...

Mom... Dad...
Is it okay to make others' problems my own?
To invade their space
when they're on the brink of losing it?
All to save it?
...
Is it okay to convince others to try
when they're already convinced of the worst?
Is it okay to convince myself
that I'm doing the right thing?

...

A low rumble stirs Niel from his sleep. 7:51 am is what the clock reads, just nine minutes off from when his alarm would've woken him, yet nearly an hour after when he normally wakes up. A near-identical situation happened only three days ago when Reed spoke with him. As Niel makes up his bed, he notices a bright flash outside, followed by another low rumble several seconds later. So that's what woke him up. He heads downstairs.

"Morning," Niel greets his guardians and Poppy.

"Good morning," they all respond, or at least variants of it. Thunder continues to roll outside as the other kids make their way downstairs, each also bidding everyone a good morning in their own yet similar way. Their demeanours, however, are drastically different. Reed is chipper as per usual, Illia is trembling and skittish—Niel assumes it's because of the storm, and Lydia is observably irritated. She normally brushes her hair straight before coming downstairs, but this morning it's been left messy. A bright flash outside brings a loud clap of thunder, causing Illia to flinch with a frightened squeak and cling to Lydia.

"I don't know if I should or shouldn't be surprised that you're scared of thunder and lightning," Lydia says to the shaking girl painfully gripping her arm.

"Aw, come here," Mabel coaxes as she brings Illia into a protective hug. The other three kids sit at the table as Poppy serves them their breakfast.

Niel looks at Lydia again as he eats. The rain normally puts her in a bright mood, but it's undeniable that something is angering her. Could it be that the thunderstorm is the cause? Did she not get a lot of sleep last night? Is it due to those 'teenage girl things' that Reed refuses to elaborate on? Whatever the case is, asking her about it now will likely lead to conflict—if not with him, then with Reed—so he decides to leave it be for now.

Reed and Lydia leave for school despite the weather and classes begin for Niel and Illia. The storm ends up affecting the at-home tutoring more than expected, with Illia cowering from sudden roars of thunder and Niel's attention being sharply drawn away from the lessons at hand by squalls of rain fiercely pelting the windows. Somehow, Louise is successful at teaching what she had planned for the day despite these hurdles. The storm conveniently quells by the time she's ready to leave, and she laments why this couldn't have happened sooner. Reed and Lydia return home shortly after she departs, and it doesn't take long for Niel to notice that not only has Lydia's annoyance persisted through the day but Reed's been infected by it as well. Niel pays him a visit in his room once things quiet down again.

"What's bothering you?" Niel asks as shuts the door behind him. Reed is sitting comfortably on his bed playing a fighting game.

"Lydia," Reed answers bluntly. "Something's been pissing her off lately, and now she's got me pissed off."

"Do you know why?"

"Nope. I tried asking, but that only pissed her off more." Reed says it both as a statement and a warning; prying will only make it worse.

"Alright, then." Niel leaves Reed be and ventures back downstairs. Perhaps Mabel and Gabriel know why.

"No idea," Gabriel answers with honesty.

"I've tried asking her before, but she doesn't want to talk about it. I'm not sure why, though, since she gets like this somewhat often. I think it might have something to do with her parents," Mabel says.

Her parents? Niel hardly knows anything about her, let alone her parents. But if it's something as personal as this, then he should hear it from her personally—that is if he's going to pry at all in the first place.

Later after supper, Niel finds himself in the living room while Lydia does homework in the kitchen. Mabel and Gabriel are in their room sorting out paperwork and files, and Illia and Reed are in their rooms as well. The cause of Lydia's anger still eludes Niel, and while thinking of why, he finds himself looking over at her from time to time. She doesn't pay him any mind at first, but when he fails to catch himself from staring is when she finally takes offence.

"Why are you staring at me?" she growls in annoyance.

Now he's done it. His carelessness has invoked Lydia's ire. But, now is also an opportunity to come clean and ask what's been making her upset. The chances of her actually answering him might be lower due to this scuffed opening, on top of them already being low in the first place, but with no one else around to hear her, she may open up with this one-on-one talk. It's worth a shot, and it's not like it can get much worse—at least that's what Niel believes.

"Sorry. I've just been wondering why you've been so upset today," Niel admits. He braces himself for Lydia's wrath, but all he hears is silence. She gives a short, soft sigh. Did this... calm her down?

"I'm kinda surprised you care," she says almost dejectedly. Niel doesn't understand what she means by this. "It's about my brother."

"What's wrong with your brother?"

This question catches Lydia off guard. "What's wrong with...? You don't know?"

"No?"

"Huh... I'm going to go see him tomorrow. Come with me after school, and I'll tell you what's going on."

"Okay." That went far better than he ever could have expected, and while he ended up with more questions than answers, he will be getting answers tomorrow.

>>>>>>

The sound of rain battering against the room window stirs Niel from his sleep. The clock reads 7:16 am, roughly when he normally wakes up at. At least rising late isn't becoming a pattern. As he makes up his bed, he keeps the window in his peripherals to watch for a flash of lightning. Nothing happens; must just be rain for today. Lydia should be happy about that.

"Morning," Niel greets his guardians. Poppy isn't here quite yet.

"Good morning," they respond. Poppy arrives a few minutes later, and Niel helps her with his breakfast. After a long while of sitting around after eating, the other three make their way downstairs, giving their own 'good mornings' as well. Reed's smile isn't as full as it was yesterday, a less shaky wave shows that Illia isn't terrified of today's thunderless storm, and Lydia's disgruntled expression persists still. Her hair again is left untidy. While the three of them eat, Niel can see from the living room that Lydia is spending more time watching the rainstorm through the window than she is eating. Again, he wonders what about her brother is weighing on her mind so heavily.

Louise's classes come and go for the last time before the weekend, and much like yesterday, the weather has slacked off to a grey overcast sky by this time. Niel sits close to the front door so he doesn't have far to go when Lydia arrives home, and when she eventually does, he wastes little time getting his shoes on and leaving with her.

It's still overcast, but something that Niel didn't take full notice of is how wet the ground is and how humid the air is. Niel is extra weary of puddles as they walk, and Lydia continuously brushes the fizziness out of her hair with her hands. She braided her hair this morning before leaving, but she must have undone it since. She keeps to his front, and neither of them talk as they go. After a while of walking, they finally arrive at a place of significance, and it's the one place Niel was afraid they'd end up going to: the cemetery. Lydia leads Niel along a path of familiarity. When he was here last with Callum, they went further back and to the left, but now he's being taken to a spot closer to the entrance and to the right.

"Here," Lydia says to confirm Niel's fears. In front of them is the final resting place of her brother, Aaron Brookes. The date on his headstone marks his death as occurring roughly four years ago, and when compared to his birthday, Niel finds that he was only 23 when he died. Plastic flowers with faded blue petals stand firmly in the soggy grass.

"I..." Niel whispers as his voice trails off.

"Didn't know he was dead?" Lydia imposes on his train of thought. Niel gives a small mumble and nod in confirmation. "I'm surprised you didn't, since I've been coming here every Friday for the last four years."

"No one told me, and I never felt it was my place to ask," Niel clarifies. "Though, this answers my question of why you weren't living with your brother if you could visit him."

Light raindrops suddenly start falling in a drizzle around them, though sparsely enough for the pair to hardly notice.

"I probably would be living here if it wasn't for Dwayne. He was the one who offered me a place at the home, and skipped all of the bullshit with other agencies for me, like he did with you."

"I... don't quite understand."

"Then..."

The drizzle grows heavier now with thicker and more frequent drops landing on and around them. Niel isn't very afraid of the rain due to previous exposure to it and how much worse the shower head is in comparison. Regardless, Lydia uses her Mute's function as an invisible umbrella to keep Niel dry.

"...Despite us living under the same roof for two months, you know almost nothing about me. And having to deal with me without knowing a thing must be a hassle, too. You told us everything we did and didn't need to know on day one. I suppose I should rewrite the score with you."

The rumble of the city's breath washes away from the growing downpour around them...

~~~
My parents are actually still alive, unlike most of us who end up in the home. Mom's Mute is oxygen, and Dad's is hydrogen. It made them a pair—a real Bonnie and Clyde, robbing places and hiding away in the water thanks to their Mutes. If they could make money from a place, they would hit it hard and fast, and then play the best game of hide-and-seek the country had ever seen. Well, until they lost.

Mom and Dad hid this stuff from me and Aaron. They just said they were leaving for a week or so for "work," and then bribe us for forgiveness with whatever we wanted when they came back. I always hated that. They must have messed up at some point despite their shrewdness because someone saw their faces, and that got the cops in the loop, all without them knowing. So when they came back to do the bare minimum for us, they brought hell with them.

I remember everything about that day. It was sunny, so they took us out for a ride in the car, tried smoothing things over with ice cream, and then a trip to the fair. What ended up happening was them getting flagged down by a cop car behind us. Of course, those bastards ran. I remember Aaron begging for them to stop, but they just ignored him! There were too many cars on the street, too many cars chasing from behind, we were going too fast, it was too sharp of a turn...!

Mom and Dad didn't teach us to wear seatbelts because they never used them. I was in the middle of the road, and all I saw was Aaron. He was laying down facing me, face torn apart, blood everywhere, eyes just barely open... God, his eyes... Mom and Dad were arrested, and we were all brought to the hospital. Aaron died just after making it there.

Dwayne's wife is the CEO of the hospital, and she heard my story from the nurse who cared for me, and then Dwayne from her. When he learned I had nowhere else to go, he offered me a place at the home until I was old enough to live on my own. He made it easy for me during that nightmare by keeping me out of other places, so I wouldn't have to worry about bouncing around while grieving. He even helped with Aaron's burial. I... I can't ever thank him enough for what he's done.

But my parents, on the other hand... they never gave a damn about us! All they cared about was money! Aaron is dead because of them! Because of their lies, because of their greed, because of their fuck ups...!

Those days with Aaron are gone, and I'll never get them back.

And they can go to hell for that.
~~~

Niel recalls a similar feeling to when he and Reed spoke back in April: speechless, but not due to a lack of sympathy. He had no idea this is what Lydia had gone through.

"Aaron was my world," Lydia says. "When Mom and Dad were gone, he would sometimes leave as well to do his own thing, like school or actual work, but he would always come back as fast as he could to keep me company." Niel notes that whenever she addresses her parents, she does so with a festering venom laced in her words. She's spiteful and vengeful in the extreme, and he can't exactly blame her. "So... yeah. Father's Day is coming up, and it's been reminding me more than usual about all that shit I told you. That's why I've been so cranky lately," she continues.

"That kind of anger isn't foreign to me. You have my empathy," Niel says, though his tone lacks a bit of soul.

"Thank you." Her's also lacks some emotion, but like him, she means what she says.

The sudden downpour has slacked off just about completely, and Niel is starting to feel sticky from the humidity. They stay at the grave for a few minutes longer so Lydia can properly introduce Niel to the stone and report the events of her week. Most of it relates to school, which goes over Niel's head, but she gets the last of her woes off her chest before long. Though she tries to keep it from being so, she mournfully says her goodbyes to her brother again, and the pair depart the now-misty graveyard.

The walk back is sombre and melancholic, and in all honesty, Niel really wants to be home. Lydia is still soaked to the skin by the rain earlier; Niel wonders why she didn't protect herself from the rain, or if she can, why she doesn't dry herself off with her Mute. A ways into their walk, Niel notices that Lydia is taking them down the wrong road back home.

"Why are we going this way?" Niel questions.

"There's something I want to check," she responds as she glances back at him briefly. "It shouldn't take long."

They continue down this side road until it reaches and runs along the edge of the forest. Niel thinks it's something in the woods at first, but they stay on the road for a ways longer until they find what she's curious about: rainwater has collected in the road and caused a significant flood. Niel can see myriad ripples in the water from a new drizzle forming.

"This road floods so easily, and yet the city does nothing about it," Lydia complains. "Could you help me?"

"Sure, but how?"

"I'll show you."

Using her Mute, Lydia parts the floodwater so they can pass through without Niel getting wet. Within the curb is the barely visible criss-cross grate of a storm drain rendered inoperable due to a staggering amount of debris. Sticks, leaves, mud, and litter all make up the clog.

"The bars are supposed to stop big things from clogging up the pipe below, but all they do is get clogged up, and the result is the road flooding every time a storm happens," Lydia explains.

"So you want me to remove the debris?"

"Yeah. Just toss it into the woods."

Niel coats his hands with Dust to protect himself from the debris and throws it all to the tree line two handfuls at a time. Once the pair steps clear, Lydia relinquishes her hold on the water and they watch as it convenes and swirls down the drain. There's still more flooding on the road, so there's yet another grate to clear.

"There's something else that I've been thinking of," Lydia says as she and Niel are working their way through the flood to find the next grate. "How lucky we are to be in the home we're in. Even in Soul, there are so many horror stories floating around of how shit the foster care system is, and how many kids have been failed by it."

"I remember Reed telling me of how the man who ran the home before Dwayne was an asshole," Niel reflects.

"I've heard of that too, but I wasn't there back then so I don't really know. Mabel and Gabriel sometimes mention him, but Reed doesn't talk about it at all."

This talk about bad foster homes makes Niel think of Alanna. What would have happened to her had he not gotten involved? He shudders to think of the possibilities. Lydia eventually finds a small bubble column rising from beneath the surface, and upon clearing away the water, she confirms it's the other debris-covered drain. Niel lends a hand again to clear away the sticks and mud, and soon they're watching as the water whirlpools away.

"That did it. The flooding's going down now," Lydia says. It's a tad slow, but the water on either side of the road is gradually disappearing. They hang around until the road clears up completely, but as they're leaving, Niel notices that a lady is watching them from inside her home. As soon as he lays eyes on her, she waves in gratitude for their service, and he gives a nod back.

There hasn't been any more rain on their way back, and yet Lydia is still soaked from the downpour earlier. Niel can't fathom how she can not only put up with it but tolerate it enough to not do anything about it, because if she can push around floodwater, then surely she can remove the moisture that's coating her whole body. Meanwhile, the humidity has him so sticky that he almost wants to have a shower just so he can be rid of the feeling. He can't see what face she's wearing because she's insistent on walking in front of him.

As they step up to the front door of the home, Niel is nearly convinced that Lydia has forgotten about her moistened state, but like a shrapnel bomb, she ejects all of the water off of her body and out of her clothes. Niel is caught well within the blast, and Lydia rushes to correct her mistake and dry him off as soon as she hears him yelp in surprise at being splashed.

"Oh hey. There you two are," Reed says from the living room. Niel is surprised at first to see him downstairs and not up in his room playing games, but after looking in, he sees that he and Illia are doing homework together. That's also a surprise in and of itself, but it explains why he's down here at the very least. "What were you two doing?"

"Nothing, Reed." Like a switch, Lydia has gone from melancholic to antagonized, fuming upstairs to her room. The sound of the door slamming is easily heard by everyone on the ground floor. Mabel and Gabriel poke their heads out from the kitchen to see what's going on.

"What was that about?" Reed asks Niel with some annoyance of his own.

"Her parents, for one," Niel says. "Their memory is aggravating her."

"So it is her parents..." Mabel laments.

Mabel decides to go check on Lydia, and she climbs the stairs with Niel right behind her. However, Niel doesn't follow her into Lydia's room. Instead, he continues to the third floor so he can clean himself off. He assumes she wants some time alone, or be with as few people as possible.

After a very shallow bath, Niel is left with a handful of minutes before supper, so he decides to look into Lydia's parents to see if there's anything more to their story. If they're as great of thieves as Lydia says they are, they would've been in the news at some point, so perhaps he can find some kind of information about them before their arrest. He punches in a search on his laptop and finds article after article on their arrest and conviction. Let's start here as a base.

Levi and Miriam Brookes, arrested four years ago following the chase and crash that killed Aaron. Charged with myriad robbery, weapon, and fleeing charges, including bank robbery, armed robbery, fleeing utilizing a Mute, and assault with a deadly weapon among others. They still have more than a decade to go until they get out of prison, with 15 years left to serve for her father and 13 for her mother. They were a hot topic in the media at one point, but yet Niel can't find a single thing about them other than their crimes and arrest. Dwayne is slated to be visiting tomorrow, perhaps Niel can ask him then.