sixteen.

NATHAN WAS SO flabbergasted that his reflex smile couldn't even appear. Nothing in him moved—not a bone, not a muscle, not even a single atom.

"You know what?" Nathan said when he found his voice. "You were right. It's a greek god retelling."

Adelaide's expression pinched with either disbelief or disgust. "I'm telling you the script's exactly what happened to my mom! It's not greek mythology! I . . . I didn't want to believe it, but Act Five proves it. It proves everything."

With a shaky sigh, Nathan skimmed through Act Five entirely. It revealed that Luna was a widow, and that she had a daughter she hadn't told Dolion about. And as soon as Dolion got to know about that, he packed his shit and left. Charming man.

Nathan raised his gaze, set it on Adelaide. "Your mom was a widow?" His fingers trembled against the paper; he didn't even notice he'd dropped it until it brushed by his leg.

Adelaide nodded. Something icy-cold struck Nathan's heart but he tried to keep his shit together as much as he could. "And your mom met a random dude like Dolion too. And he left when she told him she's a widow."

"Y-Yeah."

"So you're sure this is about your mom."

"I'm sure," Adelaide said, voice both firm and cracked. "And that makes you Dolion's son. That means your dad betrayed my mom. He's the reason she died. He's . . . He's a bastard. A complete bastar—"

"It's not my dad." It was an odd thing for Nathan, feeling the symptoms of denial but wanting to latch on it because he trusted his dad. "I know him. He's not an asshole. He loves my mom. He wouldn't cheat on her."

Adelaide leant forward, her weight on her knees. "Nathan," she said, "do you think it's a coincidence the Director hates you that much? That he keeps hurting you but he never even touched me the wrong way? You're Dolion's son. That has to be the reason he kidnapped you. And me. Because we're their kids."

The shock locked Nathan down. He couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Couldn't do anything. Everything Adelaide had said made sense. But impossible. He wouldn't believe it, didn't want to.

More tears had mapped Adelaide's cheeks by the time Nathan could acknowledge her existence again. Except this time, hints of anger forced her brows into a frown.

"My mom committed suicide because of your dad, Nathan!" Adelaide shouted, too loudly for Nathan's fragile state. He looked at her. Straight at her yet straight past her. He blinked. Adelaide's expression was getting angrier, and suddenly she was jabbing him in the chest, yelling: "She hanged herself when he left her! It's his fault! It's his fault she died—"

Nathan pushed Adelaide off even though he wasn't sure how he did it with his nerves and muscles alike numb. "Shut up," he mumbled. "Please shut up."

"I . . . I grew up without a mom because . . . because of him. I never even got to see her!" Adelaide suddenly stopped on her own. A realization must've slammed into her. Her glossy eyes lowered, then she looked at Nathan again. "That's why the Director hates your dimple. Because . . . Does your dad have a dimple too? Does he?"

His dad actually had a dimple. Exactly like Nathan's: on the left cheek, so deep it appeared with the slightest movement of his jaw or mouth.

The silence gave Adelaide an answer. "He does, right? Oh my gosh. You . . . This can't be a coincidence. I-It's real. It's true. What's your dad's name? Christopher? Because that's the name of the man mom met. The real Dolion."

The air left Nathan's lungs. Christopher really was his dad's name. Still, he couldn't bring himself to react. Adelaide was weeping again, jabbing his chest again whilst shooting at him accusations as if he'd done it.

"Get off." Nathan roughly pushed Adelaide away, and with a palm along the wall, he pulled himself to his feet. His knees trembled. The world went in and out of focus. "Get the hell off me."

Adelaide staggered back. Her chest heaved a little, breaths uneven. "I know it's not your fault, Nate." Softer voice, as if she'd gotten a grip on herself again. On her words. "I don't blame you. You- You have nothing to do with this, I know. But your . . . your dad probably went around cheating on your mom everywhere! He travels a lot. You said that—"

"I told you, shut up."

"Why! We have to talk about it. You can't deny—"

"We can't talk about it while you're flipping out. Calm down and then we'll fucking talk."

Nathan's voice cracked somewhere towards the end of the sentence. If Adelaide didn't stop, he'd probably explode: turn into a complete, full-on absolute asshole and start explaining how Luna wasn't all innocent, that she'd played a part in her own demise.

But Nathan didn't want to do that. Midst his thoughts, he didn't even realize Adelaide had actually stopped babbling. He gave her a look. Close to a momentary truce. Swallowing past the lump in his throat, he trudged to the corner and sat down there, torso tilted towards the wall.

Adelaide's soft cries returned, echoing like a broken radio, and they were torture; Nathan clamped his hands over his ears. Squeezed his eyes shut so hard they watered. Willed himself to breathe right.

Dad wouldn't do that. Dad wouldn't do that. Dad wouldn't do that.

With his head leant against the wall and his achy knees to his chest, Nathan remained stoic. Motionless. Adelaide's words crammed in his chest. Everything felt tight and it wasn't because of the small span of space right now. When he reached a hand up to his hair, he couldn't even tug with how hard his fingers trembled.

This time Nathan couldn't predict how many minutes it took, but after a long while, Adelaide's snivels and sobs in the background petered out. She must've calmed down.

Shifting sounded, then footsteps nearing. Fingertips lightly touched Nathan's arm. It took him two seconds to glance back. Adelaide was there, a muted chaos. Eyes red-rimmed but lips sealed. Her curly hair was frizzier than ever.

Nathan looked away again, but he felt her plop down beside him. Neither of them spoke. Only the sounds of their breaths could be heard.

"I'm sorry," Adelaide mumbled, voice low and ashamed. "I- I shouldn't have flipped out like that. I know it's hard for you too. I just . . . I've been holding it in for too long and I . . . exploded. And I know you're mad at me now but . . ."

Nathan didn't react. He could imagine Adelaide messing with her hair like she'd always do. "We need to talk about it," she continued, "but not to blame anyone. What's more important right now is that we know how the play's gonna end."

Every hair on Nathan's arm was still standing on end. He rotated so he could catch Adelaide's eye, but she looked away. Brown eyes attached to the floor.

"When Chris—" Adelaide stopped. She shifted uncomfortably. "Let's stick with Dolion. When Mom told him about me, that she has a daughter, he was shocked. I was like one years old maybe? She wanted him to marry her, and then they'd raise me together. But he didn't like the responsibility, so he left. He left her just like that. She felt betrayed. And I guess that was too much to handle, so she . . . she hanged herself. That's what I've been told anyway."

Nathan listened to Adelaide choke on her words. He'd comfort her, only he didn't find it in him. Energy, words—all drained. His dad could handle responsibility. He'd never been the type to run away from shit. He'd never been the type to cheat. Nathan had always looked up to him, for love and safety. For advice. For everything.

"Do you know what that means, Nathan? Do you understand why I told you it's gonna be a big disaster?"

Nathan nodded. On first thought, it meant that Adelaide would have to commit suicide in the end as part of the play. But not really. Nathan knew. In the original story Luna would die, but clearly the Director came to alter reality. Quench the thirst for warped justice. Which meant . . .

"The Director's the friend Luna talked about," Nathan said after the suffocating pause. Beside him, Adelaide's jaw dropped half ajar as if she hadn't been thinking about that. "Isn't he?"

"Oh my gosh, yeah. I was thinking about something else, but you're right." Adelaide straightened a little. "Of course he's the friend. He has to be someone who cares enough. My uncle told me that my mom had a close friend who warned her about Dolion, but she . . . she didn't listen."

Silence again. Nathan knew Adelaide had to be thinking about the same shit swirling in his head, but she didn't look like she wanted to acknowledge it. The sickening, looming possibility of death. If it'd only been a theory before, now it turned into fate.

"For a second," Adelaide said, "I thought you'd turn out my half-brother. But it's not possible."

Nathan kept looking at her, wordlessly urging her to continue.

"My mom already had me when Dolion came and left. I told you I was one or two years old, remember? You weren't even born when she died so . . . yeah. That's not it, obviously."

"Yeah." Nathan angled his face half-way towards the ceiling. He didn't want to believe it but everything made so much sense it was hard to resist. Why the Director despised him and his dimple, why he never hurt Adelaide. Why he'd always insisted he'd picked the perfect villain. Denial, though—Nathan wanted to hang onto it until the confrontation came out of his dad's mouth.

"I'm scared for you, Nate."

Nathan had to cross an arm over his stomach; it felt like a knife was slicing it from the inside. He grimaced. So Adelaide understood. She'd come to the same conclusion, the same (or opposite) ending to the same story.

"I don't even know what we should do," Adelaide said, shaking her head hopelessly. "If we should—"

"We should memorize the script." Nathan leant over, grabbing the scripts since Adelaide looked like she'd rather just stare at them. He handed her hers.

"Memorize the script? We sorta just realized—"

"What's the difference?" Shrugging a shoulder, Nathan kept his eyes on his lap. He gave Adelaide a side-look. "Weren't we just trying to survive this? Now isn't the time for justice and shit, whatever the truth is. You might hate me, but we have to stay a team. Maybe that's the Director's plan. To make us fight each other. It'd make things easier for him."

"I don't hate you." For a person who'd completely lost their shit a few minutes ago, you wouldn't think this would come out of their mouth. But it did. And the sincerity in Adelaide's voice made Nathan's heart constrict. "Even if it's actually your dad. You're not him. You're Nate, you're you. The boy I met here. A victim, just like me."

Nathan wasn't smiling but his dimple curved anyway. "But it's not my dad," he said, fiddling with his fingers.

A long, quivering sigh. "It's not your dad," Adelaide repeated, as if trying to pacify him. Nathan heard the lie just like he'd tasted it off his own tongue.

The silence was studded with a sadness both abstract and tangibly thick. But then the Director spoke through the earpiece with a giddy voice, "Well, my actors? I hope you're memorizing. I heard shouting."

Nathan straightened suddenly. He gripped Adelaide's arm and just about stumbled with her over to the other end of the room, where the Director couldn't see them even if he peeked through the glass slit in the door.

"Tell him we need more time," Nathan urgently whispered in Adelaide's ear. "He won't listen to me. If I tell him, he'll probably take away time to spite me."

Adelaide nodded but she seemed almost startled. With a loud voice, she said, "My Director, can we have a little more time to memorize, please? We . . . wasted time on something—"

"What's this something, my heroine?"

Adelaide gave Nathan a look. He thought for a moment, then quickly whispered to Adelaide what she should reply. So she parroted after him aloud: "I came to a realization, my Director. And I understand now why you hate your villain so much."

A short pause. Adelaide must've been looking at Nathan but he was staring at the ceiling, shoulders heaving slightly as he waited for the verdict.

"It's a shame that Luna came to this conclusion too late. Too late." The Director sounded both wistful and proud. "Take fifteen extra minutes, as you like. What's time in front of truth?"

Nathan smiled slightly, then leant forwards and hushed Adelaide before she could speak, trying to concentrate on the sound of the Director's footsteps. The psycho left. Nathan relaxed.

When Nathan realized Adelaide was still staring, he whispered, "We don't really need the extra time. We could've finished memorizing the script anyway. But I just wanted to stall, for the police. They might be close now, maybe."

"Good idea." Adelaide looked at the script in her hands, then at the tray across them. The cup of water and bread. Without warning, she stood up and moved away from Nathan then settled down opposite him.

Nathan frowned as he watched Adelaide; she drank water without giving a shit that he was looking (not that he minded. Just a little startled), and took small bites off the bread. Her eyes were on the script. Multitasking at best.

It took Adelaide a few seconds to lift her chin, and she clashed straight with Nathan's eyes. "I'm sorry," she mumbled. "But I have to. You said it, we might reach a point where we have to fight for our lives. And I bet you can tell it's close."

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a/n: thank you for reading/voting/commenting, it means a lot! ❤️