It's important not to forget.
Title: Mirrored Glass
Author: sexonastick
Fandom: Heroes
Characters/Pairing: Niki + Jessica, and Niki/Jessica
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers/Warnings: Obvious spoilers for 1.10 and 1.11. Incest mostly implied and no real porn. Sorry.
Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously.
Summary: Niki's just turned old enough to move out and move ahead, but can't help looking back.
Notes: It would be in honor of the awesome of seanarenay, but she really deserves REAL porn, I think, and something remotely small enough to fit inside of comments. So while the best is yet to come, as far as this fic goes it's probably one of the most limited POVs I've ever written.
The face in the mirror isn't Jessica's, and not only because she's been dead and buried for five years now, but also because it doesn't smile. Jessica knew how to smile, a look that could sometimes almost scare Niki. Clenching shivers in her chest.
Niki doesn't smile anymore, and neither does the face she sees in the mirror.
The bruises on her arms aren't Jessica's either. They belong to Niki. They belong, like something normal and expected -- or that throbbing in her jaw. She moves her teeth and thinks she hears bones crunching. It's like glass under her feet and she shifts the beer bottle in her hand, rubbing the peeling label with her thumb.
The truth is sometimes Niki wants to remember, but then she takes a quick drink to forget.
* * *
She's young, and she's not sure how old. Time and numbers feel too large to have meaning -- though everything is big really, because she's still so very small. Their mother's there, and she's laughing. Her face knows how to smile, and Niki's still does too.
Jessica won't stop talking -- much louder and faster than Niki ever can -- and their mother listens closely, making Niki feel even smaller. When they both laugh, Niki isn't sure why, though her father's rough warm hands around and across her belly make her giggle when he picks her up and takes her away to the other room.
When Niki pushes her cheek against his sharp stubble, she can look back across his shoulder while her mother and Jessica both drift further away. Only Jessica's eyes seem to stay exactly the same -- just as large, no matter how far Niki moves from them, and staring without blinking.
* * *
Niki's seven and the only sound louder than her mother crying is Daddy yelling. They close the door to their bedroom and shout so loud it sounds like they're right on top of Niki and Jessica's bed.
Something breaks beyond the doorways, and the screaming gets even louder. They can't even hear each other breathing now, even though they feel the warmth of one another's breath. Niki shifts in bed and the mattress groans in protest, but then settles again shortly.
Jessica holds onto her hand tightly and stares up at the ceiling. When Niki curls into her side she doesn't flinch away, and even wraps an arm around her, drawing their bodies close enough to hear Niki's heart pound close to her forehead.
It beats red fast, and Jessica has to close her eyes finally to stop from blinking every time it hits.
* * *
She's ten years old, and her sister's fingers are in her hair, tugging to get her attention.
"Niki."
Niki tries to slap the hand away, but Jessica catches her wrist and digs in with her nails right above the bone. "Ow," Niki tries to recoil, instinctively whining and skittishly shifting back like a dog, but the hand holding onto her holds firm. She frowns to make up for lost ground. "What?"
Jessica tilts her head toward what might be wind, except they're both still indoors and so there's only air conditioning without any currents. "You hear that?" She even sniffs, scenting the would-be breeze.
When Niki blinks and squirms, the bed frame creaks, but otherwise all is silent. "Yeah." Jessica's eyes are back on her quickly, and for a moment it's like Niki can't breathe or just can't think. "Um. You hurt me, so I said--"
"No," Jessica corrects her, just as fast, and digs her nails in a second time. She frowns, reprimanding; "Listen closely." The air conditioning shifts into a higher gear, and for several minutes its buzz is all that fills the room. "You don't hear it?"
Niki hesitates, but shakes her head.
"There's a wolf loose in our back yard." Jessica's grin is so big, it shows off all of her teeth -- and the places were some have gone missing.
Their father sleeps in the other room. Their mother's been gone for nearly a year. The window near their bed slides open with joint effort, and Jessica uses a book from the nightstand to keep it from sliding back down.
They argue over who should go first.
Niki's smaller -- not actually, not physically, but able to make herself seem so, and she quickly pushes herself out over the edge before Jessica can stop her. For moments, entire seconds, her feet dangle into space several feet above the ground. And then she loses her grip and falls.
The sound of Jessica's scream is almost as loud as the impact of bone bending and giving way. Niki's arm snaps and twists into an odd angle, and her mouth opens without sound. Above her, she hears Jessica's scream again, and the door opening to their room.
Niki's dimly aware of the sound of glass breaking, and it's then she starts to cry, knowing deeply that it's her fault.
* * *
She's twelve, and the shrink Niki's father sends her to tells hers she has issues with her anger.
He asks her to write her feelings out, and so she tries breaking his pen. When that doesn't work, she throws it at him.
"Okay," he says; "we're making progress."
He asks her why she hurt the neighbor's cat, but Niki says she didn't. He asks her why she wrote nasty things about her Daddy on their living room wall, but Niki just looks confused. He asks her about telling lies, and she says that a good girl doesn't.
When he asks about Jessica, then Niki goes stiff and still, staying quiet. She won't lie, but she can't talk, can't even move, and doesn't want to. His eyes and that look when he stares at her is so big that it makes Niki feel small again. It's like she's not even there. She's not even there.
She's in the car buckled up with her Daddy driving and tells him she doesn't like it there. He says, "about like I like paying for a new paint job?" and moves the wheel sharply so that Niki's head almost hits on the door window. She's quiet the rest of the way home.
Two days later, Daddy finds his porno magazines all torn up and thrown around the room with cuss words written all over. Somehow someone did it while Niki was still asleep in bed, but Daddy's so mad he takes away the money for therapy and tells her she can't go back.
Niki nods her head and tries to seem sad, but she smiles when he's not watching.
* * *
Niki's Daddy doesn't like the boy who asked her out on a date for Friday night, but that's alright by her. He doesn't like a lot of things, like the beer she steals from the fridge sometimes when she gets home late and he's already passed out drunk. This boy drinks too, but that's not the problem.
"He's a thug," Daddy says while she's getting dressed and looking herself over in the mirror.
What he probably means is that it's a black guy asking after Daddy's fifteen year old baby girl; except he won't say that other word, oh no, not when someone might be close enough to hear through Niki's window still hanging open.
The boy's nice and polite and he smiles when he picks her up and they leave in his car. He pays for dinner, which is pizza, and the movie too, and still he's smiling as he leans in on top of her in the backseat of his car.
He asks again, is she sure, even while his hands pull on her jeans and zipper. He asks again, and Niki only nods. She feels like his hand's already on her, tiny prickling fingertips stroking over the tight heat building and twisting in her stomach.
But the look in her face must seem terrified, because he laughs and tells her, "It's okay, baby." But it isn't, and it's only now that Niki sees it and senses something's wrong.
She tries to say it, whimpering a quiet "no," but the noise gets lost somewhere in the thick air of the car -- fogging up the windows an extra cloudy inch. His hands wrap around and push apart her thighs, holding on tight and deep and with his thumbs pushing so hard it's like they're burying into the skin.
The red hot pounding in the back of Niki's skull is getting hotter, even more than the warmth in her groin, and the prickly trickling sense of danger is shifting up her spine and sliding higher in pitch. Suddenly it's like a high piercing Nononono, and it's not just her head, it's the entire inside of the car.
When Niki wakes up in her bed, there are bruises on her thighs.
She doesn't notice the blood on her knuckles until morning, and doesn't look for the boy at school on Monday. When he doesn't show for class for several days, it almost doesn't register.
* * *
The beer in her hand is starting to get warm, and Niki can nearly taste the hangover still to come. When she takes another drink, it's with a grimace.
For a while, Niki had thought of running away. She practiced signing her name as "Jessica," and imagined living as someone else -- as the sister who should have lived and whose life now would already be more exciting. Jessica would know what to do or how to leave. Niki's old enough now to live on her own, and there's nothing for Daddy to do about it, but she doesn't know how to start.
A car seems like a pretty good place to begin, but she can't take her Dad's. He'd call the cops on his own daughter, that's for damn sure, and she's old enough now for a felony charge to really mater.
Niki sits down on her bed and waits for answers to arrive. They always seem to, however slowly. She finishes off the beer she's on and opens up another from the cooler by her feet -- sinking a perspiration puddle into the carpet that surrounds it. She's got enough to last a while.
When she stretches out and leans back, lying down, Niki kicks her feet up onto the end of the bed without bothering to take her sneakers off. She put them on earlier when she discovered broken pictures and frames all over the house. Shattered glass everywhere, and every family photo destroyed.
Niki sighs and looks up at the peeling paint on the ceiling, already tugging on this new bottle's label.
The bed was moved once Jessie died. Though it once sat near the center of the room, it now rests flat along the wall and Niki sometimes turns and pushes herself close to it like she once would with her sister. She falls asleep there like that, with her sneakers still on in bed.
Niki wakes up in the bus station in a new change of clothes. The ticket in her hand is for one person, one way, to a city halfway across the country. She's wearing a new pair of tennis shoes, good for running. They're clean, without a single piece of glass stuck in the sole.
Without getting up or otherwise moving, Niki checks her watch and then the ticket. A few people are staring, watching her closely, but she pretends she doesn't know. The bus leaves in forty minutes, and she spends the time in between sitting quietly.
Niki doesn't have to check by now to know she'll find fresh bruises on her thighs the next time she changes her clothes.
Author: sexonastick
Fandom: Heroes
Characters/Pairing: Niki + Jessica, and Niki/Jessica
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers/Warnings: Obvious spoilers for 1.10 and 1.11. Incest mostly implied and no real porn. Sorry.
Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously.
Summary: Niki's just turned old enough to move out and move ahead, but can't help looking back.
Notes: It would be in honor of the awesome of seanarenay, but she really deserves REAL porn, I think, and something remotely small enough to fit inside of comments. So while the best is yet to come, as far as this fic goes it's probably one of the most limited POVs I've ever written.
The face in the mirror isn't Jessica's, and not only because she's been dead and buried for five years now, but also because it doesn't smile. Jessica knew how to smile, a look that could sometimes almost scare Niki. Clenching shivers in her chest.
Niki doesn't smile anymore, and neither does the face she sees in the mirror.
The bruises on her arms aren't Jessica's either. They belong to Niki. They belong, like something normal and expected -- or that throbbing in her jaw. She moves her teeth and thinks she hears bones crunching. It's like glass under her feet and she shifts the beer bottle in her hand, rubbing the peeling label with her thumb.
The truth is sometimes Niki wants to remember, but then she takes a quick drink to forget.
* * *
She's young, and she's not sure how old. Time and numbers feel too large to have meaning -- though everything is big really, because she's still so very small. Their mother's there, and she's laughing. Her face knows how to smile, and Niki's still does too.
Jessica won't stop talking -- much louder and faster than Niki ever can -- and their mother listens closely, making Niki feel even smaller. When they both laugh, Niki isn't sure why, though her father's rough warm hands around and across her belly make her giggle when he picks her up and takes her away to the other room.
When Niki pushes her cheek against his sharp stubble, she can look back across his shoulder while her mother and Jessica both drift further away. Only Jessica's eyes seem to stay exactly the same -- just as large, no matter how far Niki moves from them, and staring without blinking.
* * *
Niki's seven and the only sound louder than her mother crying is Daddy yelling. They close the door to their bedroom and shout so loud it sounds like they're right on top of Niki and Jessica's bed.
Something breaks beyond the doorways, and the screaming gets even louder. They can't even hear each other breathing now, even though they feel the warmth of one another's breath. Niki shifts in bed and the mattress groans in protest, but then settles again shortly.
Jessica holds onto her hand tightly and stares up at the ceiling. When Niki curls into her side she doesn't flinch away, and even wraps an arm around her, drawing their bodies close enough to hear Niki's heart pound close to her forehead.
It beats red fast, and Jessica has to close her eyes finally to stop from blinking every time it hits.
* * *
She's ten years old, and her sister's fingers are in her hair, tugging to get her attention.
"Niki."
Niki tries to slap the hand away, but Jessica catches her wrist and digs in with her nails right above the bone. "Ow," Niki tries to recoil, instinctively whining and skittishly shifting back like a dog, but the hand holding onto her holds firm. She frowns to make up for lost ground. "What?"
Jessica tilts her head toward what might be wind, except they're both still indoors and so there's only air conditioning without any currents. "You hear that?" She even sniffs, scenting the would-be breeze.
When Niki blinks and squirms, the bed frame creaks, but otherwise all is silent. "Yeah." Jessica's eyes are back on her quickly, and for a moment it's like Niki can't breathe or just can't think. "Um. You hurt me, so I said--"
"No," Jessica corrects her, just as fast, and digs her nails in a second time. She frowns, reprimanding; "Listen closely." The air conditioning shifts into a higher gear, and for several minutes its buzz is all that fills the room. "You don't hear it?"
Niki hesitates, but shakes her head.
"There's a wolf loose in our back yard." Jessica's grin is so big, it shows off all of her teeth -- and the places were some have gone missing.
Their father sleeps in the other room. Their mother's been gone for nearly a year. The window near their bed slides open with joint effort, and Jessica uses a book from the nightstand to keep it from sliding back down.
They argue over who should go first.
Niki's smaller -- not actually, not physically, but able to make herself seem so, and she quickly pushes herself out over the edge before Jessica can stop her. For moments, entire seconds, her feet dangle into space several feet above the ground. And then she loses her grip and falls.
The sound of Jessica's scream is almost as loud as the impact of bone bending and giving way. Niki's arm snaps and twists into an odd angle, and her mouth opens without sound. Above her, she hears Jessica's scream again, and the door opening to their room.
Niki's dimly aware of the sound of glass breaking, and it's then she starts to cry, knowing deeply that it's her fault.
* * *
She's twelve, and the shrink Niki's father sends her to tells hers she has issues with her anger.
He asks her to write her feelings out, and so she tries breaking his pen. When that doesn't work, she throws it at him.
"Okay," he says; "we're making progress."
He asks her why she hurt the neighbor's cat, but Niki says she didn't. He asks her why she wrote nasty things about her Daddy on their living room wall, but Niki just looks confused. He asks her about telling lies, and she says that a good girl doesn't.
When he asks about Jessica, then Niki goes stiff and still, staying quiet. She won't lie, but she can't talk, can't even move, and doesn't want to. His eyes and that look when he stares at her is so big that it makes Niki feel small again. It's like she's not even there. She's not even there.
She's in the car buckled up with her Daddy driving and tells him she doesn't like it there. He says, "about like I like paying for a new paint job?" and moves the wheel sharply so that Niki's head almost hits on the door window. She's quiet the rest of the way home.
Two days later, Daddy finds his porno magazines all torn up and thrown around the room with cuss words written all over. Somehow someone did it while Niki was still asleep in bed, but Daddy's so mad he takes away the money for therapy and tells her she can't go back.
Niki nods her head and tries to seem sad, but she smiles when he's not watching.
* * *
Niki's Daddy doesn't like the boy who asked her out on a date for Friday night, but that's alright by her. He doesn't like a lot of things, like the beer she steals from the fridge sometimes when she gets home late and he's already passed out drunk. This boy drinks too, but that's not the problem.
"He's a thug," Daddy says while she's getting dressed and looking herself over in the mirror.
What he probably means is that it's a black guy asking after Daddy's fifteen year old baby girl; except he won't say that other word, oh no, not when someone might be close enough to hear through Niki's window still hanging open.
The boy's nice and polite and he smiles when he picks her up and they leave in his car. He pays for dinner, which is pizza, and the movie too, and still he's smiling as he leans in on top of her in the backseat of his car.
He asks again, is she sure, even while his hands pull on her jeans and zipper. He asks again, and Niki only nods. She feels like his hand's already on her, tiny prickling fingertips stroking over the tight heat building and twisting in her stomach.
But the look in her face must seem terrified, because he laughs and tells her, "It's okay, baby." But it isn't, and it's only now that Niki sees it and senses something's wrong.
She tries to say it, whimpering a quiet "no," but the noise gets lost somewhere in the thick air of the car -- fogging up the windows an extra cloudy inch. His hands wrap around and push apart her thighs, holding on tight and deep and with his thumbs pushing so hard it's like they're burying into the skin.
The red hot pounding in the back of Niki's skull is getting hotter, even more than the warmth in her groin, and the prickly trickling sense of danger is shifting up her spine and sliding higher in pitch. Suddenly it's like a high piercing Nononono, and it's not just her head, it's the entire inside of the car.
When Niki wakes up in her bed, there are bruises on her thighs.
She doesn't notice the blood on her knuckles until morning, and doesn't look for the boy at school on Monday. When he doesn't show for class for several days, it almost doesn't register.
* * *
The beer in her hand is starting to get warm, and Niki can nearly taste the hangover still to come. When she takes another drink, it's with a grimace.
For a while, Niki had thought of running away. She practiced signing her name as "Jessica," and imagined living as someone else -- as the sister who should have lived and whose life now would already be more exciting. Jessica would know what to do or how to leave. Niki's old enough now to live on her own, and there's nothing for Daddy to do about it, but she doesn't know how to start.
A car seems like a pretty good place to begin, but she can't take her Dad's. He'd call the cops on his own daughter, that's for damn sure, and she's old enough now for a felony charge to really mater.
Niki sits down on her bed and waits for answers to arrive. They always seem to, however slowly. She finishes off the beer she's on and opens up another from the cooler by her feet -- sinking a perspiration puddle into the carpet that surrounds it. She's got enough to last a while.
When she stretches out and leans back, lying down, Niki kicks her feet up onto the end of the bed without bothering to take her sneakers off. She put them on earlier when she discovered broken pictures and frames all over the house. Shattered glass everywhere, and every family photo destroyed.
Niki sighs and looks up at the peeling paint on the ceiling, already tugging on this new bottle's label.
The bed was moved once Jessie died. Though it once sat near the center of the room, it now rests flat along the wall and Niki sometimes turns and pushes herself close to it like she once would with her sister. She falls asleep there like that, with her sneakers still on in bed.
Niki wakes up in the bus station in a new change of clothes. The ticket in her hand is for one person, one way, to a city halfway across the country. She's wearing a new pair of tennis shoes, good for running. They're clean, without a single piece of glass stuck in the sole.
Without getting up or otherwise moving, Niki checks her watch and then the ticket. A few people are staring, watching her closely, but she pretends she doesn't know. The bus leaves in forty minutes, and she spends the time in between sitting quietly.
Niki doesn't have to check by now to know she'll find fresh bruises on her thighs the next time she changes her clothes.