October 19, 2023

It takes a few wrong turns and the necessary awkward conversations with strangers for directions, but Nathan and Jamie are able to return to their hotel without trouble.

In the back of Nathan's mind is a nagging voice telling him this ease is quite strange. Darkness has fallen and the Doctor hunts best at night. If the creature is still after him, catching him wounded, lost and with an incapacitated partner in crime would be ideal. Yet, his scar doesn't tingle even once.

He is vaguely aware this should have him alarmed, but the worry doesn't quite break through his high of elated delight and his lingering rage over what happened in the restaurant. Jamie, for her part, looks so tired she might just fall asleep the moment she sees a pillow, and with everything that came at her tonight, the Doctor must be the least of her concerns.

If either of them had been pondering the undead with attention at all, the thoughts would've evaporated the moment they set foot in their hotel.

Stella sits at a table in the lobby, alone. She looks up when she takes note their entry. Jamie flinches as their eyes meet, stopping in her tracks. Nathan places his hand on the small of her back to make sure she knows she's not alone.

"Hi," Stella croaks. "I don't suppose you... I don't suppose you want to talk right now, Jamie?"

Jamie shakes her head. She's instantly so stiff and stressed again that Nathan can't stop himself giving Stella a glare, even though the woman isn't doing anything wrong. Stella catches it, but refrains from making any comments.

"I see. That's okay." She nods, nervous eyes wide. "I think tomorrow morning, I'll... go have coffee at that place you like, and I'll sit there and read. You're welcome to join me should you be ready for a conversation by then. If not, I'll understand, too."

"Thank you." Jamie gets those words out, but nothing else. Nathan doesn't add anything before making his way up the stairs with her, although there's plenty he'd like to say to Stella Carrera. Plenty he'd like to ask.

Getting Jamie back to their room okay is his first priority, more important than his own desire for answers. But part of his mind keeps drifting to the woman sitting downstairs, nursing whiskey from a store-bought bottle in a plastic cup. What do you have to say for yourself, Stella? What's been going through your head?

Jamie must've felt him get tense, for she picks up on what he's mulling over. "You can go talk to my sister if you'd like," she mumbles. "I'm going to get my face cleaned up and sleep right after. I'll be fine on my own."

Nathan opens the door for her. "You're sure?"

"Yes, Nate. Pretty sure." She presses one more soft, quick kiss to his lips before shuffling into the room. "See you in the morning."

Nathan nods, closes the door and stares at it a little longer, wearing this dopey grin he's happy nobody is around to see. For a few seconds, his mind is blissfully empty. What was he going to do again?

Right. Talk to Stella.

The prospect of having a serious conversation with Jamie's older sister is enough to turn his expression dour. Not that Stella will be happy to see him, either. Her invitation to talk was extended to Jamie, not Nathan.

Unfortunately for her, he's the best she's going to get tonight. He just hopes she'll be willing to shed light on certain issues that have bothered him since Jamie first brought them up.

Hopes she'll tell the truth instead of defaulting to a lie.

Stella is in the middle of taking a sip of whiskey when he emerges from the stairwell. By the time he's reached her table, she has set her glass down, regarding him with inquisitive surprise. Nathan figures he could kick this off politely, but the ghost of all the stress in Jamie's posture still haunts his fingertips.

He'd rather be a dick.

"So was the second half of dinner more pleasant than the first, Stella?"

"What kind of heartless ghouls do you think we are?" Stella's grip on her glass tightens so much it might shatter in her hands. "Of course we didn't just stay in the restaurant like nothing happened and everything was fine. We paid and took the leftovers back here. The mood wasn't exactly festive anymore."

"So much for your precious perfect birthday night." Nathan gestures at her glass. "Must've been upsetting."

"I'm not upset about my birthday, Nathan. I'm a grown woman, not a teenage girl throwing a tantrum about her fucking quinceañera."

Nathan hasn't heard Stella Carrera swear before. Not once. This evening is getting promising.

"You don't happen to have more plastic cups, do you?"

"Up in my room with Gino, yes. Not here." Stella's tone drips with irritation. "If you want to drink, make do with the bottle."

"Fine with me." Nathan grabs the bottle, opens it, takes a swig. Stella watches like he's pouring nuclear coffee into a house plant's soil again—she clearly didn't expect him to take her up on the offer.

Nathan waits for her to cook up her next nasty jab, but she doesn't.

"I don't... understand how I could've been so... so wrong about everything. So blind and naive. I was hoping maybe the trip would be good for us, but this family never needed a vacation. It needs therapy and professional counseling for at least a year." Stella buries her face in her hands. "I didn't realise we... that she... Oh, god. Jamie..."

Nathan doesn't say anything. He'll just let Stella talk and see what comes out.

"I'm a sorry excuse for a sister." Stella sighs, face still covered. "Say it already. Tell me how lousy I am. You know you want to."

You can say it, go ahead. Taking the energy drinks was one dumb idea.

It's peculiar, Nathan thinks, how two people can be so different yet the same.

"That's how things are handled in your family. It's not how I handle them."

"My family..." Stella drops her hands, but her eyes remain squeezed shut. Her cheeks are flushed—courtesy of the alcohol in her system. "It's... it's hard. Always being in the middle. Trying to keep the peace. And it's been going on for so long. Dad will tell me his parents didn't come to the US for us to squander real opportunities in favour of unstable flights of fancy, and I'll say I understand, and Jamie will tell me dead people's choices have nothing to do with her, and I'll say I understand that, too, and so it goes on and on and on until it drives you up the walls. But I've been so... so hell-bent on trying to make everyone get along I failed to see how much of a toll some things really took. How damaging they were. For Jamie in particular."

"Good thing you're starting to see it now, then." Nathan takes another swig from the bottle. "You can't change the past or erase your mistakes, Stella. But you choose how to move forward. And something in your family does need to change, because it can't go on like this. Unless you'd rather keep destroying each other until there's nothing left to repair."

"None of us ever wanted that."

"It doesn't show."

"You're right—it doesn't. We'll have to put in serious work to start changing it. To fix what we all broke things and try to heal. I... I've been thinking about what you said a few days ago, when we went out for ice cream. You had a point. This family could do with some more understanding and supportive attitudes." Stella takes a sip of her whiskey. "Especially Mom and Dad. They don't get to make Jamie feel miserable because they're lost and stubborn."

"Lost and stubborn?"

"I know the past haunts Mom and Dad, too. Dad was rash throwing Jamie out of the house all those years ago. He never should've done it, but he and Mom really did believe Witchcraft Wednesday wouldn't achieve any of the success it has today. They thought they were teaching a tough life lesson they'd ultimately be thanked for. Except Jamie turned every expectation on its head, and they never did figure out how to cope with the fact they were wrong.

"Fundamentally, they don't understand what she does, how much work goes into it or why she does it. And this is my own speculation, but I've always suspected they deliberately keep themselves ignorant of the finer nuances. When they look at Witchcraft Wednesday, they see a strange, volatile get-rich-quick scheme that leaves Jamie too exposed to all those scary, vile people on the Internet. As long as they can believe that's all there is to it, they can justify their own rash decision. They can pretend it wasn't the biggest mistake of their lives."

Nathan sets the bottle of whiskey back on the table hard. "Nothing good comes out of those ridiculous mental gymnastics."

"I don't agree with their views, Nathan. But I've always had to be the person who understands. I had to be capable of being there for both sides. In hindsight, I should've called Mom and Dad out on their harmful bull much earlier, but it never felt like... like my battle to fight. And Jamie is excellent at pretending the hurtful things people say or do don't bother her. Most days she just continues doing whatever she's up to, seemingly without a care in the world, as if it's not getting through to her because she doesn't deem it worth paying attention to. Water off a duck's back."

It's second nature to Internet personalities, Nathan supposes, to brush the haters aside and keep doing their thing. The moment the hostilities catch up to you, you're a goner. Ignore them, move on, try to prevent their growing in numbers best you can—necessary mechanisms to stay sane and alive. But this is not sustainable, and not easy in the slightest.

When Jamie got cancelled, when all those horrid opinions flooded the socials and her mother gave her flack for it, she called Nathan because she needed his support. The next morning, she was business as usual—casually late, chatting with the undead, roping people into group selfies. If Nathan had possessed no knowledge of the preceding events, he'd never have noticed anything was off with her.

Water off a duck's back, indeed. But put too much poison in the water and even the toughest ducks in the pond will slowly die.

Nathan could tell Stella this, but she seems to have figured it out herself by now.

"I know we can't keep expecting Jamie to do right by us while failing so grossly to do right by her." Stella swirls the last of her whiskey in its cup before downing it. "If you came to me hoping to hear as much, you can rest assured."

"It's good to hear. Not entirely what I came for, though." Nathan crosses his arms on the table, flinching when putting too much weight on his wound sends jolts of pain through his body. "I was wondering if you had anything to say about the rent money."

He shivers, suddenly hot and cold at the same time. A wave of nausea briefly threatens to send his whiskey back up. Stella might've noticed this bout of pained discomfort if his mention of rent money hadn't seized her full attention. "What do you know about the rent money?"

"Only what Jamie told me. That you made her pay hundreds of dollars more than what her share of the rent should've been for months on end and that that money disappeared into your pockets. She wanted to talk to you about it, but she said she never seems to find the right moment for it. I think, if she's willing to talk to you tomorrow, you should tell her the truth. Nothing but the truth."

"You think I'd lie to her about it?"

"That you're very capable of lying to her is the very first thing I ever learned about you."

Stella's face goes bright red. "I... won't deny I can."

"I wouldn't have accepted that if you had. What I'd appreciate is you sharing your version of the story with me before you take it to Jamie. To ensure we know you won't just give her whatever bullshit excuse you think she most wants to hear. If you tell us both the same things, and we can both independently conclude you're telling the truth, I'm sure it would be reassuring for everyone involved. Wouldn't you agree?"

Nathan has faced Derek, the most skilled manipulator he has ever known, in both life and death. If Stella shows but the slightest sign of pulling a Derek-like stunt, he'll be able to tell.

He wants to believe she won't—everything she has said so far has sounded sincere, and she seems too tipsy to spin a web of elaborate lies. But trusting too easily can always present a vicious pitfall.

If Stella meant what she said about change being necessary, she should put her money where her mouth is and start being honest.

"I do agree. But be aware that it's a long story. I'll keep it as short as I can, but if you want to understand it in its proper context, you won't be getting out of that chair for another while."

Nathan makes himself extra comfortable. "Noted. Try me."

"I'll start at the beginning. When I was eighteen years old, I left my hometown to attend university in Morales. Jamie was twelve at the time and alone with our parents from that moment on. We kept in touch, of course, but my contact with all of them, especially Jamie, became sporadic. My studies and side jobs kept me busy, so having time to call or visit became something of a luxury.

"I lived in a dorm on campus for the first few years and hated the living arrangements. I had consistent terrible luck in the 'roommates' department, which was... taxing. It got so bad I became desperate to have a place of my own, even if it meant I had to cough up more money. I convinced my then-boyfriend to rent an apartment in town with me, because it would still be relatively affordable if we split the cost.

"Everything was great for a while after, until I found out he was cheating on me. So I got rid of the man, and I was through with the roommates, and I knew that if I wanted to keep the apartment I'd grown attached to, I needed to pay for it myself. I started working even more and could barely make ends meet, but I kept my head above the water. That was my living situation when Jamie moved in with me."

"When your parents threw her out the house."

"I was livid at them when she texted me about it. I left work early that day to pick her up, thinking all throughout the drive that maybe if I'd stayed more involved, their conflicts wouldn't have escalated so badly. Trying to talk sense into Mom and Dad didn't lead anywhere, so I took Jamie to my apartment in Morales and offered to let her live with me for as long as she needed. And I want to emphasize right now that I didn't do any of that with financial gain in mind. I just had to make sure my little sister was safe and sound."

Thinking only about herself in that situation would've required Stella to be a special kind of cold-blooded. Nathan still doesn't like her much, but he has gotten to know her well enough to have seen that isn't what she is. He's glad she stepped up for her sister, at the very least. If she hadn't, Jamie might've gone entirely off the deep end, and god knows what would've become of her then.

"I gave her time to settle in and adjust," Stella continues her story, "but I also made clear that, while I'd support her where I could, I expected her to get her own life on track and pull her weight. As far as I was concerned, she was an adult and she ought to act like one. Jamie thought that was acceptable and took up the task in... Well. The usual haphazard fashion. Witchcraft Wednesday was a lucrative source of income on the side, but not sustainable at the time. She got herself a waitress job and continued to build up her online career, essentially just flying by the seat of her pants, and I still don't understand how she made it work, but she did. In any case, by then, I figured asking her to split the rent for our shared living space would be more than fair."

"It would've been fair," Nathan comments, "if you hadn't gotten greedy."

"A good excuse for what I did doesn't exist. I'm aware of that." Stella averts her eyes. "I remember this like it happened yesterday. I was telling Jamie about potentially dividing the costs while she was playing that Zelda Switch game that was so popular at the time. So I was talking, and she was nodding along—I wasn't even sure at this point if she was focusing more on me or the video game—and then she asked how much money half of the rent would be. I knew exactly what sum it was, but... the amount that slipped out of my mouth was several hundreds of dollars higher than that.

"In the seconds that followed, I was mentally screaming at myself to correct it. It should've been easy to just say my bad, I seem to have miscalculated, the actual amount is lower. But it wasn't easy at all. My lips seemed glued together. And Jamie thought it over for maybe five seconds before deciding what I said checked out, and she said cool, I'll venmo you that at the start of every month. Just like that." Stella blinks rapidly, still perplexed after all those years. "Then she just sort of... launched into a rant about this annoying Zelda NPC with a... a Flower Garden of Doom or something."

This sounds like an entirely plausible series of events.

Still, Nathan doesn't understand.

"Why wasn't it easy, Stella? Why couldn't you just fix that whole mess before it even properly started?"

"I've spent countless hours trying to make sense of that myself." Stella sighs. "Do you have any siblings, Nathan?"

No. Thank god for that. His poor mother already struggled enough keeping just him and herself alive.

"I'm an only child."

"Then I hope I'll be able to put this into words for you. Having a sibling can be the most peculiar double-edged sword. There's this person out in the world you share so many memories with, who knows you just about as intimately as you know them, and you know you'd take a bullet for them any day, but sometimes you want to smack them upside the head just for breathing at you wrong. I love Jamie dearly, but she can get under my skin like nobody else. Without even trying to.

"And I guess a part of me was bitter. Because everything always seems to be about her. Because she has all the talent and the charm, and she got so many opportunities I would've had to move Heaven and Earth to get just handed to her on a silver platter, only to toss them out without blinking twice. I was neck-deep in student debt while Jamie could've coasted through college on a track scholarship she rejected. There was that, and my long-time tough financial situation, and I knew Jamie wouldn't be strapped for cash even if she paid the lion's share of our rent. All I can say is I think that, on some subconscious level, I was convinced I needed the money more than she did. Deserved it more."

"You didn't."

"I know."

"Why never come clean about it?" This Nathan doesn't quite understand, either. Surely there must've been guilt that needed alleviating. "It's been six years. You had plenty of time to speak up and make amends, yet you never bothered."

Stella's tone freezes over at his accusation. "Had I known Jamie found out what I did, I would have sat her down to talk about it years ago. I thought about doing so many times even when we still lived together, but I enjoyed the financial breathing room, and she seemed... all things considered, she seemed genuinely happy for a while. No matter how I would've gone about explaining myself, I understood it would hurt her. More than ignorance ever could. I chose to keep her oblivious because I hoped it would spare her the pain."

The skeptic in Nathan has to offer a rebuke. "Not to mention keeping your mouth shut meant you wouldn't have to reimburse Jamie for what you swindled out of her."

"I paid it back. All of it."

"Huh?"

"I had to. The guilt was eating me alive. Everything I owed her, I returned. I repaid the entire debt years ago."

Nathan frowns. "And Jamie just conveniently missed that?"

"Of course she missed it. The last thing I needed was for her to notice, so I took precautions to make sure she wouldn't. I paid in instalments under fake aliases through donations on her Twitch streams. Even if she did check her bank account frequently, she wouldn't scrutinize those." Stella stares him down as if she'd like to sear her words into his brain. "It was... Gino suggested doing that when I couldn't handle the secret anymore and broke. I have the digital bank statements to back those claims up. Do you need to see them?"

Nathan wants to shake his head, but it feels too heavy on his shoulders. The weight of this and the past days' intensity presses down on him. Adrenaline, curiosity and his desire to be there for Jamie have been keeping him upright, but his body is done pretending it isn't as exhausted as everyone else. He absent-mindedly rubs at the sleeve covering his bite wound.

"I'm not the person you should be showing them to." He stands up, careful not to sway on his feet. He has heard enough. "Thanks for being honest, Stella."

Stella doesn't look him in the eyes, fixing her gaze on her empty cup. "I just hope she'll forgive me."

Nathan remembers feeling the same way, months ago, when the truth about his former profession slipped out and took Jamie by surprise. He'd been sure, then, that Jamie she'd despise him for it and for hiding it from her, that she'd walk away and abandon him as she should. But she stuck with him against all odds, gave him another chance. Believed his past mistakes and terrible choices didn't define him, that he wasn't the awful person he'd convinced himself he was. Believed in her family, too.

"Don't sweat it." Nathan shivers, stifling a yawn. God, he needs sleep. "You guys are going to be okay, and I'm going to go to bed. Goodnight."

He starts walking away, mentally readying himself to drag his tired ass to his room, when Stella stops him. Mirth now colours her voice.

"Congratulations on the relationship, by the way. About time."

Astounded, Nathan turns back. "How'd you know?"

Stella smirks. "If you're not looking to telegraph your intimate moments with my sister, consider cleaning the smudged lipstick off your face."

Nathan grumbles, wiping at his lips and the corners of his mouth. "All that talking and you're only telling me this now?"

"I'm sorry. It was very entertaining." There's laughter, then—modest but genuine. "I meant what I said, though. You're good for her. Truly."

"I hope so." He turns away again. Stella doesn't need to see how much he's smiling. "Thank you."

This night is madness, he thinks as he forces his weary self up the stairs. It's the kind of night after which nothing is the same—ecstacy and delirium rolled into a single intoxicating cocktail. Nathan likes cocktails every once in a while, but this one seems to have left him with a fever. He needs to sweat it out, sleep it off, and then, in the morning, he'll wake up refreshed.

He tells himself this, at least, plucking at his sleeve and the bandages it hides. Any thought of what festers beneath his skin drowns in a sea of denial and fatigue.