[Glimpse] A Chat between Sisters

---

---

---

---

Most of the time, Talia has things on her own terms. Whenever they'd meet up, where they'd meet up, would mostly be up to her. Fire's place was the most common meeting ground. It gave Talia the option to walk out. They never met at her place; that would involve Talia's family knowing she had a living sister.

Fire - no, Danica, has prepared a cup of raspberry tea for Talia. It's her favorite. Has been since she was little. She pulls out a cup, filling it with a combo of rum and coke for herself. Liquid courage? She wouldn't call herself an alcoholic these days, but given the buzz she gets from it, one could be concerned.

Talia doesn’t know that Dani no longer grows hair and she is nowhere near ready for that conversation, so she preps her hair in one of her most natural looking wigs and pencils on eyebrows as realistically as she can. It helps that her eyebrows always were dark and bushy. She hates drawing them in though. She can never quite get them exactly even and she has to try multiple times before she's semi-happy with it. The rest of her makeup is near non-existent. Aside from that, she doesn’t try very hard with appearance. She’s wearing a pair of black shorts and a Paramore band tee.

The thing she can be thankful for is not having roommates anymore. It’s good, aside from the fact that it gets lonely. She has Riley and now occasionally Lucas to hang out with, but aside from that? She’s been a recluse. Even more so since Linden passed.

She hears a knock at the door and she swallows hard. She never does feel ready when Talia comes over. It feels like trying to run in water to open a door caked in ice sometimes. She walks over and opens the door to what looks like a near twin to her, but with a pixie cut and a lack of piercings and tattoos. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

Awkward silence.

“Oh, uh, come in.” Danica steps aside for Talia, letting her walk through into the living room of the apartment. A hand raises up to her hair, well, the wig’s hair, and she scratches a little in an awkward manner before shutting the door.

“What happened?” Talia never did beat around the bush.

Dani opens her mouth and then closes it again, unsure of what to say.

Picking up her tea from the kitchen, as if she was just another resident of the apartment, Talia makes her way back over to the couch. She knew she was in full control and at the moment, Danica just didn’t care.

Dani grabs her rum and coke and takes a long swig.

“Alcohol? It’s like 4 o’clock in the afternoon.”

“Yeah, and I’ve got a lot going on.” A retort as she walks back with her drink to settle down on the other end of the couch from Talia.

Talia suspiciously eyes the Lost. “Go on.” A poke. A hard one. She just wants to know. At the same time, just spending time together like this could put her in danger.

Can I even protect her if that happens? I couldn’t even save - “Linden,” it just comes out. The name. Their name. Dani just drops her drink, shaking. Things just feel like they go black and sobs overcome her body.

This is likely not what Talia was expecting, and even then, she doesn’t have a clue what any of it means. “Nica, what-?” she moves immediately to Danica, hands on her shoulders, trying to console. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. The sobs consume every bit of breath she has. Even the breaths back into her body are a secondary breath of pain.

Talia just sits there awkwardly, rubbing her sister’s back and trying to figure out what to do or say.

“I couldn’t- I couldn’t do it- I couldn’t-” it’s like her body convulses with the wrack of each sob. “I cou-ou-ou-dn’t pro-tec-t the-hem”

“What happened to them?” Talia asks, her soft voice with a bit of fear on top of the concern.

“It- and I didn’t- I had to-” nothing comes out like it needs to. Sentences setting in the wrong place as multiple thoughts go through her mind in a jumble at once.

“Nica…”

There comes a point where Natalia realizes that Danica just needs to sob. She could’ve walked out, done with this random nonsense, but she stays.

She stays.