#tw: morbid idolisation

[victoriams]

∗ 97﹕ sender  has  hidden  an  injury  from  receiver ,  and  receiver  finds  out . auggie & liv <3

tw: references to torture, injuries, and alcohol

She may not be the oldest, but Livinia has always felt protective of her siblings.

Maybe it was her mother's doing – imbuing her with an inflated sense of responsibility for the actions and wellbeing of those around her. Or perhaps it was just a repressed instinct to nurture – however vile the word felt on her tongue. Though she would rarely admit it, there were few people in the world she cared about more than her siblings. Even if they spent most of the time at one another's throats, there was still an understanding that, when all the cards were on the table, they would still sit down to eat at it. Together. That they were a united force against whichever outsider forces threatened them.

It had been easier when they were children. Max and Auggie never strayed too far from her line of sight. She would be there when the nannies patched up their knee scrapes. She would know when they were upset. Although comfort had never been Livinia's strong suit, she would try, in her own way. She would watch them a little closer – ask the cooks to give them extra dessert.

Then, they all grew up. Grew apart, even if they were still hopelessly intertwined in one another's lives. Her parents would call caring a weakness, and, eventually, Livinia came to view it as one, too. She learned to reign it in, she learned to be cold. Max learned to hide his feelings with a bright smile and bold lies. Auggie learned to be quiet. And, when they weren't, they learned to be angry.

Maybe she shouldn't be as upset as she is, then, when she sees deep scars on Augustus' back and realises she has no clue how, or when, they got there.

Maybe, if she were a little more sober and the moon were not so low in the sky, she would have swallowed her morbid curiosity and pocketed the information for later. Maybe, if she hadn't invited herself to crash at Auggie's place in lieu of going home to her boring husband, she wouldn't have seen the scars at all. Maybe, if they hadn't been equally inebriated, Auggie would have thought twice before slipping into their pyjama shirt with Livinia seemingly in the next room.

They don't seem to realise their mistake, at first. They turn back around and fix Livinia with a sheepish grin – move to gather some blankets for her to sleep with. But Livinia doesn't move. Her feet won't let her – and she's not sure if it's the shock or the alcohol, but nausea quickly makes a home in her stomach. She feels unsteady on her feet. She doesn't notice as Augustus' expression quickly morphs into concern, and then they are darting forward to steady her. She thinks they're saying something to her – but there's cotton in her ears and hot tears springing to her eyes. She wipes them away furiously.

A plethora of possibilities run through her mind – maybe they fell backwards into a rose bush, maybe it's carpet burn, or road rash, or some sort of nasty skin condition. Anything but the horrifying, numbing, most likely conclusion that her mind continues to skip to like a broken record. Somebody did this to them. Somebody hurt – no, tortured, her sibling... and she had no idea. Somebody did this to them. Somebody looked Auggie – her older sibling, the one she had idolised as a child and started to understand as an adult, one of the only people in the world she truly loved more than herself – in the eye, and mutilated them.

And Livinia didn't know. They didn't tell her. They tried to hide it from her. They had suffered in silence, because their sister would always be too cold to understand, right?

Livinia lets out a shaky breath, then another. Her entire body is shaking – she's sitting on the bed now. Auggie must have manoeuvred her there in her haze. Sat her down and taken her hands, rubbing small circles over the back of them. Finally, she gathers the nerve to look them in the eye – she's sure her own have an uncanny mix of fury and sorrow, and she speaks – "What happened?"