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 Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 7:46 pm
He shook his head, reflexively hugging her closer to him with a thoughtful frown.
"I do not know."
And it was the same question that haunted him every night.
"One day they just v'ent to v'ork, and never came back."
He remembered the waiting. If Sydni hadn't been there, he might have just stared at the door until he died, waiting for them to come home.
"And that ee's something I hope to find out. To find them." Those journals - they nagged at him. Raised so many more questions, and for all he knew it was irrelevant information. That his parents had just been friends with Quinn's father, and then stopped being friends. The journal only covered a small amount of time.
His ears flicked back, then forward, as he mentally put aside those thoughts to grin down at her. "I think they v'ould like you. Although my father v'ould go ee'nsane over a new daughter."
He scowled. His father was insane already.
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 8:01 pm
“He looks weird,” She agreed with a nod. All the pictures of him clinging to a disgruntled Varu were evidence enough of that. She decided to add to that, however, so as not to be mean, “--But your mom was pretty.”
He must have known about all the things hidden in the attic-- of course people knew what was in their own houses, right? He must have already seen all the strange and unknown things that she had. There was no way any of that could have been as interesting to him as they had been to her.
“They must have been really good cops.”
That was the conclusion that she had come to. Guns, maps, and all that stuff? They were in something serious… But they were related to Varu, so they had to be good guys. The guns were for their job, the maps to map out where stakeouts would be, and the information must have been on criminals. When you put all the pieces of information together, they simply had to be on the police force.
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 8:08 pm
He tilted his head in puzzlement, eyebrows raising in curiosity - "V'hy do you think they v'ere cops?"
Unless this was another story the twins had fed her. Then again, Valeriu had no clue what they did for work either.
His tail flicked. He thought back, way back. But there were no clues. They left for work together more often than not, although sometimes one parent would stay home. But he'd never heard them talk about it beyond the few casual comments; the normal complaints.
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 8:14 pm
Her look was one of pure shock and a little bit of glee-- Had he really not seen all the stuff up there? Would she get to wallow in her own glory as she gave him a tour of his own attic?
“The stuff in the attic. There’s a bunch of cool stuff up there…. You didn’t know?”
Oooooohhhh. This, this was going to be fun. She’d get to play a adult and show him what was what for once!
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 8:19 pm
The attic?
He looked up the stairs.
And shuddered.
He'd never been up there. As a younger kid, he'd had terrible fears about that damn attic - about monsters living up there. He used to think he could hear noises, movement - strange static sounds and creaks. Once, he'd even seen the drop-down entrance shake, as if something were trying to escape.
He had fled down the stairs, and vowed never to think about it ever again.
"No," he answered distractedly, "I have never been up there."
What was he doing? He was an adult. Now that he remembered the attic, he should've realized how many answers it could have held.
And now he was curious.
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 8:25 pm
“Well… What are you waiting for?” She looked at him as if he were a silly little boy, “There’s no one to stop you from snooping, now! So come on!”
Hopping off his lap, Tepin fluttered away and up the stairs like a little fairy.
“What are you waiting for?”
She called down from the top of the stairs, before darting off and the loud thumps began. No matter how many times she had to jump, she would get that bobble, tug the stairs down, and force him up there if she had to.
She really wanted to show off.
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 8:31 pm
More than a little anxiously, he took the stairs two by two - "Be careful!" - before arriving at the top, watching her jump for the string. Ruefully, he caught her mid-jump, looking tremulously up at the entrance to the attic.
His ears heard no noises now. Nothing but the normal creaks and groans of the house.
The child inside him reminded him that that's what the monsters wanted him to think.
He scowled, and reached up, pulling the string to gain access to the drop down ladder. There was nothing scarier than him in this world! He set Tepin on his shoulders.
"Hold on, da?"
And then climbed up the steps, poking his head into the dusty room. He could see where she'd been before, the places that had been disturbed. But even then, the place was not as dusty as an old and ignored attic should be, even given his mother's cleaning habits.
Strange.
Warily he scouted the layout of the room before pulling himself all the way into it, setting Tepin back down at his side.
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 8:53 pm
Wrapped around his head, she felt none of the anxiety that the boy had. This place was familiar, if not as exciting as the first time around. Carefully she ducked as he climbed the steps, avoiding a nasty bonk with the ceiling as they made their way up.
By the time she was put back on the floor, she was already itching to move and show him just how cool the place was. Her mouth moved a mile a minute as she gave him the grand tour, finger points accompanying her motor mouth.
“Over there is the pictures, and over there’s your baby stuff.” She smiled at him-- Yes. Yes, she had looked through those boxes, and yes, she had laughed at pictures of Varu’s baby butt. “The cool stuff is over here!”
Motioning with her hand, she scampered over, dropping to her knees and tugging open a wide array of boxes labeled “work” in that scratchy handwriting that must have belonged to his father. This was where the goldmine had been, and this was exactly what she had used to form her idea of what his parents did for a living.
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 9:05 pm
His mother had sworn to him that she had burned all his baby pictures that his father took.
She had lied.
He scowled. He would burn those himself.
Curiously, he glanced over the boxes - more pictures, his old blanket, old chinaware that his mother had not dared to put near Andrei, old toys, more books. He finally ambled his way over to where Tepin was opening other boxes.
"Cool stuff?" he asked, leaning over to peer into the box.
It was strange, and filled with stranger things: rolled up and pin-pocked maps, sharpie-slashed x's marking buildings, logs upon logs of numbers and data and acronyms who couldn't even begin to make heads or tails of. Sitting down next to her, he helped unpack the thing, setting aside several different sized metal cases for later inspection and unrolling one of the maps. He vaguely recognized the settings - some section of Downers.
"Huh," he hmm'd, bewildered. There were even routes marked out on it, stopping in the most random of places. Maybe...crack dealer sites? It did look like some stake-out map from police headquarters.
And the logs - it was obvious it made perfect, clear sense to whoever knew the strange code. But so much short-hand made his head spin.
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 9:59 pm
While Varu had occupied himself with the more boring contents of the box, Tepin had taken it upon herself to inspect the various metal cases. First, she knocked on them-- they were strong. If she hit it hard, her fingers would have been the only things to suffer.
These cases were tough; that meant whatever was in them was worth protecting. Her smile grew devious-- maybe there was some sort of treasure locked in this attic yet. Looking at the boxes, they were combination locked, rather than padlocked. Haha~ So she would need to play the hacker, would she?
It took little time before she fumbled with the latch, trying to figure out just how the cases worked. To her amazement, the case opened first try… Andrei must have been either too paranoid to lock them (in case of emergency), or too scatterbrained to remember just what the combination was. Regardless, with a quiet click, the case revealed its contents to the girl, who received them with a sharp gasp.
There really were guns in those cases!! She thought there were… But only because of the other stuff! She didn’t really-- there wasn’t really--
They must really have been cops after all!
“Varu!! Varu!” She tugged at his arm, demanding his attention, “Look at this!!” By the time he could have laid eyes on the pistol, she had already moved on, tugging at the latches of the other cases. Two or three opened, most of them didn’t. Now scattered on the floor of the home were a myriad of cases, some exposing guns or knives, while the others remained obstinately closed before them.
She really had hit a gold mine!
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 10:14 pm
Guns?
His mind blanked out. It could not equate his parents with the weapons before him.
Those were not standard police issue.
Scrambling to his feet, he quickly moved Tepin away from the weapons.
"Don't! They are dangerous," he warned. "V'hat ee'f one of them goes off? You v'ait here." He wasn't about to have her accidentally shoot herself!
Carefully he moved back to the pile, eyebrows furrowed and a deep frown on his face, looking through the cases one by one - the ones that were locked were made short work of, his shadows snipping through the locks on the sly.
It was a weapons-cache. A trove of killing items - every possible kind imaginable.
They weren't cops.
Abruptly, he got to his feet, snapping the cases shut again and shoving them back into the boxes, backing away and tail swishing in agitation.
He didn't know what to think of this. He didn't want to think about it - didn't want to consider that his parents, that Andrei, that Dana--!
Those maps. Those logs. Those guns. He didn't want to know about any of it.
He didn't want to know if it was all a lie.
Stalking back, he swept Tepin up, heading back towards the ladder.
"Do not come back up here v'ithout me, okay?" he murmured. Those other, unopened boxes, what did they hold? It was terrible. A twisting in his gut that said everything he knew had gone wrong. "I do not v'ant you getting hurt."
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 10:37 pm
She could tell that something was wrong, even before he had spoken. The way he moved, the difference in him, the strange way he opened the crates that she could not… Something wasn’t right.
That was not the way you would act if you just realized that your parents were defenders of justice. Clutching the hem of her dress between her fingers, she watched him from afar. He was struggling… Internally, mentally, he was in pain. This wasn’t the kind of reaction she had wanted….!! She wanted him to be happy-- to learn something-- maybe even to find his parents because of this… Not this. This was all wrong! This wasn’t how it was supposed to go!
He scooped her up as normal, but he felt tense to her touch as he whisked her down the stairs. Worst of all, there was nothing that she could do that would make him feel better…
She shouldn’t have shown him… She should have just kept this secret to herself, waiting until she had found some type of a clue.
“I won’t.” She promised, her head resting on his shoulder as she dared on last, long look into the attic before it would be beyond her grasp forever. How many other secrets--other clues-- would be lost in that room because of what she had found?
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 10:56 pm
Away from the attic, it all seemed more distant. The ladder folded back up, and he was back in his home - back in the well-worn hall, back to the familiar lights and smells and comfort.
He wasn't going to think about it, he told his twisting stomach. His parents were his parents. They'd woken up in the morning, made him breakfast, and gone to work; eight hours later, they returned.
Except he could remember some nights they had called to say they would be late. Or when one would show up, the other still missing. Sometimes waking up early in the morning to find his father had already gone--
"I think ee't ee's time for bed, da?" he suggested. He wished he felt as upbeat as he sounded. "Enough excitement for one day."
He would have to sleep in their bed tonight, his gut reminded him with a sharp stab. Sleep in the bed of his parents. His parents who had a weapons cache resting right above his head. His parents, who he suddenly didn't know so well.
His parents, who he loved, that lied to him.
Couch it was. Just for tonight.
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 11:13 pm
She smiled, nodded and scrambled to the floor. She’d be quick and good, and he’d be pleased with her. Anything to be a distraction-- anything.
So, after running to her room, changing, rushing to the bathroom, brushing, and sprinting back to him, she had nothing but a big grin of freshly-cleaned teeth to flash at him: All in record time.
Her hand slowly, cautiously, reached up, fingers gripping at his significantly larger hand. Daring a small, sincere smile, she looked at him only an instant before intently staring at her wriggling toes.
“Hey…” The toes! Nothing seemed more interesting than staring down at them, (she simply found herself unable to look at his reaction,) “Can I come to work tomorrow, too?”
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 11:22 pm
He smiled back, squeezing her hand.
"Ee'f you v'ant to," he did feel marginally better, embracing the distraction willingly. "Just do not listen to v'hat the Carnegie brothers spout off anymore, alright? They are good men, but they are liars." He scowled good-naturedly, before grinning and taking up her other hand, hoisting her up slightly to stand on his feet as he walked them back to her room amusedly.
"Pajamas on? Check. Teeth brushed? Check. Flossed? Looks like ee't. Hair brushed?" He paused. "V'ell. Ee't does not matter anyway," he added helpfully, grinning wider. "I think all systems are go for bed, da? You v'ill need your energy to keep up v'ith those brats."
And he would need plenty of coffee in the morning.
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