The Weight of Legacy

She wasn’t staring. No, Malwine stood perfectly poised next to Adelheid, channeling her inner Bernie as she patiently waited for Alaric to open the door to his chambers. The door wouldn’t catch fire or anything like that. All she was doing was calmly look forward. Were there more efficient ways to get her uncle’s attention? Sure—not to mention, her little sister could have easily just teleported them right in.

…It had been really, really awkward when she’d worked on convincing the girl to avoid doing that in the future, and, if that had actually been a thing, she might have unironically prayed to the Devils of this world that Adelheid hadn’t read between the lines with that overpowered {Implicit} of hers. Alaric was just a teenager, but he was a teenager with, say, a surprise roommate, so barging in there had the potential to go terribly wrong and Malwine wanted to avoid having to explain that type of thing at all costs.

“That ‘privacy’ thing is dumb,” Adelheid grumbled, not for the first time. She’d spent the past five minutes muttering variations of that complaint, but she had stayed put.

Malwine was growing increasingly grateful for that—honestly, the longer Alaric took to answer the door, the more she worried they might actually have been interrupting something.

At last, the door cracked open, with her uncle sneaking a glance before opening it fully. For once, he had tied his hair up instead of leaving it loose, though several strands looked quite eager to escape from that clearly hastily-tied bun. Alaric eyed the girls, focus rapidly shifting from one to the other—he looked more confused than surprised.

“Hi,” Malwine smiled, hands clasped in front of her. “Can we come in?”

Her uncle looked at her like she was insane.

“We need to talk,” Adelheid said in what had to be the most serious tone Malwine had ever heard from her—she even took the time to warily look over her shoulder, the hallway empty behind her.

The fact that Alaric started to follow her gaze had Malwine biting down a cackle—this was serious, dammit. “That we do, uncle. That we do.”

She really couldn’t help herself—Alaric was probably on edge enough as it was, but it really wouldn’t help anyone if he just kept staring at them like this.

“…Alright,” he said, voice thick with reluctance. With how he was acting, one would think he was letting hungry vampires into his rooms instead of two perfectly harmless little girls.

They’d agreed on Malwine taking the lead, though she’d told Adelheid to interject as she saw fit, if in simpler terms—it wasn’t as if anyone could or would stop that little entity of chaos in the first place, so she didn’t want her little sister to feel bad if or when she inevitably interrupted her.

“So, first things first—it’s not that I don’t believe in Bernie with all my heart, but we’d probably have better chances at figuring out what’s happened to Auntie and Abelard if we investigated ourselves, too,” Malwine started as soon as the door was shut behind them. As much as waiting about to watch the teenager’s reactions would have amused her, she did want this conversation to be productive, even if she was already starting to secondguess her decision to do this at all. “Adelheid already tried, and, no, she can’t get any closer to them.”

Apparently, there was something keeping people away from the area affected by stasis—even when Malwine had tried to get her double to step forward, she found it just wouldn’t. Her legs just wouldn’t move, and neither trying to manifest the double inside nor having Adelheid teleport worked.

Bruteforcing the matter with their abilities was seemingly off the table.

For once, Alaric’s narrowed eyes focused on her, instead of Adelheid. “You’re being weird.”

“Oh, uncle, I have always been weird—I just don’t see a reason to hide that at the moment,” she looked around. “Do you have anywhere where we can sit down?”

“Why?”

Malwine was more than a bit thrilled by the chance to finally say something like this. “Because you’re going to want to be sitting down for this.”

They had to share a sofa, with Alaric seating on a plush chair angled in their direction. Despite his increased wariness towards her, he still seemed worried about Adelheid in particular, though his expressiveness appeared drowned out by palpable lethargy. He just looked out of it, in general—it was somewhat understandable. Even before the wedding day had devolved into a shitshow, it hadn’t exactly been going great for him.

Between the dead man, and Thekla of all people being trapped in that strange stasis, he had more than enough reasons to be depressed.

…Malwine still couldn’t figure out why he seemed scared of Adelheid instead of just dismissing her as everyone did, though. Because that wasn’t acknowledgement—it was fear, outright. She didn’t need [The Way of the Clave] to notice that.

In the end, she presented herself as just a regular, confused kid… within reason. She didn’t know why or how she’d woken up in stasis, or since when or for how long she had been in that state. No, she didn’t know if it was Beryl’s doing, nor did she really recall how she’d ended up in the crib they found her in. She did admit to guessing it might have been in stasis alongside her, if only because it would have been incredibly weird for her to just so happen to drop on a crib the moment the stasis faltered—and she didn’t know why that had happened, either.

That probably covered most of her bases. Once she heard from him, she’d figure out how to weave mentions of some of her Skills in too.

“I’d honestly have preferred to never have to bring this up.” The pout came naturally. “But, I was thinking of telling Thekla before… whatever happened. It’s, like. I actually need somebody to help me—to help us. And, for obvious reasons, it’s not like I could just talk to Bernie.”

Alaric probably had his own reasons to avoid talking to Bernie, but there was no need to specify—if nothing else, things would probably get even more awkward if she did try to elaborate. Compared to what she recalled telling Veit, Malwine had been vaguer. It helped that her uncle didn’t have an actual frame of reference for how strong she was.

“That sounds exactly like something she would do.”

Malwine stiffened, tipping her head. It took her a moment to process Alaric’s words. He hadn’t even deigned to comment on the rest of her story, as if the idea of a toddler spending an indeterminate amount of time in stasis just reading were a secondary detail. “Who, B—my mother?”

“…Yes.” Alaric seemed to hesitate. He kept looking off to the sides, trying and failing to suppress what looked suspiciously like a nervous smile.

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“I thought my mother was just a regular mortal, though?”

The ship had sailed as far as pretending not to have any Affinities was concerned, but this was interesting enough for her to solidify her decision to be upfront about that part. Maybe not about the curse or her messed-up core, but hiding even more information wouldn’t help when it was already clear that knowledge about Beryl seemed almost suspiciously absent. If she had to out herself as a cultivator, so be it—that would have been bound to happen sooner or later anyway.

“She was, as far as I ever knew.” Alaric leaned into his palm, nearly covering his chin as his elbow settled on the armrest. Pensiveness replaced his earlier jumpiness. The fact that he was taking this all at face value was frankly bizarre. “Though if anyone could figure out a way to change, it would be her.” The boy blinked. “Devil’s name, what if…?”

“What if what?” Malwine leaned in, not even bothering to hide her curiosity. If he had an idea as to what Beryl might have been up to, that’d have been a massive improvement from the cold trail she was working with.

“…Okay. This might take some time to explain, but. Look. Nobles. They’re like fancy—”

“I know what nobility is. As a concept, anyway.” Was hurrying him along rude? Probably. Malwine pointed at her eyes. “I read a lot, remember? A lot.”

Alaric recovered swiftly enough, then started to look a little smug. “Right. But do you know what Proclivities are?”

“I do.” She might have felt slightly bad about being so blunt had he not started to sound exactly like people did when they learned something new and suddenly felt qualified to explain it—more than anything else, that reminded her that she’d been thinking of him as a teenager because he was one, despite him technically being 20 by this world’s standards. It was bound to affect how he acted still.

Her uncle’s expression fell, and a moment later, he pursed his lips. Is pouting a genetic habit? She’d noticed it in herself, in this life, but frankly held no memories about that type of thing from the widow. Blaming it on the Rīsan bloodline sounded like a great idea to avoid any and all responsibility when Adelheid inevitably copied the expression.

Seeing as he didn’t immediately continue, Malwine did it for him. “You think my mother somehow got a Proclivity?”

“I know not,” Alaric admitted. “I can’t think of any other way for her to have gotten the power to cast something like that, though. Beryl was, is crafty. Though I have no idea how she could get that kind of connections, seriously? I wouldn’t know how she could even begin to come into contact with a high noble, let alone have that kind of arrangement with one, but, it’s plausible.”

A noise between a laugh and a snort came from behind the divider in the middle of the room, soon devolving into a coughing fit.

“Oh, hi, Theo,” Adelheid waved at the divider. “I’m sorry for not saying hi earlier. But you were hiding well. Didn’t want to bother you.”

Oh, right, Theo. Malwine might have forgotten about that guy—she honestly hadn’t expected him to even still be around after that shouting match. “Bernie didn’t kick you out?”

Catching his breath, the other boy emerged from his dubious hiding spot, walking until he reached Alaric’s chair before lingering behind it. “I’m hard to keep out.”

“I will punch you in the face,” Alaric spoke without even turning, sounding completely serious, “again.”

It was a shame neither she nor Adelheid thought to bring snacks.

“So you two have been… in cahoots, for a while?” Alaric’s phrasing would have had her raising her eyebrows had she not known these people apparently had access to much of Zayden’s stuff, somehow—it honestly tripped her up for a moment regardless.

“That’s one way of putting it, uncle. I prefer to think I just don’t keep secrets from my little sister,” Malwine pulled Adelheid closer and squeezed her. It was somewhat difficult to pull off a sideways hug without breaking eye contact from her main conversation.

The girl presumably decided this was the perfect time to interject. “Not too many secrets, anyway.”

This was not going as well as she’d expected, but at least it wasn’t going badly. The truth was, Malwine hadn’t even been sure as to what would happen—her only real previous experiences with revealing anything about herself had been her conversations with Adelheid and Veit, and neither of those counted as normal people.

…She was starting to think Alaric didn’t, either. For lack of a better term, her uncle was way too chill about this. He hadn’t batted an eye at being told his niece had been in stasis and presumably had nothing to do for years other than read books at a distance. That should have at least concerned him. Actually, I take that back, that’d still probably be a saner upbringing than being raised by Kristian.

“Sure.” Alaric nodded. Because of course the part he doubted was the lack of a conspiracy between the teleporting children.

The four of them lingered in silence for a while—well, mostly silence. Theo had taken to pacing the room at some point, and his glossy dress shoes made each step almost aggressively loud, despite his movements looking light enough. It was him who spoke first. “What’s your plan?”

That… that was a question Malwine had been dreading. The crux of her problem was being unable to come up with one, especially with her usual strategy of just hoping things sorted themselves out not exactly being applicable here—the fact that Thekla and Abelard were caught in stasis, for unknown reasons, added a sense of seriousness that kept even her from being willing to take too many risks.

“I will be honest with you,” Malwine sighed. “I didn’t actually plant that far ahead. I’m… I was really expecting to have to work on convincing Alaric about me, like.” She turned to her uncle. “Not that I’m complaining here but uh. I wasn’t expecting you to just believe me.”

Alaric looked borderline offended at that. “Why in any Devil’s name would you—or anyone—lie about something like this? No offense meant, Malwine, but what you said is absurd enough that I frankly doubt it could come from nowhere.”

Oh, boy, are you going to be disappointed if you ever find out. She made a mental note to keep him from ever finding out she very much had lied, to an extent. With each person she told, she’d be narrowing her paths as far as cover stories went—it would likely be best to just stick to this permanently.

She hadn’t even ever wanted to tell anyone the actual truth, anyway. The widow felt like a forbidden topic at an instinctive level.

“And you are not exactly good at acting your age. You’re what, eight?” Theo added. “I only ever met a couple people who went through time dilation, but I shared a tutor with one. He was… insufferable. That difference in experienced time versus real time makes people weird.”

“That does not reassure me,” Malwine offered, as neutrally as she could. She hated that she couldn’t tell if that was just meant to be commentary or criticism of herself, and she’d promised herself she would go at least one more day without overreacting.

Theo just smiled, his gaze shifting from her to Adelheid. “Fret not—you’re doing just fine.”

That ominous comment honestly just made it worse.

“Wait, wait,” Alaric rose, turning to face his apparent roommate. “If you’re familiar with time dilation, like that, do you have any idea what might have happened to Thekla?”

“That’d be like asking me if I know the name of every rare bouquet just because I know people who do flower arrangements for a living.”

“You could have just said ‘no’.”

“Anyway, like I was saying,” Malwine cut in before the tension could continue. “I didn’t actually think that far ahead, since I was worried about whether you’d believe me, but I also don’t actually have a plan. Like, at all. I was… okay, I was sort of hoping you would know what to do?”

More specifically, if Alaric knew what to do, but she wasn’t about to make that clarification when her concern for her aunt was currently only barely holding her back from adding fuel to the fire of whatever was going on between these two.

After a moment, Alaric let out a slow exhale. “Can I have… between ten and twelve hours to think about this?”

“…That’s a bit specific.” Malwine couldn’t help but comment on that. “But sure?”

What was she supposed to do, tell him he couldn’t? It wasn’t as though she had high odds of coming up with anything in the meantime. Instead of letting another bout of silence stretch on, Malwine rose, nodding towards her little sister. Theo opened the door for them without a word, as Alaric sat down, rubbing his temples.

It was only once they were back in their own room that Malwine noticed something.

Oh, fuck. I forgot to ask how we were going to get back in touch after twelve hours. She nearly facepalmed then. That was ultimately quite the dumb concern. Even if she’d been trying her best to keep Adelheid from just barging in, it wouldn’t cost them anything to just do as they had done just now, and knock on Alaric’s door.

Odds were, she was getting testy just because nothing had imploded. It was almost unnatural—things did not usually go this well. All it achieved was make Malwine more than a bit paranoid.

Whenever things seemed to be going too smoothly, chances were they weren’t actually perfect.

It was far, far likelier that Malwine was missing a key detail or ten, and she did not like the thought of that—not one bit.