Fifteen minutes passed. Kimberly stared at the ruined dinner, her stomach turning. The anger was still there, festering beneath her skin, but beneath it was something worse. Guilt. The same goddamn cycle. The same hateful words they once hurled at each other before the Fusion Wave. Different lips, different voices, but the same cutting pain.
She breathed heavy, her mind replaying the words they had flung at each other like daggers. Her own voice rang back at her:
I remember a mother who never listened.
She exhaled sharply and pushed herself away from the counter, and began to walk up the stairs.
Sarah’s room was nothing like it used to be. Once a place of muted tones, soft lavender bedsheets, and neatly stacked bills on the nightstand, it was now an explosion of color and chaos
Clothes—skimpy, mostly revealing, low-cut, and utterly impractical—were strewn across the bed and over the floor. Posters of punk bands and scandalous celebrities Sarah had used to despise littered the walls.
The room was a disaster—laundry strewn everywhere, posters of loud rock bands plastered haphazardly on the walls, the air thick with the scent of sweat, perfume, and faint traces of cigarette smoke. Nothing remained of the tidy, organized space Sarah had once kept. Kimberly had claimed that for herself, in a cruel twist of fate.
Sarah lay curled up on her bed, face buried in a pillow, shoulders trembling. Her broad, bare shoulders trembled, and her tail was wrapped around her legs like a shroud. Kimberly had seen her mother cry before, but never like this. Never with such deep, gut-wrenching sobs. She hesitated at the doorway before stepping inside.
"Just go away," Sarah croaked, voice muffled and raw.
Kimberly sat down instead, on the edge of the bed. "No."
A bitter laugh. "Gonna ground me?" Her tail flicked against the sheets. "Take my phone? Make me do my homework?"
Kimberly swallowed hard. "I never wanted this, you know. I never wanted to be in charge. To be this person."
Sarah grew tense. "You think I hated you?" she murmured. "I was tired, Kimberly. And you made it so damn hard to love you."
Kimberly let out a bitter laugh, muffled against her palms. "Could’ve fooled me."
But it was true.
"I was awful to you. Before all this. I know that now," Kimberly admitted, voice thick. "I said things I can’t take back. I wanted to hurt you because I was hurting. And now...now I see you doing the same thing. And I hate it, because I know what it’s like to be that angry and lost."
Sarah turned over, her face blotchy and wet. "Yeah, well, I never wanted to be this either." She gestured to her body, her six swollen breasts, her inhuman tongue. "And I sure as hell didn’t want to be the one that got left behind."
The words struck deeper than anything else. Kimberly clenched her jaw, but the fight was gone. Her hands shook as she covered her face. "I miss him too," she whispered.
Sarah turned her face, mascara-streaked and blotchy, eyes shining with resentment. “Why do you care? You hate me.”
Kimberly sat at the edge of the bed, folding her two lower hands in her lap. “I don’t hate you,” she said, her voice softer now. “I never did. But we make it really easy to think we do, don’t we?” She whispered. "I love you . . . Even when I didn’t show it. Even when I didn’t know how."
Sarah choked out something between a sob and a laugh. "You’re such a fucking sap now."
Kimberly let out a watery chuckle. "Yeah. I guess I am."
A silence stretched between them, not the tense kind from earlier, but something fragile and new. Kimberly hesitated before reaching out, cautiously brushing Sarah’s hair away from her face with a hand that trembled slightly.
“I was a nightmare,” she admitted. “Before the Wave. I put you through hell, and I never apologized for it. I just… I was angry. At Dad, at you, at everything. I thought you were just trying to ruin my fun.”
Sarah swallowed thickly. “I thought you didn’t love me,” she murmured.
Kimberly shook her head. “I did. I just didn’t know how to show it.”
Sarah looked down, toying with the hem of her ridiculously short skirt. “I feel disgusting,” she confessed, barely above a whisper. “I hate this body. I hate that people stare at me. I hate that I can’t even look in the mirror without wanting to scream.”
Kimberly exhaled, a deep, weary thing. “I know.” She hesitated, then admitted, “I hate mine, too.”
Silence stretched between them. Then, tentatively, Sarah reached out, her fingers brushing against Kimberly’s wrist, as her tired, wet eyes gazed remorsefully upward.
Kimberly was quiet for a moment. Then, she took Sarah’s hand—small compared to her own, fingers still delicate despite the months of reckless living.
The small gestures shattered something inside both of them.