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Chapter Text

       She sits beside her, letting her trace her finger on the inside of her wrist. 

004.

She traces her finger along the inside of her wrist too. 

011.

Her sister puts another marble into the socket, the veins in her temple slightly bulging as she struggles to control it on its way down. The marble falls without struggle, her sister left in the wind to do so for it. She lets out a frustrated breath, stalling for only a moment before falling back into tracing. 

004.

Comfortingly, she scratches the inside of her sister’s hand, then goes back to tracing. 

011.

“Your turn,” Her sister tells her. 

She nods her head and takes her place as she moves away. She takes the marble and drops it through the slot, watching it fall, then struggle, catch, and reroute to the other side of the board. She drops it into the very last slot, making sure not a noise is made as she does so. 

A handler murmurs their approval from beside them, but apart from that, stays blank-faced and stale-breathed as they watch over them. 

“You always catch it,” Her sister says. 011. “How?” 

“I’m the one who dropped the marble, so I’m responsible for making sure it lands safely,” She answers. 004. “I think I want the marble to land softly, unharmed. So…I just do it.” 

“Oh.” 011 . “I don’t think I understand.” 

“That’s okay.” 004. “One day you will.” 

     001.

“Go,” He tells her. 

004.

“But what about-?” 

001.

“No,” He stops her. “Leave.” 

004.

“I…I don’t understand.” 

001.

He smiles and it’s not a sweet thing, it never is with him. But still, he smiles. But still, he's her brother. Ugly. Hateful. Understanding. “It’s okay,” He tells her, “you will.” 

004.

“I don’t like that,” She says, “I don’t want them to hurt you. Either of you.” 

001.

“Go,” He demands, his grip on her wrist suddenly too tight. Bruising. The other side of him, the ugly side of him, his true nature. Pure hate. “Go.” 

004.

“Okay,” She caresses his tattoo with her thumb, watches the way it only makes whatever’s inside of him fester and bubble and screech. She lets go and so does he. “Okay.” 

She leaves. 

001.

004.

011. 

Four watches an address from the depth of her mind, her brother’s voice reading it to her. A broken record. 

She runs. Ironically, it takes her four days.

She knocks on the door with the address, her brother’s voice suddenly cuts off. A light turns on, the door rattles, opens. 

A man, who looks like her but doesn’t, looks down at her, glaring, then softening, and finally paling. 

“Are you my father?” Four asks. 

“Your Tío,” He corrects seemingly without thinking. He blinks hard once, then twice, then brings his hands up to roughly rub at his eyes and blinks the hardest on his third. “I- I- Chimalmat?” A name, she thinks. It sounds odd. 

It fits. 

Still. “I’m Four,” She raises her hand and shows him her wrist. The tattoo, the bruise. If possible, he pales further. “I escaped. I found out about you and came here. Is that okay?” 

“Yes!” He exclaims, frantically looking up from her to look both ways down the street while also softly pushing her inside. “I- yes, of course it’s okay. Where-? I mean, where did you-? I mean-” 

“The labs,” She tells him, “my brother let me out. I don’t know why, but he told me to just go. Told me I’d be okay with you.” She tilts her head at him. “Will I be okay with you?” 

He falls onto his knees in front of her, gathering her hands in his and making her look smaller than she is. “Of course! Of course you’re safe with me, mija, always!” But she doesn’t hear, she can’t, because all she can see is- 

Warmth, the sun massaging heat into their backs. His sister is glowing underneath it, his new niece pressed against her chest. 

“I never thought I could love so much, Luis,” She tells him and he smiles, a different warmth in the air charging it and making it feel like so much more. “I feel like I could fly, as long as I have her and Ikal with me.” She turns to face him, and God, she really is glowing, isn’t she? Eyes glittering like emeralds, hair black and curly, skin like onyx and marble. 

She looks just like their mother. 

“I hope you can feel like this one day, Luis, really I do,” She grins at him, fire and gold. “And Chima? Chima is just the start of that. Make more babies with that wife of yours, so that Chima can have little cousins to look after just like Pedro does with her.” 

Luis laughs, shaking his head at her. “Okay, Yadi,” He indulges her with a roll of his eyes. He wishes he could finally tell her Gina is six months pregnant, but Gina wants to keep the whole thing a surprise and then suddenly show up to their families with a baby in her arms. His wife, the ultimate jokester. “I will, I will.” 

They watch the forest in silence, the sun a silent beat on their backs, and little Chima’s coos music to their ears. 

A vision. The past. 

He brings a hand up and wipes the blood that drips from her nose. “Chima? Mija?” He prods, gentle, oh so gentle as he stares at her like a drowned man needs air. “Are you okay?”

Four- no… Chima breathes in, watching him. Then, she steps forward and hugs him, collapsing into him now that she knows he’ll always catch her. “Yes, Tío. I’m okay.” 

He cradles her against him and that’s all the confirmation she needs before letting the lights go out. 

       Chima has cousins. 

The three of her cousins stare at her, all with varying degrees of emotion. Tío Luis shuffles nervously beside her, having just introduced her with a shaky voice and a big smile. Sweet in a way a grizzly bear looks like when he’s just eaten from a hive rich with honey.

The tallest one, who looks the same age as her, glares and glares and his aura shines bright with red and orange and yellow and black. The same colors as her brother’s. Red touches yellow, kills a fellow. Red touches black, venom lacks. With her cousin, red touches black. The same but different; her brother had been full of venom. Full of hate. Her cousin is only filled with anger, his aura would be seen as a cesspool, but all it offers her is familiarity and comfort. 

The second tallest one stares at her as if she’s a ghost, or a spider that swings down from the ceiling and stops to stare down at your face while you freeze in bed, thinking that the spindly shadow in front of your face is awfully out-of-place. His aura is bright blue and pink and just the softest hints of gold, kindness and love in every crevice. He’s soft, like the hand of a toddler tugging at your hand in excitement. Her cousin is a baby wrapped in soft linen. 

The smallest one, the one even smaller than her, is the same age as her sister, and stares up at her with a big gap-toothed smile. Her aura is bright with green, pink, blue, and yellow and all Chima can think is, she’s like a forest and a field of wildflowers. She’s sweet and kind and looks as if she hasn’t got a disloyal bone in her body, nor will she ever. Her cousin is a field of beauty, breathing life into the world. 

Chima looks at her cousins and smiles and says, “Hi.” But then she goes ahead and thinks, I love you already. 

“Well, where the hell did she come from?” The tallest one asks, his hands stuffed into his pockets as he scowls at her. She thinks it’s adorable. 

“Language!” Tío huffs. “Smoke, don’t speak as if she’s not worth your time. She’s your cousin and the both of you are going to spend a lot of time together from now on, so…” He gestures to her with a sweet smile. Identical to his only daughter in every way, “Kids, this is your cousin Chimalmat.” 

“Call me Chima,” She interjects, her hand coming up to thumb at the bruise around her wrist. The only pain her brother had ever marked her with, and of course, it had been with urgency. The urge to get rid of her for whatever things he had planned. 

A beat passes where each of them just kind of stare. 

“Introduce yourselves, will you?” Tío frowns at his children like one would at a soggy chip. Disappointed. “Hijole,” He says, more under his breath.

“Oh, uh,” The second tallest one stammers for a moment before smiling at her, hesitant but willing to try. “I’m Pedro and I’m the oldest. Nice to meet you.” He gives her his hand and she stares at it, weirded out. What’s he doing with his hand? 

She thinks of Eleven. Oh. 

Chima grabs his hand and turns it over to lightly scratch his palm. She gets a flash of- 

Cuddling. He loves to cuddle with his baby cousin. He thinks she’s the cutest, with her button nose and sweet little laughs when he makes fart noises every time she takes a step. 

He loves her so much, he loves her even more when he watches her and Smoke play together, the two of them like peas in a pod. He loves them so much, he feels as if he could burst. 

He’s the oldest, which means he’s responsible for them, he’s only a year older, but he thinks that’s enough to be like their second…well, third daddy. He can be the biggest boy for them. Always.

The past, again. After a few seconds pass, she lets go. 

When she looks back up, everyone is looking at her weird. 

A pang of concern runs through her, but she brushes it off after a second. What she had done can’t have been that bad, since she hasn’t been backhanded yet. She raises a hand and wipes the blood drop from the bow of her lip. 

“I’m Camilla!” The little one exclaims, the only one that was the least phased by whatever they had thought Chima had done. “Can you scratch my hand too?” Camilla hops forward and offers Chima her hand. 

Chima smiles and nods, softly grabbing her hand to lightly scratch the palm. She sees- 

“Cam! Cam! Cam! Cam!” Her cousin chants, a big grin on her face. 

She gulps the whole half-gallon of milk in record time and watches as Smoke splutters on his own half-gallon. 

“Fuck!” He exclaims, pounding his chest as he slams the half-gallon onto the table. He lets out a loud belch and a bark of laughter right after. “Holy shit, Cam, how the fuck did you drink so fast?” 

Camilla giggles and slaps his back, her hand finding Chima’s so that she could simply hold her hand. It’s always fun holding Chima’s hand since…and there she goes, scratching the inside of Camilla’s palm. “I don’t got this big mouth for nothing!” She replies, getting a series of loud laughs from both of them.

Her greatest achievement will always be to make the ones she loves laugh. 

The future. When she finishes, Camilla scrunches her nose with a grin, “Thanks!” 

 When his silence causes Tío to give him a sharp look, the tallest one grunts out his name, “Smoke.”

His name is odd, like hers. She stares into his eyes as he glares into hers. She thinks about the fact that his aura is filled with rare colors, she thinks of the fact that her own aura is red, green, gold, and purple and thinks maybe it’s best that the one she likes the best seems to like her the least. 

One always told her nothing good came out of being a pair. It was why he had denied her calling him her brother for so long. He had never given in about that, but to be fair, neither had she. 

“Offer your hand, Smoke,” Tío says, crossing his arms and raising a brow at his son. 

Smoke sends him a dirty look.

Tío, taking the dirty look with a grain of salt, narrows his eyes and says, “Ahora.” 

Smoke rolls his eyes and does as he’s told, despite the hard look he gives her as he does. She thinks it’s supposed to scare her, but Papa has always had the meanest look, and it’s because of him that it doesn’t scare her nearly as much as it’s supposed to. 

She grabs his hand, scratches his palm, and barely catches a glimpse of a vision- 

“Me and you?” He tells her, his hand clutched in hers. “We’ll always be together. We might as well be twins.” 

“Always?” Chima asks him, the insecurity bright in her eyes. He wishes he could snuff it out, so he tries. 

“Fucking always, prima. Fucking. Always.” He tugs her to him and hugs her tight. She hugs him just as tight, if not tighter, always his equal no matter what they decided to do together. 

“Always.” 

-before he snatches his hand back. 

Oh, She thinks, so I’ll be your favorite too. 

“Muy bien,” Tío says with a pleased smile. No longer is he looking at a soggy chip, rather he looks as if he’s looking at an artwork he had spent his life’s work perfecting. “Now, Chima, let’s get you to your room, alright?” 

Chima smiles at her cousins, bringing her hand back to rest on the tattoo and the bruise on her wrist. “Okay.” 

Chapter Text

       One night, when it’s only her and her Tío, with lemongrass tea thickening the air around them, he turns and stares at her. Something grim is settled in the shadows of his face, a testament to how long he had been thinking to ask whatever it is she knows he needs to ask. 

“What did they do to you, mija?” He asks, his voice as soft as cotton dipped in alcohol against a small but deep wound. “And why did they do it to you?” 

Chima thinks about whether she should tell him or not. Would he lash out and glare at her bluntness like One always did, or would he listen with warm wide-eyed attentiveness like Eleven? Even worse, would he stare blankly and coldly at her as she carefully explained her experience, detached from emotion, like a parasite in a baby’s bowels. Like Papa, just before he would tell her, ‘You’re too rebellious a child, Four…we’ll have to shock it out of you now.’

“Will you…hurt me, if I tell you the truth?” 

“No,” Tío states, his face hard. Something about the way he looks when he says it makes something warm and tentative fill her to the brim. And then, somehow, like the sand knows the waves, he goes on, “I’ll never hurt you, Chima. Do you hear me? Forget everything you’ve ever known about how the adults in your life have treated you, they never should have been around children in the first place. Adults should never hurt children. Ever. I will not raise a hand to any of you, nor will I ever, and if it looks like I will…well, I give you permission to help Smoke beat me up because it’d be an imposter—not me.” 

Chima cracks a smile at that, but it’s quick to fade when she thinks of the fact that though he may never hurt her, it’s very possible for him not to believe her. To her, in more ways than one, that’s worse than being tied down and electrocuted. To not be believed is one of the most tortuous things in the world. “Will you believe me?” 

“No matter how screwed up it is, I will always believe you.” He places his tea onto the coffee table and takes her cup to do the same before bundling her hands in his. This is what safety is, she thinks, to be held like she’s loved. To know she’s loved enough to be held, tender and sure. “Tell me. Not because I demand it, but because I’d like to know so that I can do a better job in raising you. You’re my niece, mija, but you’ll just as well be my daughter now that I have you.” 

Chima sighs and lets herself take the fall, tentative but still believing that he’ll catch her—and if he does, she knows that he always will. “They took me away because they believed in a project where they could raise children to be psychics used by a certain section of the government.” She looks down at their hands and clenches her jaw. “I don’t know how they awakened the power in us, or the method of it, I just know that a lot of us eventually began to…do things. Things that should be impossible to regular humans. I- I was the fourth child they took.” ‘Took,’ as if to soften the blow of her being stolen from her dead mother’s arms. 

Chima turns her hands over within his and watches as he stares down at the tattoo forever inked into the inside of her wrist. She can’t bring herself to look him in the eyes, though, not when the matter of his murdered sister and brother-in-law has been silently brung up. 

 “They trained us in plenty of things and tried to find the things we were most skilled at. Most of us knew how to use telekinesis, as it was the thing that came a little more naturally and was often the main power for some of us. But a few of us also had a main power more specialized in certain areas.” She inhales, a little shuddery. “I was a natural clairvoyant. I receive visions of the past and future when I touch objects or people. I haven’t been out much, but they told me I would also get visions in certain locations as well, like historical places. Another thing I can do is dream-walk. I can basically…control the way dreams happen or I can walk into someone’s dream and just…be there with them. Sometimes it kicks them into lucid dreaming, or sometimes they wake up with the faintest impressions I was there and then forget about it later. It usually depends on whether I want them to remember or not.” 

Tío is silent for a second, his mouth a straight line and his eyes gleaming with thoughtfulness. “Can I ask if you can use your telekinesis right now?” 

"Yeah, I can do that,” She replies, thankful he even asked at all. No one ever had—they had always expected it or forced her to do it. Detaching herself from him, she stretches out a hand and flexes it. Her tea cup floats up and towards her hand, her control on it steady as she watches the way the steaming liquid inside sways but never spills. She grabs the handle and cradles it between her hands. “There,” She murmurs, “proof.” 

Tío shakes his head at her, his lips shaking and his eyes a little watery. “Full-proof proof,” He jokes, despite his heart not being quite in it. 

Still, she rewards him with a small laugh for his efforts. 

“Did they hurt you?” He asks. 

Without hesitation, she answers, “Yes.”

Then, and only then, does she see his resemblance to Smoke. She was right to compare her Tío to a bear, he’s as protective and fierce as one now, with that heavy scowl and promise of murder in his eyes. 

Chima hums, feeling as if someone had told her she was allowed to have a lifetime of candy. Suddenly and violently, she’s grateful One decided to throw her from Papa to Tío, and thinks that it’s quite funny that the only thing he had ever done for her turned out to be sugary sweet despite it being from the bottom of his withered up and rotten heart. The cautious love she has for her brother peeks its head out from her heart, but swift as a hawk, she stuffs it away and tries to remember no good comes from loving a man who wears cruelty on his sleeve. 

She looks up at her Tío who’s to be the one she’ll lean on from now on and thinks it’s best she’d learned that lesson from One, because it’s an awful lot better loving someone who’d put his heart into her pocket if it meant she was safe. 

Tío wipes the blood drop from the bow of her lip, softening as he wipes the murder out from his eyes so that he can look at her with love. “It’ll be okay, mija,” He says, “this just gives me all the more reason to protect you from them.” 

“Will you tell my cousins?” 

“Only if you want me to,” He answers without missing a beat. 

“Tell them,” Chima says, “it’s better that they know. I don’t keep secrets from the people I love—I tell the truth.” 

Tío Luis smiles and kisses her head. 

They say nothing more as they sip on their tea, watching the sun rise. Chima thinks—with a deep-boned sadness—that the only thing that could make this better, is Eleven’s hand slipped in hers as she sips her own tea, tucked close into her side. 

       She looks in the mirror, taking in the colors, the way the scar on her forehead has browned, a dash lighter than the rest of her, and scarred over with raised skin. 

Today is her first day of school. After two weeks of adapting, Tío had decided it was time for her to be ‘a normal kid.’ Chima hadn’t minded, if anything she thought it could be fun, so she agreed and waited patiently for the first day with a smile. Tío is going to drop her and her two primos off in around ten minutes, but nervousness had run through her so she came to check in the mirror one last time. 

She looks in the mirror and she sees the woman from her Tío’s vision, the woman who had been her mother. She’s in the green of her eyes, in the mocha of her skin, in the soft curls barely sprouting from her head now that it’s been allowed to grow, in the bump of her wide nose, and in the cupid’s bow that shapes her lips. 

She sees her mother. She sees herself. 

Chima smiles. 

“What are you doing?” A growly voice demands from behind her. “You’re taking too long. Hurry up.” 

Chima glances over her shoulder, making eye-contact with Smoke, before looking back in the mirror one last time. She raises a hand, following the jagged line of the scar on her forehead with the pad of her finger. She remembers how she had gotten it. A word of defiance against Papa, the handler’s coming forward and back-handing her across the room, One standing to the side of the room looking as if he wanted to murder but couldn’t for the sake of his self-preservation. Four had scrambled up, drunk on rebellion, and killed one handler but then another had tackled her and she had split the skin of her forehead open on the side of one of the wooden devices on the floor. 

She had woken up not too long after that, with Papa staring down at her. “In three,” He had ordered someone behind the glass, then stared at her and said, “You’ve been a naughty girl, Four. I’m sorry to say, but Papa needs to punish you for it.” She had barely gotten out a slurred, “N-no,” when the electricity had run through her, pain tearing through her vessel, and she barely had enough consciousness to realize all of it centered from the sides of her head. Burning, unbearable, and Papa staring at her, apathetic and monologuing about her wrongs and his way to make it all alright. 

Well, despite it all, it was not her last act of defiance against Papa. If anything, it had been the gateway, the thing that made her crave rebellion even more. 

It wouldn’t be the last time she’d find herself on the table, strapped up and ready to be electrocuted to Papa’s content. 

There’s a small sound from behind her, a sigh, she thinks. Then, Smoke is standing beside her, looking at her through the mirror. They share the same eye color, she muses, he’s the only one of her family who has green eyes like hers. 

A pause.

A breath. 

“How’d you get that scar?” He asks her and she knows then that Tío had finally told her cousins all that she had confessed to him. It’s a comfort to know there’s someone who can take on some of her burdens when she asks—Eleven had tried, but she was a baby, so Chima never let her. Tío, it seems, has proved himself reliable in the sense that he’s someone who’d take her burdens with a smile. 

“Breaking the rules,” She replies, her lips quirking. “Fighting back. They didn’t like it when I fought back.” 

His jaw clenches, an owl stares out from his eyes. “Did you still fight? No matter what?” 

“I got this scar the first time I ever fought back,” She says. “It hurt. A lot. But all it did was make me fight harder.” 

He brings a hand to gently hold her bruised, tattooed wrist. “And this?” 

“A brand and a title,” She answers. “I’m Four. Didn’t know my real name before I got here.” 

He scowls. “I know that. I meant this.” He taps the bruise with his finger. 

“Oh,” She murmurs, holding her breath as they take a moment to simply stare into each other’s eyes through the mirror. “My brother.” 

“He did this to you?” 

“Yes. He needed to get me out of there.” 

“Why?” 

“Selfish reasons. He didn’t care about me—just needed me out.” 

“No, why did he hurt you?” 

She lets out a small hum. “I’ve only known one person who didn’t want to hurt me.” 

He blinks at her. Takes two breaths. “Well.” He turns his head to look at her. Really look at her. 

She turns her head and looks at him too. 

Smoke hardens, but in a way, it’s almost as if he had softened. “Well, you’ve got four more people who don’t want to hurt you.” 

Chima smiles, but it feels more like a grin. “Okay,” She says. “You’ll protect me?” 

“Yeah,” He grumbles, his hand dropping from her wrist to hold her hand. “I’ll protect you.” 

“Okay.” She nods her head and rubs her thumb against his skin, there are scars on his knuckles. He’s a fighter—he has the power to protect her. She feels safe and suddenly realizes why the vision of her future with him had been so warm and kind. He said he’ll protect her, and she knows he’ll never stop now that he’s admitted it. “I’ll protect you too.” 

He shrugs, frowning. “If you want to,” He tells her, “but I don’t need it.” 

“I know. I’ll protect you anyways.” 

       The first day of school is… okay. 

Kids stare at her, weirded out by the state of her too-short hair, of the fact that she doesn’t speak or act like a ‘normal’ kid. 

Mostly, they steer clear when they realize she’s Smoke de León’s cousin. She doesn’t make any friends. She doesn’t make any enemies either. 

That lasts until lunch period hits. 

A boy and his friends come up to her. “So, you’re the new girl?” He sneers. “Figures you’re a filthy wetback. My dad says you people are like leeches, once you come to America, you stay even though you’re not wanted.” 

She stares. What is he talking about? Her back is dry—and she doesn’t think he knows, but she was born in America. What catches her, though, is the last thing he said, ‘you stay even though you’re not wanted.’ She thinks of how she used to badger One and smiles, because that’s true, she’s nothing if not stubborn to the core. 

“Hey, wetback,” He scowls at her, looking an awful lot like the face of a deflated doll. “I’m talking to you.” 

She just stares at him, waiting for him to continue. She feels a little bad when the silence stretches on. She doesn’t know what to say since he didn’t really give her a conversation topic the way people are supposed to. 

Then, like lightning, Smoke is between them, a glare and scowl on his face that’s almost sharp enough to stab someone. The day his face matured with age, it probably would. “Anderson,” He growls out, “what the fuck are you doing, trying to talk to my cousin?” 

Anderson scowls back, not nearly as powerful as Smoke when it comes to the delivery of it all. It still makes his friends nervously titter. “I was just welcoming her, Leeyawn,” He says their last name with a drawl, butchering their last name so much that it sounds unrecognizable. It makes him sound like he has a speech impediment, but she doesn’t question it because for all she knows he probably does. It would be really mean to poke at something like that. “Got a problem?” 

A beast is in Smoke and at Anderson’s words, it unhinges its jaws and roars—silently answering that, yes, he really, really does. Next thing she knows, Smoke is throwing Anderson over his shoulder and onto the ground, twisting around and dropping down with him to pound his fists into Anderson’s face. 

“Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!” The other kids all gather around, either with smiles or gaping faces. Overall, excitement charges the air. 

Chima watches, a little perplexed. This escalated quickly, but she guesses she doesn’t mind. Smoke is a fighter at heart and it would be incredibly insensitive of her to try and change that. She didn’t particularly like Anderson anyways and if Smoke dislikes him enough to wet his knuckles with the boy’s blood, she figures he’s not exactly a person that she would like anyways. 

She’s satisfied to just watch as her primo beats the boy up, but then another boy, Anderson’s friend most likely, lunges forward with a plastic knife. Something in her snaps. She catches him by his hair and throws him back. He stumbles with a shrill shout and when he catches sight of her, he gives an ugly sneer. 

It doesn’t phase her. 

She centers her weight and flexes her hips as she twirls around and roundhouse kicks him straight across the face. He screams, his knife flying in the air equally as fast as he does. She blinks when an adult, a teacher, catches him while shouting at all of them. 

“Leeyawn’s!” The teacher bellows. Chima doesn’t think it’s a speech impediment anymore. “Get off that boy right now! Straight to the principal’s office, youngsters. Now!”

Smoke rises, a wild grin on his face that seems to scare the teacher a bit because when the man catches sight of all the blood splattered across her primos face, he flinches. Her cousin goes to her and Chima latches onto his hand to scratch the inside of his palm, trying to calm him down from his fighting-high. She thinks it works when his grin recedes into his usual scowl.

“Lead the way, Mr. Carter.” 

They get to the principal’s office and Mr. Carter snaps at them to sit down and wait for them to be called in. 

Smoke sits beside her on the bench chair, their hands still linked together. 

“I protected you,” He tells her. “That’s proof that I always will.” 

Oh. Is that what he was doing? She smiles. “Thanks.”

“You don’t need to be protected,” He glances at her, something like a proud smile on his face. It's the first smile she’s ever seen him make. It’s funny, because he really does look like her now, with the two dimples that reveal themselves in the quirk of his lips. “Doesn’t matter though, I’ll still protect you.” 

Something clicks between them. “I protected you,” She squeezes his hand. “That’s proof too.” 

He nods, wordless and serious. 

A pause. 

“So, wetback is an insult?” She asks him, tilting her head. “That’s kind of stupid.” 

He eyes her with a sigh and a scowl. “Cara-pálidas will think of anything to insult someone’s ethnicity. Wetbacks, beaners, brownies, spics—and that’s only when they think me and Pa are latino. When they see Pedro and Camilla they call them niggers, monkeys, jungle bunnies…I could go on. We’ve heard a lot of their stupid shit.” He guides her hand to his bloodied knuckles, unflinching when she touches the skin that split from rough-handling. “I always beat their asses up when I hear it, though. I don’t care if they’re 80, 40, 20, or 10, man or woman or neither—anyone tries to be racist, tries to insult me or the people that are mine, then they’ve already signed their life away to the fucking devil.” 

Chima grins at him, going back to fold their hands together. “Good,” She says. 

He snorts. “You’re the only one who thinks so.” Smoke rolls his eyes. “Pa, Pedro, and everyone else think I’m too violent. That something’s wrong with me.” 

“No,” She shakes her head, “you’re violent enough. You only hurt people when it matters, you hurt people you feel deserve it. I’ve met violent people that hurt others just because they like to hurt. Just because they’re told to hurt. Just…just because. There’s nothing wrong with you.” 

“Was your brother like that with you?” 

“No,” She says, “not with me. I think sometimes he wanted to be, but never tried. Papa was like that, in a way. He never hurt me, but he made others do it.” 

Smoke tilts his head down to look at her. She tilts her head up to look back. He’s starting to feel more like a brother than a cousin. Not like One had been her brother—no, he felt more like hers, like how Eleven had been hers. It feels warm. It feels like it fits just right. 

“If I ever meet him, I’ll kill him.” 

Chima huffs out a small laugh. “Please do.” It’d be like someone cleaning the grime off of her shoes— for free.

“No one’s ever hurt me,” He tells her, bringing his free-hand up to clench his fist. Blood from one of the splits in his knuckles trails down the back of his hand. “I never let them, and I never will.” 

“We’re only 10,” She says with a sardonic smile. “Try your hardest, but someone always manages to squirm their way in.” 

Smoke stares at her for a second, displeased, before letting a wordless snarl come onto his face. He’s as defiant as a stray hair, as rebellious as she was everytime she prepared for the electric punishment Papa would force onto her. 

Chima brings his hand up and uses her shirt to gently blot the blood. The light blue of the material becomes tainted with red, completely overtaken. She doesn’t apologize or try to explain, because she knows either way he’ll understand one day. She hopes he won’t have to, but hope is a silly thing in that it can only do so much. 

“Don’t worry,” She tells him, “if I ever see that someone tries to hurt you, I’ll kill them.” 

His snarl calms into a small scowl. “I don’t need you to, I’ll kill them myself.” At least he doesn’t deny that one day he might get hurt by someone he loves. He’s smart enough to know to take stock of all the advice he’s been given. Smart enough to know even the mightiest of beasts had been hardened because of hurt.

“I know, but at least let me help you do it.” 

He huffs. “Fine.” 

Chima smiles at him and his cheeks go a little pink, as if she’s caught him flipping off Tío or something. “You're not used to this, are you?” 

“To what.” 

“To someone being your sword and shield.” 

He glances down at their hands, where she cleans his other bloodied hand. “I guess.” 

“Me neither,” She tells him. “I’m usually the one doing the sword-and-shield-ing thing—like for my sister. But you make me feel safe, so it works out.” 

“Good.” A pause. “Fucking get used to it.”

She snorts. “Yep. Good.” 

To say the least, when they’re called in, the principal and Tío are livid at them for starting a brutal fight on the first day of school. Tío manages to convince the principal not to expel them, saying, “Isn’t there a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ system? Well, sir, this is only one strike and I promise the other two strikes will never happen.” 

And because he’s got the charm of a playboy on personality-steroids, the Principal purses his lips, nods along, and lets them go with two weeks detention stuffed under their belt. 

The next time Chima goes to school, she and Smoke are officially coined with the term, ‘The Twins.’ She doesn’t mind because she guesses it makes sense, her and Smoke have certainly begun to act like such, so it’s just a bunch of her fellow classmates exercising their nicknaming skills, just like Ms. White always tells them to. They’re awful at it, since it’s kind of cliché, but it’s no big deal. No big deal at all. 

       Except, from then on, the term sticks like glue. 

“Twins, huh?” Pedro teases when he finds out, smiling like a kid who’s been given three cookies when promised two. “Sounds about right. I like it.”

Smoke scowls and grumbles at him, but a protest never makes an appearance. Something like approval lingers around him when they’re called as such nowadays. Like her, he thinks it fits them, since everytime he hears someone call him her twin, his lips twitch up. 

Camilla giggles at them, nodding her head along with Pedro’s words. She puts a flower sticker on Smoke’s cheek, sticking her tongue out at him when he snaps his teeth at her in response. He doesn’t peel the bright-pink flower off. 

Chima smiles, savoring it all while she scratches the inside of Pedro’s palm. “Yeah,” She says, “I like it too.”

       “Oye, pulgas,” Tío Luis calls out to them one day, a week after her first day of school. “Time for music practice.” 

Chima blinks, tilting her head at him. “Music practice?” She had heard Tío and Pedro singing their hearts out while she’d been there, with Smoke and Camilla occasionally chiming in too, and it was beautiful to listen to, but she hadn’t known they practiced music. 

A pang of worry runs through her at the thought. They were all good at music, all good at singing—what would they think if she wasn’t good at it too? Papa had already looked at her and her siblings with ire, but the weakest ones weren’t even looked at at all. Would Tío do that too? Remembering his fierce protectiveness over her, she doesn’t think so. She really, really hopes not. 

“Yay!” Camilla squeals, grabbing Chima’s hand and dragging her out the side door to their garage. “Chima! Chima, you’re going to love music practice!” 

Pedro follows after them with Smoke at his side, both looking eager. 

Feeling a little lost, she watches as each of them go to an instrument. Smoke sits on his drummer’s stool, chipped drumsticks in each hand, and begins to practice with a simple beat that encases the room in a loud lull. Pedro goes to a case and opens it to take out a violin, looking at home on the chin-rest, and a quiet melody starts in tune with Smoke’s steady beat. 

Camilla sprints over to the piano and runs her fingers over the keys. Then, without any remorse, begins to loudly play Ol’ Macdonald Had A Farm.  

Chima giggles when Pedro and Smoke stop to shoot her dark looks. Immediately, Camilla snickers and halts the melody as they go back to playing, only then does she play soft notes that lightly compliment their song—and though she stumbles and misses notes now and then, it sounds like the beginnings of a gorgeous tale.

Tío holds Chima’s hand and guides her over to a stool next to three acoustic stands. “The first instrument that each de León learns to play is the guitar or the bass, while also practicing the instrument we want to excel in. It gives a sense of purpose to each of us, since music is in our very blood.” Tío grins at her. “So, the guitar or the bass?” 

She hums, staring at the guitar with a small smile. “The guitar.” 

“Alright,” Tío chuckles, “now…take another pick of an instrument. Even the ones your cousins are playing—whatever you’d like-” 

He doesn’t even finish before her hand is wrapping itself around the flute presented in a blue case on the table beside them.

“-and…oh, you found one already.” 

Chima blinks her eyes, not listening because- 

Yadira lets her fingers dance down her flute, the trilling notes combining with her husband’s quena. It’s like magic, how their song fills the room with warmth as they both hold each other’s eyes. 

‘I love you, keep me, please, I need you,’ Their wordless song croons, translating the language of their hearts. 

The song comes to a slow end, the flute edging away with the soft guidance of the quena. 

Yadira pants as her lips detach from her flute. 

“Wow,” Ikal breathes out, “we’re amazing.” 

She laughs, stumbling over to him like a drunk so that she can kiss him silly. When they finish, lingering and flustered, she says, “We’re perfect together.” He bends down to press a kiss to her brow. 

“Absolutely perfect.” 

Chima lets out a laugh so belly-deep that it startles her. She didn’t know her voice could get that high-pitched when she isn’t screaming. Apparently, everyone thinks it’s funny, since they’re staring at her and softly laughing—like she’s contagious. Like they can’t help but laugh with her simply because they enjoy her joy. “It’s perfect,” She tells them. 

“Good!” Tío chirps, pleased despite the sad nostalgia in his eyes. Like her, he knows whose flute she carries in her hands.

“Wipe your damn nose, Chima,” Smoke gripes, rolling his eyes. 

Pedro glares at him, Smoke being Smoke is—of course—unfazed, but Pedro barrels on to grin at her. “The flute goes perfectly with the violin. We can practice together, okay?” 

Camilla pouts, draping herself dramatically over the piano. “Betrayal!” She wails. “I thought you’d pick the piano! Now I can’t boss you around…” 

Chima offers her an apologetic smile and shrugs, sitting down as Tío guides her hand to the right places. She softly blows into the instrument, wincing at the shriek it lets out. “Sorry!” She yelps out. God, she is terrible and that in of itself is even worse than terrible and-

“Eh,” Tío shrugs, “don’t worry about it, mija. It takes practice to get good. You’ll sound pretty bad at first, but everyone does, really.” 

Something melts inside her, like butter on toast. “Really?” 

Tío nods. “Really.” 

“Yeah, you should’ve heard Smoke the first time, he sounded worse than a gorilla’s buttcheeks when it shits-” 

Smoke scrambles over his drums as he chases after Pedro when he sprints away with a wild laugh. “Fuck off and die!” 

       To say the least, despite Tío’s best efforts, she and Smoke get expelled eventually. It takes around two years, but…they still manage to do it. Smoke, because he’s the one that never backs down from the fights the delinquent-kids and racists pick, and Chima because she’s always beside him when it happens and someone always tries to sucker-punch him, which she can’t allow, so she always ends up fighting too. 

“It’s not the first time,” Tío says at the end of his incredibly harsh lecture. “But it’d best be the last.” He sighs, crossing his arms as he looks up at the ceiling. “You're both lucky we’re moving states anyways, your new school in California better be different from the ones here in Indiana, do you understand me?” He glares down at them, no longer a bear slathered with honey, but a bear staring down at a river infested with salmon while a rival bear stares from across the stream. “Smoke? Chimalmat?” 

Smoke clicks his tongue, scowling harder than usual. “Understood,” He grits out. 

“Mhm,” Chima smiles up at him, trying to calm him with the smile she knows can melt through his parental armor, “understood.” 

It works. He melts like molten iron. “Good, now, who here wants Mickey-D’s?” 

“I want a Big Mac with large fries and a coke.” 

“Filet-o-Fish with small fries and milk, please.”

Smoke shoots her an amused look. “Vieja,” He teases. 

“Puta.” 

“Who you callin’ puta, puta-!” 

“Agh! Language!”

       California isn’t so bad. She loves the way the air always seems to have ocean salt, even if the beach is eight miles away from where they live. Lennox is the place where Tío had decided to live. They live on a lively little street, a hot-pot if you will. The neighbors on their left side are Cuban, the neighbors on their right are Guatemalan, and the three houses parallel are American-white, Nigerian, and Mexican. 

Tío is quick friends with their neighbors, the matriarch’s of both houses treating him as if he was their little brother whom they loved dearly. Not a day went by when Martha and Alexandra came by to have coffee and cookies. 

But it seems it never quite translated over to their children, because if there was one thing that Chima knew, it was that Martha’s son and Alexandra’s daughter despised her and Smoke. She doesn’t know why, since she and her twin hadn’t even interacted with them further than a ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye.’ 

“Puta cabrona!” Alexandra’s daughter would cajole while her friends watched on. “You think you’re all that, huh? Well, you’re not, you’re just an ugly bitch.” 

Chima furrows her brows at them. “Are you telling me that because you're insecure about your own looks?” She pauses, giving her a once over. She hums, contemplating. “Maybe you should be, your face looks like a clown cake.” 

Alexandra’s daughter goes red as her friends snort and begin to laugh. 

“Damn, she got you there, Bella!” One girl pipes in. 

Chima frowns at them and shakes her head, continuing her walk out from the cafeteria to the hall. It’s empty as she goes through it, save for a counselor that walks past her, in a hurry. 

Then, she hears a shout, the sound of someone being slammed against the locker, and like a bee knows there’s a flower before it sees one, she knows that whatever this fight is, Smoke is definitely in the middle of it. 

She sprints down the hall, turning a corner and being proven right. She sees Smoke and a boy with a wild mane of blonde curls duking it out. Martha’s son is on the floor, dazed and cupping his hand against his bloody nose. His glasses are on the floor beside him, cracked and askew. 

“C’mon, cara-pálida,” Smoke hisses, jumping on his toes like a professional boxer that’s won one too many fights to not to know he’s a master at his art. “That all you got?” 

“Oh, buddy,” The boy spits out, “you’ve got no fuckin’ idea.” Then, he lunges and Chima sighs, watching the two of them start an incredibly violent dance of punch, retreat, kick, and repeat. 

She comes forward and leans on the locker that has a small dent in it. Martha’s son eventually collects himself and stands beside her, watching the fight with something ugly in his eyes. Not ugly like her brother had been ugly, but ugly like the way Papa had looked at her.

“Your twin is an asshole,” Martha’s son tells her. 

“Only when he needs to be,” She replies, smiling when Smoke hears her and lets out a bark of laughter. “What’d you do?” 

“Why the fuck would I tell you, you stupid fucking bitch?” 

Uh-oh. He shouldn’t have called her stupid. Or a bitch. 

Smoke, of course, hears him and lets out an earth-shattering bellow, grabbing the curly-haired boy by the hair and throwing him across the floor. The boy slams against the side of a locker with a pained wheeze. 

Smoke snarls at Martha’s son and, in response, the boy’s face drains of all his blood—deathly pale. “Don’t call my twin a bitch, you fucking pathetic piece of dogshit!” 

About to get up and start the fight again, the curly-haired boy’s eyes go wide as he catches sight of Smoke grabbing Martha’s son and then supplexing him straight into the ground with a roar from the bloodthirsty beast he carries within him. 

Martha’s son’s scream gets cut off as he hits the ground, effectively being knocked unconscious. 

“Wow,” Chima comments, impressed but not surprised, “you really got the hang of that.” 

Smoke pants, grinning hard enough to make his split lip bleed even more profusely. “I always get the hang of everything.” 

Chima nods, then gestures to the curly-haired boy, who simply continues to stare at them with wide eyes. “So, what happened?” 

“Martha’s punk-ass son picked a fight, said something about Pedro being too black to be Mexican. Said Pedro and Camilla looked ugly ‘cuz their skin was too dark for them to be anything but monkey’s.” Smoke bares his teeth, the very image of righteous rage, and spits a loogie straight onto Martha’s son’s cheek. “Fucking ugly ass piece of shit.” 

Anger pierces straight through her as she stares down at the boy. A beast is in her too—buried deep down inside of her, but within her nonetheless. It snarls and growls and howls and Chima goes straight up to him and kicks him hard between his legs. It wakes him up for a moment as he lets out a breathy scream, his hands going down to cradle his cajones, and his face purpling as he knocks right back out. 

“Hijo de gran puta,” She hisses down at him. 

Smoke snickers at her reaction. “See? Worth the risk of being suspended.” 

Chima nods, her jaw clenched. “Yes,” She says, “it is.” 

“Oh,” She hears the curly-haired boy utter. Then, louder, he tells Smoke, “You fight good.” 

Smoke snaps to attention and glares with a snarl. “There’s plenty more where that came from, hijo de puta. Wanna see?” He goes forward to try and knee the boy in the face, but when Chima sees the boy’s aura she grabs him by the back of his shirt and tugs him away. He shoots her a betrayed and confused look, but she soothes it by rubbing his back. 

“You didn’t know,” She states, staring down at the boy. No one with gold, red, and light blue in their aura would fight for the likes of someone like Martha’s son. It’s against his very nature, of that she’s incredibly sure.

He blinks up at her and stammers for a second before stopping to give a nod. “I thought, uh, your twin was bullying Ricky. I didn’t know Ricky was racist, if not I woulda just let it happen.” 

Smoke scowls at him. “You're just saying that ‘cuz you’re a pussy that doesn’t wanna get his shit knocked out.” 

“I’m not!” The boy shouts at Smoke, scowling right back. “I didn’t fucking know, alright?” Then, he spits out, as if it was physically hurting him, “I’m sorry.” 

There’s an awkward lull in the air, where they just stare at the boy and the boy stares back. The three of them, an unyielding force of power and stubborn as can be.

Chima breaks it by shrugging and saying, “Eh, okay.” Then, she smiles at him.

Smoke glances at her, incredulous, but backs down when he sees the look on her face. He trusts her, therefore he trusts her intuition and he knows her well enough to know that when she smiles at someone, it’s not to be taken lightly. 

The boy stumbles as he stands up. He hugs his arm around his gut, a little hunched over from pain. It looks like Smoke managed to bruise the boy’s ribs. A beat passes. He swallows and looks down at the floor before looking back up at them, offering his hand to them. “I’m Billy. Billy Hargrove. Can- I mean—wanna be friends?” 

Smoke looks down at his hand as if he were looking at a squirming cockroach desperate to live after being squashed beneath his shoe. Still, he glances at her and sees her staring at him with an encouraging look, so he grabs Billy’s hand and roughly shakes it before dropping it as if burned. He even goes so far as to wipe his hands off on his jeans with a frown as he introduces himself, “I’m Smoke de León.”

Billy offers her his hand next, tentatively accepting her smile with one of his own. 

She doesn’t shake it, she grabs it and lightly scratches his palm. He looks at her weird, like her family did two years ago when she first met them, but she doesn’t realize because all she can see is- 

Is it possible to feel like this? To feel crazed with love? To feel like a part of his soul had broken off and stitched itself into hers. Belonging to her. He guesses so. No— knows so. 

And, God, does he love that. Belonging to her and her belonging to him in turn. 

He loves her. He loves her so much he could explode with it each time she simply glances at him with those big emerald eyes, each time she smiles at him with her delicious pink lips, each time she turns to him and says his name as if he was something precious, something to be held and treasured and loved and- 

Fuck. Fuck. He adores her. 

He’s in love with her. 

And she’s in love with him too. 

She runs her fingers through his hair and presses her lips against his forehead and whispers, “I love you, Billy. I love you so much—don’t you know? Everytime I see you I feel as if the world has caved-in, as if nothing else matters. I could breathe in your air and live and die in it and life would be better for it. God, Billy,” She brings her lips down from his forehead to his lips, not kissing, simply speaking against him there to brush their lips together. “Billy, Billy, are you mine? Am I yours?” 

“Yours,” He breathes out—enthralled, enraptured, in love. His hands tighten like brands on her wide hips when he rumbles out, “Mine.” 

Chima smiles down at him and it’s like heaven opened up and swallowed them whole. “Yours,” She confirms as she takes his bottom lip into her mouth with a soft suck. Billy’s lips tingle, overwhelmed, and he moans—unashamed of how loud he is, of how much pleasure she brings him. She bites him so softly, so gently, and continues, her voice like milk, cinnamon, and honey. “Mine.” 

-oh. That’s. That’s…the future. That was the future—she just saw a vision of the future. 

Oh.

Wow. 

She yanks her hand back and stares at the boy in front of her with wide eyes. Her face is red as a tomato, she can feel it. Smoke is looking at her weird, Billy is looking at her weird, but she couldn’t care less because this- this boy is going to be hers one day. He’ll brand her hips with his touch and she’ll let him. She’ll let him because he adores her like the stars in the sky adore death for giving them beauty and- and- and- 

She’ll adore him in the very same way. Adore him so much because she’ll be in love. The kind of love that plants itself into one’s soul and grows with its roots deep in the core of it all, growing until all else is overshadowed by mighty branches adorned in pretty green and yellow leaves. 

“Yeah,” She squeaks out, “we can be friends.” 

And that’s the end of that, because she grabs that vision by the neck and chokes it as she stuffs it into the deepest corners of her mind. Her face goes back to its normal color. 

“Cool.” Billy clears his throat, smiling at them both. “Wanna go play football?” 

Smoke grunts, scowling and shrugging. “Sure.” 

“Yeah!” Chima chirps. “I’m Chimalmat de León. Just call me Chima, though.” 

Billy grins at her and she ignores the way her stomach flutters in response. They had been older in the vision, teenagers. She doesn’t need to concern herself with romance and boys right now. 

She watches the way Billy straightens and falls into step with her and Smoke like he had always been there. Chima’s grimace at that feels more like a smile and she doesn’t quite have anything to think about that except for the fact that she has a crush and she’s the only one in the whole world that knows it’ll turn into something a whole lot more than just a crush who knows how long from now. 

Still, she does just as she was taught in the labs, and thinks of rebelling against the butterflies inside of her. Instead, she decides to compromise. She gives each one a flower to land on and tells them, not yet, stay your time and drink the nectar because it’s not your time to fly. Not yet.

If she’s going to fall in love with this boy, she’ll make sure to fight on her way down, down, down.