Evelyn Caffrey settled into the warm seat of her dad’s minivan that she’d borrowed to make the trip up to the hospital to visit Ellie. She wasn’t a winter person, so she welcomed the blast of warm air to combat the December chill and took an indulgent second to just sit there, rub her hands together, find a radio station, and snack on one of the cookies nestled in a bag securely hidden in the console.

But something was gnawing on her. A very faint, barely detectable something that grew as she paid more attention to it. Yes, she was definitely miffed about something. Waylon drifted in and got through to Ellie so seamlessly. And she listened. Evie decided that wasn’t really fair; Her words weren’t any less serious than Waylon’s and by far more emotional, she was sure of it.

It wasn’t until she was already driving and stopped at a light that she realized she was feeling like she was ‘wronged’ in some way and needed to quit pussyfooting around and think about this s**t. Because something was not right about this.

And so began the circuitous train of thought that started with the simple, evident fact that Waylon and Ellie were friends. This led Evie into admitting that she wouldn’t really call either of them friends to herself. None of the Asteroids were people she would call ‘friend’. She liked Sailor Irene, so far, and had warmed up to ********* considerably since their first meeting began with her threatening to punt her, but she had met the others with disdain or total neutrality and Sailor Ellie was firmly in the realm of ‘dislike’.

She didn’t belong.

And so the rest of the drive home was filled with more cookies at stoplights and wallowing in spades of mental self pity. Poor Sailor Eunomia, the black sheep of the group. The unaccepted. The pariah. She just couldn’t connect with these people, and honestly, this 30 day free trial of destiny wasn’t winning her over, mostly because of that. Evie just instinctively wanted to be in a group of friends—it’s her preferred way of doing anything—and this was a group, but they were no friends of hers.

She decided it was probably time to give up on this s**t. At best her feelings for the team as a whole was ‘not hate’ and at worst she wanted to defect as soon as possible. So that was it, then. She’d tell ********* the next time she saw her and she would decide later if she wanted to do away with the senshi thing as a whole or take up solo superheroing. Maybe after law school or something. Yeah, that sounds like a perfectly doable plan. Except for the whole destiny thing, but really, Evie was practical and logical and didn’t put that much stock in that crap.

She hopped out of the van with an audible “Whoo!” because really, this was a weight off her shoulders. No more worrying about the team or how she was going to maintain two jobs, school, and a secret identity all at once was kind of a big pain in the a**. One she wouldn’t have after tonight!

So with that in mind, she happily strutted into the little house she shared with her dad and sister and went right for the leftovers in the fridge. Was it too early to celebrate her freedom? Probably, but she still indulged in a beautifully crafted sandwich with enough delicious flavors to say “I don’t give a ******** about my bad breath”.

A gorgeous layering of baby spinach, seared Pecos onions, smoked havarti, balsamic sprinkled tomatoes, and a garlic spread sat there between two pieces of toast and eased her turbulent mind and teased her appetite with the strong, savory smells and for once, everything’s lookin’ up Evie.

Until the door slammed and the short, stompy little gait of Dana ruined the very first bite.

“That smells like onions,” She announced, disgusted as she sat in the stool next to Evie’s at the breakfast bar and kicked off her muddy tennis shoes.

Evie made an audible groan through her full mouth and tried to continue chewing for as long as possible.

“Onions are gross,” Dana continued. Like her sister, she didn’t need a willing participant in a conversation to keep talking. Charles always liked to say they inherited his ‘strong speaking skills’. Evie simply recognized it as acceptable karma for not caring how much she annoyed everyone else. But acceptable or not, she was still annoyed as hell at this intrusion on her little piece of heaven.

“I mean, really, they taste gross and they make you smell gross and now the whole kitchen smells gross. And you won’t even let me make fishsticks!”

“Fishsticks are gross,” Evie countered in a half hearted and flat voice when she finally swallowed. Dana was immediately disappointed her sister was not into this and tried to regain the fun in provoking her by upping the ante.

“God, no wonder you have no friends,” She huffed, watching carefully to see if it’d register a twinge in Evie’s face.

“I have plenty of friends,” Evie pointed out between bites. Maybe plenty was exaggerating, but she wasn’t without people she could call on in a jam. Therefore Dana’s claim was entirely untrue and not worth being bothered by.

“Yeah, I know,” Dana sighed as if admitting defeat. I saw you hanging around those new weird people. I don’t why, though. You’re very gross.”

Evie snorted, but then when she finally connected ‘new weird people’ with the Asteroids she’d been lingering around since awakening, she actually did become a bit bothered for some reason. “They aren’t my friends, we were just… teamed up.”

“Oh, for like school or something?”

“Or something.”

“Well that makes much more sense, I thought you suddenly became likable when I was busy dealing with the social whirlwind of fifth grade,” Dana said with a very matter of factly nod as she pulled on each individual finger of her knit gloves and spun around in the stool for no particular reason.

“So you don’t like them, then?” Dana had switched modes. She wasn’t trying to pick a fight anymore, she was just genuinely passing the time until their dad came home and she had someone else to talk to.

“Not really.”

“Why?”

“God, Day, I don’t know,” Evie was finding herself more and more irritated by this conversation, regardless if her little sister was trying now or not. She was trying to not think about them. And this was ruining the experience of her epic sandwich.

“Oh, so I guess they really don’t like you,” Dana laughed, but the lack of response made her stop and snort. “Really?”

“Oh shut up. It’s not my fault,” Evie snapped, shifting to the defensive without realizing it. “Some people just don’t click, I guess.”

“Oh bullshit!” The ten year old brunette threw her hands in the air at this.

“Dana!”

“Oh baloney!” She said in the same tone, repeating the hand motion. She didn’t understand why it was a federal crime whenever she said s**t but her stupid sister could drop cluster f-bombs at the slightest frustration. “You don’t click with other people because you’re a control freak! And an unfair control freak. I have to smell onions that make me wanna puke and you won’t even let me make fishsticks!” Dana intended to use this as an example, but it only led her to stand on the barstool, hands on her hips, and continue on a tangent. “And you know what, Evelyn?! Some people like fishsticks! Even the soggy, funny smelling ones at school and maybe they’d like to just come home sometimes and have some warm, crunchy ones out of the oven. But they can’t! Because their stupid mean sister won’t move out and give up the good room because she’s a mean control freak loser b***h.”

And with that, she hopped off the stool, gathered up her muddy shoes and gloves, and stomped down the hall to her room to go level up her pokemon team for a while.

Evie watched, unamused and half lidded until the slam confirmed the brat was gone and she went back to her sandwich.

Now she was mad at Dana. She was finally getting a little feeling of being at peace and now, for some reason, she was all riled up and her stomach was in knots for some weird, indiscernible reason. It was only the kind of knot a nap could fix, so she got up, fed her fish, did the dishes, and started to haul her butt into the bedtime routine of teeth brushing and pajamas.

But she just ended up staring up at her ceiling, thinking. Well, while she found Dana overdramatic, she knew she had a point about her tendency to be a bit controlling, but outside the realm of sister on sister combat, she really didn’t think she was that self serving. She was mad about Ellie/Ellie’ job of leading the Asteroids because it was unfair and likely to get someone killed! And that was perfectly logical, given the fact she’d just visited Ellie in the hospital, strung up in a massive cast.

And then she hit a wall. There were no more confessions after that, right? That was all there was to it, and why she just had to get the hell out of this situation as soon as possible. So then why wasn’t this knot gone?

There was one possibility Evie had tried not to consider. Something so shocking and disturbing that to even silently think it gave her pause.

There was a teensy little chance that Evie was the party in the wrong here.

The more she thought about it, the more she—very strenuously—admitted to herself that she had been wrong for the get go. She didn’t feel like part of the team because she hadn’t tried to be part of the team at all. Not once. What she had done was try her hardest to put Ellie down from the get go. Sure, she had a lot of ammo, but she had to wonder if she started this anti-Ellie campaign because of the ammo or if she started it and used any evidence that appeared as confirmation that her ‘intuition’ was spot on. And that was bad. If she was going to not like Ellie she needed to be very sure which was which.

They were barely not-teenagers locked in a bizarre battle between good and evil with the very real possibility they could be killed or maimed any day and here she was doing this. Focusing on Evie. It was very unflattering, considering how much of her life was spent trying to fix the world. She’d been pretending she was trying to fix the Asteroids too, and she was! On some level. But why? Why was she so petty that she would even think to try and tailor this preexisting team to her own preference?

Because she wanted to be the one in charge. Not Sailor Iris.

The second those words formed in her head, she felt very small and ashamed of herself, even pulling up the blankets over her head as if to hide from some invisible, judgmental eyes that might be staring her down. It was a rare day that Evelyn Caffrey felt something even sort of like shame. But she was definitely feeling it today.

She’d lost any illusions that all her problems would go away by cutting this team loose. Evie had made a huge mess, and that was something that actually needed fixing.

(1945)