Dead Girl Walking ― Aaron Minyard

56. 4AM

here, here, my family
you are my familiar, you are my familiar
― bastille

♦

DESPITE BEING ONE OF THE TWO MOST EXHAUSTED, Mara was the first awake the next morning. Even so, she felt more rested than she could have imagined, and she didn't bother with trying to fall back asleep when she saw it was nearly ten. She doubted it would take long for the rest of the team to stir. 

Carefully and quietly, Mara extracted herself from her brother's side and from underneath Aaron's arm, silent as she made her way out of their dorm and to her own. 

She made a detour to the bathroom and left with two Tylenol, which she promptly washed down with a cup and a half of much-needed water. It would have been smarter to wait for the pain relief to kick in before attempting to change, but she was too impatient and suffered through the rough five minutes to switch her pajamas for comfortable clothes just decent enough to be seen in public in. 

As she waited for the rest of her roommates to trickle into their dorm to get ready, she busied herself heating up water for a cup of tea, stealing one of Renee's teabags and one of Dan's mugs. 

When the door to the dorm opened, Mara was only half-surprised to see Andrew instead of one of her roommates. 

As the water boiled, Mara said, "If you're going to threaten me again, save your breath."

"I'm not going to threaten you."

Mara scoffed under her breath. "There's a change of pace."

She both felt and heard him cross the living room to stand in the kitchen with her. He said nothing as she poured the water into Dan's mug and set Renee's teabag in, but she felt him watching her all the while. 

"You didn't say anything," he finally said. 

"About what?" Mara said, just to be difficult. She figured Andrew, out of anyone, deserved it. 

"You know what," Andrew said. 

"You never asked," Mara said, looking through the cabinets for honey. 

"Your long-lost twin brother showing up out of nowhere doesn't seem like something I'd have to ask about," Andrew said. 

"Not my problem."

He fell quiet again, but Mara no longer felt the threat in it. Maybe there was none—or maybe she'd lost all sense of fear in that basement in Baltimore. 

"Did you kill him?" Andrew asked. "Your father?"

"As far as the FBI knows," Mara said, "that was Stuart."

"As far as you know?" 

Mara swallowed. She stirred the honey into her tea for distraction as she said, "He was going to kill me, and then he was going to kill Neil. I did what I had to do."

She met Andrew's studying gaze, and knew the mirror was visible to them both. 

Mara had always known she and Andrew were two sides of a fucked-up coin, two parallel roads that went through the same treacherous path on opposite sides of the country. Two victims of unspeakable things; two children made cruel by experience rather than design; two people broken too young. 

But now, the similarities were so obvious it was almost as if they were the twins in this scenario—and she could see in his face that Andrew knew it, too. 

Both the abandoned; both the protector; both the killer. 

Both the survivor. 

"I won't apologize for falling in love with Aaron," Mara said. "And I won't expect an apology for lashing out at me for it—"