Chapter Text
Hildegard Billingsley watched as Nathaniel Benedict turned the corner and walked out of her office. Finally. It was almost over, only one thing left to do now. She looked at her watch, it was five o’clock. Right on cue, the phone rang. She steadied herself and picked up the phone.
“Miss. Billingsley, public records office” she said in her standard customer service voice.
“Yes, I know who you are” came the woman’s voice on the other end of the line. “Did they come?” she asked.
“Yes” Miss. Billingsley replied, “they both came, just like you said they would”.
“Excellent. And you were sure to ask them if they had any other biological siblings besides each other?” the woman inquired.
“Yes, and they both said no” she answered.
There was silence from the other end of the call. Upon hearing this news, the woman who had called Miss. Billingsley’s office felt like she had just been slapped across the face, but after a pause, she shrugged the feeling off and continued her line of questioning.
“And did either of them leave any information?” she asked.
Miss. Billingsley, relieved the caller’s silence had finally ended, answered, “Yes, the first one, Nicholas, left his phone number for his brother to contact him. Seemed rather desperate to get in touch with him but hesitated quite a bit before writing down his information. I’ll send you the number. Will there be anything else?”
“Yes”, the woman replied from the other end of the line. “I want you to erase their names from your records and tell no one about me or them. Neither of them ever stopped in to see you. We’ve never been in contact. And make sure all remaining copies of the Benedict family’s records are destroyed. I understand there isn’t much left, but whatever there is, I want it gone. Finish that job, send the proof, and I’ll make sure the Department of Juvenile Well-Being hires you with a competitive salary and benefits, and that you’ll be on track for a promotion”.
Hearing these words, Miss. Billingsley felt her stomach tie up in knots. When she had agreed to do this, she was told that she was protecting a family’s noble legacy from stalkers, sensationalist reporters, and conspiracy theorists obsessed with a family’s death and that the good she would be able to do in a new career far outweighed the measly sins of erasing a few names out of a log, burning a few documents, and making sure not to reveal to anyone claiming to be a member of the Benedict family that she was feeding this woman information on them, as in all likelihood, the Benedict siblings were dead and these people were lying reporters looking for a headline, or at least, that was what she was told. But at this point, anyone could see that this story, which had sounded dubious to begin with, didn’t add up at all. She glanced at the money in her hands. There seemed to be so little information on this family already, why all the desperate attempts to cover things up? There didn’t even seem to be any information on the parents or how they died for reporters to obtain or sensationalize. And now she had to choose between the man who had given her money to tell no one he’d been there and the woman who offered her a dream job provided she spared no detail of either brother’s visit.
Well, she reasoned to herself, since she’d already told this woman that Nathaniel had been by her office and she couldn’t risk losing the job when she’d come this far, the choice was easy. Unpleasant but easy.
“Yes,” she finally answered. “I’ll erase their names from the logs and have the documents destroyed.”
She paused before continuing. “And one more thing. The second brother, Nathaniel, also requested that his name be removed from the visitor’s log. And that I tell no one he’d been there, not even his brother”.
On the other end of the call, the woman leaned forward in her chair and smiled with interest. “Really?” she asked.
“Yes,” Miss. Billingsley replied, “He paid me a substantial amount of money to do so. He insisted I take it.”
“Hm…” the woman answered, “and yet you still relayed everything to me. You must really need that job. Well, I do believe that loyalty deserves to be rewarded. I’ll call my contacts, and you should expect a letter by the end of the week. Feel free to call if there are any more issues, but if not, thank you very much for your assistance”.
“Of course,” Miss. Billingsley answered and put the phone down as soon as she heard the click.
She once again glanced down at the money in her hands and looking at it made her feel sick. She’d do what the woman asked; she’d take the job, she’d put whatever money that man had given her into orphanages and outreach programs, and hopefully leave whatever was going on with this family behind. Whatever it was, she didn’t want to know, and she didn’t want to be a part of it anymore. She would stick to her plan, work her way up to a high-level job in the Department of Juvenile Well-Being, and hopefully never see either of those brothers or hear from that woman again.
Meanwhile, the woman on the other end of the telephone hung up and began spinning her office chair back and forth as she smiled to herself. She had found them. After years of searching, years of wondering if they were even still alive, she had finally found them.
“So,” she thought, “I was right about Nicky and Natty being separated, but perhaps the separation wasn’t entirely out of their control. And if my brother’s temperaments haven’t changed, then I’m guessing Nicky eventually got tired of Natty’s fussing and bossiness and tried to get some space, and Natty is still pouting over it. Typical”.
Once again, she leaned back and smiled. It was nice to see that some things hadn’t changed after all these years. Her brothers were still the brothers she remembered.
After pulling a few strings, local phone records confirmed that although Natty had kept Nicky’s number, likely as a method of tracking their brother, he made no attempts to call the number. It was an invasion of privacy, but if Natty didn’t want her digging through his phone records, he should have come up with a better fake name. Even before she’d had it confirmed, as soon as she saw the name Ledroptha Curtain somewhere inside, she just knew that crybaby had given himself the name just for the drama and attention (and to make it a pun? As if he was trying to be clever. Really Natty?).
Though to Natty’s credit, the name change had worked to her advantage. If her brothers weren’t talking to each other, they would assume that the other had taken their family’s things. Not that either of them would have ever had a chance to obtain them. She had taken possession of their family’s remaining items, records, and money years ago. She couldn’t have them falling into the wrong hands after all. Plus this way she’d have a little reunion present for her brothers. Once she could put her plan together and her brothers had gotten through, well whatever petty little kerfuffle they had gotten themselves into this time, she would contact them. She had promised them that she would come back for them after all, though her brothers didn’t remember her saying that. In fact, they didn’t even remember her at all. She knew she shouldn’t be surprised by this. They had been barely three years old. It was hardly their fault. But it still stung. She knew it was silly, but a part of her had hoped that they would have some memory of her at least. Or a lingering doubt that perhaps there was something missing, something they’d forgotten. Or someone.
But, she reminded herself, it was for the best. She had enemies, and it was safer that her brothers didn’t know about her, at least not yet. As their older sister, it was up to her to protect them. Even as a child, she had been very aware of her responsibility. She was the oldest, and they were the youngest, and it was her job to take care of them.
Well, she supposed technically Nicky was the youngest and Natty was in the middle. By a few minutes anyway. The twin’s birth order had become a running joke in the family since one of the hospital staff had accidentally written the wrong birth times on the twin’s birth certificates.
She could still remember their father, laughing as baby Natty was whining for attention, saying, “awe, are you still upset that they thought Nicholas was older than you? You poor thing. You can’t let anyone take your spotlight, can you?” And she remembered their mother, smiling and adding “you’d better be a good big brother Nathaniel. Nicholas needs attention too”.
Even as a child, she had found the idea of Natty being Nicky’s older brother ridiculous. They were both babies. They would always be the same age. An age gap of a few minutes didn’t come with any of the responsibilities that came with an age gap of several years. No matter which twin was older, she would always be the eldest regardless. She would always be the leader, the responsible one, the one that looked out for them.
A 3-minute age gap wasn’t the sort of thing that someone would actually care about anyway.
What she did care about was receiving the evidence that all their family’s remaining records had been destroyed. A rather drastic measure, but she’d become accustomed to using drastic and destructive methods, it was a necessity that was slowly becoming her style, and she’d already risked a lot by allowing those records to remain there for years, although she had been very careful with what she included in the documents. Bare scraps of information, not enough to find anything really useful, but enough to bait her brothers. A method of tracking them. Hunting them down. The documents had served their purpose. Thanks to the private investigators she had hired to track them from the office, she had finally confirmed the location, aliases, physical appearances, phone numbers, and addresses of both her brothers. And now that these documents had served their purpose, she could no longer risk leaving any trace of their family open to the public eye.
It was a particular shame to destroy the copies of her brother’s baby photos that she had left for them- their parents had allowed her to take those photos herself with their dad’s old camera (and she hoped that the twins would enjoy having something from her, even if there was no way for them to know that she had taken the photos).
But it had to be done. She had worked too hard for too long. She had to make sure that her enemies continued to assume that the Benedict siblings had died with their parents, something Natty had unknowingly helped her with by taking on a different name, as ridiculous sounding as it was.
She suddenly shivered, remembering everything that happened, the burden she had had to carry alone for decades. A burden she would continue to carry alone for a few more decades if she couldn’t find a way to fast-track her plans.
That thought terrified her. She gripped the table to steady herself until her hands turned white and started furiously blinking back tears. No matter how many times she flashbacked to that night, it never got any easier. She could hardly remember a time before those memories had controlled her; sometimes she felt as if they had always been there. Creeping around inside her, twisting in her mind, refusing to give her peace, breaking her apart. Sometimes it made her feel crazy. Like she would do anything, hurt anyone, to make the pain stop. That was the part that terrified her the most. The sudden desperation that took over her mind, the panic, the terror that made her feel like she was some sort of starved and caged animal. The dreadful realization that no one is coming to comfort you, no one is going to tell you that everything will be all right, because you are alone, and nothing will ever be right again.
“You have only yourself to blame”, came a voice from somewhere deep inside her, a voice that made her feel weak and powerless.
“It’s your fault your brothers were orphaned. It’s your fault that they suffered. You should have protected them. You should have fought harder; you didn’t try hard enough. And now look at what’s become of you. A crying, sniffling, pathetic mess. Do you think your brothers will even want to see you? After you let them down? You are responsible for everything that they have had to go through because of your mistakes. And the things you’ve had to do to make up for your failure. All those people you’ve hurt. The lives you’ve ruined. Imagine if your parents saw you like this. If they knew what you’d done. You’re a monster.”
She was sobbing now. She was shaking too. She couldn’t stop herself.
She wanted to cry out, to scream at the voice to stop, beg it to stop, to yell to her brothers, to her parents, to those she’d hurt, to anyone who would listen that she was sorry, that she hadn’t meant to do the things she had done, that she wished, desperately wished she could take everything back, but her mouth wouldn’t move, her body couldn’t move.
She knew deep down that the voice was right. She was a monster. It was her fault.
But still, she had only been a child herself. It wasn’t fair. They had taken everything from her, from them. They had destroyed her brothers’ lives; lives her brothers couldn’t even remember. They would pay. She’d make sure of it. She would find whatever it was that they loved, and she would destroy it. Then they would finally know what it was like to lose everything. She would hurt them and anyone else who tried to stop her, and she would do it in ways even her enemies couldn’t imagine a person could be hurt.
The familiar feeling of her fear giving way to blackout rage was the last thing she felt before passing out.
She woke up still in her chair, her hands still frozen somehow, clenching the table in front of her. That was the other thing they had taken from her. Her emotional control. Her brothers’ narcolepsy had been more severe, joy and vulnerability are hard emotions to avoid, but her narcoleptic attacks had been rare before that night. She had never been an angry child and was always described as being very happy and agreeable. And now, well, now her attacks happened all the time. Way more often than they should. She wasn’t sure how much more of this she could take. Her entire body ached with exhaustion. But she didn’t have time to rest.
She’d found her family. Her little brothers were counting on her. And when things were ready, when she could be sure things were safe, she would come back for them. They’d be together again and in time, they would have their revenge too and anything else they wanted. And no one would be able to stop them. She had made a promise to her brothers, and she intended to keep it. At any cost. No matter how long it took. She was their older sister after all. It was her job to protect them, to take care of them. And they needed her. She released the table from her death grip and dried her tears. She had work to do.