Shoulder [Diana]

[cara june bainbridge]

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September 22, 2029

Diana was acting funny. Not in the classical sense of her twin being strange, but in a more upbeat, sneaky kind of way. As usual, Cara had observed the obliviousness of their parents. It was amazing that they had managed to raise so many kids and just look right past all of them at the same time. Maybe that was the point. Seven of them later, it was probably impossible to keep up with every single one of them as well as their own lives. Crazy to think, but she had started to realize it once they gave up on asking her what her next steps for work were going to be a few years earlier. They never did ask her to move out though, despite the thought rumbling around quite a bit these days. Cara didn't want to exactly impose on Calliope and move herself in with her girlfriend. That wouldn't be cool at all. Even if she was there frequently, she'd be no better than any of her shameless characters she wrote about. An actual discussion needed to be held about that sort of thing...

But back to Diana. Something was off, and Cara wanted to figure out what it might be. Her first assumption was that it was a new job. The Merlin museum was great and all, but she also didn't really view her twin as the receptionist sort either. Hopefully that wasn't just her placing herself in that position, because that would suck. Serving ice cream to snotty children and muggle obsessed teens with pumpkin spice lattes was bad enough. Her customer base merely shifted from one to the other as the school year began.

Seated at a booth in the back of the Leaky Cauldron, Cara folded a straw wrapper in half over and over again. They were supposed to meet for lunch, but she'd gotten there early. Today was her only 'off' day, in the sense that she didn't have shifts at Fortescue's or Spellbucks. Usually that meant she slept in and spent the remainder of the day writing. Unsatisfied with the way the paper was folded, Cara flicked it across the table, where it stopped right along the edge. She knew she should have brought her laptop to do some work while she waited.

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[diana eoina bainbridge]

Maybe you're just a dream

That's what it means to crush

September 22, 2029
cara june bainbridge

Slowly, Diana inched her way to full-time employment at the Museum over the past three years. But as of now, she is still technically part-time. Unfortunately, this meant that her longtime job working within the illegal markets had not entirely ended. It was good money, which Diana had to admit, and while she wasn’t swimming in vast amounts of gold, it was better than living paycheck to paycheck. And it let Diana save a little bit of gold over time. Reuniting with her family had been wonderful, but the house was sometimes crowded and suffocating.

She blamed Elaine for that feeling because, before that unfortunate Vow, Diana had never minded so many people in the house or the noise. It was difficult enough to sleep some nights still. While the frequency had decreased significantly over time, Cara once in a while had to comfort Diana after a nightmare. The memories would never entirely leave her. Sometimes, Diana wasn’t sure she wanted to entirely forget if only to remind herself of the horrible things she had participated in, even if against her will.

However, the most recent variable in her life was something far more exciting. Even if their initial introduction and later friendship had formed because of the activities mentioned earlier, their interactions over the last few years left far more pleasant memories in her mind instead. She was running a few minutes late to lunch with her twin, and somehow, she’d managed not to bump into anyone while approaching the Leaky Cauldron since she was texting and walking simultaneously. She didn’t even notice her hair color but could hardly suppress the grin while responding to a message from Ares.

But Diana forced herself to take a deep breath and return her hair to its default blonde. She hadn’t told Cara that she’d been seeing someone over the course of the year. If she was being honest, Diana hadn’t mentioned Ares to any of her siblings because of his association with The Purifiers before. However, introducing him as a friend was far different than admitting she was seeing him. Again, she took a deep breath and pushed out images of that mischievous grin from her mind. Upon entering, she looked around several times before spotting Cara near the back. ”Sorry I’m a bit late.” She said as she slid into the booth.

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[cara june bainbridge]

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Reaching over and across the table to pick at the flicked wrapper, Cara realized how precarious of a position that was. Had it not been early in the day and quiet in the Leaky Cauldron, that easily could have been risking leaning into a puddle of butterbeer condensation. Her own drink was sweating, the napkin square underneath it was doing its best to absorb everything. While it was currently successful, she didn’t have much hope for it, the center already having become water-logged and separating from the edges. Eventually, she was going to have napkin particles spread all over the table, and then she’d have to be careful about making aggressive movements like she just had. She’d had enough wet sleeves and elbows over the years of improper lookouts. Having that today when she wanted to be in interrogation mode wasn’t going to work for her.

Caught in her silly little daydream, she only looked up from the twisted straw wrapper when she felt the familiar presence of Diana sliding into the seat across from her. Blinking a few times back to reality, Cara shook her head, ”You aren’t. I got here unreasonably early.” Enough to have half of her drink and become bored by it already. There was nothing new there, though. More importantly, she gave her twin a hard once over, trying to see if she could visually pinpoint any differences. Despite Diana controlling her metamorphmagi abilities better than most, Cara could still tell. She was somewhat of an expert at this point, between her sister and girlfriend. The latter was far more forthcoming with her emotions though, of which she was very thankful of Calliope for.

Everything seemed normal though. That should have been a sign that something was up, and for her to believe what she had been feeling for a while now. Relaxing back into her seat, Cara finally gave up on fiddling with the paper. ”When was the last time we were able to do this? I feel like all I ever do is work, and work.” And whenever she wasn’t working or writing, she was at Cal’s. Somehow, her life was relatively hectic.

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[diana eoina bainbridge]

Maybe you're just a dream

That's what it means to crush

September 22, 2029
cara june bainbridge

Diana wondered how long Cara had been waiting, though by the sight of her butterbeer, maybe a while. Not that Cara drank too slowly or quickly, but the important thing was they both were there. A waitress came by surprisingly quickly, but the pub wasn’t crowded. ”Oh—erm—butterbeer please.” She had to admit that The Hog’s Head was her usual stomping ground now if only to see Ares, and he had a habit of placing a drink in front of her as soon as she’d sat down. It had been years since Diana had ordered at that bar.

The waitress left, and only a moment passed before Cara sat back and spoke. Diana tried subtly scanning her sister for anything that might be different. While they roomed together and often saw one another at home, most days, they were two ships passing in the night. Still, their lifelong bond alerted them when necessary. Diana shrugged as a butterbeer landed safely on the table—a small napkin and all. ”I don’t know—I suppose it’s been a while.” Time often didn’t feel real as one day blended into another, and the routine blurred the lines between days. It was typical for Diana to forget the day of the week if she’d stayed the night at Ares on a Wednesday instead of Thursday because she had grown accustomed to such a schedule.

”The museum is giving me more hours. Sometimes, the archivists will let me see when they’ve gotten something new, or they don’t mind me asking questions.” It had taken a while to break that wall, but as Diana had gotten to know them and they trusted Diana not to touch or break anything, they let her in the back room, so to speak, which was something out of her wildest dreams at fifteen to see rare artefacts and their connections to magic and their history. ”How is your—erm—writing going?” The discovery of her twin’s side job as a viral internet writer still brought some glee to Diana’s life as a fangirl, but she was also immensely proud of her twin.

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[cara june bainbridge]

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”I’m still fine,” she waved off the waitress after Diana ordered her own butterbeer. She was most likely going to be nursing this for a while, a habit of hers that was only broken with wine and around her girlfriend. The ordered butterbeer arrived immediately after she had asked her question. A natural interruption before anything had even gotten started. Cara paused, waiting for her twin to answer. It was lacking about as much information as she had assumed it would be. That had never changed with Diana. If she wanted to talk, beyond basic pleasantries and whatnot, she would. Pushing her had never worked before and Cara disliked doing that anyways. She knew how she could come across sometimes, which was something she had been working on fixing for years now.

Hearing she was getting more hours was good though. Cara knew what that was like. Part of the reason why she had picked up the second job at Spellbucks was to make sure she wasn’t spending too much time idling around. She knew that eventually she was going to have to decide on whether or not she wanted to take her writing full time or not. ”It’s…going…” Cara answered sheepishly. She was still embarrassed by the fact that some of her siblings knew about her writing. They had apparently already been reading her work too, which only made it worse. The content of her stories were…aggressive in nature sometimes. ”I mean, I’m sure you know. The views are higher than they’ve ever been, but there isn’t really any money in it. There aren’t exactly advertisers for that sort of thing. Yet.”

Cara wasn’t even sure if there ever would be. While she could easily have a stranglehold on the minute fantasy smut market in their community, she also still doubted her own ability. Branching out into the muggle world was probably for the smartest. This decision was where she had been stuck for the last several months. ”So…aside from work, what else have you been up to?” she asked after a moment. That was what she was really interested in after all.

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