[original] but i don't know where I stand.

[go_hifreann_lea]

More myth!fic. Egyptian, this time. That calls for an incest!warning. ft. Nephthys & Set. ♥ love them.




The lake wasn't a popular spot. It sat too close to a busy highway for it to become a place which people would visit frequently. Even so, the rain muffled the scurrying sound of cars, and that burden of the constant hum was lifted and seemed far away. The wind blew softly over the surface of the water, blowing more rain into her face. Nephthys made no effort to cover her eyes, and simply took in the sight, bothered by how hidden this lake was.

Behind her there was a little path, but it wasn't paved, nor was there a sign announcing the lake's location. It had been her curiosity that had lured her down here, standing in her comfortable dress shoes, getting drenched.

Her mother had told her to be good, and to be polite. She'd done so for as long as she felt she could manage, and had then told her family she would be going for a walk.

Her father was getting re-married. The wedding was tomorrow, and she and her mother and her sister had flown in for the occasion, their best two outfits packed and ironed carefully. Her mother wanted to keep up appearances for the bastard, she said, her lips turning up gently. He had been nice, and Nephthys had been surprised. She didn't really remember her father all that well, being the youngest. There was the possibility her aversion to peppermint stemmed from his constant gum-chewing, but that could never be solidly established.

Her brothers had also surprised her. She had grown so used to disliking her father she had nearly forgotten she had brothers. Granted, they were only half-brothers, from a marriage prior to the one he'd entered with my mother. It still felt careless to have forgotten them. There they stood, trim and serious. Osiris was so tall, his face smooth and honest. Nephthys felt annoyed with herself for adoring him immediately, but she could tell he was the sort of person who immediately won the hearts of every person he ever met. He couldn't help it, and neither could she.

Both Set and Harmachis seemed smaller standing next to their older brother, but Nephthys understood this feeling and so studied them as closely. Set's hair was a little on the long side, his eyes defiantly gazing back at her, as if he were doing the same sort of analysis as she. Harmachis was bigger, thicker, and seemed the most uncomfortable in the stiff clothing they were all wearing.

Her father was a small man, but his voice was very deep, gravelly, strong. Her mother towered over him, her heels clicking as she followed him into the kitchen when he offered her a drink.

His...his fiance (Nephthys hated the word; he was too old for it) was out with her sisters, he told them, making the last of the arrangements for the next day. Nephthys didn't even know her name; she wasn't interested in the insignificant details. She wasn't planning on seeing her father ever again, anyway. The recalcitrant thought had passed her mind on the plane ride and she had immediately delighted in its vengeful spirit. Although...here at the lake, stranded in the rain...it all seemed somewhat juvenile.

He was her father, and all her petty rage (most of which was her mother's) wouldn't change that fact. It was like the earth: permanent, for better or for worse.

In sickness and in health.

"Do you do this often back home?" The voice interrupted her reverie violently, but she only reacted to the intrusion by straightening her back slightly and slowly turning to face the person behind her.

It was Set, his hair plastered to his cheeks and his eyes dangerously bright against the backdrop of his face. He wasn't very beautiful, but he held himself as if he were, and that pride was attractive. Nephthys shook her head slowly and her eyes traveled up toward the tops of the trees which sheltered Set.

"No. I don't think there are many lakes where I live."

"You don't think?" His eyebrow cocked, and his mouth curled upward cruelly. His words were inflammatory, but Nephthys ignored his tone.

"I haven't been everywhere."

He stepped out from the protection of the trees, and bent over, cupping something in his hand. She half-expected him to show her a bug to shock her. He seemed like that sort of boy. Instead, he passed the stone he'd picked into his other hand and flicked his wrist. The stone skipped across the water before falling to the lake's bottom. The ripples were lost in the ones caused by the rain.

"So you've never skipped stones?" She shook her head, but he was already sitting on his haunches, searching for more flat stones, so she was forced to reiterate her response aloud.

"Shame," he continued, standing again and tossing her one of the rocks without a warning. She almost dropped it, but managed to keep a grip on it despite its wet surface. "Just do what I do, then." It wasn't a sufficient explanation, of course, but Nephthys was sharp and after a few tries she had the stone hopping on the surface of the water. She grinned over at Set as the stone did its little dance on the lake. He didn't meet her eyes, instead keeping his gaze steady on the stone she'd thrown, even after it had sunk.

"I didn't think you could do it."

Nephthys snorted and crossed her arms. "I flourish under mediocre guidance."

He finally did look at her then, his eyes too dark for her to read. After a moment's pause, he turned away from her and began walking back down the path toward the gravel which would lead them back to her father's house. "They sent me to get you. Dinner's ready."

His legs were familiar with this path, and Nephthys was forced to follow more slowly, for fear of slipping on the newly-formed mud. He waited for her when he reached the top, looking down on her with a queer air of amusement.

"Do you remember me?" he asked her, and she flicked her eyes up to meet his in surprise.

"From when we were children, you mean?"

"Of course."

She squinted her eyes at the distance, where a small bridge overshadowed a little stream. Over it ran an offshoot of the highway, but it was lonely and the rain had slowed the flow of traffic to nothing that evening.

"Not really." He opened his mouth to respond, but she continued. "I remember one of you used to...I didn't like to eat my salad, so I would share half of it with one of you."

"That was me. I like--"

"Lettuce." She laughed, and the sound was brash and unfeminine. "Yes, I recall. I always thought that was cute."

"Not usually the word used in reference to me," he said.

"Is the more appropriate word 'self-pitying'?" He glanced at her sharply, his face framed by his surprise. After a moment, though, he laughed, and she was in turn taken aback by how pleasant it was to make him laugh.

"On occasion. Only Osiris will say it to my face, though. And you, now."

They were under the bridge now, but they didn't pause to enjoy its shelter, but continued on, the smell of wet gravel heavy in her nostrils. After many minutes, she spoke again.

"And...what kind of person is Osiris, anyway?" It seemed like a very important question, but it made Set physically uncomfortable, and Nephthys immediately regretted it.

"A much better person than I," he answered, and they both left it at that.

The wedding was a tense affair, at least for Nephthys. She didn't know anyone there but her immediate family, and was reluctant to make new acquaintances. What was the point? She was never going to see them again.

Isis didn't take this stance and left her sister sitting on her own in one of the chairs which had been lined up against the wall. Nephthys nursed a glass of port she'd sneaked away from one of the tables, trying to make up her mind as to whether or not she enjoyed the taste of it or just the feeling of doing something wrong. A part of her had hoped Osiris would come over and try to talk to her, but he never did. Neither did Set, who was sitting at a table on the other side of the room with his brothers, laughing with a group of teenagers.

She was a teenager, too, but it never occurred to her to refer to herself as such.

They woke up early the next morning in order to get to the airport on time, and Nephthys had a headache. Only Harmachis accompanied them. Her father tried to explain to his ex-wife his other sons were not morning people, but her mother continued to be insulted, if only to spite him. Harmachis and his sisters didn't really speak on their way to the airport, but Nephthys had questions lying in wait for the occasion arose.

It never did, but she did ask him for his address so she could write to him. She wasn't sure if she expected to actually write to him, but it felt nice to know she could. Like a red ribbon connecting them across the distance.

And three months later, she found herself forlorn and blue, listening to Bob Dylan through two pathetic portable speakers. She dug through her mess for a postcard she'd bought in elementary school on a class trip somewhere and started writing on the back of it. She told Harmachis she was tired of her small-town suburban existence, which pretended to be upper middle class when it was closer to being lower half. She told him she wasn't sure she loved anybody but Isis, and even that wasn't a willing affection. She had to adore her sister.

Everyone else did.

She told Harmachis about walking through the park and finding a dead hawk in the middle of the field. She described its blind corpse, and how it touched her. She wrote in a small cramped script, and Nephthys could barely fit in his address by the time she was done.

The stamp was of a cat, the price small and insignificant in the corner of the little square.

Two weeks later she received a response from him in letter form, telling her he couldn't really relate, but he sympathized with her plight. She'd half-forgotten she'd sent that postcard and felt ashamed someone had read her self-deprecating garbage. He told her Set was doing well and that Osiris was doing even better, despite the fact she hadn't asked. He told her his heart occasionally ached desperately, physically, but he never told anyone.

He told her he'd watched a movie about a war and had cried, and his heart was hurting now. Nephthys decided she also loved Harmachis.

A week later Isis told her a postcard had come for her. She expected a follow-up from Harmachis, but to her surprise, it was actually from Set. It was characteristic of him. On the front there was a lovely print of the Niagara Falls.

On the back, he'd scrawled one sentence: As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

She didn't recognize the reference, so she went to her British Lit teacher, who told her the source was not British, but French. She asked her French teacher to translate it into the original language. It sounded like the sound a stone makes against the water. Nephthys wrote back asking him for more. Set sent her Les Mains Sales, note-less.

When she finished it, Nephthys sent him a postcard of the Eiffel Tower. Her postcard was almost as scarce as his had been: I know nothing, I am neither woman nor girl; I have been living in a dream and when someone kissed me, it made me want to laugh. Now I am here before you, it seems as though I have just awakened and it is morning.

Harmachis wrote to her next, recommending some music he believed she might enjoy. Set wrote the postscript:

Don't you dare.

She laughed as she read it, and not only at Set's half-hearted warning. Harmachis was dry in his humor, and Nephthys found it delightful. She asked a friend if he knew any of the artists Harmachis had mentioned to her, and she took home the tapes. And she fell asleep to Joni Mitchell.

Her next postcard was of a thin man leaning over a guitar. She drew music notes around her words: I think I understand / Fear is like a wilderland / Stepping stones or sinking sand.

Set wrote out his next message on a postcard declaring LAS VEGAS: I hope you're not implying what I believe you are. P.S.: Clouds is awful. Although not as mediocre as her current work. The following week she received a tape cassette from Harmachis with several songs off of Mitchell's last two albums. Well...it sounded better than Madonna.

Her next postcard featured a little puppy: No blame for what we can and cannot feel.

Set called her next. She almost didn't take the phone call; it would be expensive. But Nephthys finally threw trepidation into the wind and told the operator she accepted.

"I'll give you the money for this call," was the first thing he said to her, which she found very un-romantic of him. It was appropriate.

"Okay. What do you have to say that's so important?"

There was a long pause, and the static ate up more and more of her wit by the second. Finally, he spoke. "What are you trying to say to me? With...your quotations."

"What do you think I'm trying to say?"

"You're defeating the purpose of this phone call, you know."

"And you're defeating the purpose of my postcards, Set, so we're even."

There was another stretch of half-silence, in which he cleared his throat and she coughed. "I'm not sure what to say to you if you're not quoting something," he admitted, his voice soft, as if expecting her to ask him to repeat him so he could tell her to forget it.

"Hold on a second, let me flip through Being and Nothingness."

"You've read it?"

"I've skimmed it. Ah, here we go. 'All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure'."

He laughed, and she smiled back, knowing he would guess at her reaction even if he couldn't see her. "I can match that. And I don't have to flip through anything to find it, either. 'There is only one good. And that is to act according to your conscience'. "

"Who's that?"

"Oh, dear, someone's education has been thoroughly lacking. De Beauvoir?"

"Who?"

"I should hang up on you for that."

"Do so."

His laughter merged easily with the words which followed. "'You made me come to Paris. You pestered me to start living again. Well, now it's up to you to make my life livable. You mustn't let three whole days go by without coming to see me'."

"Is that De Beauvoir or Set?"

"Both. Come see me. You can take the train. I'll wire you the money."

"So we can do what, exactly?"

"I'll give you some De Beauvoir and Camus and Rich for you to read. Betty Friedan, if your education is that backwards. And we'll even listen to your ridiculous Mitchell tapes. But only if you'll give The Kinks a chance."

"I listen to Joni Mitchell a lot. Fair warning. And I've read Friedan!"

"Thank goodness. And I can live with that."

"Why are you reading Friedan anyway?"

"I enjoy the works of feminists. Obviously you didn't recognize De Beauvoir and Rich as a trend for that."

"You must not have that many friends."

"I don't need them. Friends were invented only to become fiends."

"Who's that?"

"Me."

"...Good night, Set."

"I'll do it this weekend. Don't forget."

"I won't. I'll call you to tell you when I'm coming."

"Good night and good luck."

"What?"

"Just go to bed, Nephthys."

They lay on his bed, which wasn't made for two people, but their limbs overlapped enough to make it possible. His parents were at work, as was Osiris and...

"Hey, where's Harmachis?" She moved to sit up, but Set grabbed her arm and tugged her back down to him.

"Probably at the library. Their AC is fantastic."

"By himself?"

He grunted, turning his head and opening one eye to give her a dirty glance. "I don't know. Why, you want to keep him company? Go ahead."

She could tell he was feeling tossed aside, rejected, inferior, so she didn't bother to reply. Self-deprecating, as usual. Joni's voice rose over their conflict, and finally the two of them calmed down again, their breathing regular.

Turning onto her side, she leaned onto her arm. "How fucked up are we, on a scale of one to ten?" Her grin felt loose on her face, like a hand-me-down. She didn't expect an honest answer from Set, if any. It seemed like the sort of joke he would brush aside and label as utterly unimportant. To her surprise, his cold eyes rested on her heavily and his mouth did not so much as twitch.

"Thirteen."

She leaned forward, her breath light against his cheek, her thumb pushing back some of his hair. He watched her with that same overbearing look he saved for puzzles. A part of her screamed to press forward, to take that step in the wrong wrong direction, to fuck up again until you don't quite recall what's good and what's bad, if that ever existed. She kissed him and he kissed her, and Nephthys closed her eyes, knowing full well that he was gauging her somehow. This was yet another test, and for the first time since she'd gotten there, she didn't care if she failed it.

His hand was warm when he gripped a handful of her hair in his fist. Nephthys moved over him, resting her elbows on either side of his face, air seeming something feasibly necessary, but too distant to be a reality. They made a wet noise when they came apart, like suckling babes. She immediately noticed that she was hot, her face, her body; everywhere where she could feel tingly and warm, she did.

Set's face was set in stone, and it made the ecstatic butterflies flutter toward the flame and burn away.

He slid out from under her, and perched himself on the edge of his bed. The music ended, his breathing was irregular. Nephthys watched him without saying anything, afraid that any moment he would tell her to get out, to leave, and that she would be rejected for the last, most powerful time.

"That felt weird."

Her heart felt flawed, and she tucked her hands under her armpits to keep her fingers warm.

"I really was pretty sure I was gay."

"...was?"

He stood up quickly, brushing her question aside with his brusque movements. He picked up the books he'd left scattered on his floor, placing them all carefully back onto his shelf, where each of them had previously been sorted into alphabetical order. Nephthys watched him passively, her pulse a gentle tide, and she crossed her legs as she sat up. Finally, he finished putting back his tomes and faced her once more.

"You're the first female I've been attracted to in sixteen years."

Nephthys wanted to take this in stride, lift her chin like the adult she liked to pretend she was. But she was only fifteen years old, and to hear this was hard. It was difficult enough, to know that she was attracted in this way to her own brother, without having to deal with the fact that he was gay. Or bisexual, she supposed. So, rather than take it in stride, she stood up and walked out of the room. He didn't follow her.

The air around her was oppressive, the heat leaving a sticky residue of sweat on her skin, but she ignored it as she walked through their house, past all the empty rooms and the photographs of their happy little family. She was putting on her shoes when Set appeared at the top of the stairs, leaning nonchallantly against the railing. She shot him a look of fear, like a deer trapped on a long street she knew would end in blood. But she couldn't move, because she's sure she would regret it. His own stare was cold, that of a bystander.

"Do you know why our parents got divorced?"

Her fingers paused on her shoelaces, letting her half-finished knot fall apart. "My mother always said it was because...because he never kept his promises. And she hates that more than anything."

He snorted, and she looked away, busying her hands once more with her shoes. "More like your mother could never keep her legs shut. She told him you weren't his."

She was completely frozen now, unable to even breath. He was lying. He was just trying to make her come back to him with him having to beg her. Set was manipulative, which was a personality trait she was already coming to accept. Nephthys knew she could learn to live with it and maybe even learn when was the right time to believe him.

Right now was not one of those times, surely. She swallowed hard and stood up. "You're just trying to hurt me. Enough."

Set told her it really made no difference to him; why would he lie about something like this? "You can ask either of them, if you like. I thought you...knew." That flash in his eyes revealed the truth. He'd known perfectly well she hadn't been aware of this and had been keeping the secret for this exact reason. Which also revealed his honesty.

His plan was perfect, of course, as were they all. He always knew exactly what to say in order to touch you, and in order to hurt you. In order to reel you in with his little hook. And Nephthys realized she would never learn how to beat him at his own game; she didn't work like that. She would always be trapped in his little game as long as she didn't give up being a player in his life. And she wouldn't. Even if she knew the very worst parts of him, he was also the most interesting person she had ever met. When it was good with him, it was so good.

And when it was bad...she could just remember the times when it had been good, and hope for it to be like that once more.

She kicked off her shoes, and padded up the stairs slowly, tonguing the wound Set had left on her lip when he'd let his fishing line drop into the water.

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