Inessa's parents reacted to the four of us appearing out of nowhere with hugs and hot chocolate, then shock and confusion, then—as the reality of things finally settled—the faintest hint of quickly buried anger. We didn't get that much explaining done that night. Between my crying apologies, the confusion at my—apparently pretty obvious—changes and everyone's relief to have me back, no one had the energy left to actually offer a coherent explanation to Inessa's parents.
No, I'd been assured upstairs to Inessa's room and started crying again. Somehow a familiar bat plushie and a pair of green apple studs were waiting for me on Inessa's desk.
Inessa hugged me and I hugged Count Fruitula and resolved myself that my partnership with Avaritia wouldn't end there.
Both Inessa and I slept until the early afternoon. But eventually we had to rise. And, after a few parental discussions and talks with Inessa that I wasn't privy to, we'd sat down "as a family" according to Inessa and talked. Inessa took over for most of it. I don't think I could really have worked up the courage to get my new name out of my lips, or to lie to them after they'd welcomed me back into their house despite me running off without a word.
Officially, I was a trans girl, for all I still felt like an imposter. My name was Chiro, and the shock and depression over gender combined with everything with my dad had driven me to run away and do some dumb things including taking hormones. After a few weeks, I'd broken down and called Inessa and she'd panicked and gone running and that was how we'd gotten there last night.
I hated the necessity of starting life as Chiro with so many lies. But it wasn't like we could tell them what had really happened and this let me explain why my face was different. I wasn't sure if HRT actually worked anywhere near that fast. But—as a panicked group text with Temperance had informed us—cis people would basically believe anything about hormones.
While Inessa's parents were still trying to untangle it all, wondering how the quiet boy they'd known for so many years could actually be a girl, Inessa had triumphantly announced that she was adopting me.
I missed a bit of what happened next. Inessa's surety sparked a familiar spiral of guilt and fear that I was about to be thrown away again. Apparently the Brandt's had agreed to take me in before everything. But, well, finding out that the nice boy next door you thought of as the son you'd never had was apparently a girl who couldn't stop crying while she danced around the edge of admitting exactly how close to the end she'd actually come… that couldn't have been easy.
Except, after a whispered back and forth, Mrs. Brandt had pulled me into a hug and told me she was proud of me for coming back. That had set off the tears again and somehow that had settled everything. In a way, that was a little ironic. I'd spent so much time being miserable and pretending I couldn't cry. Now I was as happier than I'd ever been and I couldn't stop sobbing in front of everyone.
They'd told me that they wanted me to be family as much as Inessa did. And maybe they'd immediately followed that up by grounding me until we sorted things out. Maybe they both struggled to figure out how to treat me; maybe Mrs. Brandt kept trying to talk me into choosing a normal name, and maybe Mr. Brandt kept slipping and calling us children or teens anything that wasn't girls. But I wasn't sure how to treat me either.
The important thing is that they were trying. Inessa's mom took us shopping on a girl's day out, because Chiro had basically nothing that would work for her in terms of clothing or any other essentials. Mr. Brandt tried to remember to get my name right and Inessa tried to comfort me when I told her how guilty receiving so much kindness made me feel. And I tried to be better about not bottling everything up until we exploded. Between us it almost felt like we might try hard enough for things to be different.
We made plans to sneak back into the Abyssal Forest of course. We needed to find any clues we could about Uriel, Superbia and Avaritia. I'd wanted to grab a few things from my room. Instead, the way was locked off, as if without the Beasts there was nothing to hold that gloomy castle together. Or perhaps Superbia had managed to recover enough to destroy it in a rage or Uriel had somehow hidden it away.
That room had been a prison to me, but it was also where I'd started to find myself, where Avaritia had awkwardly tried to comfort me after my first victory, where I'd first looked in a mirror and seen someone I adored. At least, ey'd gotten me the mementos that really mattered. That only sparked more guilt of course. Even after refusing the offered hands, Avaritia was still helping, too hurt to come close, too greedy to ever cut ties.
Ey weren't making Resinners anymore. At least not where we could find them. Instead, a new type of monster had appeared: grayscale creatures that felt fundamentally wrong in a way the Beasts' creations never had.
As much as I hated to admit it, a part of me was glad to have the stability and power of fighting with the Saints. Helping felt good even if it was scary and people could get hurt. There was enough confusion in everything else in this strange new life I was building. The ever-more familiar cadence of monster battles helped ground me.
And then, after a few doctor's visits, way too many phone calls and a lot of nightmares, it was time for the young woman who was to be called Chiroptera Brandt to do something terrifying.
----
I took a cotton swab to my left eye for the seventh time that morning. I'd messed up my wing again and, for all my hands wouldn't stop shaking, I needed it to be perfect. I sighed and took a moment to steady myself and then started tracing a thin line across my eyelid yet again.
I was sitting in front of Inessa's desk, staring intensely at a vanity mirror, while she sat on a bed and texted someone. My sister was probably complaining to our friends how ridiculous I was being or, worse, bragging about her adorable sister. I would check the Saints' group chat later and complain as appropriate.
But I couldn't help it. I vaguely recalled my first school day as the first Chiro being about this bad, but she was a beautiful and mysterious transfer student who had nothing rational to fear about anything. I was the weird boy who'd vanished for a month and was now coming back with only weeks until graduation, trying to convince everyone he was actually a girl. But I had to go, and that meant I had to put as much effort in as I possibly could.
I still didn't buy that I looked like a real girl; I didn't feel like one either, no matter what Temperance said. But that just meant I had to be even more perfectly put together. I wasn't sure how Mrs. Brandt had talked the school around to accepting me as Chiro or letting me finish the term after missing so much. I wasn't sure why the thought of just going back to being Charlie—even just at school—had stuck like a fishbone in my throat and left me struggling to breathe. But, even if she found the whole Chiro thing a bit of a struggle, she was an adult in my life and she'd actually fought the bureaucracy for my sake.
I managed to get the pen away from my eyes before I started sniffling, earning Inessa's attention more quickly and more totally than if I had tried to strangle her again.
"It's fine," I said. "I was just thinking about how your mom managed to get school to be okay with the absences and the, whatever this is." I gestured to the skirt I was wearing. "And I just got so happy that she did it all for me."
"She got your name wrong twice yesterday!" Inessa said with her arms crossed over her chest. "You're not allowed to be so grateful to her that you spontaneously burst into tears."
"I mean..." I should probably have been upset at that. A real trans girl probably would have been inconsolate. "I accidentally introduced myself as Invidia Bat in that fight last week. She's trying."
A part of me was frustrated at how protective Inessa had gotten. For all she trusted me with her back against our new enemies, she seemed to treat me like I was made of glass the rest of the time. Another part of me remembered how radiant she'd been as she struck me down and couldn't imagine my sister being anything less than the perfect knight. A third part was simply terrified enough of returning to school that I would happily accept any degree of infantilization if it meant a human shield between me and the student body.
Inessa huffed and shook her head, and looked at me seriously for a moment. "Your makeup looks good. Are you sure you're up to this?"
I bit back the urge to wipe it all off and start over, grabbed a little teal tab from an orange plastic bottle on the desk, popped it under my tongue, and gave her a tiny nod. I wasn't sure how the actual hormones would interact with whatever my magic was doing to me, but MIchael seemed to think it was fine. We'd needed to convince the Brandts that I had already been taking them when I'd vanished, and one thing had led to another and now I had them for real. It was another blessing I didn't deserve.
Mr. Brandt caught us on the way down, giving Inessa a hug and staring awkwardly at me for a moment until I shyly crossed the distance and put my arms around him as lightly as I could.
"Have a good day kids," he said with worried affection. "Inessa, take care of your sister. Chiro, we expect you to text us at lunch and after school to let us know everything's going okay."
Inessa found the idea that her parents were demanding check-ins demeaning. I didn't think I'd stumble in a way where her parents would be able to help. But sending a few updates a day might give them peace of mind. And, even if it was hard to disentangle the Brandt's actions from every other adult who'd had me, and even if a part of me was waiting for them to get sick of all the attention they were giving me and throw me out, it honestly felt nice that they cared enough to hover.
Speaking of hovering, Inessa grabbed my hand and dragged me out the door, muttering something about parents being ridiculous and our need to hurry if we wanted to meet up with friends before school started.
---
I made my way through classes, reintroduced once an hour to stares and whispers and flickers of assorted sins I wished I couldn't hear. I should have worn pants. Chiro, the first Chiro, would have looked great in the knee-length skirt and sleeveless top. People looked at her with all sorts of desires. They looked at me like I was a comedy act.
At the same time, I found myself smiling in the rare moments when it felt like I might be unobserved. I'd notice how the fingers wrapped around my pen had a bright green nail polish that matched my hair, and that'd fill me with this soft little giddy emotion that made me want to laugh and dance right there in the classroom. And so the morning went, a dizzying mix of ecstasy and terror accentuated by a backing track of dark feelings I wasn't meant to hear.
None of this was new. I'd done it as Chiro 1.0 all the time. And yet, somehow, every little bit of euphoria, rare as they'd become, felt so much more immediate and intense. Perhaps it was because this was a mask closer to my core. Even if I couldn't quite find a way to think of myself as a real girl, I was at least faking it as myself.
I found myself exhausted by lunch, content to simply sit safely ensconced on all sides by the other Saints and quietly listening to the chaotic medley of sins that characterized a highschool cafeteria. I didn't want to pry into any of them. But one quiet little tune kept grabbing me. It was a soft and ordinary kind of longing that stuck in my head for reasons I couldn't quite parse.
"Skirts do suit you," a familiar monotone broke me out of my reverie, before I could really examine the sin in detail.
I looked down to find Temperance Atwater nodding approvingly at me. As if she hadn't repeated that joke a half dozen times since my return.
"You're coming to the GSA today," she decided for me.
"I'm doing what?"
"Coming to the Gay-Straight Alliance meeting," she repeated as if that had been the point of confusion.
"Why?"
"I am," she said gravely, "going to make you admit it."
"Look," I bit back my first response to the well-meaning girl. She'd been the first to see all the desires I hadn't been able to voice. Maybe, as Gula, she'd sensed enough of my sins to know. Maybe trans girls just had a hidden sixth sense for boys who maybe had actually always wanted to be girls; magical or otherwise. And she'd tried to help, in her own noncommunicative way. She had covered for Chiro in those early fragile days when recognition might have shattered any possibility I had of ever being her for real.
Beyond that, she was the other one who understood how much it hurt that Avaritia had vanished after that fateful night and, weeks later, neither of us had had the chance to say what we wanted to tell em. I didn't know, exactly, how far Temperance and Avaritia's partnership went. I was afraid to ask, for all we'd agreed that we would turn the world inside out if that's what it took to reach our wolf.
And, whatever the genuine trans girl was, she was it. She was, in ways that Inessa had been, the genuine article I was currently pretending to be. And she liked and accepted and even seemed to enjoy helping me figure this all out the way Avaritia had enjoyed the same things.
To be short, it was hard for me to figure out what exactly I felt about the blue haired girl in front of me. Gratitude? Exasperation? Longing? Jealousy, at least, remained an essential component.
"You won, okay? You got me in a skirt."
"My victory will be total," she proclaimed. "I demand a friend of the girl variety."
Befuddled, I pointed to the two palpably amused girls watching our interaction. Ida seemed as confused as I was. Inessa tilted her head to the side for a moment, then gave Temperance an inscrutable look and buried her head in her hands.
Temperance looked at me the way one might look at a particularly slow child and let out a long-suffering sigh.
"Yeah," Ida said. "We'll always be your friends!"
"Yes, I am friends with Ida and Inessa. That is what I meant by a girl friend." Temperance agreed, woodenly. "And you are going to admit that if you decide to be a girl, that makes you trans," she continued speaking in a valiant effort to stem a tide of denial not even her hydromancy could budge.
Perhaps, if that had been the first time she'd accosted me with such logic, I would have found myself shaken. But it wasn't. She had explained this to me at length, she had linked me to essays I hadn't been able to work up the courage to read. Maybe—I could admit on good days—she might even be right.
A few months ago, this kind of conversation had been enough to set me on the path to becoming Invidia. Maybe I still had some figuring to do, some things to make peace with. But I had told the world I was trangender and a woman and I was living like it was true. But, that was all it felt like. Another mask. Shouldn't I have been able to look at myself and know it was real if that's what I was?
"Sorry," I said at last, my eyes leaving hers to count the number of people staring at the new girl. I forced myself to calm down. I was handling it better, but I would never like this kind of talk. And, even if no one was listening, we were still in public and there was no way to know that no one was listening, not really. Anyone could have been silently staring, judging. I was coping better.
"Look Temperance," Ida cut in, just as I thought I was free. "I guess I'm the token cisgender heterosexual on the team and I don't really get this stuff. But, like, you'd just know if you were gay or trans or anything, right? LIke, people just have an internal sense of that kind of thing."
"Exactly!" I agreed, puzzled by the unexpected support, but willing to accept it even if it meant my efforts to avoid the topic were failing.
"No," Inessa preempted Ida. "At least, it's like, it's complicated, I just thought girls were, you know… There were, umm," I wondered whether mortified or amused was the better reaction to seeing my sister squirm. Secondhand embarrassment felt about right. "You know, thoughts about women. But, it's not like I had a 'lesbian' label floating over my head or anything."
I spared a glance at Temperance, who seemed to be looking at Ida with something like dawning horror as the latter girl tapped her finger against her lips.
"Huh," Ida said in a tone of voice I'd never heard from the usually confident Saint. "That's, huh. Well, the more you know." And then she laughed and rubbed the back of her head and returned to her lunch with gusto.
Slowly, Inessa turned to face Temperance, communicating something inscrutable but horrified in the private language only possessed by real girls, or maybe just real lesbians?
"No," Temperance announced firmly. "We can unpack that after we finish breaking Chiro."
And there went my chance to avoid answering. And really, I owed it to…
"Today's already really overwhelming and I hate the way everyone's looking at me, and, I know you want to help, but could we maybe leave the processing and the GSA and the everything for another day?"
Temperance winced.
"Sorry." Her voice carried only the faintest trace of guilt. But she stopped looking at me like she smelled blood in the water.
For a second, she looked like she might want to say something more, then she looked around and, with a few glares at nosey bystanders and confirmation from me that no feelings were hurt, we settled into the silence of friends close enough that no one felt pressured to keep the conversation moving.
And so the day went. I only heard my deadname whispered once and—even if I retreated into myself and longed for the comfort of baggy concealing clothes we'd all agreed I should deny myself on the first day—I could live with that. None of the others shared sixth period with me; it probably wouldn't have happened if any of the potentially intimidating girls I called my friends had been around to imply murder at anyone who dared.
And honestly, it hurt less than the stares, than the uncomfortable anticipation. Better to have it out there than constantly be wondering what every teacher was thinking.
And sure, shortly after school someone at the GSA turned into one of the the new monsters and we had to rush to get there before it managed to get away from Temperantia. But that part was easy, for all Temperance seemed intensely determined to inform us that it absolutely wasn't her doing. I'd only teased her about it once, there was no need to be so insistent really.
And then I made my way home and apologized to the Brandts for being late and listened to their gentle reprimands and let Inessa explain how I'd needed a little time to gather myself after school and really it was her fault for not texting and… I hated how easily lying to her parents came to my sister. She wasn't good at masking her feelings, but it was obvious that she'd had a lot of practice at this particular application of the skill.
And then I was free and I made my way up to the room I was sharing with my sister and asked for some time to decompress.
---
The girl in the mirror struck a pose, legs bent and arms crossed under her chest. A pair of cartoonish wings stretched behind her and a gentle green halo hovered placidly above her head. She looked… good enough. Her chest was too flat. But the ribbon helped hide that. She was too tall. Her forehead was awful and protruding and anyone who got close would be able to see.
Or would they? Everyone said I was a bad judge of myself on this. Even Mrs. Brandt said I was, at least when she hadn't accidentally misgendered me in the last few hours. Temperance had said significantly more than that. They were probably right.
I picked up my lyre up off of Inessa's desk and held it over my torso, one hand poised to strum. That was a little better, maybe. The instrument drew the eye.
I'd heard a few students talking about Humanitas in the aftermath of the fight. No one seemed to have guessed she might be trans or whatever incomprehensible thing I actually was. But maybe they had? Maybe people were just more polite when the ugly boy in a skirt had magic superpowers and got to hang out with the magical girls.
The door behind me creaked open. Panicking, I dove for the side of Inessa's bed, as if that would somehow hide me.
My sister froze in the doorway, staring at Angelic Saint Humanitas lying awkwardly on the floor for a long moment before recovering enough to jump into the room we were temporarily sharing and slam the door behind her.
"Chiro!" She whispered, worryingly. "Why are you transformed? Why are you on the floor? What are you doing?"
I blushed.
"I, umm, well…" I didn't get enough chances to actually see myself as Humanitas. I'd hoped that seeing her—actually, literally, seeing her—might help me see myself a little differently, might help me see the girl that Temperance insisted was there. And, well, where was I supposed to do that if not our room?
"I just, umm, wanted to see how Humanitas actually looks, and, you know… Sorry."
With a thought, I allowed my uniform to unravel into an errant breeze, facing Inessa as plain old Chiro.
"You should really work on all that apologizing," she said with a pout.
"Sorry," I apologized again anyway. She was right, that kind of self-indulgent suffering that had gotten me to some of my worst places.
"Chiro…" She shook her head.
"Sorry!" I repeated.
Her eyes narrowed.
I removed my tongue from my cheek to stick it out at my sister. "Sorry."
Inessa rewarded me with a pillow to the face.
"Feeling better?" she asked after I'd retaliated in kind.
I bit back my immediate urge to respond with a 'yes' and actually thought about it. My instincts screamed at me to be okay, to tell people that I was reassured, that they didn't need to worry. I'd taken that path to its extreme and it had led to dark places. My therapist—I had one of those now—had suggested that forcing myself to be a little more open in small ways might help.
"Yeah," I said. "Today was rough." That was the root of it. Chiro the first had been an experience of joy in my appearance married to guilt and confusion and hatred for the person under the skin. C, in retrospect, had simply hated everything about himself to an extent I had never quite dared grasp. Now, as with so much of this trying to be a better person thing, I found myself all over the place. Some days I marveled at the changes that had already happened. Some days I was ecstatic for what they meant might still occur. Others, I looked at my face and saw my parents.
And sometimes I went to school for the first time in two weeks and realized that trying to be a girl around people who'd vaguely known guy me was probably the special kind of hell reserved for wicked little bat creatures who'd come up with really stupid plans to get their best friends to kill them. It wasn't a fair thought. Bats deserved a much better afterlife than that.
"Oh," Inessa said.
"It's fine, really. I kinda knew it was going to happen like that." It was fine, I decided somewhat capriciously. Admitting to bad thoughts didn't mean that all of them had to have some great moral weight. "What have you been up to?"
I listened as Inessa talked about her day and grabbed Count Fruitula off the bed. It was impossible to hold him without thinking of the person who was missing, the one supportive voice who'd been so loudly absent all day. That longing was good in its own way; it was probably why, even after everything, hurt and alone, ey'd grabbed my things and brought them to me.
Ey had cut emselves away from me and Temperance, but ey longed to be held close. Avaritia wanted me to wear the familiar little studs I obviously had had to wear on my first day and hug the Count and think of em even as ey refused to let us extend them the same compassion.
Inessa's finger poked my cheek and I belatedly realized that I'd completely lost the flow of whatever she'd been saying.
"Missing em?" my sister asked, a quiet, crackling little envy sparking in her heart.
"Yeah," I admitted, pretending like I couldn't sense what she was feeling. My seed had grown used to its confines, or perhaps Humanitas' power simply made it easier to keep its impulses restrained. It barely tried to extend a root even when my sister was a little jealous of me.
"We're going to bring em around though. Like you did for me," I added after a moment's thought. Temperance and I had promised each other as much. Any means necessary.
Inessa forced a smile. "I'm sure you will," she said, the bitter feeling in her heart subsiding in favor of something warm and good that my seed would not show me. "My adorable little sister can be pretty amazing, you know."
---
It had been a good day, I decided as I listened to Inessa sleep next to me. I hadn't expected that. And yet, even with the anxiety and the being in public around strangers who knew exactly who I'd been, it had been good, for all it wasn't pleasant.
I looked to Inessa's window, though I couldn't actually see the house I was looking for from the bed: the one down the street with a "for sale" sign I wouldn't have been able to make out in the dark anyway. Despite everything, that still felt like it was my fault, like I'd failed my abusive dad one more time. I hated that I couldn't just excise that part of my heart.
Two months ago, I'd fantasized about being a magical girl, about standing with Inessa and Temperance and Ida and being beautiful and strong and amazing. I'd envied them and felt so bad about that everyday emotion that I'd buried it deep down and refused to admit it until it took root inside of me and hollowed me out of everything else. I'd let those bitter dreams consume me and refused to accept a world where they could be the least bit possible.
Now, they'd all come true and instead I found myself fantasizing about the day I'd march up to that house and knock on the door and show a man who wouldn't be living there anymore that I was beautiful and strong and amazing, that despite him, I'd turned out okay.
It felt just as impossible. Envy still had a hold of me. It wasn't a grand emotion, some sweeping dramatic power, not really. My envy had always been such a mundane little thing to have so much sway over my life. I couldn't imagine that I'd have taken any steps toward being that girl without envy to light the way to my desires. It had shown me what I still sought, how little of a person I was underneath all my little masks. I'd done wrong. I wouldn't run from that or deny it.
My sister had been trying to save the world and I'd spent so much energy presenting a shell of a good person that I'd turned myself into a monster instead of actually doing anything for anyone. If I'd been the kind of person who could just admit her needs from the start I could actually have been the kind of person who could have helped them.
But there was no use in imagining happier pasts. At the end of the day my envy was a part of me, whether I liked it or not. I was hardly the only one to feel that way. And perhaps the only way out was through. In naming it, in acknowledging the distorted way I looked at my sister, I could render it transparent enough to start looking beyond myself. I still idolized her of course, still took her as a lodestar in a way that even I could admit probably put a terrible kind of pressure on a girl who had too many weights to bear.
No, envy still lit my way, still consumed me. But, just maybe, it was okay to imagine that kindness was actually starting to join it.
For instance, there was the thing I'd avoided telling anyone about all day. I'd heard that quiet ugly song in the cafeteria; nearly drowned out by the cacophony of sin that filled any room with so many teenagers. But that bitter wanting was too familiar to miss; familiar enough that it ached just to hear.
Inexplicably, it had pointed right at me. Some stranger in our school had envied my current mask. They had longed for the awkward trans girl struggling to breathe under hypervisibility, not Humanitas or Charlie or Inessa's mirror.
I wondered if they knew what they were feeling or why. Mostly though, I wondered what I would say to them and if it would be able to help.
NEXT WEEK ON SHINING…
