime." She lived in a modest home with a teacher's salary, so it was nothing as fancy as this, but she supposed it might be a nice change for Petra. She didn't seem to like Paisley much. Pia wasn't sure Petra was so fond of her either, but she thought she'd extend the invitation. "I know we don't know each other, but I guess I wouldn't mind the chance." Who knew, the whole thing could completely backfire.

She'd have to figure out what to do about her mother later. She couldn't hide Petra's existence for long without feeling like she was lying to her mom, but she also didn't want to rush into anything. Petra didn't seem to care about her one way or the other, so Pia was going to have to be the tactful one.

Petra considered the invitation. She'd never actually been to Martha's Vineyard before. She'd never really felt there was anything for her there, so a had trip seemed pointless. She guessed it wouldn't hurt to check out. If she hated it she could just up and leave whenever she wanted. "I guess I could stop by some time, if I have nothing better to do," she said, as if she ever had anything better to do.

Pia supposed that was as close to an acceptance as she was going to get. "I live near the school," she explained. "I'm a teacher."

She wasn't sure why she'd gone into teaching, but being home schooled as a child was probably part of it. She didn't have a real passion for it, besides that. It made her feel like she was making a difference, which was nice. But the long hours sometimes made her regret her decision.

"But I'm far enough away that I don't have to worry about the kids stumbling around," she added. Supposedly before the school was built the island had been secluded, but now (during the school year) it was bustling with life. The summers were nice, though.

Petra almost wanted to laugh. Her and her sister. A criminal and a teacher. While Pia was off nurturing and educating young kids, Petra was working for an organization that kidnapped them. And somehow Pia knew that and still wanted to know her, even have her come to Pia's home. The whole thing was just insane.

Eventually Pia left, leaving Petra with a lot to think about.