A Posteriori
Title: A Posteriori :: Goodbye, Milkyway [12/12]
Rating: PG-13
Summary: I think everyone knows how this turns out.
A Posteriori :: Eppur Si Muove
A Posteriori :: Feel Me Heaven
A Posteriori :: Dreaming of Andromeda
A Posteriori :: Dancing With Mephisto
A Posteriori :: Northern Lights
A Posteriori :: Invisible Love
A Posteriori :: Message from Io
A Posteriori :: Hello and Welcome
A Posteriori :: 20,000 Miles Above the Sea
A Posteriori :: Sitting on the Moon
A Posteriori :: The Alchemist
They send her off to eighth grade, confident and in remission with spiky red hair and a smile that shows none of the stress and worry and panic of the last five years. Her eyes sparkle when she talks about school and friends and how much she hates gym class because everything is working out the way it’s supposed to this time. She missed out on pretending to have a sprained ankle because everyone else was pretending because one person legitimately fell in gymnastics and she missed out on making rubber cement balls during a lesson on the history of upstate New York and she missed out on the How Your Body Changes talk delivered by school nurses but she figures that she’s alive and none of that much matters. She’s felt more pain than a sprained ankle - real or fake - and been more bored than reading about the Seneca and her mother delivered the How Your Body Changes talk quite a bit less awkwardly and with a little bit of humor.
She rolls her eyes at every checkup because it’s kind of dull and even if she did mind the needle, she’s too old to freak out and make a big deal out of it. She once asked an incompetent intern if he’d like her to insert the needle and draw her own blood since she’s obviously seen it done more times than he has. Not to be shown up by a fourteen year-old girl with no medical training, he got it on the next try. She managed to find a “Be Nice to Me, I Gave Blood Today” sticker and modified the wording to be snarky and slightly insulting (because it definitely hurt and she knew her arm would sport an impressive heroin addict-esque bruise for the next week) and stuck it on his back.
Noah uses all of his social capital and intimidating physical build to frighten off any boy who shows any interest in his sister until she pulls him aside after a particularly scary glare and politely tells him that at some point she plans to be interested in boys and, until then, she’d really like to have at least two male friends. He backs off just enough to make sure that her chosen male friends are of the type that would be too shy and awkward to even act like they were remotely interested in her in any way that didn’t involve copying math notes and editing English papers.
Dylan tells Noah to shut it when he attempts to give a lecture about passing on older brother responsibilities because he’s going off to college in the fall, saying that it’s kind of annoying and, if he hasn’t noticed, Kylie’s pretty good at handling the boys who slip under Noah’s radar. When the ridiculous argument escalates into a shouting match, Mark tells both of them to shut it because he’s been screening boys since she was playing in sandboxes with the neighborhood kids and don’t they think that, as her father, he has some sense of who his daughter should and shouldn’t be with? Addison tells all three of them to shut it because, while it’s cute and endearing, any boy who wants to date Kylie in the kind of way they want boys to date her is going to treat her pretty damn well anyway without their stern glances and intimidating demands of when said boy will have her home. Kylie tells all of them to shut it because she currently hates all boys because two of her friends just got dumped and she’s supposed to and, besides, the boys she knows are geeks (“no offense, Dylan”) and sometimes need her to tape their glasses and she doesn’t really want to date them.
--
Mark pauses outside of Noah’s room when he hears Kylie’s voice speak up. Even though she’s fourteen and completely unresponsive to any parental-suggested bedtime, he still thinks that she should be asleep at midnight.
“Noah. I’m in remission. I’m going to be fine. Don’t pick Penn State just because it’s closer.”
“I like the school,” he answers quickly. “It’s got the football team, the academics…”
“…and it’s a few hours drive away from your kid sister if she gets sick again. Which she won’t.”
“K-Bug…”
“Don’t K-Bug me,” she interrupts crossly. “I know it’s hard because you spend a lot of your time in testosterone-filled locker rooms surrounded by idiots or wearing butt pads, but have some sense. You never cheer for Penn State, you keep staring wistfully at the OSU info packet on the counter when you think no one’s looking. If anything happens - which it won’t - you being here a few hours later isn’t going to be that big of a deal to me if it means you’re at the school you want to go to.”
“I have an AP Chemistry test at 7:30 in the morning,” he says by way of avoiding any more focus on the topic of choosing a college.
Mark takes his cue to continue on to his room and smiles as he virtually hears Kylie roll her eyes as she hugs her older brother goodnight and slips out.
--
With only one left in the house, things are a little calmer. Kylie turns out to be a bit of a handful - her pixie-style haircut dyed deep auburn with bright red highlights scattered throughout and answers of simply “out” when she’s asked where she’s going, a tendency to drive too fast and not do enough homework - but she’s always home in time for curfew, gets good grades and empties the dishwasher generally before someone has a chance to ask.
As much as they love their sons, Mark and Addison find it incredibly relaxing to only have one around. They found it easier with just Kylie and Dylan and then any sign of chaos disappeared once they dropped Dylan off at MIT to major in something that none of the family understands. They use the space and quiet and their daughter’s busy social life to their advantage, spending more and more time together and actually going out. Kylie always rolls her eyes with a smile when she comes home and sees them cuddling on the couch or sitting out back watching the sunset with their arms wrapped around each other. She knows how crazy their lives were for most of her life and she’s glad that they can relax now and simply be with each other and not have to worry whether she’ll be alive next week.
Addison cried when they left both boys at their respective dorms and Mark knows he’s going to have to work hard to hold back some tears when they eventually drop Kylie off wherever she decides to go but they support each other through the process, sometimes taking phones away when a phone call was made last night and sometimes just offering a hug. They’ve never really known life together without their children, Addison’s surprising pregnancy with Noah coming only months after they got back together, and it’s weird because they’re gradually being left alone again and they’re not entirely sure how to act. Addison brought it up one night and they simply laughed about needing twenty-two years before being able to be alone together.
--
“This is…insane.” Noah rests his arm on Kylie’s shoulder and watches the movements of way too many family members for their house, some of whom he sort of forgot existed.
She rolls her eyes up to look at him. “I know,” she says with a groan. “I’m walking across a stage in a shapeless gown of an unattractive color and they’re giving me a frame.”
“And an ugly frame at that.” He sighs and messes with her hair. “They’re all here because of you, you know.”
Kylie clenches her teeth. “Because I made it here alive? That’s morbid. If I hadn’t nearly died a few times, half of them wouldn’t have showed. I should find some way to be offended.”
“You sent them all graduation announcements,” Dylan points out and rests his arm on her other shoulder as he comes up behind them.
“Because Mom told me to and Dad said that the more people who know I’m graduating, the more money I get.”
“We are a well-oiled machine,” Noah nods, proud of the three of them. His girlfriend told him that it was rude, sending out announcements about things just to get money, but he told her that he sent very nice thank you notes so it was okay. He left off the part where the thank you note generally meant that he’d get a ten-dollar bonus the next time a holiday rolled around.
Kylie catches sight of Alex trying to weave his way through the maze of people he doesn’t bother introducing himself to lest he be accosted by all forms of Kylie’s family who want to thank him and slips out from underneath her brothers’ arms, smirking over her shoulder as they both lose their balance. She directs him through an open doorway and into an unoccupied corner where she can give him a big hug and not be shoved around by people eating things that she let her mother buy only if she promised to allow Kylie to have a proper graduation party. One with friends and soda and cake with an inappropriate congratulatory phrase on it.
Alex smiles and hugs her tightly in return. He calls every month even after she went into remission, just to check up on her and see how the family is doing but he hasn’t seen her in eight years. “You got tall.”
“Consider my mother.”
He smiles and nods softly. “True. So. We doing okay?”
She nods energetically. “Yeah. I have my last pre-college check-up in a few weeks. And everything’s been good for the past five years so they should tell that I’m in the clear.”
Alex smiles again, pleased to see the smile and energy and happiness and even more pleased that he was the one who could put it there. “Good.”
Kylie bites her lip softly and stares at the floor for a few seconds before lifting her eyes to look at him. “Thank you, Alex,” she says quietly, her voice hinting that it might shake if she spoke up. “So much.”
Nodding, he pulls her back to him for another hug. “You’re welcome.”
--
Graduation over, the relatives and the friends and a couple neighborhood kids who just didn’t want to go home for a few days have left and the house is back to two parents and three kids. Despite Kylie’s protests that they didn’t really need to stick around and could go back to school where all the alcohol and partying and girls are, Noah and Dylan decided to stay out of solidarity and a desire to scope out the boys at the University of Pennsylvania. Noah teases her about choosing a school in Pennsylvania when she told him to do just the opposite but she politely tells him to shove it somewhere unfortunate because if she didn’t tell him to do just the opposite he wouldn’t be a national football champion.
“You scared?” Noah joins his younger siblings on the roof to stare at what stars they can see through the fog of New York lights.
Kylie nods a little. “It’s dumb. I know I’m okay and I know that that’s what they’re going to say tomorrow, but…it’s rare that it comes back after this long but it was supposed to be rare to come back last time, too. And if it does, it just keeps getting worse and that…” she trails off, not wanting to talk about just how terrified she was or how many nights she fell asleep crying because all she wanted was someone to make her better and it wasn’t like she was asking for world peace or something incredibly monumental. “That wasn’t fun.”
Dylan rolls over on his stomach. “Hey. You don’t need to worry about anything. You’re gonna be fine. Permanently.”
Though she’s confident that he’s right, her smile still wavers. “How do you know?”
“Because we’re your older brothers and it’s in the Older Brother Handbook that younger sisters are only allowed two near-death experiences. You’ve had your two, K-Bug. So, you’re stuck here.”
At that, Kylie laughs and wipes away a few stray tears. “Thank you, Noah.”
--
Kylie stops when she enters the living room, her keys still in her hand and her sunglasses pushed on top of her head. “I feel like I’m about to be interrogated.” She raises her eyebrow at her family sitting on chairs or draped sluggishly over the couch pretending to be doing anything other than waiting anxiously for her to get home. “Really, you guys. The acting needs some work.” She smiles and drops her purse on the table and hooks her keys next to Noah’s on the hook on the wall.
She takes a deep breath before she relays the news that she’s waited sixteen years to hear. “Complete remission.” She pauses a few brief moments while they process the information they already knew and then braces herself for the hug attack as all four of them surround her.
--
“Wow,” Mark breathes in unfounded disbelief once the celebration has disbanded and their three children went out to celebrate in their own way (and they left with a stern warning from Addison that nothing illegal or questionable was to take place). “I knew she was gonna make it but hearing that…”
“I know.” Addison snuggles deeper into his arms and closes her eyes. “I can relax now.”
Mark chuckles and places a kiss on his wife’s forehead. “Me too.”
“I’m not sure I ever thanked you.”
He moves away a little so she can look up at him. “For what?”
“Giving me a second chance.” She blinks rapidly at herself. “Even if it did turn out completely insane.”
Mark smiles and thinks that, really, he should be the one thanking her because, as far as he’s concerned, he screwed up in a much bigger way than she did but he simply nods. “You’re welcome.”
Addison groans as she hears the attempt at shutting the front door quietly and stifled laughter of all three children. “Please tell me that no piercings, tattoos or blue hair were involved in whatever they just did.”
finis.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: I think everyone knows how this turns out.
A Posteriori :: Eppur Si Muove
A Posteriori :: Feel Me Heaven
A Posteriori :: Dreaming of Andromeda
A Posteriori :: Dancing With Mephisto
A Posteriori :: Northern Lights
A Posteriori :: Invisible Love
A Posteriori :: Message from Io
A Posteriori :: Hello and Welcome
A Posteriori :: 20,000 Miles Above the Sea
A Posteriori :: Sitting on the Moon
A Posteriori :: The Alchemist
They send her off to eighth grade, confident and in remission with spiky red hair and a smile that shows none of the stress and worry and panic of the last five years. Her eyes sparkle when she talks about school and friends and how much she hates gym class because everything is working out the way it’s supposed to this time. She missed out on pretending to have a sprained ankle because everyone else was pretending because one person legitimately fell in gymnastics and she missed out on making rubber cement balls during a lesson on the history of upstate New York and she missed out on the How Your Body Changes talk delivered by school nurses but she figures that she’s alive and none of that much matters. She’s felt more pain than a sprained ankle - real or fake - and been more bored than reading about the Seneca and her mother delivered the How Your Body Changes talk quite a bit less awkwardly and with a little bit of humor.
She rolls her eyes at every checkup because it’s kind of dull and even if she did mind the needle, she’s too old to freak out and make a big deal out of it. She once asked an incompetent intern if he’d like her to insert the needle and draw her own blood since she’s obviously seen it done more times than he has. Not to be shown up by a fourteen year-old girl with no medical training, he got it on the next try. She managed to find a “Be Nice to Me, I Gave Blood Today” sticker and modified the wording to be snarky and slightly insulting (because it definitely hurt and she knew her arm would sport an impressive heroin addict-esque bruise for the next week) and stuck it on his back.
Noah uses all of his social capital and intimidating physical build to frighten off any boy who shows any interest in his sister until she pulls him aside after a particularly scary glare and politely tells him that at some point she plans to be interested in boys and, until then, she’d really like to have at least two male friends. He backs off just enough to make sure that her chosen male friends are of the type that would be too shy and awkward to even act like they were remotely interested in her in any way that didn’t involve copying math notes and editing English papers.
Dylan tells Noah to shut it when he attempts to give a lecture about passing on older brother responsibilities because he’s going off to college in the fall, saying that it’s kind of annoying and, if he hasn’t noticed, Kylie’s pretty good at handling the boys who slip under Noah’s radar. When the ridiculous argument escalates into a shouting match, Mark tells both of them to shut it because he’s been screening boys since she was playing in sandboxes with the neighborhood kids and don’t they think that, as her father, he has some sense of who his daughter should and shouldn’t be with? Addison tells all three of them to shut it because, while it’s cute and endearing, any boy who wants to date Kylie in the kind of way they want boys to date her is going to treat her pretty damn well anyway without their stern glances and intimidating demands of when said boy will have her home. Kylie tells all of them to shut it because she currently hates all boys because two of her friends just got dumped and she’s supposed to and, besides, the boys she knows are geeks (“no offense, Dylan”) and sometimes need her to tape their glasses and she doesn’t really want to date them.
--
Mark pauses outside of Noah’s room when he hears Kylie’s voice speak up. Even though she’s fourteen and completely unresponsive to any parental-suggested bedtime, he still thinks that she should be asleep at midnight.
“Noah. I’m in remission. I’m going to be fine. Don’t pick Penn State just because it’s closer.”
“I like the school,” he answers quickly. “It’s got the football team, the academics…”
“…and it’s a few hours drive away from your kid sister if she gets sick again. Which she won’t.”
“K-Bug…”
“Don’t K-Bug me,” she interrupts crossly. “I know it’s hard because you spend a lot of your time in testosterone-filled locker rooms surrounded by idiots or wearing butt pads, but have some sense. You never cheer for Penn State, you keep staring wistfully at the OSU info packet on the counter when you think no one’s looking. If anything happens - which it won’t - you being here a few hours later isn’t going to be that big of a deal to me if it means you’re at the school you want to go to.”
“I have an AP Chemistry test at 7:30 in the morning,” he says by way of avoiding any more focus on the topic of choosing a college.
Mark takes his cue to continue on to his room and smiles as he virtually hears Kylie roll her eyes as she hugs her older brother goodnight and slips out.
--
With only one left in the house, things are a little calmer. Kylie turns out to be a bit of a handful - her pixie-style haircut dyed deep auburn with bright red highlights scattered throughout and answers of simply “out” when she’s asked where she’s going, a tendency to drive too fast and not do enough homework - but she’s always home in time for curfew, gets good grades and empties the dishwasher generally before someone has a chance to ask.
As much as they love their sons, Mark and Addison find it incredibly relaxing to only have one around. They found it easier with just Kylie and Dylan and then any sign of chaos disappeared once they dropped Dylan off at MIT to major in something that none of the family understands. They use the space and quiet and their daughter’s busy social life to their advantage, spending more and more time together and actually going out. Kylie always rolls her eyes with a smile when she comes home and sees them cuddling on the couch or sitting out back watching the sunset with their arms wrapped around each other. She knows how crazy their lives were for most of her life and she’s glad that they can relax now and simply be with each other and not have to worry whether she’ll be alive next week.
Addison cried when they left both boys at their respective dorms and Mark knows he’s going to have to work hard to hold back some tears when they eventually drop Kylie off wherever she decides to go but they support each other through the process, sometimes taking phones away when a phone call was made last night and sometimes just offering a hug. They’ve never really known life together without their children, Addison’s surprising pregnancy with Noah coming only months after they got back together, and it’s weird because they’re gradually being left alone again and they’re not entirely sure how to act. Addison brought it up one night and they simply laughed about needing twenty-two years before being able to be alone together.
--
“This is…insane.” Noah rests his arm on Kylie’s shoulder and watches the movements of way too many family members for their house, some of whom he sort of forgot existed.
She rolls her eyes up to look at him. “I know,” she says with a groan. “I’m walking across a stage in a shapeless gown of an unattractive color and they’re giving me a frame.”
“And an ugly frame at that.” He sighs and messes with her hair. “They’re all here because of you, you know.”
Kylie clenches her teeth. “Because I made it here alive? That’s morbid. If I hadn’t nearly died a few times, half of them wouldn’t have showed. I should find some way to be offended.”
“You sent them all graduation announcements,” Dylan points out and rests his arm on her other shoulder as he comes up behind them.
“Because Mom told me to and Dad said that the more people who know I’m graduating, the more money I get.”
“We are a well-oiled machine,” Noah nods, proud of the three of them. His girlfriend told him that it was rude, sending out announcements about things just to get money, but he told her that he sent very nice thank you notes so it was okay. He left off the part where the thank you note generally meant that he’d get a ten-dollar bonus the next time a holiday rolled around.
Kylie catches sight of Alex trying to weave his way through the maze of people he doesn’t bother introducing himself to lest he be accosted by all forms of Kylie’s family who want to thank him and slips out from underneath her brothers’ arms, smirking over her shoulder as they both lose their balance. She directs him through an open doorway and into an unoccupied corner where she can give him a big hug and not be shoved around by people eating things that she let her mother buy only if she promised to allow Kylie to have a proper graduation party. One with friends and soda and cake with an inappropriate congratulatory phrase on it.
Alex smiles and hugs her tightly in return. He calls every month even after she went into remission, just to check up on her and see how the family is doing but he hasn’t seen her in eight years. “You got tall.”
“Consider my mother.”
He smiles and nods softly. “True. So. We doing okay?”
She nods energetically. “Yeah. I have my last pre-college check-up in a few weeks. And everything’s been good for the past five years so they should tell that I’m in the clear.”
Alex smiles again, pleased to see the smile and energy and happiness and even more pleased that he was the one who could put it there. “Good.”
Kylie bites her lip softly and stares at the floor for a few seconds before lifting her eyes to look at him. “Thank you, Alex,” she says quietly, her voice hinting that it might shake if she spoke up. “So much.”
Nodding, he pulls her back to him for another hug. “You’re welcome.”
--
Graduation over, the relatives and the friends and a couple neighborhood kids who just didn’t want to go home for a few days have left and the house is back to two parents and three kids. Despite Kylie’s protests that they didn’t really need to stick around and could go back to school where all the alcohol and partying and girls are, Noah and Dylan decided to stay out of solidarity and a desire to scope out the boys at the University of Pennsylvania. Noah teases her about choosing a school in Pennsylvania when she told him to do just the opposite but she politely tells him to shove it somewhere unfortunate because if she didn’t tell him to do just the opposite he wouldn’t be a national football champion.
“You scared?” Noah joins his younger siblings on the roof to stare at what stars they can see through the fog of New York lights.
Kylie nods a little. “It’s dumb. I know I’m okay and I know that that’s what they’re going to say tomorrow, but…it’s rare that it comes back after this long but it was supposed to be rare to come back last time, too. And if it does, it just keeps getting worse and that…” she trails off, not wanting to talk about just how terrified she was or how many nights she fell asleep crying because all she wanted was someone to make her better and it wasn’t like she was asking for world peace or something incredibly monumental. “That wasn’t fun.”
Dylan rolls over on his stomach. “Hey. You don’t need to worry about anything. You’re gonna be fine. Permanently.”
Though she’s confident that he’s right, her smile still wavers. “How do you know?”
“Because we’re your older brothers and it’s in the Older Brother Handbook that younger sisters are only allowed two near-death experiences. You’ve had your two, K-Bug. So, you’re stuck here.”
At that, Kylie laughs and wipes away a few stray tears. “Thank you, Noah.”
--
Kylie stops when she enters the living room, her keys still in her hand and her sunglasses pushed on top of her head. “I feel like I’m about to be interrogated.” She raises her eyebrow at her family sitting on chairs or draped sluggishly over the couch pretending to be doing anything other than waiting anxiously for her to get home. “Really, you guys. The acting needs some work.” She smiles and drops her purse on the table and hooks her keys next to Noah’s on the hook on the wall.
She takes a deep breath before she relays the news that she’s waited sixteen years to hear. “Complete remission.” She pauses a few brief moments while they process the information they already knew and then braces herself for the hug attack as all four of them surround her.
--
“Wow,” Mark breathes in unfounded disbelief once the celebration has disbanded and their three children went out to celebrate in their own way (and they left with a stern warning from Addison that nothing illegal or questionable was to take place). “I knew she was gonna make it but hearing that…”
“I know.” Addison snuggles deeper into his arms and closes her eyes. “I can relax now.”
Mark chuckles and places a kiss on his wife’s forehead. “Me too.”
“I’m not sure I ever thanked you.”
He moves away a little so she can look up at him. “For what?”
“Giving me a second chance.” She blinks rapidly at herself. “Even if it did turn out completely insane.”
Mark smiles and thinks that, really, he should be the one thanking her because, as far as he’s concerned, he screwed up in a much bigger way than she did but he simply nods. “You’re welcome.”
Addison groans as she hears the attempt at shutting the front door quietly and stifled laughter of all three children. “Please tell me that no piercings, tattoos or blue hair were involved in whatever they just did.”
finis.