RP: Sibling Reunion @ The Archives Who: Gael & Serafina What: Meeting again When: Tuesday 13th Feb, 2000 Where: Tarrytown Lighthouse Supe Archive Warnings: brief nudity, swearing Completion Status: Complete
I don’t need to live with you anymore. The words echoed in Gael’s head to the rhythm of Heureux Lake lapping on the rocks. It had been over a month, and he still couldn’t make any sense of them. For him, living with Marcos had not been a matter of ‘need’. Hadn’t they chosen to live together, to build a life together? Gael would swear it had been true, once, and he couldn’t understand when that had changed.
He pushed the thoughts aside, forcing his attention back to the white-painted bookshelves built into the walls of Tarrytown Lighthouse. The books were, according to Maria, organised by date which seemed minimally useful, but what did Gael know? He wasn’t an archivist. Maybe people came in all the time asking for ‘that book on shifters published in 1985’.
From below, he heard the thud of the heavy door which separated the inside of the archive from the natural elements. Tucking the 1985 book back onto its shelf, he called down, “Just a minute, I’m coming!” He hurried down the stairs, eager to see whether his theory would prove true.
–
It had been a couple days since the new archivist was meant to have started, but Fina's class schedule had meant she was better suited to the library at Colombia. She would be glad to have her Lighthouse time back though, she was running out of notes on Supe sources that she'd stockpiled before the opening times got shorter and more erratic.
Emerging from the water in seal form she transformed back in the secluded entrance, fully nude, and neatly caught her skin and the dry bag she had been pulling along before pushing through the outer door. She had started keeping her own clothes in one of the lockers only a few weeks into using the archive.
She heard the slightly muffled voice through the locker room door and was surprised by how young they sounded. She had been expecting someone at least middle aged. Most of the volunteers were. “No rush, I'm changing,” she called back. Best not startle the new archivist, since she needed them onside to help her out.
Undoing the padlock she extracted a woollen wrap dress and slipped into it as she hung her seal skin to drip in the designated area. She hauled up the dry bag onto the table designated for wet things and started to open it up. “I'm decent!” She called, knowing she had a couple more minutes of sorting herself out before she headed through to the archive itself.
___
Gael slowed his steps; this was obviously a regular visitor, not someone new he needed to offer a dry change of clothes to. When Gael had expressed his doubts about taking on the job without official archivist training, Maria had waved him away with promises that half his duties would be those of receptionist. Gael supposed he was about to find out how true that was.
Given the all-clear, he pushed the door open, bearing his best customer-service smile. “Welcome, welcome, you’re actually my -” The words came to a halt in the time it took for Gael to realise that the woman didn’t merely look familiar in the way any Heuruex selkie would look familiar. “Sefie!” It had been years since they’d seen each other in person, for which Gael mostly blamed himself. Until this year, he hadn’t been back to Tarrytown since high school.
He rushed forward, but stopped short of throwing his arms around his sister. “I wondered how long it would be before I saw you.” That it had been as long as this was honestly surprising, when they lived on the same property.
–
She wasn't actually looking as the door opened, since she was too busy trying not to get her notes wet in the puddle that had fallen off the dry bag. But the voice that continued was suddenly far more familiar. Her head swept up quickly, so her hair also flew out of the way. “Gael!” She exclaimed. She knew he was in town, of course, but she hadn't expected to see him here.
It took a few seconds to shake off her shock and close the gap between them. Her papers dropped into the damp patch as she clasped her brother in a brief, but tight hug. It had been so long since they had been face to face.
She stepped back to give him space, he hadn't completed the rush for a hug after all. “I had to find out you were back from Miche Spraggs, Mama didn't even tell me!” She complained. Admittedly she and her mother got along best if they gave each other space and lived independently, but they did still see each other and speak most weeks due to sheer proximity. Although it was sometimes in seal form, which made it rather harder to communicate complex human messages.
Fina sighed and nodded. “I tend not to come to the main house and school and work keeps me pretty busy. I saw you at a distance like a week ago, but you wouldn't have heard me shout. I kept meaning to work out where you were, but my schedule has been frantic.”
___
Gael smiled, stooping to gather Sefie’s papers out of the damp patch before they were ruined. “Ah, don’t blame Mama,” he muttered, feeling his face warm despite the cool air of the archive. “She didn’t exactly know I was coming.” It could hardly help but incite interest if he left things there, but Gael still paused, trying to find a short way to explain the upheaval of the last month. Maybe it would’ve been easier if he’d understood himself what had happened. Or rather, why it had happened.
Over the week he’d been back, he’d struggled to tell from Maria exactly how her relationship stood with Sefie; she’d become even more adept at a politician’s non-answers than she’d been when Gael had left home. Selfie’s frank acknowledgement that she tended not to come into the house seemed more clear-cut. “We’ll have to change that, I can always use more people to eat my cooking.” He laughed softly, “And now your schedule brings you to me anyway,” he pointed out. “I’ve mostly been getting to grips with things here, when I’m not at the house or in the water.”
–
When he said Mama hadn’t known he was returning her eyebrows went up. “Are you okay?” she asked, looking him up and down. He didn’t seem physically hurt from what she could see, but that wasn’t totally foolproof. And it didn’t cover emotional harm. She would happily hurt something or someone who had hurt him if he wanted her to. Family might irritate her sometimes but they were still family.
“I’d argue, but honestly one step less to decent food sometimes would be really welcome,” she said and slumped down a little, knees bending and back curving. And it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a bit of a buffer between her and Mama once in a while. Not that she should really put that on Gael, but it was hard to spend too much time with her Mama without some kind of fight happening, despite best efforts on both parts.
Just then her brain started kicking back in from the shock of Gael being here. “Hang on, if you’re here, are you the new archivist?” she asked sharply. She finally took back the notes he had picked up for her and put them over on the dry table. She was fairly sure that he didn’t have archive training unless something massive had changed and he’d never told her. She really didn’t want to have to train someone with zero experience about all the things she needed.
—
Gael exhaled hard, as if that would help him find the words. He didn’t want to leave Sefie questioning if there was something physically wrong with him, so he had to do his best to explain something. “Marcos and I… broke up?” He winced, not because it hurt to admit, but because it still didn’t feel like the right phrase. “That’s not how he would’ve put it, I don’t think. What do you call it when someone acts like your relationship was never serious in the first place?” There should be a word for that, but Gael didn’t think there was.
“We’ll see if you still call it decent food once you’ve tried it.” Gael wasn’t totally oblivious to the fact that his culinary adventures couldn’t always be described as triumphs. But he never had a problem with them, and Sefie had grown up with the same mix of influences, so maybe she’d be more open than some of Marcos’ friends who’d insisted that black beans didn’t belong in a risotto. “I can always come to you and cook, on nights you don’t want to deal with Mama.”
The sudden sharpness in his sister’s tone made Gael raise an eyebrow. “At least for now,” he confirmed. As much as he was enjoying having permanent and easy access to the lake again, he didn’t know if he was planning to stay forever. “What are you researching, anyway?”
–
Serafina had never been sure about Gael’s relationship with Marcos. Nobody had actually said in so many words that the two were a couple, and she'd barely met him when the two of them were teenagers. On the other hand she had had suspicions for a long time, especially with Gael haring off after him to somewhere with basically no water. Any attempt she had made by phone, or more recently email, to be sure if the relationship was romantic or platonic had failed. Sometimes it seemed one way, sometimes the other, and she had long become comfortable with either.
At first she was full of sympathy for Gael. Breakups were hard, and she could only imagine a relationship that long would make it even harder. Then she was enraged. Not by Gael, but by Marcos. Who had apparently been stringing her brother along. “Personally I'd call it him being a dickhead,” she said fiercely, before softening her tone. “I'm sorry, manito, that's horrible. That … man deserves his dick shrivelling up until he needs a magnifying glass to find it. Perhaps he'd find his integrity at the same time!” She had called him a particularly colourful version of an epithet that implied improper things about his relationship with goats. She was very glad she had eventually learned enough Spanish to swear properly, because it was so much more creative than English.
“Some days all I need is the right temperature and not to be puking at the end, so I think you'll be fine,” she joked. It wasn't quite that bad, but her cooking was one of the least organised parts of her system. And there was only so much big batch cooking she could manage. “But not having to deal with Mama every day would be nice. Also you can come over for non food reasons too.” She impulsively reached over and held onto his arm. “It’s so good to see you.”
There was a muffled groan as Fina reacted to that news. She really wasn’t looking forward to having to dive into the archive with the help of someone who knew it even less than she did. And how had he got this job? The answer was probably Mama, and the place was mostly run by volunteers, but at least the previous archivist had been knowledgeable, if a little flustered by her assorted requests. She wanted to say something but she bit it back in the face of his situation. At least she could see how he got on first.
Her research, that she could talk about. “I’m doing an exploration of the proliferation of Supe specific language into human society and how that has changed since 1980, and how it changes in contact with humans,” she explained. “Apparently my initial proposal about the treatment of Supes was deemed to not be sufficiently in my wheelhouse and having not enough evidence,” she couldn’t help but add with heavy sarcasm and an eyeroll. That one hadn’t even made it as far as her Colombia applications.
—-
“But-” Gael pressed his lips together, fighting the impulse to leap to Marcos’ defence. Sefie was right; whatever integrity Marcos might have had in the beginning of their relationship, or in other areas, he’d thrown it aside when he’d decided to pretend they’d been living together out of necessity. If Gael’s family were anything to go by, the anger would come, once he’d got over the confusion. In the meantime, he let Sefie rage for him, taking comfort in knowing it was justified.
The right temperature and a lack of vomiting were definitely things Gael felt confident promising. “I haven’t given anyone food poisoning yet,” he assured. “How are you and Mama getting on, living so close? I asked her but -” He made a face which, he hoped, indicated the non-answer nature of the response he’d gotten from Maria. “I hope I’m not throwing off a family dynamic which only just works.” He smiled back, more pleased than he would’ve expected at the comment. “It’s good to see you too. I think I’ve missed it all more than I realised.”
Gael noted the groan, but assumed it was to do with the fact that he might not stay in the role, causing yet more upheaval as the clan had to find another archivist. There wasn’t much he could do about that, bar promising he wouldn’t leave until Sefie had finished her research, and who knew how long that might take. “Ooh, that sounds cool!” Language had never been his area of interest, but the way it changed when humans got involved still sounded interesting. As for the treatment of Supes not being Sefie’s wheelhouse, Gael frowned. “But you’re literally a selkie. And you’ve lived here.”
–
Fuck, the shock of it was clearly still raw for Gael, and she wanted to both hug him and rage extensively on his behalf, but she didn’t think either of them were going to be welcome right now. “We can talk about that later, if you like, you know, when we’re not here, or when you’re ready,” she offered. In the meantime she was considering if she should give in to the impulse to find someone to go beat up Marcos. Or at least ring up and yell at him if he hadn’t moved yet. She might not have known about their relationship, but that didn’t mean she was happy about some asswipe treating her little brother poorly.
“Super reassuring there,” she said with a little smirk. “Still, I’m happy to return the food favour when I’ve got enough time.” The implication about their mother was far from lost on her and she groaned louder. “I think she’s forgotten how to have a normal conversation with both of us out of the house,” Fina said and shook her head a little. “Honestly we’re both so damn busy we don’t get too much time to see each other and if we manage to do it in the water that makes life easier. Nobody has come to actual violence yet, but we have arguments from time to time. Mostly it’s not so bad.” She and Maria were very much still learning each other’s sore spots and no-gos, and a year in Japan had taught Fina a lot about reigning in her temper. Didn’t always work when it came to her mother, but it was better than it used to be.
She grinned when he was enthusiastic about her research. “Yeah and there’s a reason the stats analysis is my least favourite part of research. Give me the words and mapping origins any day.” She was a competent mathematician as far as was needed, but he had always been the one who enjoyed it. She rolled her eyes again. “I think it’s more because I have a linguistics major and I was suggesting something far more sociology based. It’s totally got some discrimination behind it, but I liked this idea too so I didn’t fight. Plus I can probably fold some of it in because language doesn’t just change in positive ways.”
She realised her feet were starting to get chilly, since even selkie body warmth can get defeated by too much cold tile and she shivered slightly, darting back to her still open locker to stick her feet in her ugg boots. One of her few pricey indulgences, she had splurged on the real thing and found they were ideal for the cold feet and tile combo at the archive. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any plans to add LoC or Dewey classifications to the archive?” she asked, without any real hope of a positive. It had grown independent of either system for obvious reasons, but it did make researching that much trickier.
—-
Slowly, Gael nodded. He had, at least, moved beyond the phase where some part of him believed that if he didn’t talk about it, it wouldn’t have happened, and the number of people he could talk about it with was vanishingly small. Especially if he wanted to talk in person. “My big sister volunteering to talk about emotions?” he asked teasingly, accompanying the words with a genuine smile. “That would be good, though. Maybe over food and/or alcohol.” His eyebrows lifted slightly, realising they’d not really been in the same place long enough since he turned 21 to get drunk together. They should remedy that.
He couldn’t help a laugh, amused by the suggestion that it had been their presence in the house that had kept their mother able to have normal conversations. “I hope that’s not true.” Otherwise, it didn’t bode well for their younger sister. Speaking of whom, Gael should check in with her, too, find out how she felt about the descent of her two older siblings on the family home after all these years. For now, though, he focused on Sefie. “I might be a better peacemaker than I was at 11, but I make no promises.”
Eyes lighting up, Gael nodded eagerly, “You should show me all your stats, I bet they’re fascinating.” Just because he’d dropped out of his degree, didn’t mean Gael was any less interested in numbers and manipulating them. “Not necessarily now. What did you come in for?” He did wrinkle his nose, slightly, “Maybe I don’t want to see the stats about the negative language. It’s one thing to do the work to try to improve things, it’s another to see in black-and-white just how bad they actually are, you know?”
As yet, Gael didn’t have any particular plans, so he shrugged. “I feel like it needs some kind of organisation beyond publication date, but I don’t really know who’s using it or what they want it to look like.” Much as he would’ve liked to just impose his own preferences, if every archivist did that, they would be bound to lose things.
–
She laughed and poked her tongue out at him playfully. “I can talk emotions,” she teased. “I give a crap about you and if it’ll help I’m happy to do it. I got practice with cousins in Washington and girlfriends at school.” It was a slightly too enthusiastic protest and they both knew it, but it was honest. “Alcohol would absolutely help though!” she admitted.
The little see-sawing of her hand said that Fina was only partly joking. “Depends what you’re talking about or asking. Or maybe it’s just with me because of how much friction we have,” she said and shrugged. She smiled fondly. “Hopefully I’m better at holding it in than I was when I was 13 too. In fact I know I mostly am. Just some days when I’m already at the end of my rope I don’t have the capacity to make the effort,” she said.
She nodded eagerly at Gael “I’ve been tracking the use of a list of words back to about the 50s and I’m here for the next bunch, but sometimes I just come here if I don’t have to be in the city but I want somewhere I’m forced to work.” Technically she wasn’t forced to work even in the archive, but there were far fewer distractions than in the house and she got to have a quick swim to and from it. “Plus it’s quieter here, even on a busy day.”