A brief stop for first-aid (stop making me waste band aids ya lil shits)

"Ow!"

"Try not to fidget so much, Lovely; it'll only make it worse." I sighed, fingers carefully tugging out whatever splinters were left.

"Sorry~" He childishly sulked, fingers fidgeting in impatience to bandage my scrapes and bruises. Earning himself another light swat on the knee from me. "I just don't like it when you bleed."

My face was as blank as always, hands focused on taking out the wood pieces. "Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it won't happen."

We were back in our dorm and tending to our injuries; Squishy, on the bed, and me, sitting on the floor in front of him and meticulously wielding the tweezers from our room-issued med-kit with a grace that should not belong to a six-year-old befitting of my rank.

The first time we had splinters, it was a painful ordeal since our skin was healing over them first before we could extract them first. We had to go four days feeling the obtrusively sharp feeling underneath our skin until our flesh spat them out in a bloody pile on the bathroom floor. Luckily, no one saw us, so we quickly discarded the bloody pieces without much attention.

Letting out my breath to cover his palm, I checked for any pieces of wood left over. Thankfully, there was only one so I guided the tweezers and gently tugged it out. Placing it on the slightly bloody towel with the other pieces, I reached for the antiseptic spray. Spritzing a couple of pumps on my twin's hand, I lightly wrapped it just to prevent any germs from getting on it while his palm healed.

Holding his hand in mine, I gave the back of it a little peck.

"Pain, pain, fly away."

Once Squishy looked over his hand and deemed it alright, he quickly grabbed my wrist and pulled, switching our positions.

My mouth let out a surprise, "Careful." before shifting around to get comfortable.

"Hehe, my bad." He apologized—knowing I wasn't really upset by my unbothered cord—and curled his already tight grip on our bond into a more comfortable hold.

"My turn~" He grinned, already reaching for the med-kit.

Squishy's hands rummaged around in the kit and brought out some band-aids, placing them on top as he got up and walked to the bathroom.

Coming back, he held a wet towel in his hands and sat back down in front of me. Gently holding my left hand, he started the process of cleaning the scrapes. The areas where the liquid made contact stung with a familiar burn as it seeped into the scrapes. Already desensitized to the pain, my body made no movements to avoid the wet towel as I sat there with a straight face.

When he had finished wiping my palms, he set down the towel and used a dry one to wipe my hands dry. Its rough texture was hard against my skin. Holding both my hands in his, he cupped them against his soft cheeks and closed his eyes, not caring if they started bleeding again.

"Pain, pain, fly away." He gently whispered before pressing soft pecks onto my scrapes. After Squishy finished, he pulled away and picked up a band-aid. Peeling off the protective paper, he applied them to the scrapes and made sure they were comfortable and tight without any gaps.

Moving onto my knees, he slid my slightly long shorts up my thigh to make way for my right knee. Hot fingers—a stark difference against the cold and ventilated air—brushed up against my skin in a comforting way as they rubbed circles on top of my left thigh. Pretty soon, he finished wiping the left knee and pulled it away to start on the right, the towel already a dark red from what little blood came out.

Repeating the same steps on the other knee, he dried them and whispered the same words before laying down a kiss on both of them and plastering on band-aids.

Normally, I wouldn't need to put on band-aids for these kinds of things. But since there are video monitors in the dining hall, it'd be suspicious if I didn't have any band-aids on me, or at least some visible scrapes and bruises. We were lucky that this happened nowhere near our physicals; I'd have to fall again to make up the evidence replacing the smooth and unblemished skin.

Gripping the side of the bed, I hoisted myself up and squatted down next to Squishy; quickly, we put the supplies away and organized. Fingers clicking the box shut, I grabbed it and walked over to my desk while Squishy had picked up the bloody towels and walked over to the bathroom.

Thankfully, we no longer lived in the room we first woke up in. The constant feeling of being observed was annoying, as it was preventing us from communicating and discussing things comfortably. We lived in that observation room for about two years until they moved us to the barracks to make room for more arrivals.

My twin and I now live in a small room containing: twin beds; a desk with a small drawer on the right side; a bookshelf placed above the desk; a bathroom with a sink and toilet; and a lamp hanging on the wall near the door that automatically turns on and off depending on the alarm and curfew times.

Pulling open the drawer, I placed the med-kit inside and pushed it shut. A memory about homework popped up in my mind as I glanced over the textbooks on the wall.

"Hey, Squishy."

"Mm?" He hummed back from where he was in the bathroom, his hands scrubbing the fabric together underneath the faucet.

"Our Trinomial equation packets are due this Sunday," Eyeing the thick packet, I asked, "Do you want to work on them now?" Because of course, there are no weekends off from training and lessons.

Heathens.

"Sure, just gimme a minute!"

Using the chair as a stool, I kneeled up on the desk to reach out and take the maths textbook from the shelf; it wasn't a difficult task, seeing (no pun intended) as we had placed the texts in order of subjects. Climbing down from the desk, I picked up our packets and a pair of pencils and walked over to Squishy's bed, plopping down with a dulled thump from the stiff mattress.

As you can tell, the Program held back no mercy so it didn't bother trying to accommodate my blindness; only treating it as a mere convenience in the grand scheme of things (whatever it was). So, they plopped me down in the front of every class and forced me to learn how to write on paper.

I remember the red welts I'd walk out with after every class, made by the swats they'd give me from a sharp ruler whenever I strayed from a straight line. There were instances when my regenerative abilities (because that was what our healing abilities were in a nutshell) were maxed out from exhaustion, so the still healing lash marks would be victim to more hits. Those were a bitch to hide from prying eyes, not to mention, the constant stress this put on my shoulders if they ever looked closely at my hands.

My twin's footsteps made their way back to his bed as he readied himself for another evening of math. Scooting over, he crawled on and sat close next to me, our shoulders rubbing against each other as he leaned his head against mine. As usual, I handed him the textbook as he looked for the assigned page number while I waited.

"The reference materials should be on pages 306 through 310. What format is it?"

Flipping through the pages, he hummed. "Got it; it's B."

A few moments later, we got ourselves started on the packets, hands swiftly jotting down mathematical equations in the assigned areas, as my brother read the questions out loud. There was no braille offered for me so he was in charge of relaying the questions on our papers.

Chewing on the tip of his pencil, Squishy briefly asked. "Hey, did you get 'parenthesis two x plus six parentheses' for the second binomial on question sixteen?"

Stopping in the middle of my calculations, I thought back to that question. "Hm," Tapping my pencil on my chin, I tilted my head down in thought. When the binomials came, I shook my head at him. "I didn't. You're a bit off, but not by much." Feeling him nod at my response, I went back to factoring the equation I was working on.

Half an hour passed and we finished our work, checking over each other's papers. Mine for messy writing and his for incorrect answers. I'll say that all this work sure is exercising my memorization and writing skills for sure. Don't even get me started on English or any other writing-focused subject; if I stray from the assigned lined paper, I'd have to rewrite the entire assignment ten times.

"Come on," Picking up our packets and pencils, I walked to our desk to put them away. "Let's get ready for bed. It's almost curfew."

Getting up, he grabbed the textbook and followed after me, covering his mouth as he let out a yawn. "Mn."

Placing our packets in their designated folders, I walked back to his bed and slid underneath the covers, waiting for him to come. Hearing him slide the book into the shelf, I waited until he was halfway across the room before I lifted the covers up for him. Once he climbed in, I shut my eyes and pulled off the blindfold, carefully placing it underneath the pillow for later.

Settling himself next to me, he faced me and reached out for my hand. Fiddling a little bit with my fingers, he entwined them together, his hand warm against mine. I could feel his gaze on my face as he took in my features. Moving from my forehead to my eyelids to my lips, all identical to his according to Squishy's observations.

We waited in comfortable silence for our curfew alarm to ring. It only took about five more minutes before the familiar alarm blared through the hallways, alerting the other children to sleep.

Beep Beep Beep

Shifting around, Squishy faced the ceiling, eyes closed tiredly. "Bratishka."

"Hn?"

"Tell me a story please?"

My mind raced through the storybooks I had read at the library before picking one. "Sure." Rubbing my thumb along his knuckles, I asked. "Do you want to hear the one about Alibaba and the Forty Thieves? Tikki Tikki Tembo? Maybe Hansel and Gretel?" At his enthusiastic nod towards the last suggestion, I prepared myself. Getting in the mood, I lowered my voice into a whisper, grabbing my brother's attention.

"Once upon a time, there was a poor woodcutter. He and his family lived in a forest where they would struggle to procure money for food for their constantly hungry bellies." My fingers tickled his stomach, eliciting a surprised giggle from him.

"One day, the woodcutter's wife suggested to him," I raised my voice's pitch in a sad attempt at a woman's voice. "Husband, why don't we wake them up early tomorrow and lead them down the thickest part of the forest. There we will light a fire for them, and give them each a piece of bread, then we will go to our work and leave them alone. They will surely get lost and be unable to find their way home, and we shall be rid of them."

My voice went back to the narrator's tone. "However, the woodcutter was against it, not being able to bear the thought of separating from his children." My voice lowered in a ruff pitch. "No, wife. I can not just leave them all alone in the forest. The wild animals would soon come and tear them into pieces."

"The wife reprimanded him, "You fool! Then we shall all die of hunger." She hounded her husband until he finally consented to her idea."

Despite being sleepy, Squishy couldn't hold back his excitement. "What happens next!" he asked.

I patted his hand to calm him down. "While all of this was happening, the two children they were talking about were listening in on them the entire time due to their hunger distracting them from sleep. Gretel, the younger sister, wept tears of bitterness as she asked her older brother, Hansel."

Making my voice airy, I spoke in an innocent tone. "Whatever are we to do, Hansel?"

"Comforting his sister, he said, "Don't distress, I will find a way." When his parents had fallen asleep, he had snuck out of the house and collected as many pebbles as he could fit into his pockets. When he came back, he assured Gretel, "Do not worry, God will have a plan." and laid down on the bed. The next morning, their mother had woken them up to fetch some wood from the forest. Giving them a piece of bread, she told them, "There is some for your dinner, but don't eat it too quickly, for you will get nothing else."

"Gretel had put the bread in her apron as Hansel had his pockets full with pebbles. As they set their way to the woods, Hansel would occasionally drop a pebble on the path they had used under the unsuspecting eyes of their parents. "Go fetch some wood and I will light a fire for you." Their father asked."

"When they had collected the wood, their father lit it, and when the fire was burning very high, their mother told them to lie down and rest as they worked. They would wake them up when it was time to go home."

"The children had sat by the fire and ate some of the bread believing that their father was nearby due to the sound of his chopping. However, they were wrong; the sound was from a branch which the woodcutter had fastened to a withered tree which the wind was blowing backwards and forwards."

Squishy gasped.

"Eventually Hansel and Gretel had fallen asleep by the fire; by the time they had woken up, the sky was already dark. Waiting for the moon to show, they had followed the path of pebbles Hansel had dropped. Upon knocking on the door of their house, they were greeted with a frowning mother who reprimanded them for sleeping so long. The woodcutter, on the other hand, rejoiced at the fact that they were still alive and had come back."

"Once again, the woman complained and forced her husband to carry out her plan, this time, even further out into the woods. That night, Hansel had tried to sneak out and gather more pebbles, but the doors were locked by the wife, so he laid back in bed with a crying Gretel-"

("Gretel cries a lot, doesn't she."

"Yes, she does."

"She's not very helpful."

"Not at first, no," I admitted. "She'll change though, so she won't be useless forever.)

The next morning, they were woken up again to gather wood and given a smaller amount of bread. This time, Hansel had ripped it to pieces in his pocket and left a trail. Eventually, they had gone far into the woods where they had never been before and left to rest there beside a fire as their parents left. They had fallen asleep again and by the time they woke, it was already nighttime. When they tried to follow the trail of bread, they found nothing, for the flocks of birds in the forest had eaten them all."

("That sucks."

"Yeah, it does.")

They had walked for days trying to get back home to no avail. One day, they caught sight of a snow-white bird and stopped to listen to it sing. When it had finished, the bird flew away and they followed after it. The bird had led them to a house made completely out of sweets."

"Being as hungry as they were, they made quick work of it and started eating the sugar windows and chocolate walls and cake roofs. Suddenly a voice called out from the house.

"Nibble, nibble, gnaw

who is nibbling at my little house?"

The children answered.

"The wind, the wind,

the heaven-born wind,"

Going back to their feast, they continued eating when suddenly, an old woman came out the door. They froze and dropped the food onto the ground in fear. The old woman simply said, "Oh, dear children, what has brought you here? Why don't you come in and stay with me? I will take care of you." I crooned, voice croaking as if aged.

"So the children went into her house of sweets and were fed cakes, milk, and nuts until they were stuffed full. After, she tucked them in beds, linens white as snow and pillows soft as clouds. "

"It might have seemed like a pleasant ending for them—but do not be fooled. For the old woman was but a wicked witch! She lured children into her home, and once caught, she cooked and ate them as her meal. Witches have red eyes and poor eyesight, but to make up for it they have keen noses akin to a beast's, aware of humans who draw near. She planned to fatten up and eat Hansel and Gretel the moment they stepped onto her land."

"The next morning, she had seized Hansel with a withered, bony hand and locked him in a cage. Next, she had shaken Gretel awake and ordered her, "Get up, fetch some water and cook something to fatten up your brother. For when he is plump and thick, I shall eat him."

"So every day, Hansel was fed the best meals while Gretel was fed mere crab shells. And every morning, the witch would force him to stretch out his finger to check if he was fattening up enough to eat. Gretel had found a way to avoid this by using a little bone in place of his actual finger. Four weeks had passed and the old witch had had enough."

"I've had enough!" The witch cried out, impatient to wait any longer. "Lean or fat, I will eat the boy." So, forcing Gretel to fetch some water, she prepared to cook Hansel."

"Gretel had cried and cried, lamenting over what was to come, but the witch only reprimanded. "What use is crying when you cannot avoid your fate. Stop your tears and go back to your task."

"Kneading the dough, she started the fire in the oven. "Check the oven, Gretel. Go inside and check if it's properly heated." The witch ordered Gretel, intending to shove the little girl inside and bake her."

"Gretel, catching on to the witches line of thought, said, "How am I to do that? How do I get in?" The old woman scoffed at her, "Idiot girl, the door is big enough. Look, I can get in myself." And with those words, she went on her hands and knees and put her head in the oven. Before she could take it out though, Hansel pushed the witch deep inside and fastened the bolt."

("Ouch."

"Mn, ouch indeed.")

"With the witch's cries of agony in the background as she burned to death, Hansel unlocked Gretel's cage, freeing her brother. After celebrating their freedom, they went inside the witch's house and found chests full of precious jewels and pearls. Stuffing as many valuables in their pockets, they walked through the forest for two hours before reaching a large stretch of water. Seeing a white duck swimming along, she asked."

"Little duck, little duck, dost thou see,

Hansel and Gretel are waiting for thee.

There's never a plank, or bridge in sight,

take us across on thy back so white."

"The duck came to them and seeing as they were too heavy for both of them to get on its back, Gretel told Hansel. "We will be too heavy for her to swim us across. She will take us across, one after the other."

"After they both made it across the water, they walked through the forest, seeing familiar parts, and shortly, they saw from afar their house. Sprinting as fast as they could, they threw their arms around the woodcutter's neck. The man rejoiced at the sight of his abandoned children; for he was all alone, his wife dead and his children absent in their presence. Quickly, the children unloaded the precious jewels and pearls from their pockets and pinafore, the precious stones rolling along the floor as their father froze in shock at the sight with them laughing in joy."

Letting out a hum, I checked on my brother; his eyes were half-lidded with sleep and his breath sputtering to a slowed pace as he struggled to stay awake to hear the last of the story. "With the poor family's worries gone, they lived a happy life full of splendid food and a pretty house. The end."

Shifting a bit, I pressed a soft kiss against his temple and whispered sweetly, "Goodnight Brat." Mumbling a bit, he sloppily kissed my cheek, returning my words.

"Goodnight, Bratishka."

Shuffling to make myself comfortable, I laid on my back once more and let go of my consciousness, keeping one ear out just like my twin is currently doing to detect any disturbances; something we learned that was extremely helpful in the face of sabotage.

Going over today's lessons, I let out an annoyed light sigh. For some reason, the teachers and staff seem hell-bent on comparing me to Squishy, always bringing up our differences, with or without an audience to bear witness and hear. It started out with subtle comments like how I was fairing in class; not all of them were positive. Then, as time passed through the years, it snowballed into blatant comparisons digging into my inability to be on the same skill level as him.

Never were we without a day where they wouldn't say anything about me and Squishy; they were always tittering in the background, someone always at the corner of my eye. As if waiting.

But for what?

A breakdown?

A violent reaction?

An aversion to my twin?

I can tell the others have been picking up on it, their little teasing and snickers after a hard reprimand about my work. It's going to become a nuisance if this is going to be an ongoing thing.

The ventilation vents hummed on, a constant in the background through all our years living here, something we've both grown accustomed to. It always turned on every other forty-five minutes or whenever it was an especially hot day, filtering out the muggy air or chemical fumes from the Chemistry lab.

Rattle rattle rattle rattle

Listening to the rattling of rusted metal nails, I drifted off, hands interlaced with Squishy's as he let out the occasional babble in his sleep.

Just a little more time—that's all I need. To gather resources. To train. To plan.