alpha, omega. sunny & ridley blitz.

"Dad."

One word replies were a Sunny Le Roux trademark. Ridley looked different. Older. Wiser. Sunny hadn't paid much attention to her cousins growing up in that house, preferring to keep a smaller company of Harper and Silk. Hell, she barely said more than two words to her own siblings these days, although Sunny was beginning to question if they were her brothers and sisters after all.

One potential answer was that she had been adopted like Ridley. It would make sense. Why John Le Roux was so viscous with her. But as much as she stared in the mirror and grappled with her differences she knew there were similarities there too. His eyes, his brows, his chin, his hands. Coincidence or genetics, she hadn't quite settled on a conclusion.

Ridley deserved more than a one-word answer. Those were reserved for her father, her opponents. If anyone in this family had her respect, it was Ridley.

"Made me enter the tournament," Sunny continued, wincing ever so slightly. Her diaphragm still hadn't fully healed from the stab wounds. "Almost lost my arm."

When Ridley smiles it's game over. Sunny frowns, glancing at her feet - she's embarrassed. Ashamed. Yes, it hurts like hell - in more ways than one. Ridley was never going to give her a pity party, and she didn't want nor expect one. Hardly anyone in this family gave a fuck about the other members. At least Ridley had more reasons than one to keep her distance.

I get it, she wants to scream to the world. I learned my lesson.

No pity party, but she does get an invitation to come in - one Sunny is surprised to receive. If she had to bet on it (she always loved a gamble) she'd say no more than two Le Rouxes had ever stepped through the front door - Ridley being one of them. The house was grand, like the one she'd grown up in - but it also felt empty, her steps echoing as she walked. It was oddly calming. When you grow up in a house of chaos, the quiet is strangely comforting.

"I'm not hear for that," she muses at the kitchen island, a seat taken gratefully after her efforts struggling up the hill. So the rumours were true about Ridley and her deals, as true as the ones about Sunny's terrorising the streets of One at midnight.

But Sunny wasn't here to discuss those rumours about her.

"I came to ask if you remember when I was born," she confesses quietly to Ridley. "Because I think I was adopted too."

Perhaps this was a bad idea. There was a reason Sunny was fist first, ask questions later. Why she picked her people and stuck with them. Harper and Silk and Bea, everyone else an enemy. Everyone else a threat. Because when she did try to speak she ended up fighting anyway, losing a battle of wits and words. All brawn, no brains - Ridley had both, and she'd gotten a crown for it. An escape out of that house.

Perhaps she had a point.

"I guess," she fumbled, taking a sip of the tea inside her mug and trying not to pull a face. The liquid was bitter, a foreign taste and an even stranger aftertaste. "If I wasn't born with it, then maybe I wasn't born with everything else that comes with it."

Being Sunny, she was okay with that. The sun was lethal, a necessary evil. It gives and it takes and it burns and it blinds, she liked that she was named for something everybody needed - even if it scorned them for doing so. But to be given the name of Le Roux, that came with an expectation she wasn't sure she could carry.

Her mangled shoulder and scarred cheeks could attest to that.

"Maybe I don't have to be like Dad. Maybe I don't-"

It catches in her throat, guilt. She washes it down with another gulp of tea.

"-have to be so terrible all the time."

Ridley was one of those people that were too smart for Sunny. But as frustrating as it was to feel stupid in front of her cousin, she stayed put. Ridley could have turned her away at the door, even shut it in her face - it was a kindness given to her that she did not deserve. Sunny could respect that gesture, sipping on tea she still wasn't sure about, listening to words she only half understood.

It was tough to admit it, but Ridley had a point. The same one her father constantly made, just worded differently. Sunny could understand a lesson in pain, even if it had been inflicted on her by her own father. Ridley crafted hers carefully, making every word count - and she was right, the name was not just a sword. It was a shield, crafted from those that came before them. By Malachai and Pax, even her father had his hand in protecting his children whilst the world was distracted by his viciousness.

Perhaps John had been so accustomed to shielding her from the world that it had sharpened him, taking blow after blow after blow. Maybe she didn't need to know the truth. Perhaps it was for the better. He could be showing her love in his own way, a different way, one Sunny hadn't been able to see until now.

If Ridley bore the name out of respect for Pax, perhaps Sunny needed to wear it out of respect for her parent too.

"I hadn't thought of it quite like that," Sunny confessed, embarrassed at her own shortcomings. There was a lot she needed to learn, it turned out.