Storyline:
"What are you doing here?" Robby grouses, although since he was under the Beast it did not have much of an effect. "Come to nag me again?"
"Nope," Cara sighs, leaning her hip against the metal monster. "Mum found me and shoved me out. It was either you or actual work."
"Huh, you saying this isn't actual work, sis?" He pulls out from underneath and gives her a glare, to little effect. "Just 'cuz you're tiny and useless doesn't mean I don't work. You just don't do any of the lifting."
"I'm not useless." She huffs. "Just because physical labour is the sole thing that is deemed useful in this ridiculous place, doesn't mean by far that I'm actually useless. I have brains, which few of the people in this place can actually boast."
"Don't bash hard labour, sis. Being intellectual doesn't deem your worth."
"Neither does psychical prowess then," she counters.
"Fair enough," he concedes.
"Anyway, I'm not saying they're lesser, I'm just saying I have something most of them don't." Cara explains. "Brains are good, and they're needed to keep a place like this running."
"Ah yes, they're good if you can get to a place you can use them." He pulls himself up and towers over her. "In case you forgot, midget, you're stuck down here while all the higher-ups, with or without brains, make the decisions." He pokes her (lovingly) on the arm. "Mum's right, your brains are useless."
Robert shared some of her cynicism. Perhaps even all of it, but he hid it will. Once and a while his exasperated and bitter tone mixed just well enough with his sarcasm until you could perfectly pick up just how much he hated the place. Still, he behaved, having learned to very quickly at a young age. Unlike what it did to other kids, Cara's wild ways did not inspire Robby but instead made him cautious. Couldn't even look into his sister's eyes without getting twitchy.
One too many visits from authorities since you were a toddler tended to make you docile. Even if he himself had done nothing wrong, he, sure enough, got a good helping of the scolding they unloaded on the family. Perhaps that's why Cara would tone it down from time to time. Robby's smile was worth it to her. Sit indoors and play with him while he drooled on his shirt and grabbed all that was in sight. He didn't drool anymore (well maybe in his sleep but Cara was not going to check if that was the case) but the case still stood. Protect the baby brother at all costs, even if he was twice as tall as she'd ever be and still hadn't stopped growing. And even if he was a pain in the damned ass and obviously the favourite.
He didn't comply though either. Sure, he was quiet and held the doors. Perhaps he broke no laws and made sure no others could either. Hell, he even reported people as necessary and went against his sister's wishes. But was that not the perfect cover? If something went awry, no one would accuse the boy who turned in his own childhood friends. Even if you had managed to pin it down to the Lugo family, the first you would go for is the sister. Then it turns out her rampage in town squared provided a pretty good alibi. The parents were no question. Quiet, stoic, much like their son (until you looked the mother in the eye and saw the embers her daughter had inherited).
No, you could only find any one of them guilty if they willed it so or if they got too cocky. Only one member ever got too cocky. So now the authorities were left there, standing like confused, petulant children, stomping around and trying to find the perpetrator with their whiny voices. What a sight to behold.
Robert Lugo was just as much of an enigma as his sister.
"Here, attach this. It's small enough that I can't manage and with your child's hand, it should be fairly easy." Robert drops a copper wire and a spanner into her idle hands and shoos her off. "Go be useful."
"I do not have a child's hands," Cara protests. "I have perfectly normal hands, thank you."
"You really do not." Robert picks up the hands in question and inspects them for a minute. "Soft like a child's hands too. You really have managed to avoid real work for most of your life. Astounding."
"Thank you, I'm terribly proud of evading mum, but I have been doing real work."
"A story that none will read. A book that will never be published. Is that really real work?"
Cara points to the Beast. "A mobile that will never drive."
He shoves her shoulder lightly, still sending her back a step. "Uncalled for. Don't keep doing that or I really will tell mum you're useless to me and you would do better helping her."
"You wouldn't."
"I would don't try me. Now go attach the copper wire and keep the jabs to a minimum."
She goes to do as he instructed, but not without sending a glare his way. "So, you're allowed to insult me and my work, but the moment I do the same it is not allowed? Hypocrite."
"I am the one in mum's favour right now, so I hold all the cards."
"You don't have to hold that over me."
"But I can." He grins up at her from his position on the floor. "I can so I will."
She jabs the wire in sharply, misses the hole, and bends the wire. She pulls it back to inspect it with a quiet curse and then gets to work on straightening it out.
"You were always the favourite, don't kid yourself."
"I always was because I am well behaved and law-abiding. You should try it sometime."
She snorts loudly. "Law-abiding, right. Let us pretend that you are an upstanding citizen."
"Anyone you ask will tell you I am." He sweeps his hand out in a big gesture. "Go on. Go out and anyone you see if Robert Lugo is a perfect model citizen. The law thinks I'm law-abiding. Is that not all that matters?"
Wire straight again, she tries, more gently this time, to get it in right, and this time manages. "Well perhaps, but don't try that with me. I've known you since you were born."
"You know," Robert hedges. "I think you would try that sometimes. Being less obvious. Saving mom a few heart attacks and coins."
Cara shakes her head. "To what end? No one listens to a polite request that disadvantages them." She grunts as she turns the spanner sharply to the right. "Besides, if I started to be nice and polite I may get sent to the doctor. At this point, I am expected to be wreaking havoc on the nice lady down the street or ruining the reputation of so-and-so."
"It doesn't have to be this way." Robert says calmly. "There are other ways that cause less heartache all around."
"Cause less heartache and then have less effect. I want something to happen now, not when I'm old, and my bones are starting to creak. Not when the next generation is already having kids. Now." She laughs bitterly. "Don't you understand, at least a little, where all of this is coming from? Where I get these ideas and why I run around pissing off everybody of meagre importance? Do you really want me to stop?"
Robert looks down and plays with the stray thread hanging off his pants. "No, I don't. Still, I don't wish to cause more harm than good." He looks into Cara's eyes for once. "But know that I will stand behind you whatever step of the way. It may be quietly, but I will back you up. Just be careful with what you do."
Tears fill those dark eyes of hers as frustration builds. Years of frustration that have created those knots in her back and the words that flow out of her fingertips every time she writes. Robert opens his arms and a little of the armour falls away as she tumbles forward into the comforting embrace. He was quiet and calm in the eye of the storm. Had they been twins, you could have called them to sides of the same coin, but as it stands, they still balanced each other out.
"And to think you are thought to be the good sibling. The one who inherited the morals," she whispers through the silent tears.
"Hush," he chuckles. "You can't let mum hear and find that out. It would ruin everything I've built for years."
"She can't hear us. I whispered."
"You don't know that for certain. She certainly seems to have ears built into every nook and cranny of this house. She appears at the most inopportune times."
"True."
* * *
Writing:
The poison of the place ate at you all your life long. So familiar most did not take notice of it until they keeled over at the age of forty, or, if you were terribly lucky, by fifty. But then again, that happened so often most of the townsfolk considered this normal. When those who lived their life working hard died before retirement age, it was just something that happened.
No matter what went on in the upper class. Who cared that those with the coins lived well past eighty? When you got fatally ill from working in the sub-zero temperatures of the winter with snow up to our knees, it was how you lived. If you broke down, your body was weak, and that was your own downfall. Not that no one would mourn you or wish you get better, but if you died, it certainly was solely your own fault. Why did you work in the inhumane conditions? No one cared, because there was no other way they knew. And they never knew because they were too exhausted to lift their heads out of the dirt and look around them to see how other kingdoms lived, and if they did, they closed their eyes to once again become blind to this, living comfortably in denial.
So, you would spend your life in this kingdom, sweating and breaking your back for the land. Yes, perhaps the other kingdom, wrought with pest and famine treated their workers better, but that just proved the superiority that this place had over them, did it not? The work was hard, but the land was fruitful. Perhaps we had to teach our children to toddle amongst the vines to pick the grapes the moment they could pull themselves up to stand. Yes, perhaps we did the same back breaking labour no matter the weather, but still, it was worth it, was it not?
Who could argue against this all? No citizen would ever think to protest and the king was happy too. So perhaps the rash comment of him being cruel and disliked under that charming exterior was false. Perhaps the people did love him after all.
But was lack of protest from the broken people really a sign of love? Or was there a gaping absence of any goodwill or adoration towards the king. Something you lost when you toiled all day and looked at your empty wallet and trading stall after all evidence of that work had all been rounded up by the authorities. Apathy rather than anger. No energy left for anger. No ground to build it on either, especially to those who closed their eyes and carried on.
So yes, the fields were green and wildly growing, watered by the blood of those who had fallen.