Unlocked (a Mormor Fanfic)

Part the twelth

School. The next challenge. They were to borrow old uniform from other kids as they had practically nothing themselves. Sebastian was not enthusiastic about this. He was smart, yet had chosen to join his sister in public school (that made 8 and their Father decided it would not be tolerated), so he knew the rough ins and outs of it. He'd had a few friends but nothing majorly sustainable. He knew how to take care of himself and had made sure that he was in the best possible position. Now, he had to take the position best suited to Stan: he'd see what exactly that entailed at school today.

She was up before everyone else, as usual. Her internal body clock was up at 6 am sharp always mostly due to the fact that it allowed her to assess what kind of day it was going to be. She hopped into the girls' bathroom and shower before anyone else could, thus allowing her not to worry too much about the scars. She had, unfortunately, forgotten about the sharing room thing that she did now. Poor Laura's eyes widened to the size of saucers before abruptly turning away in disgust - Zedd's marks of possession probably didn't help either.
"I'm so sorry....I...I...um," she stuttered playing her character perfectly, "sorry. I thought you'd still be asleep. It's 6:30 so.." She let her sentence trail off.
"I am always awake by 6:30 so that I can get ready properly." Laura's reply was rather haughty.
"Oh." Having gone to public school, she knew what school actually meant for most girls. Laura left and An felt that this was to be an accurate interpretation of the day. There was one thing she had to clarify though, before she did anything else.
Laura walked through the door, with her towel wrapped round her waist and An cornered her. She lowered her head slightly so that she had to look up at Laura through lowered eyelashes. She made sure to speak in a dead and threatening voice.
"You tell anyone, and I will make sure that you have matching sets. Understand?" Accompanied with the smile of a madman, a threat like this from someone covered in scars whilst clutching your towel to protect your modesty, was (as I'm sure you'll agree) terrifying. Laura nodded quickly. An let her go and left for downstairs, not wanting to be witness to the ritual of hair and makeup that was to take place next.

At breakfast, (which was at 7:30 for those on time and whenever you made it for yourselves if not) Sebastian noted the set of An's face and immediately knew her day had started off badly. He also saw a small hickey-like bruise near her neck, but had learnt to ignore that...and the small scratches that Zedd seemed to acquire. Alex had been up most of the night on his phone so he'd had to stay put. His stomach growled as breakfast for them had always been 7:00am precisely.
"Morning!" Jenny was cheerful as she greeted the only 5 people ready, only two of whom were actually awake (no surprise which two). "Stan, Rae, nice to see you up. Are you early risers?" From the end of the table Rae, nodded her head with a humble smile.
"Yeah, sorry."
"Oh, darling, no need to apologise." Her eyes widened in shock at being called darling. A boy from the end of the table noticed and simply said to her, "don't worry, we're all either 'hon', 'darling', 'petal' or some other atrocious pet name."
He received a mumbled thanks for this.
"Don't sweat it. It's a trigger for some. We had a girl through who just couldn't deal with 'sweetie'. Jenny learnt that quickly, and the hard way."
"Ian! Stop that. I'll have none of that at breakfast." Jenny chastised as she gestured for them to start whatever breakfast they'd made for themselves. Sebastian thought that this wasn't so bad. A lot of children, grim subject matter and (from what he could hear coming from upstairs) arguments; not so different from home...just less of how they'd lived all their lives.

Walking to school, that was a new one. They'd always had to drive -Father's orders. As he walked down the street with the other children, he memorised the route, and possible escape routes, number of rooftops and good vantage points, the number of houses and all kinds of useful information that she'd taught him to memorise. Needless to say that she'd be doing the same, just quicker. Zedd had probably already got it- lucky bastard.