Chapter Text
It was almost spring. And it was almost dawn. And she was not an early bird. The sun wasn’t up yet so it couldn’t have been a stray ray that woke her up. And she wasn’t sharing a room with one of her siblings, so it wasn’t like one of them was snoring too loud.
She tried rolling over, away from the window and adjusting the sheets to try and see if her temperature was the issue but eventually, she found herself just staring at the grey ceiling unable to go back to sleep. The room was unfamiliar, at least what she could make out of it in the dark, unusually bare compared to her room back home. Its was the last night of the tour anyway though so it wouldn’t be long till she would be back in the safety of her own room, where everything was familiar and she wouldn’t be woken by random bumps in the night.
In the silence, the soft click of a door down the hall echoed. It was followed by the almost silent sound of wheels rolling across hard wood before disappearing, as whoever it was made it around the corner at the halls end. Her parents were in the room at the opposite end of the hall and Flash was even less of an early bird than she was, so the only culprit was Bullet. Bullet who was the only early bird in the family but not this early.
Curiosity and fear broiled deep in her pipes as she quietly made her way out of bed and rolled towards the top of the stairs. She caught a peak in Bullets room as she rolled by. It was empty, everything that he had brought with him was gone along with his travel trunk, which she assumed he had with him. She was sure the knocking of her engine was audible from the top of the stairs. Not again, please not again.
From where she hesitated on the first step she could make out the sound of quietly frantic rummaging coming from the living space below and the jingling of keys spurred her forward. Being as quiet as possible, by the time she made it down, she could just make out his shadow fading outside and she spotted the note folded under the plundered bag as she sped to catch up with him. He jumped when she caught his arm a few meters down the road. Just as she thought, he had his trunk in hand.
The look on his face was of absolute guilt and he couldn’t look her in the eye, clutching the trunk to his side as if she might try and take it from him. Her fans stuttered as she felt all of the coolant in her system drain out through her skates. He wasn’t leaving, there was no way he was leaving. Not him as well. She could feel tears welling in her eyes as she stared him down, daring him to turn around keep going.
“Lightning what are you doing out here”
His voice was gentle, kind even. The same tone he had used when they were a lot younger to soothe nightmares. Hers was not; she needed him to know how much this was going to hurt her if he went through with this.
“What are you doing?”
“I can’t stay anymore. I need out. I need away from them.”
“But it’s not that bad, Ma and Pa said this will be the last year. That they’ll stop paying the bookies as soon as the racing season is done. At least wait until then.”
“They said that last year. We’ve got legitimate sponsors now and I’ve been offered a contract down south that I can live off for a while. I’m sick of being a commodity they just cart around. I’m sorry but I can’t stay”
“So your just leaving Flash and I behind? That’s not fair, you’re our older brother you can’t just disappear into the night and leave us alone.”
She watched as Bullets grip on his trunk tightened.
“Take care of each other. Please. And if you get the chance to leave, take it. Their approval isn’t worth throwing your future away. We deserve more than that”
“So me and Flash deserve to have all three of our brothers walk out on us?”
“No! that’s not what – “
“That’s exactly what you’re doing! You’re walking away from your family!”
There was a thunk as the trunk hit the dirt and Lightning could feel a tiny wet patch forming in her hair as her brother pulled her into a hug, tears streaming down both of their faces. She hadn’t been able to prevent the fight that had caused Eagle and Arrow to leave, she wasn’t going to fail and loose Bullet as well.
“Its just a few more races, just a few more long days and fake smiles and then a proper management team will take over and Ma and Pa will retire, and we’ll be free of them. Just like they said. You just have to stay till then”
Bullet pulled their foreheads together and they just stood together for just a second. Then he pulled away and she knew she had failed again.
“My mind is made up Lightning. I can’t stay”
_________________________________________________________
As Lightning watched him leave from her place on the couch, she saw the weight of that night settle on his shoulders. It served him right that he should still carry it. What once might have been quiet understanding and heartbreak, over the years had simmered into fury whenever she thought of it and had to be reminded of how it had felt to have to go back to that unfamiliar shed and unfamiliar bed and just lay awake and wait for his disappearance to be discovered.
How she had had to lie to her parents faces. How she had had to be the one to tell Flash that they had lost another brother. How she had had to be the one to sit with her while she had cried her eyes out because their family was falling apart. How she had had no one to talk to about it because she was now the eldest in the house and that meant it was her job to keep everything together. He had left her with that burden. She at least had had the decency to tell Flash she was leaving.
When she had gone north, she had never imagined she would ever see him again. She had never imagined she would see any of them ever again. She had kept tabs on Flash until she moved away and then that was that. The five of them at different ends of the country. The Starlight must have thought it would be an amazing joke to bring them back together.
Even now, wounds treated and allegedly feeling better, Eagle and Arrow couldn’t stand each other and had already started throwing dirty looks at each other again. Before her crash, Flash hadn’t been able to look Bullet in the eye for more than two seconds. And Lighting hated being in the room with any of them for any period of time.
In a cruel way they had Greaseball to thank for crashing and hogging all the headlines so that the imminent second collapse of their sibling unit wasn’t the front cover of every gossip magazine. It was a nasty joke indeed if the Starlight really thought they would stay together.
She went to adjust how she was laying when she accidently knocked her right heel on the arm of the couch. Her sudden intake of breath was aggressively audible and the speed at which she sat up made the pain worse. She couldn’t hold her skate so opted for holding her shin while she breathed through the receding pain.
While trying to look anywhere but her mangled foot she noticed her brother’s side-eyeing her very unsubtly. The genuine concern present surprised her and as she gingerly ran a hand over her skate once the pain lessened, her fingers ran over a small patch of extra padding at the base of her heel which had cushioned her healing axle just now.
She hadn’t noticed it before or asked for it, but Bullet had wrapped it in anyway, seemingly anticipating this situation. The more she looked, the more she realised how much thought and care had gone into what Bullet had done. There was extra padding where he thought she might need it, he had seemingly been very careful about the spacing of the wraps so the pressure was comfortable and even, and he had remembered to leave her wheels unwrapped so that even though they couldn’t spin, they wouldn’t get caught in rolls of bandages; and because she hated the feeling of her entire skate being wrapped up.
Warmth spread through her system as she, more carefully this time, adjusted how she was laying so she could more comfortably nap. The same warmth that came with the sun on a spring morning. It had been years, and he had remembered. The warmth was eventually chased away by the feeling of betrayal that hid deep beneath the fury, and she couldn’t get it to come back.
Could she ever forgive him? Did she want to? She had spent the last few months giving him the cold shoulder, would he even want to forgive her?
She glanced over Eagle and Arrow, who had also made themselves more comfortable and chosen to face as far away from each other as they could comfortably manage. They couldn’t forgive each other. They were a lost cause.
Wasn’t time supposed to heal all wounds? It hadn’t healed them. The time they’d spent apart had done nothing but make everything worse. And according to her mechanic, she had several months of repairs and “resting” ahead of her. She would be damned if she was going to be stuck in the stupid shed with all of her siblings returning to work and icing each other out while she was stuck on the side-lines having to put up with it with no way out.
As soon as her wheels were spinning again, she was done. She would be back up north with her coach and the rest of her racing team and she could keep an eye on her brothers and sister from afar. It was what was best for everyone. What happened between them was in the past and there was nothing they could do to fix it.
Maybe she would wait until their contract with Troubadour was done, so she didn’t risk her sibling’s employment. But after that, she was out. She’d leave them a note