Nothing Is Ever Quite What It Seems

With Kevin finally home, Nika actually found it far more relaxing to be on the ranch. Everyone was home, Kevin would have no lasting effects from the medication most likely, and all was right in the world.

"Nika?"

The sound of her sister's voice brought Nika's gaze from the horse she was grooming to the door, and she grinned at her sister, who moved to rest one elbow on the top of the stall door. "Hey there. Kevin doing all right?"

"He's napping. Now that everything's out in the open, I finally feel like the boulder that's been on my shoulders for months is gone. So I figured I'd poke my head out and see how you're doing," Nala commented, leaning her chin on her hand. "Saddlesore?"

Nika shrugged. "It's a good kind of sore. Besides... got my own personal doc to keep my backside muscles limber," she said with a wicked grin as she brushed the horse's flanks.

"Geez," Nala smirked. "You're getting right raunchy in your old age, sis." There was a faint blush across her cheeks even as she laughed. Perching her chin on her hands where they rested on top of the stall door, she asked her sister, "So.... you and the doc, huh? What about you and Brian Connelly?"

Glancing over her shoulder at her sister once more, Nika sighed heavily. "Oh Lord... if we're having this conversation, you better have brought the good stuff."

Nala laughed and held up her other hand, which contained a bottle of amber-colored liquid and two glasses.

Patting the horse's withers, Nika let herself out of the stall. "You either know me too well or you're desperate to tell me everything I never wanted to know about Larry Johannsen," she chuckled.

Nala blushed still deeper rose and headed for the ladder to the hayloft. "C'mon. Your friend Christian said he'd watch Kevin if he woke and make sure everyone gets dinner if we're out here a while," she tells her twin. At the top of the ladder, Nala headed for the far corner to plop down on a pile of hay that looked just made for such plopping. "Aw, to hell with it. Who needs glasses anyway?" she asked with a grin, holding the bottle out to Nika.

Settling herself next to her sister, Nika's mind went back over the last time they'd sat up here like this and she laughed out loud. "Remember Jeremy Korskin?" she asked as she uncapped the bottle and took a swallow. Oh GOD... it burned all the way down!! Nika coughed a bit and handed the bottle back with a teary-eyed expression.

Nala snorted. "Please, do not remind me of that jerk!" she said after taking a swallow. "And don't change the subject. You and Doc Arden and you and Brian. Tell me what's going on in that head of yours."

Nika shrugged a little, taking the bottle back. "Seriously, Nala... I'd rather wait til we're a little closer to smashed before I get into it. You'll be pissed."

With a frown, Nala replied softly, "Even if I was mad at you, it's your life, Nika. C'mon... talk to me."

With a sigh, Nika took another long swallow of the bottle of Brimstone -- gorram apt name if you asked her -- and held onto it a minute. "After what happened with Trey, I couldn't... I really didn't want to go back to Harbinger, Nala. Oh, they all would have been two hundred percent behind me... behind us... for what happened. And when I finally told them, they were actually kind of mad at me for not calling them sooner. But... Some of what we were doing out there was still just too close to the war. And I wanted something not as... demanding. I wanted somewhere that nobody was going to bother the crap out of me while I figured out how to deal with it."

Nala looked part horrified and part regretful. "Oh Nika," she murmured. "Did I send you away too soon?" That fear, that worry, had been part of her mindset ever since that fateful day. And now her sister was laying out exactly what she'd been worried about. That she'd pushed her twin out the door before it was really time.

"No... I don't think I could have stayed here, either, Nala," Nika admitted softly. "Every time I looked at you and Kev, all I could see was... that day. The way that you looked at me after."

Nala wrapped her arm around her sister's neck and dragged her into a tight hug, hiding her tears in Nika's hair. "I'm sorry," she said softly. "I'm so sorry."

Resting her head on Nala's shoulder, Nika replied softly, "So was I."

"Don't be," Nala murmured fiercely, her other arm coming around to cradle Nika to her. "It was worse than you know. God... by the time you came home, I hated him, Nika. I kept wishing it was him that died instead of Daddy. And I think... if you hadn't done it, I would have one day real soon after. He was .... it was getting worse and worse. Before Daddy died, he was mostly in control, but after? God... it was a nightmare."

Nika pulled away from her sister and looked into the face nearly identical to her own. "He was still *Trey*, Nala. Still... the boy who patched up my knee when Dancer threw me when I was twelve. The boy who... " All the good things Trey Johannsen ever did once more flash through her head. "He stepped up when Daddy wanted to spend more time with JJ to help with the ranch. I mean... "

Nala grimaced and took a long swallow from the bottle. "Yeah," she replied with a rasp to her voice caused by the liquor. "I know exactly who he was, Nika. Good, bad, and now... ugly." She sighed. "Look... knowing that it wasn't all his fault? It helps in a lot of ways. And maybe it'll help his brothers too. They took him out behind the barn one day and beat the living daylights out of him the first time he laid his hands on me, but ... whatever was driving him, it wasn't... " She shrugged a little. "He clearly couldn't control it. I thought it was something *I* did for a long time, and then after you left ... I finally managed to come around to the idea that I hadn't done anything wrong. But that just made me mad, cuz if I didn't, then... something must not have been what we thought it was in his family, you know? But that didn't set right either, and so... it's just been a muddled mess for months."

Nika laughed quietly. "Yeah... it was such a mess that Larry managed to climb into that chilly bed of yours," she teased.

Nala blushed and took another long swallow, handing the bottle back to her sister. "As you say .. if we're going to have that conversation, we better be toasted."

Nika laughed, and the two women passed the bottle back and forth while Nala finally filled her sister in on all the gory details about the strange and crazy courtship of Larry Johannsen. "We were scared to death that his Mama would have an absolute conniption," Nala confessed with a soft giggle.

"You're lucky that woman didn't smack him upside the head at the hospital last week," Nika laughed. "Actually, I'm probably lucky she didn't smack *me*!" she said, laughing even harder.