When I find Fleur, I am appalled by the state she is in. It amplifies my guilt, inflating it like a giant balloon, because the pathetic excuse for my sister residing in Barcelona only confirms how impossible it is for anyone else to truly sort her out. I apologise to her, because this is clearly my fault. It's easy to forget about Leah when the most important person in my life is decaying internally in a foreign country. She has been left so alone. It's hard to keep it together at the sight of her.

I slap her, at a loss on what to do. Fleur's haunting laughter mixes with her incoherent babbling about Scarlett and marriage and a proposal that never actually happened. "Scarlett is dead; she is not coming back," I tell her gently. It seems to sink in.

We get drunk. I use it to suppress the rising memories of how I left things in England, and Fleur pretends to be reluctant about being allowed to loosen up for once. She leaves with a woman named Anne. They are too drunk to recognise each other, but they have slept together before, and I poke fun at it but don't make an effort to remind them. Their father and Papa are business partners. A mutual connection.

Lars keeps me sane when we are left alone. "Don't worry about it, Jaimie. She doesn't understand, but you cannot fault her for that. She will listen; she will learn." He smiles at me, and I remember a time where I would have found an empty bedroom in whichever house we were in and dragged him to the bed. But, I feel nothing inside me set ablaze as he wraps me in his embrace. Of course I don't. I still love Leah, even if she can sometimes be so short-sighted.

"I wish things could be different," I mumble into his shoulder, a salty tear pooling at the corner of my mouth. I sniff.

"Ja, me too," he replies, a certain sadness creeping over us. "She makes you happy enough to agonise over an argument. She's good for you. Talk to her, make sure she knows she hasn't lost you."

I don't talk to her. I'm too busy hauling a red-faced Fleur to Amsterdam, telling her to fight off her hangover on the plane. It feels wrong to call Leah when I am at home – I think it would make things worse.

Papa is thrilled to see Fleur, and prefers for me to keep my sister company if I must be distracted from my recovery.

It is six o'clock in the evening when Papa and I sit on the armchairs in the trophy room, a glass of whiskey in his hand and a tennis racquet in mine. I twirl the racquet in my palm, the worn grip hard and sharp against the bones in my hand. The strings are loose and bending, faded from age and use and anger. My nail plucks one, pinging a dull sound into the otherwise quiet room. I do it again. "Stop that," Papa chides, setting his glass down on the glass cabinet that holds Fleur's silver boot from the 2017 Euros.

I furrow my eyebrows, taking in the sheen of the silver. "She came joint-second, and yet it sits pride-of-place in here?"

He smiles, a chuckle dropping from his lips as though he had expected me to say that. "Second place is not an achievement for you, the same way getting ninety-percent on a physics test wouldn't be. But, for Fleur, who must fight harder, second is big. Ninety is big." I scoff, finding that to be bullshit. "No, it is true. Until she wins the Ballon d'Or, we cannot overestimate her. You have already won all there is to be won."

"Wimbledon," I remind him, a bitter taste in my mouth. "I haven't won that."

"Look at the cabinet more carefully, Jaimie." I lean closer. There, behind Fleur's award, sits my Wimbledon runner-up plate from 2016. "We cannot overestimate you, either."

I clench my jaw, teeth grating together uncomfortably. "When you make me cry, Papa, does it ever occur to you that you are being too harsh?" He straightens up in his chair, but then relaxes, laughing once again. I look around the room at my achievements, wondering why he gets to display them.

"I would rather you hated your father than yourself for not seeing reason," he replies, but it is not a sufficient answer. I wait, content with inspecting my trophies once more. "It pains me to upset you, of course it does. I love you."

"Y-you do?" falls out of my open mouth, saturated in my shock.

"Yes. You and your sister are my world. Would you not want your world to be as perfect as you know it could be?"

Pulling apart his sentence, truly contemplating the concept, I sort of understand what he means. However, I cannot relate to it. "Papa, you are simply a mere part of my world." He sucks in a sharp breath, raising his glass to his lips and drinking the final drops of the remaining liquid. "And... And Leah is a part of my world, too. I love her."

"Are you sure?"

We hadn't gotten out of bed yet, but it seemed like Leah had no intention to do so. She had pulled her hair out of its previously practical ponytail, letting it fall to her bare shoulders. "What are you doing?" I had asked, giggling as she stretched out, sheets pooling at her hips. She leant over the edge of the bed, as if to fish something from the floor, and I wrapped an arm around her waist to keep her from falling.

"We're neglecting him!" she squealed insistently as my fingers brushed her skin with an underlying threat behind the feather-light touch. "Don't tickle me, you're going to make me..." Milo rolled further away from us, but Leah was too determined to retrieve him. She reached out, and my hands ran down her sides to remind her of what she could be focusing on instead, not caring if the teddy bear's feelings were going to get hurt. "He deserves to be loved!" I let go.

She toppled down, hitting the floor with a thud. But, before she had fully made it to her inevitable destination, her hand had shot at and grabbed my arm, taking me with her.

I groaned, rubbing my elbow having banged it on our descent, miserably letting Leah pull me on top of her. Leah's grin was wide, and it grew wider as she plucked Milo from his hiding spot, tucking him in between us. "There," she said, satisfied. "Safe and sound with his mums." I raised my eyebrows, body hoisted up by my hands so I could look her in the eyes. They were shining. Full of love.

My eyes narrowed when I noticed something odd about his scarf. "Why is the Ajax part hidden, Leah?" She squirmed underneath me, cradling Milo's body as if to protect him from the wrath about to be directed at her.

"Milo and I love you very much, darling, but, you see, he is a clever bear. Clever bears know that Arsenal is the best club in the world." She smiled, cheekily. "My red suits him better, baby. You can try with the next one?" And, even though she had spoken a few incriminating sentences, the raw, unrelenting, unconditional love I felt for her led me to kiss her.

I nod at my father. "There is nothing Leah seems to be capable of that will make me less certain."

A tear rolls down my cheek as Papa takes my racquet from my hand, resting it on his lap. "This was your first proper racquet," he says, and I hear his mind absorb my words and take them into consideration. "You were ecstatic that I had bought it for you. You were nine, and you evicted your stuffed animals so that you could sleep with your racquet instead. Your mother, she was amused by your devotion to it, and I remember her asking you if it was the love of your life. What was intended to be teasing stopped you dead in your tracks, and you burst into tears. You said that you hoped the love of your life was less rigid and warmer to sleep with. Does... does Leah keep you warm?"

He is okay with it.

My heart soars.

"Yes, Papa," I laugh, "she does."

"Good." The smile he offers me reminds me of the man I grew up with; the father whose eyes soften words that were possibly too sharp for a child, the father who flew to Australia for my birthday despite being a stranger in the country. A complicated man, whose wife failed to understand him completely. A brilliantly intelligent, fiercely loyal, and privately loving man, whose words are only moulded into knives because he cares too much. Papa clears his throat. "So, are we going to review Iga Świątek's latest match or not?"

And the noise of bored protest I make is half-hearted, because I am too pleased to care about how terrible it will be to hear him analyse her style of play ( and no doubt to call mine 'brutish' again).

We watch clips for a while, until he and I both agree that we should get some sleep, the time indicating that 'tomorrow' will soon be 'today'. He readjusts his suit, not yet dressed in pyjamas, and tells me that he is going to check to see if Fleur has managed to combat her probable insomnia. It's late, and I hope that she has.

I trudge upstairs to my own bedroom, its white walls grey in the city darkness. My bed is inviting, and I change quickly so that I can settle underneath the cool sheets before I fall asleep standing up. I expect to be out as soon as my head hits the pillow, but I am plagued by the restless sensation of forgetting to do something. Plugging the charger into my dead phone, I jump slightly at the amount of notifications I get, but am too lazy to investigate past half of them being text messages from Alex Scott. I don't even read what they say. Now satisfied with myself, content to go to sleep, I close my eyes.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

"What the fuck?" I mumble, sitting up, rubbing my eyes.

Phone screen lit up, I check the time. Three in the morning.

Who is texting me at three in the morning?

The buzzing becomes relentless, and I realise someone is now calling me. Only one person in my contacts is named like this.

Incoming call from OTWN (which is all the time).

Leah. Leah who had finally found out about her name and had added to it rather than change it. Leah who I had argued with before getting on a plane and not spoken to for over twenty-four hours.

I pick up.

Leah who is incredibly drunk.

"Shush, sh, sh," is the first thing I hear from the other end of the line. "She picked up! Alex, Alex, she picked up!"

"Yeah," I grumble, voice hoarse from sleep. "Yeah, I'm here. Are you okay, Leah?"

"I am... not," she declares, words slurred. "Alex has thrown me a party for my birthday, and I'm just kinda miserable, you know? 'Cause – shutupm'onthephone – my girlfriend, she, like, left me. But this is a secret between you and me, okay? 'Cause I've been telling everyone 'm fine." I try to interject, but she carries on. "Alex told me to call 'er 'nd say sorry, but I she's with 'er sister and... I love 'er so much. I love that she loves 'er sister so much."

"That's nice," I reply, unsure if she is aware it's me she is talking to.

"She's so nice. Wanna, like, get with 'er and tell 'er how sorry I am. She can do what she likes, and I was bein' selfish – I just wanted to keep 'er happy. And she would've been sad to see Fleur fuckin' de Voss. Fuckin' de Vosses ruin my life, man."

Suddenly, the line rustles and Leah's voice becomes quieter, mainly shouts of protest as someone presumably wrestles her phone from her hands. "Jaimie?" It's Beth Mead this time, sounding less drunk than Leah. "It's so late, I'm sorry. We couldn't stop her. The whole night she's been whining about–"

"Don't worry about it," I reply, unable to keep the smile off my face. "I'll call her later and we can talk properly. If she survives."

Beth waits for a moment. "Really? That would be great. And Viv agrees." She adds the last part reluctantly, as if Leah herself has told her to convince me by using one of my friends.

"I promise." Because it was just one argument in a relationship that I hadn't realised was incredibly strong.

And, when Fleur is browsing in DutyFree and I am happily sitting in the business class lounge of Schiphol Airport, I press Leah's contact, her number dialling like mine would have twenty hours prior, keeping my promise. Leah picks up instantly. My lips twitch upwards in a smile, but I suppress it for a moment, remembering the tone of our last proper conversation.

"H-hi, Jaimie." She sounds as though she had partied hard and ended her night screaming so loudly that her vocal chords will be permanently damaged.

"Hi, Leah."

"I... I'm sorry."

All of a sudden, everything feels slightly less grey. "I'm sorry too."

notes:

i wasn't going to make them argue for long yk i wouldn't do that to u

but pls deal with their father's redemption arc because he was supposed to not be THAT bad and it escalated and i actually like his character

also, it is now time to fully accept that this fic is nearly over and that my NEW fic will be started as soon as hmc has comfortably resumed

thank you so much for reading, as always x