#like celia translated to dark beer

[hannah-heartstrings]

Corvus is Latin for crow, and Umbranox is Latin for dark night, so basically the Gray Fox has the edgiest name in Cyrodiil. XD

But I got randomly curious if Millona was Latin, and according to Google translate it means millions and her full name translates to this:

Is this true? If so, I think that's pretty cool.

Also I don't know how accurate these are, but giving them relatives could be fun. XD

[fluidityandgiggles]

Sleep Is For The Weak - Chapter 8

Previous Chapters: Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 5, Last Chapter

Writing Masterlist - for previous chapters not otherwise linked, Read on AO3

Notes (I guess): I could not wait to post this. I know it’s only Wednesday but I couldn’t wait and I had to. I’m sorry... I’m sure the next chapter will bring us back to the regular schedule. This chapter is really weird, at least in my opinion (but it might just be that I read it again and again a million times over), but I’m really happy with it and... also not really. Some people in this chapter need to... I don’t want to say anything. It would only make things worse if I say anything.

Thanks to @broadwaytheanimatedseries for the original suggestion, to @whatwashernameagain for all her help and for being a sweet lil angel of a person, and to my little elves, @anony-phangirl, @asleepybisexual and @winglessnymph for dealing with my bullshit. A special one goes to Nicky this time, for being an adorable bean and reading this chapter ahead of time to help me figure things out. I am so grateful that I have this lovely group of people to help me and I can’t thank them enough.

Tag list (sort of): @bunny222, @ab-artist, @secretlyanxiouspersona, @your-username-is-unavailable, @virgilcrofters, @why-things-go-boom, @ilovemyspoopydad, @violetblossem, @prinxiety-an-chocolate

Trigger warning: period appropriate transphobia (the early 00s were not exactly trans-friendly). Especially in this chapter, and not necessarily period-appropriate, but... you have been warned.

—————

Wednesday, November 27th, 2002

Remy finally understood the point of existentialism and, more specifically, of the saying "Hell is other people".

He couldn't even take comfort in knowing how close India was. She didn't leave Boston for the holiday, and she wouldn't have anyway. Her family in North Carolina were horrible people and she told him that she hadn't seen any of them since she came to Harvard.

That meant that, for the next few days, he was stuck in Social Circle, Georgia. All alone. With no escape plan.

"Sarah, look, Remy's here!"

...and Leah.

She came down the road on her rollerblades, looking entirely too proud of herself, and their cousin Sarah on her trail. Sarah wasn't particularly bad, but Remy wasn't entirely comfortable around—

"A little bird told me you were going to be away this year."

"Gurl, you don't even want to know what happened."

"No I don't. I'm just glad you're here, Becca."

Becca. A cursed name. Yeah, maybe that's going a bit overboard, but… Remy wasn't called Becca since… well, Christmas of last year. But it's been a long time!

"I can rollerblade, right Remy?" Leah was holding onto his leg, almost dragging him down, and started taking her rollerblades off. "You saw me do it!"

"What are you doing?"

"I don't want Mom to see…"

"But you'll freeze!"

"But she won't be mad at me!"

"Becca, would you like to hear the holiday forecast?" Sarah tapped Remy on the shoulder as she said that. He didn't really, but… "Sunny. Way too sunny. With high chance of showers and a possible thunderstorm."

(Translated, it meant there will be fights. A lot of fights. And Remy was ready to deal with them, but… it didn't mean he wanted to hear it.)

"Wow, thanks for all the help, Sarah."

"No need to be rude, I'm just trying to prepare you. Everyone is coming. And some of us aren't as accepting of your ‘identity' as others."

That was incredibly true. Sadly. It took Linda no time at all to let everyone know that her daughter believes that she's a boy, and it took his grandmother no time to tell him that when she was younger, she had a very good friend who was born a boy, but lived as her true feminine self, and that she misses that friend so much because "there was no kinder or sweeter woman you'd ever meet, too bad we had to lose her to that wretched AIDS. We didn't have no cocktails or whatever back then, not like today. She died something like three years after you were born. You would've loved Celia."

It was going to be an insufferable holiday.

"Sarah, you're barely two years older than me. You don't—"

"I'm not mothering you. I'm just pointing out the facts."

Leah let go of Remy's leg, and instead grabbed onto his arm, the rollerblades in one hand. She was barefoot, she was cold, and he just wanted to hold her tight so she wouldn't freeze too much.

He was falling hard and fast for the sister he didn't want to meet a couple weeks ago, and he was struggling to understand what exactly happened.

"Sarah has a boyfriend now," Leah said happily as she led Remy (and his bag) to the house. "He's not very nice." She threw her rollerblades into a small shed near the door and quickly closed it.

"I'll bet."

"It's why she's being a bitch. I think. I don't know."

"It's how she's always been. Don't feel bad."

Leah decided to give him a house tour, and explained that nobody was there yet because everyone will come tomorrow and Stephen had a thing to do in Atlanta and Rachel had a play date. And Linda's house was… well, a house.

Remy was so used to the small and outrageously expensive apartment on West 106th, with the bad lighting and the closet-sized bedrooms, that the house seemed huge to him. The living room alone was - mismatched furniture aside - incredibly impressive. The floor-to-ceiling windows let in so much natural light that reflected off the shiny hardwood floors, the cream-colored walls and the needlessly large flat-screen TV, that Remy doubted they even needed the huge fucking chandelier (okay, maybe he was exaggerating a bit) that hung in the middle of the room. The walls were covered in crayon doodles and bright purple marks where the girls' heights were measured, and a few dark scratches. Obvious evidence that a certain scooter kept running into them.

Two black suede couches faced the brick fireplace (a fucking fireplace? Utterly pointless, much like a lot of things in this room), with dark blue and gray throwing pillows placed strategically on them. It looked incredibly comfortable. Between the couches and the fireplace was a small glass coffee table, "adorned" with misplaced toys and children's art supplies. A beautiful, blue-green glass vase full of white daffodils was right in the middle of the table. Leah proudly told him that she picked them herself.

Wooden bookcases covered the wall next to the entrance, and two light gray, plush armchairs, with the same dark blue and gray pillows, faced them. Remy was very familiar with those armchairs. They used to belong to his grandparents. He used to torture those chairs with Sarah when they were younger, draw on them with markers and put stickers all over the armrests. How his grandmother managed to remove the stickers was beyond him, but he knew for a fact that she put them through very intensive cleaning after every visit.

Two years ago they disappeared from their house in Red Bank, New Jersey. And nobody could explain to him why.

In the corner of the room, next to the bookcases, sat a sleek Steinway that Remy knew very well. It belonged to his grandfather. He wasn't even aware that it, too, made its way from New Jersey to Georgia.

(Nobody told Remy anything anymore, as it turned out. At least he could take comfort in knowing that Roger's piano was being put to good use.)

And that was just the living room. Remy didn't even want to think about the hallway.

"We moved here from Atlanta when I started going to school and my grandma and grandpa wanted me to go to where Dad went to school," Leah started rambling. "And I miss Atlanta. There's a lot more to do there, there's a lot more fun stuff to—"

"I know." The offended look on her face went away when Remy put his hand in her hair, to calm her down. "I live two blocks away from Broadway, I just need to take the subway and I'll be at Times Square, but I can't. I don't have the money for it and I don't want to take money from my dad."

"Isn't that annoying?"

"Leah, you're seven. Stop complaining about that kind of stuff," Sarah chided as she pushed past them, a glass of water in her hand, and went to sit down. "Just wait until you're in college."

"You mean, the place where everything is close by and rather affordable thanks to student discounts and the option of working on campus?"

"You're only a senior in high school, what do you know—"

"I go to Harvard, Sarah. It's been a couple months already."

"Oh… yeah. I'm sure you're doing great."

Yeah. Maybe this holiday he'll just stick to Leah.

——

"If there is a thing you should know about your mother," Edith Brigham told her grandchild in late 1992, "it's that she is too headstrong for her own good. It doesn't matter how much you try to change her mind, she'll never listen."

This was the reason Remy kept talking to his grandmother after the divorce. Why he kept visiting Edith and Roger after Linda left.

"Where's grandma and Roger?"

"They won't be coming this holiday, Rebecca. They're in Thailand."

Remy was absolutely not ready for this thanksgiving.

Stephen started a conversation with him about college while Linda was finishing things up in the kitchen that Wednesday. He asked him about his boyfriend, Remy did his best to avoid those particular questions ("is Ian playing any sports?" "She told me she was a cheerleader in high school, she wasn't allowed to do color guard"; Stephen choked on his beer when Remy said that), and things just seemed…

Overall, things seemed strangely calm.

Remy missed Edith and Roger.

"Who's she?" Linda asked from the kitchen.

"Never heard of her."

"Rebecca, please be serious."

"Remember when you met my best friend and she told you her name is Ian?" Linda made a choking sound. "Remember grandma's friend Celia?"

"That— you never even met her. You were too young. You don't even remember her. You are not the same as grandma's friend."

"I'm sure my best friend would love to hear that."

"So he's… he…"

"You can call her a she, you know."

"Grandma doesn't have a friend called Celia," Leah piped in from the corner, where she was sitting at the piano, trying to motivate herself to play it. Little Rachel was pressing all the keys, irritating Leah quite a bit.

"She died of a really bad disease before you were born," Linda said sharply. Something in her changed when talking to Leah.

"She was very nice," Remy added, trying to be softer than Linda. "Grandma says that she was a painter, and she spent a lot of time reading books, and that there was nobody sweeter than her. She died of AIDS."

"What's that?"

"Don't you—"

"Acquired immune deficiency syndrome." Leah hummed to herself as Remy said that. He could feel Linda glare at him. "You get it from contaminated blood or unsafe sex, and your immune system just doesn't work. I don't know a lot about it, so you should probably read about it—"

"Rebecca, she's seven years old!"

"She's a seven year old who knows that female hyenas have penises, Linda! She's old enough to know about AIDS."

"...you sound just like your grandmother."

"Thanks, I try to."

Leah just hummed again in understanding and left the piano in order to go painting. Rachel's key-pressing was getting too annoying for her. She said her hearing can't take it anymore.

Remy believed her.

"You can't just explain STDs to my child, Rebecca," Stephen hissed at him through gritted teeth, suddenly looking rather threatening.

"One of my professors said that if you can't explain it to a child, you don't truly understand it yourself."

"That's no excuse to—"

"Mom I have a headache can you tell Rachel to go away?"

"Deal with it. Rachel, sweetie, come here."

"Deal with it?" Linda just… shrugged. "Leah, come here, love. And bring my bag with you."

So she did. Remy took an ibuprofen pill out of the bag and gave it to her. And Linda...

"You're drugging up my kid?"

"She told you she has a headache. I'm having cramps right now, so I have painkillers on me. Shocker? To you, probably. You're the one who taught me that the cramps are just another sign that my body so terribly wants to have children, and—"

"Spit that out, Leah. You don't need anything."

And with that, Remy gave up on trying to talk to Linda. (Leah did not spit out the pill.)

——

Sunday, December 1st, 2002

The rest of the holiday was just as awful. Leah got overwhelmed by everything, Remy kept fighting with his aunts, and the alcohol didn't help in the least. Everyone felt Edith and Roger's absence and it only made things that much worse.

He should've stayed in Boston.

When he called India after getting off the plane, she told him to take comfort in the fact that Christmas is only three weeks away. And, yeah, she was right. But it didn't make things any better…

For now, he decided, he should focus on other things. Midterms were starting very soon. Next Tuesday was Emile's birthday. His dad started working on a new production—

There was a knock on the door.

"I heard you had a horrible holiday," an adorable, heavily-accented, quiet voice said once Remy opened the door. He could hear the smile in it. "Nothing cuddles and cookies can't solve, right?"

Thin, pale hands pulled Remy in for a hug, and finally. Remy came home.

——

"Umm… Emile, babe, you're crushing my lungs."

"Oh, oops. Sorry."

"Want to watch Nightmare Before Christmas and do absolutely nothing else?"

"Sounds lovely. Let's do it."