Chapter 32.2: Family Reunion

“Yes,” Jinkke replied, muffled by Minkus’ arms wrapped around her. She wriggled, but only to free her mouth. “I’m perfectly copacetic, Big Brother. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Almost as quickly as he’d embraced her, Minkus released and backed away a step, wrapping his arms awkwardly around himself instead of his sister. He stared at the ground between them and stammered for words almost inaudibly.

Penny shook her head at him, her mind called back from thoughts of Ippi and Kikka. Of course, she thought. Minkus had been overcome with relief to see his sister safely in Rata Sum, not neck-deep in trouble somewhere in backwater Brisban. But with that initial thrill behind him, Minkus now had no idea what to say. Whatever the siblings’ falling out had been over, he wasn’t past it. Strangely, his evident discomfort made their interaction even more awkward for Penny to watch than their usual affection did.

For a moment, Jinkke matched Minkus’ discomfort, standing silently across from him and avoiding the eyes of anyone else. Penny wasn’t even certain Jinkke had seen her and Wepp standing behind Minkus.

With a sharp exhale that seemed to bolster her, Jinkke stepped forward and took her brother by the shoulders, craning her neck to get their eyes to meet. She really had to get underneath him, looking up into his eyes still fixed on the floor. As soon as she did though, she took a deep breath, and words proceeded to spill out of her mouth.

“Big Brother,” she said, “I don’t care why I would be anything other than safe. At present it’s irrelevant. My singular concern is that you’re here. You have my deepest, most sincere, and painful apologies, Big Brother. I can’t begin to express how wrong I was—how wrong I have been for years—to deceive you, to cheat on your behalf, to leverage you for my own gain.” He looked away again, but she gripped his arms tighter and continued anyway. “Big Brother, I used you. I see that now. I cannot believe I went so long without acknowledging the truth of it. I did want your betterment, I did want to maintain our family honor, and I do love you—I always have and forever will—but I also desired my own education. Smoke and sparks, I did, perhaps excessively.

“You were entirely justified in leaving me in Lion’s Arch—entirely. I should never have done it, any of it, and I deserve any penance you want. Any penance, Big Brother.”

Minkus lifted his head slightly, and Jinkke paused her plea. He didn’t say anything, though. He made no effort to speak, and he stood no taller, still bent forward under an invisible weight.

Jinkke slid her hands down from his shoulders to his hands and gripped them tightly. “Minkus, you are the most honorable person I have ever known. Whatever any ignorant fool in this city has thought about you, you are capable of looking out for yourself and entirely capable of making your mark on the world—you have more than proved that. I was just too obtuse, and quite frankly fearful, to fully acknowledge it. What I did was wrong to do on anyone’s behalf. On your behalf, it was reprehensible. This—” she stammered, slowing for the first time as she considered her words. “This is all that I’ve been pondering the last few days, Big Brother. Since we parted ways, this is all I can cogitate. All I—”

“Why?” Minkus asked. It was quiet, but they all heard him clearly. He slipped his hands away from hers and crossed his arms again. “Why, Jinkke? Why did you lie? Why did you cheat? I— I did not ask you to. I wouldn’t have.”

The coming tears were audible in his voice, and Penny, still behind him, shrunk back a little. She’d heard a similar betrayal in his words just the day before, and that time it had been on her account, not his sister’s. It hadn’t bothered her then, or maybe she just hadn’t admitted to herself that it had, but it suddenly bothered her now, all of it. Penny was severely in this asura’s debt. His sister was too.

For several seconds, Minkus’ question hung in the air, backed only by the slapping footfalls of a student passing down the hall. Jinkke took a step backward, retreating into the doorway. Now she was hugging herself too, much like her brother. She started to open her mouth but found nothing.

Minkus filled the quiet with another question. “You were ashamed, weren’t you? Of me. Of— of what I am— of how I am.” His face fell again.

“What? No,” she said, shaking her head adamantly. Her golden hair rippled with the movement, falling out from behind her ear, but her eyes were locked again on her brother’s. “I’ve done awful things to you, I see that now. But please, please believe me when I say I have never been ashamed of you, not once. I only—”

Minkus winced and cut her off again. “Then I’m confused, Jinkke. I’m confused again. Why would you lie? Why would you tell me I could do anything and then— and then ask people to cheat for me, as though I couldn’t?” He sighed, shrugging to himself. “I suppose it is true that I really couldn’t do it for myself. But I could have lived with that, Jinkke. I had no need to go to college. I was happy doing lab maintenance for Plikt.”

Now it was Jinkke’s turn to sigh. She dropped her eyes to the floor.

Another student passing behind them jolted into Penny, not paying any attention to where she was going. But what was happening was too important for Penny to get distracted with anything else.

“It was never about you,” Jinkke finally admitted with another sigh. “It was about me. It was always and undeniably about me, and I didn’t comprehend that until three days ago, when you forced me to confess. I needed you to attend a college, Minkus. I needed you to attend so that I could attend. And so I wouldn’t lose you.”

Minkus lifted his head, genuine uncertainty dressing his face. “What?”

His sister brushed her hair back, exhaling deeply again. “You’re the elder between us, Minkus.”

“Yes,” he agreed, scratching his ear, “but I don’t understand what...”

He must have suddenly understood after all, because he fell silent.

His sister nodded, stepping toward him again and returning her hand to his arm. Wepp shifted uncomfortably, and as usual, Penny was the only person present with no idea what was going on.

Scratching his head, Minkus thought silently as Jinkke continued “If I had attended a college before you, it would have been a dishonor to you, to me, to amma and appa, to all of us. Our peers in Soren Draa, in Rata Sum—everywhere the information may have spread—they would have discredited us; our family would have been shamed, and they would have disparaged you even more than they already did. Getting you accepted, enrolled, and through your coursework— It was—” Her voice broke, punctuating her words where she’d not intended to pause. “It was the only way I could attend a college and the only way to keep you with me in Rata Sum. If I hadn’t brought you, you would have been ferried off to amma and appa, to join their krewe as a menial laborer, and Alchemy only knows when I would have seen you again. I didn’t want that life for you. And I was unsatisfied with any of that life for me.”

Minkus said nothing.

As Penny tried to work out what was going on, she was struck in the back by another absent-minded student. This one paid her no mind as he bounced off and continued down the hall, not even looking up at her as the last one had. That was enough.

“Hey, guys,” Penny said, knowingly interrupting the moment between the siblings. “I get that it’s a bad time, but do you think we could move this chat inside?” She gestured at the hallway around them and another small group of approaching asura. “It’s getting a little busy out here.”

Jinkke's eyes moved from Minkus to Penny for the first time in that conversation, and the little woman grimaced at the sight of her. Jinkke had been so focused on her brother, Penny realized, she actually hadn’t seen the other two of them standing there that whole time. There was the subtlest flare of indignation in that thought, but Penny thought better of it and bit her tongue.

Jinkke nodded and stepped back, motioning them all into the room. They entered, and with a sweeping gesture that was as close to polite as she could manage at the moment, Jinkke introduced them to her laboratory. She pointed to the workstations, which ones they could touch and which ones they absolutely should not, and then to the corner where they could set their things. She then got right back to the matter at hand.

“Big Brother,” she said, focusing her attention once more on her sibling, “would you accompany me? My dormitory is directly adjacent to the lab and provides substantially more privacy.” She shot a look again at Penny and Wepp. Of all the things grating at Penny in that moment, though, this barely caught her attention.

Minkus nodded agreement, and the two passed out of the door they’d just entered. Penny heard them step just feet down the hall, where another of those steel doors noisily slid open and then closed behind them. And just as quickly as they’d been brought into the room, Penny and Wepp were now alone in it.