i fought the law | darkfire sibs | kou

The footsteps were far too quiet but she was fast, despite the alcohol coursing through her veins. Damon's voice cracked through the night like a whip. He was sharp edges and anger, just like Daena. He wore their family's loss of status like a giant gash across his back. A weight on his soul. Acerbic words and angry tones. He was the head of the family. The strongest weapon in an arsenal of gifted children bred to fight and kill. Daena bore no such weight. It didn't constrict her chest the way it did for Damon. He was a smoldering ember but she was a spark.

Her hand flew fast, gripping the small dagger from her leg and holding it up to Damon, softening at his idiotic question.

"Was my presence missed so deeply? Give me better trainers and I won't bail. I'm better than them, Day." Daena took another puff of the cigarette before tossing it into the dark. She knew better than to push the smoking issue in front of her older brother.

You do something wrong once and no one lets you live it down. At least not in this family. Not with their fall from grace so catastrophically. Every step now was scrutinized. Dissected with a scalpel and examined.

The words hang in the air between them. Each exhaling deeply as Daena avoids her brother's eyes. She wants to scoop up the words and watch them trickle through her fingers. They feel fine, like grains of sand beaten on the beach forever and she isn’t sure she entirely understands which wrong she is thinking of. She had done many things recently that her older brother would berate her for. Things she was not proud of. Things she was proud of.

Daena looks up, shaking her head as she puts the small dagger back where she found it.

"It was one training session. I just needed to...", she pauses. Exhales the anger that threatened to break forth. "I just needed to not be there today. I don't know."

Damon sat down next to her, perhaps tired of towering over her like the authority figure that he had become in her life. It was not too long ago that they were just siblings. But then the universe had exploded. All of their stars had slowed down, like a ball that had been thrown into the air, suspended, and they came to a halt. And then they all tumbled towards the center of the universe. They were still falling. Dying stars. Well, perhaps not dying, if Damon had anything to say about the trajectory their family was on. They were Darkfires and they would never burn out.

His voice softened and Daena prayed that he just be angry with her again. The anger she could handle. She thrived on it. But sympathy and compassion was something that was lacking. It was the unknown variable in any calculation she made. Anger was easy. Love, even from her older brother, was harder.

"No, its nothing like that. Its just- ," she broke off again, finding her words. "Aren't you ever just so angry about what happened? Daeron has nightmares, that's how he copes. You and I - we just train all the fucking time. "

Damon has to keep it together. The mask cannot slip. The crown cannot slip. He needs to shoulder everything if their family is to regain any sense of status or place in this fucking district. Never one to be nurturing, unless he was training Daena and Daeron, his words now are different. Perhaps they all are different.

"We're all suffering in our own way, all of us." The understatement of the century, dear brother. Daeron had given up everything but his art. Damon, Aegon, Aemon and herself had thrown every fucking fiber of their being into training. Sweat mixed with fire mixed with the need for revenge. And it was building. In all of them, if Daena could guess.

"Of course I'm angry and I seethe with rage just thinking about it and if you were Aegor, you would know what I would do to the bastard who did this to us and everything I'd do to make sure we're all okay. But I concentrate my anger into something productive, a coping mechanism. There's no use in being angry if you just let tragedy swallow you whole. I can't shut down Dae, not when there's so much on my shoulders. I can't lose myself because I lost them. And neither should you."

"I know, Day. It's just too much some days. We can't just ignore what happened." Her arms wrap around her knees, her head tilted to gaze at her brother.

"It's in every single swing of our swords. Every single movement in the training center. Every single punch we throw. Can we ever really get past it?"

The day that it happened, Damon would not allow her to go. She threw herself at him, her nails tearing at his clothing, but his word was final and she had no choice but to obey. Daena ran up the stairs and out to one of the many balconies of the family home, hoping to yell after Damon but he had disappeared. He was also so good at remaining unseen. Everything changed that day and the world turned upside down. Torn asunder. How could she not emerge from that tragedy whole and unscathed?

"We must," Damon begins, pausing to look at the stars. Their future wasn't written up there. Not any longer. "The moment we let a tragedy define us, is the moment we allow tragedy to win. And if there's one thing I remember about Mother and Father, it's that they never would've permitted us to lose to tragedy." Here comes the hope speech, but she needs it. Daena is hanging on her brother's words as if they are scripture because damn it if they aren't the only thing holding her together tonight.

"So if we must swing swords until our muscles tear then we shall because we are Darkfires and we are their children."

Daena needed to diffuse whatever it was that was happening. She had not wanted to admit any sort of failing to Damon, even if it was something that she had no control over. She was haunted by their past, but she needed to rise above it all.

"I know, she whispered. Her eyes are warm and the telltale signs of tears threaten to form but damn it, she is a fucking Darkfire and they sure as hell do not cry when things get tough.

"When did you get so good at this?" she asks with a tease.

Daena never cried, at least not in front of her older siblings. She called it pride - the war inside of her head raging and tearing her up inside. But she was stronger than that. If there was anything that they had learned through years of training, structure, strategy, and strength, it was self-discipline. In the Games, if Ripred granted them that beautiful gift, the Darkfires would never be those tributes who broke down in tears when the weight of the world threatened to break their backs. They would stop, take a breath, and continue in their pursuit of glory.

She listened to her brother's words about growing up quickly and he was not quite a man, but a boy with the weight of one thousand crowns sitting upon his head. They were only just teenagers, after all. But this tragedy had forced them to grow up quickly.

"I would never do anything stupid," Daena joked as Damon wrapped her in a hug. "We both know that would be something Daeron would do, even without the intention behind it," she laughed.