strangetrip | [EP] NOT the Worst Birthday Ever

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[EP] NOT the Worst Birthday Ever

It was hard to believe Vex had been at Madonna Inn almost a year. It felt both far longer and not nearly that long.

It also wasn't anything to celebrate. Unlike today, which demanded to be celebrated. Not with anything big or flashy. No surprise parties, thank you! But drinks certainly. Not like last year, though, when Vex hadn't been here at all, and Vax had attempted to drown himself and her absence in booze. It was their birthday and they were both here to raise a glass together.

So drinks. And cake, because birthdays had always meant cake, even when Vax had had to swipe it for them, or cut a purse to buy it. So when she slid into a booth in the bar, wearing a shirt Percy insisted she needed, she set a plate with two cupcakes, one almost black with chocolate and espresso, the other snowy white but flavored with mint, on the table between them and kissed her brother on the cheek, pleased to see he was wearing the shirt to match. They were twins, after all.

"Get us a drink," she said with a bright grin and a twinkle in her eye for the person passing by. "It's our birthday."

(tag either twinnie's TL, or get them both by request)

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"Birthdays happen every year, or so I've been told," Vex remarked, a spark of humor lighting dark eyes. "But I understand not letting Caroline, or anybody else, in on the day. As long as you had the birthday you wanted, dear."

Snow actually smiled back. A twitch of a smile, barely there before it was gone. "I was twenty in November." And aside from the part where she'd missed Bear and Lian and Sissy, she'd had about as good a day as she could ask for. "It was good enough, for being here."

"Your secret is safe with me," Vex promised, drawing an X over her breast with two fingers, and telling herself she'd remember this November. "I'm glad it was good, though. You're smarter than my brother." Vex glanced to where he sat chatting with Scanlan, and smiled fond and a little sad thinking how horrible it would have been celebrating without him. "He spent our last birthday drinking himself stupid, making a public embarrassment of himself."

"Yeah," Snow said, glancing over at Vax as well. "I remember that." She hadn't said anything or approached him at the time, though. It wasn't like she really knew anything about how to pull somebody out of a pit that deep, or that she'd known him at all.

But Vex wasn't trying to make anything serious of it, she thought, so she added, "He broods like the tortured romantic lead of a novel."

"He can be a broody, broody bird," Vex agreed, although he was so much happier with Steph. "When he's not throwing himself into trouble, at least." All leap and no look, that was Vax.

"Still. I think I'll keep him. Don't know what I would do without him."

Snow nodded. "I had a brother once," she said quietly.

She said it in much the same way she had said, I had a bear once and I had a fox too. Trinket had been there for Vex when there had been no one else but Vax, who had always been there. Snow had had Florimund and Thompson, until she had had to run away, leaving them behind. Had she been forced to do the same with her brother? Or was it more like Velora, where they didn't even know she existed until she was – you know, Vex still wasn't sure how old Velora was, six? older? younger? – about old enough to be starting her schooling at the very least.

"Brothers are a lot of work. But sometimes they're okay."

"This one wasn't," Snow said, her brow furrowing in the slightest frown. It had been three years since she'd seen her brother; she really wasn't sure she remembered what he looked like anymore. When she tried, she saw Roland's face more than his. "He lived on the other side of a mirror. We never even touched."

The other side of a mirror. That kind of magic was way beyond anything Vex could understand, so she didn't try. She cared more about how it kept Snow and her brother apart, how he'd maybe been as trapped in his mirror world as she had bene in her father's house.

"I'm so sorry, Snow dear. I can't even imagine what that would be like."

Not entirely sure what it was like herself--she had only begun to process the strangeness of it after Roland had come into her life, the first time she'd laid her palm against his, the first time he'd snuggled up close to her--Snow only nodded. "He was a nice baby, I guess. I don't know much about them. I left when he was five."

Vex knew less than nothing about baby siblings, or babies in general. Although she was supposed to be godsmother to Zahra and Kash's twins, so hopefully she would learn.

"Vax and I didn't even know we had a sister until she was about that age. She's a sweetheart, but we haven't gotten to see her very often."

Vex and Vax were such a unit that Snow could hardly imagine a third. "What's her name?"

"Velora." Vex's face softened as she thought of their sister. She was such a sweetheart. "She's mad for owlbears, and has far better taste than our father or her mother by realizing Vax and I are the absolute best ever. They, of course, think we're a bad influence... which of course we are, if the alternative is her growing up to be just another elven arsehole."

"I like your bad influence," Snow said softly. Then she blushed and turned away. Where the hell had that come from?

That shy admission felt good in the same way a bouncy hug from Velora did, and she could feel the quiet smile on her face and the warmth in her chest.

"Oh, I'm glad of that. Being a bad influence is so much more fun than being a good one." Voice light and eyes twinkling, Vex smiled over the rim of her glass as she took a drink. Vax, and even more, Percival insisted on treating her like a moral compass, when really that should be more Pike's role, and Vex worried more than she would admit that she would let them down.

Snow's blush deepened and her eyes remained firmly on her feet. "I... okay." She worried that she had said the wrong thing. She didn't have that problem here as much as she'd had in Gotham, but she knew that she was still without much charm or sweetness (even if she could sometimes accept now that that did not make her wicked).

She wondered if she had been considered a good influence or a bad one on the children in her life. Then again, if she'd been a bad influence on Sissy, she couldn't imagine Dani would have allowed that for a second.

"What's wrong, darling?" She obviously wasn't doing a very good job at being a bad influence if Snow was worried about offending her. Snow was pretty much the opposite of the kind of person who could hurt Vex that way.

Snow did not know how to explain it, not in a way that made sense outside of her own head. She did try, though, turning over the idea in her brain to see what words would stick to it. "I am..." she ventured, "lacking," she landed on finally.

It wasn't untrue.

Oh, dear Snow.

"You're you. And I'm not the only one I know who likes you." That first, because it was most important, or felt that way, when it was so close to Vex's own fears.

"Besides, who isn't lacking somehow? Of the people I know, and care about, call family or friend - all of us are fuck-ups in some way or other. Some of us are simply better at hiding it, darling."

There had been a time in Snow's life where she had not even known that other people cried. Learning about the weaknesses and frailties of others was a long, slow learning process for Snow, but she couldn't just turn away things people told her directly.

She hesitated, but she nodded.

"Perfect people are boring at best. Most of them go on to being completely insufferable." Like elves. Completely and totally insufferable, how they prided themselves on being just so, and looking down their too perfect noses at anyone who wasn't.

If Snow was someone else, Vex would have pulled her into a hug. But Snow was Snow, as Vex had just pointed out, so Vex reached out slowly, telegraphing her movements and watching for signs she should pull back without smoothing one of Snow's braids.

Snow allowed the touch in a way she wouldn't have for most people, even closing her eyes to savor the affection. "Then... maybe it's best she failed with me," she murmured.

Vex could have asked. With some people she might have. But Snow, like so many of the broken people Vex was most fond of, would probably shut down at direct questions like that. And when she trusted those people enough – Snow, Kash, Curnen, of course Percival – Vex could share a little of herself instead.

"Our father believed, if he had us properly educated and indoctrinated, people – and by people, he meant elves, although of course he wouldn't say so aloud – would forget we were only half, or worse what that said about him. But when we failed, they laughed," or often worse, "and when we excelled at things they thought of as elvish, they hated us for being better at it than they were.

"I'm glad he failed with us. I like who we made ourselves much better." And who you are too.

Snow couldn't say where the urge had come from, but rather than question it or struggle with it she... gave in and gave Vex a kiss on the cheek.

Coming from Snow, the affection was a sweet surprise. Not the feeling behind it, but the kiss itself.

Vex smiled, more with her eyes than her mouth. "One lacking girl to another, that might just be the best birthday gift I've gotten so far today."

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[EP] NOT the Worst Birthday Ever

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