Once, when she’d been in her late teens, Emilia’s class had been taken on a trip. While it wasn’t uncommon for Baalphorian students to be taken on school trips once or twice a season, for their school, those trips had usually been insular, only students from their own school—or occasionally other schools that dotted the Penns—included.
Why? Simply because the Hyrat clones, who were primarily raised across The Penns, attracted attention and scorn. Even wandering through museums and art galleries, or running across other people traversing through the Lithra Cave System, held a risk that someone would do something.
Fortunately—although still unacceptably, in Emilia’s opinion—the majority of people they’d come across just gave them a wider berth, a mixture of tense silence and whispers leaving them. Occasionally, however, they’d come across someone who had a history with The Black Knot—yes,
The Black Knot
; sometimes these people didn’t even have a history with the clones in particular—and confront them.
“Where is my brother!?”
they would yell, as though they hadn’t just announced to everyone in the world that they were related to someone heinous enough for The Black Knot to have permanently detained them.
The clones would ignore them, usually—Baylor had always been a bit more hot-tempered, but that was generally reserved for when one of his brothers or Emilia were being threatened; rather, it had been Emilia and the rest of them who had often stepped in, telling men—why was it so often men?—many times their age to fuck off. Teachers would get involved, the older Hyrat clones who often acted as bodyguards on their trips outside The Penns as well.
The trip would go on. Emilia would make sure to spend time with the triplets and any other clones, making sure they knew they were loved and accepted, that they were right to not care about the things some random person had yelled at them, about the accusations they had made, because that was the thing: the clones really didn’t care, nor would anyone else with a black knot.
Black knots didn’t feel guilt over random people, only people they liked. If any of her black knotted friends hurt her or people she loved, they’d feel guilt, shame, but other people? They could wander up to a small child and snap their neck without remorse, only the fact that
she
would be disgusted with them holding them back.
There were other ways to control and guide black knots into, you know, not killing anyone who annoyed them, of course, but there was a reason the families that controlled The Black Knot raised their children in as normal a setting as they could manage. Friendships, obsessive as they were wont to be, with
normal
people were a much better control mechanism than threats or therapy would ever be.
Black Knots loved with an obsession seen nowhere else, and once they loved, they did everything in their power to hold on to that love. The fact that Emilia was currently facing prison time because she knew that—because she had known that there would be no stopping the black knotted man who had attached himself onto Lux and decided if he couldn’t have her, no one would—was not lost on her. As unfortunate as that whole situation was, every other black knot she considered a friend was someone she loved just as fiercely back… even if her relationship with Rafe was current a giant mound of question marks.
Knowing so many meant Emilia knew there was often a little part of them that wasn’t exactly guilt, but rather a small, perpetual question mark of its own—a question of
Where do my actions and beliefs land me in the spectrum of social rightness? What do the people I love think of what I have or haven’t done?
Black knots might not care what random people thought of their actions, but they certainly cared about what those they loved thought, constantly striving to align themselves to their most loved peoples’ framing of morality and the world.
Yes, what you said was rude.
It also needed to be said.
No, they’re the one in the wrong.
I think we’re just… not going to tell anyone about this.
Why? Because even Loren is gonna be questioning the thought that definitely didn’t go into this decision.
Hence, during their usual school trips, she’d taken to assuring her friends they weren’t the problem. It was both unnecessary and essential.
On the particular trip that her mind always slipped away to, whenever she dressed up to go out with the clones, knowing that she could be walking around naked and still wouldn’t be the one attracting attention, she hadn’t been the one reassuring any of the clones that the random, grown ass adult who accosted them while they were innocently going on a scavenger hunt set up through that trip’s museum was in the wrong.
It had been one of the few trips they’d held with schools from outside The Penns. It wasn’t one of the giant,
good will
trips that included practically every school, save the ones that served kids with
special needs
—a distinction reserved for kids who had criminal records, severe disabilities, or irregular deviations deemed
dangerous
and were therefore held in special facilities—but had included several hundred students as they descended on a ski hill for a few weeks.
An entire hotel had been reserved for their exclusive use, many students from The Penns complaining about the lacklustre accommodations—not her or her siblings, who had grown up in conditions that made that hotel seem like a dream. Lectures had been held in huge auditoriums, teachers wandering the aisles and shushing students because with several hundred students filling the space, even a small portion of them whispering would be too disruptive.
There had been a few cases of other students making snide comments about the clones, a few who had even known the Laprise twins by sight, but overall, it hadn’t been any worse than their usual trips. In fact, in that regard, they’d experienced more vitriol at the hands of random adults as they skied and explored the village that surrounded the mountain.
Over the long years of experiencing such things, the specifics of what had been said, of which blurred face of memory had spoken, glared, spit at them, had vanished into the aether. What she did remember from this specific trip—other than the joy of skiing and falling and spending nights tucked in with her friends as they laughed, of stolen touches with kids from other schools and even a few tumbles in the sheets because
their
teachers weren’t used to dealing with someone like her—was the comment one boy had made to her.
When she thought about it now, forcing her shock into focus and overlaying other memories of the boy throughout the trip with the person who had spoken to her, Emilia didn’t think he’d meant what he said to be cruel, to be so pointed and shattering that even now, over a decade later, it still filled her mind as she looked at herself in the mirror.
A beautiful woman looked back, which was odd—she’d so long looked at herself and seen
a girl
, barely older than the scraggly thing her parents had dragged home with them. Almost twenty-five years on, she was no longer so run down and pathetic—Rafe’s description of her, when they’d first met.
Long, silver hair brushed her thighs, despite the intricate braids she’d woven into a crown using the fancy hairstyling machine that one of the clones—she still had yet to figure out which one—had left in her room when she’d first shown up, several weeks earlier. Baylor’s tiara was tucked safely into the braid, shattering black and sparkling in the dim light of her room, making her look like the princess Olivier claimed her to be.
Somewhere along the line, her hips and thighs had swelled, her breasts not so much—not that anyone had ever made like she was lacking, Valor in particular always happy to show them appreciation. Huge eyes peered back at her from under a dusting of sparkles over her eyelids, and the mouth dozens of boys had praised her for, had told her they’d had fantasies about, pouted just slightly.
She was pretty—eye-catching even without the revealing, dark-purple dress she’d pulled on, hugging her body like a second skin, black ribbons running down her arms, her legs, her back, and leaving the impression she was a present, just waiting for someone to open.
If she had been alone, or with virtually any of her other friends—even Rafe or Andre, despite how well known they were as Laprise heirs these days—
she
would have been the centre of attention. It wasn’t something she needed or wanted, but she accepted it all the same.
To not accept how eyes fought to find her would have meant making herself smaller, and of all the gifts of knowledge and self-confidence her parents had ever given her, the demand that she never feel like she
had
to make herself smaller for other people was one of her most treasured, even if that very desire to not be a distraction was how she’d ended up adopted by them in the first place.
Oh, she still made herself smaller often enough, letting her friends take the lead, letting them sparkle as she wore blander clothes, pressed her presence into a box, let her posture fall into that perfect place so she stood out a little less. While she might shine with so very little effort, some people required more, and she was perfectly happy to push herself smaller, so their effort wouldn’t be wasted.
Part of her had probably known, even before a boy unintentionally broke her world view, that she could be
more
with the Hyrat clones and still remain invisible. She could dress how she wanted, be as loud and vibrant as she wanted, and somehow attract little attention. She could be herself for no reason other than that she wanted to be herself, simply because
they
would always attract what attention would otherwise fall to her.
It had gone as an unacknowledged fact, was the thing, living in the back of her mind as a fact that led her to wear bright and strange clothes—much of it things she’d picked up when travelling with her father in the Free Colonies—when hanging with the triplets, who had always seemed so happy to see her not giving a shit about what other people would think of her style—and to be clear, she didn’t care. There was just something freeing about being with the clones and not having to worry about people giving her a side-eye, about gross old men trying to peek up her skirt until someone—usually an older Hyrat clone, who had so often been left her questionably effective babysitters since her father had mostly given up on keeping her from running wild when her Censor was installed—popped out of the shadows to escort their nasty ass away.
The triplets might be babies—not so much anymore, but certainly back when they’d been teenagers, even if half the adults they came across outside of The Penns had still treated them as adult killers—but no one dared look at her like that when they were with her. Either they were too afraid to offend a clone, too afraid they would suddenly be taken into custody, or too distracted by seeing a clone in person, especially ones acting so… normal, even if Emilia knew that normalcy didn’t translate into everyone’s mind—the reactions of Olivier and his students had highlighted the dichotomy of people who were confused to see a Hyrat clone acting
normal
, and those who continued to fear them despite the laughter echoing out of them.
So yeah, regardless of whether she’d actively realized it or not, being with them was freeing, and then someone had actually pointed it out.
“You know, I didn’t even realize you were with them,”
the boy had laughed, leaning against the wall next to the fabricator after she’d wandered off from the table she’d been eating lunch at with the triplets, as well as one of the clones from another school,
“not until you came over here. They kinda hide you. Impressive, considering, well…”
His green eyes had flickered over her, catching on her breasts, the nipples peaked from the cold air occasionally bursting in when someone opened the door to the snowy world outside. They had lingered there a second too long before returning to her face.
“You’re hard enough to ignore when you aren’t dressed like that. Is it on purpose? Are you just friends with those guys because they hide you so well? It must get tiresome, always being the centre of attention.”
The boy had reached out, probably intending to wipe a stray hair off her forehead, only to find himself being flung across the room by a skill. Fortunately, none of the teachers had been able to figure out exactly who had activated the skill—shit would have gotten messy if they’d managed to determine it was Baylor, the clones under stricter rules about conduct than the rest of them while they were on trips. The boy hadn’t been hurt, thankfully, just a little shaken, and hadn’t tried to talk to her—or anyone else from The Penns—after that.
His words had stuck in her head, though, and eventually the triplets had had to sit her down, and ask why she was being so weird. It had taken less than a day for them to see that something was wrong, her time with them sparser, the way she acted and dressed around them more subdued than normal.
Then, it had been the triplets assuring her that they didn’t mind being her shield—that they had never felt like she was using them as a wall of protection simply so she could be herself without fearing the assholes of their world. They had never felt like she didn’t love them, like she was only around them for her own peace and erasure.
“If anything,”
Valor had said in that quiet way of his that was like a dagger through the soul,
“if you start treating us differently because we cannot control that we are a shield to your vibrance, that will be more offensive.”
His fingers had brushed soft over the tear sliding down her cheek, and in hindsight, Emilia had no idea how she hadn’t realized that, in that moment, if she’d asked, he would have climbed on top of her and fucked her so softly her tears would have shifted from sadness into the pure ache of being loved into frustration.
So, she didn’t treat them differently. She was herself when they went out, using them like the inadvertent shield they were and offering them the entirety of what she was, when she was free to be it, in exchange. Few people were ever able to see her so free, let alone continue to love her within
how much
she was.
Still, Emilia thought of that boy and his words whenever she let herself so fully out for them. Part of her was annoyed that he had pointed it out, another part grateful: if he hadn’t said that, in that exact moment of them being locked in such close proximity for weeks, this unsaid, unacknowledged thing would have lingered between them, and perhaps she would have realized it on her own one day, would have pushed herself away from three boys she loved so much simply because she didn’t want to risk that she really was using them.
It had been rude, and yet, also something that had changed her life for the better.
It was strange, how such small moments in time could shape the form of someone’s life and their understanding of themself.
Arc 8 | Chapter 283: To Be Vibrant and Invisible
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