Painfully Complicated 

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Fate and Destiny intertwine in the oddest of ways- reincarnation can go wrong, destinies can falter, fates can change- and the results can be... messy.

I genuinely don\'t even know what this is. The idea wouldn\'t leave me alone so I wrote it out, and I figured people would appreciate my strange ideas. Maybe. Forgive me for this weirdness otherwise.

Aelita Schaeffer never made it to the age of twelve. It was an unfair, cruel counter-destiny that the Fates lamented as they watched the child being murdered, shot straight through the heart at the tender age of seven. The details were unimportant to the girl’s destiny, for all that they were of importance to that of her parents, so those details were ignored. The girl had a destiny to fulfill, and damned if the Fates were going to just let the girl die on them.

The fact that the very details they bypassed were what had made the destiny so important were again ignored. They were busy, they didn’t have time to really look at one child amongst millions. Instead, they studied the threads that connected to hers, and choose one. The thread led to a family which would, in several years, be expecting a child. The Fates had little trouble attaching the soul of the girl to a second body that had belonged to the child’s twin (the fact that the twin would have been a stillborn was simply lucky).

The two children were born to the Stern family, christened Ulrich and- by help of the Fates -Aelita. The Fates, considering their job done in this instance, moved on.

“I’m not fucking my sister!” Ulrich looked incredulously over at Odd. “Why would anyone think that?”

“Because they’re assholes!” Ulrich said exasperatedly. “Just because I don’t want anyone to break my sister’s heart I must be fucking her? What kind of fucked relationships do these people have with their siblings?”

 twins. Everyone knows twins are different.” Odd said. He then proceeded to duck out of the way as Ulrich threw his bag at him.

“Just because I asked you to stop flirting with her you have to go around with this bullshit-”

“It’s what everyone says, though you really aren’t helping your case, good buddy.” Odd competently ignored his sputtering friend. “You have never let another boy get near your sister. Plus, the way you two act around each other... you’ve definitely got a sister complex.”

“I do not!” Ulrich cried in outrage, though admittedly, he knew he sort of did. He wasn’t about to tell that to Odd, though. “None of them are in her league, that’s all. And she’s like a marshmallow! All fluffy and full of sugar. I won’t let one of those boys hurt her.”

“Yeah, well, if you don’t let your sister date 

, people are going to at least think that you want to be with her like that.” Ulrich glared at him, huffing as Odd finally left their room for his date. So what if he was close to his sister? So what if they loved each other and were closer than most siblings?

The Stern family wasn’t a loving place to grow up in. Unlike most families, what they valued most was competition, the best of the best- and neither of them had ever been considered that. Neither of them was good enough and they knew they weren’t good enough. Their father had said on more than one occasion if the twins were fused together he’d have the perfect child. The implications were not missed. Their mother was distant, a perfect wife but a horrid mother, and they had gotten used to being by themselves, entertaining themselves, helping each other. They were each other’s only cheerleaders and only real family, it felt like. Was it wrong that they should be so close? Ulrich didn’t think so.

Of course, this was disregarding what had happened over break... he began to blush as he thought about it. Still, that had only been practice, they’d agreed, and it wasn’t like they expected to be that way. They knew where the line was- they wouldn’t cross it. Even if parts of them wanted to. He was about to burrow in his bed to sulk about it when the door flung open and he found himself assaulted by his sister.

“Aelita!” He managed to choke out before the air was knocked out of him, and she smiled at him charmingly. He was not fooled. “Dammit Aelita, what was that for?”

“For being a bum.” She said with a grin. “I could practically feel you sulking through the door.” She probably had felt him sulking, and didn’t he know it. It wasn’t just that he didn’t like seeing his sister hurt- he didn’t like feeling her hurt, either. “Well, I also wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Oh?” he pulled himself up on his bed, looking at her blush with a raised eyebrow.

“What do you think of Jeremy Belpois?” she asked, but continued talking before Ulrich could actually answer. “I ran into him today, and he and I started talking, about computer programming actually, and he just knows so much! And I think I would love to hang out with him more, you know? Yumi thinks I have a crush, but even so...” she turned to her brother. “Anyway, what do you think of him?” Ulrich paused, thinking of what Odd said before he actually replies. This wasn’t the first time that Aelita had come to him asking what he thought of a boy, and while he was usually beyond honest teetering into gossip and occasional blatant lies, with Odd’s words on his mind he couldn’t do so now. Ulrich cursed Odd silently as he weighed how to react to his sister’s crush.

“I don’t know a whole lot about him,” Ulrich started, “I’ve had to partner with him once or twice, things like that, and he seems to be, overall, a pretty good guy. I don’t think he has any friends, and he is really smart...” He trailed off to look at his sister. She appeared to be nodding her head thoughtfully.

“Maybe I’ll give him a try, ask him out,” she said speculatively. He swallowed the feelings that popped up at that thought and instead concentrated on knowing that Belpois probably wasn’t foolish enough to try and break his sister’s heart.

“Yeah, maybe you should,” he said as evenly as he could manage, which turned out to be almost normal. Almost. He cleared his throat. “I’m thinking about maybe asking Emily out.”

“Oh?” Aelita said, and there was something dangerously dismissive in her tone that told him she didn’t approve. He had to clamp his jaw shut to keep himself from saying the things that he shouldn’t say, that she shouldn’t have this much control over him and they shouldn’t care so much. He knew he had a sister complex, he knew that he really shouldn’t be so... protective of his sister, if one could call it that. He knew he shouldn’t have cared so much of what she thought of a girl he wasn’t even thinking of dating for more than a cover so people will drop those damn rumors, but he did.

They don’t ever talk about this. There is something there, something they don’t want to acknowledge, and Ulrich didn’t know what it was or what it meant, only that it was there and as much as he hated it he didn’t want it to go away. Unbeknownst to Ulrich, the Fates may have accidently tangled their strings up when they’d reincarnated Aelita which had had... unintended consequences.

“I’ve heard that Emily has been eyeing up Theo.” Aelita finally said. “I think he’s planning on asking her out soon, too. Maybe you could ask Yumi out, instead?” Aelita’s voice was light, but Ulrich knows there’s something deeper here. He lets whatever that is drop.

“Maybe,” he said, but his tone was dismissive as well, though not quite as much as hers was of Emily. It’s not that he’d never date Yumi, it’s just that he doesn’t really know where he stands with her, and he knows where he stands with most other girls. It’s easy to see in their faces when they like him and when they don’t even if few ever get the courage to approach him. Yumi, on the other hand, has always been a bit of a blank slate. He’s not the best at reading her, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like her. He’s had to hang out with her when she’s with Aelita and at Pencak Silat, and he does enjoy her company and perhaps even has a crush on her himself.

“Ulrich?” Aelita prodded him as she spoke, drawing him out of his thoughts. “What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing special,” he said, and he smiled at her. When she smiled back, something inside him fluttered. He loved that smile, and the flush of joy that usually accompanies it. He wasn’t expecting it when Aelita tackled him, however.

“Let’s take a nap. You look rather tired little bro.” Aelita giggled at the scowl on Ulrich’s face.

“Two hours isn’t all that much,” he grumbled. Aelita only laughed at him.

“I’ll tell mother you think so. I’m willing to bet she’d disagree.” She didn’t get the chance to stop laughing as Ulrich attacks her sides, tickling her until she can barely make a sound. She counters by tickling him, and soon the two are collapsed on Ulrich’s bed, half wrapped around each other, exhaustedly trying to catch their breath. “Let’s take that nap.” Aelita said, curling closer to Ulrich.

Ruefully, Ulrich reflected that it’s this sort of behavior that seems to have convinced people there was some sort of strange thing going on between the twins in the first place. He tries to argue (even in his own mind) that there is nothing more than sibling feelings between them, but Aelita is warm at his side, and his mind is flooded with a shared contentment. Letting the rumors rest for the moment, Ulrich pulled his sister closer and reached for one of his blankets, which he threw over them. Together, they drift into sleep (though only, Ulrich promises himself, for an hour).

The sunlight that streamed through the window tells Ulrich that he and Aelita have slept for far more than an hour. He glanced over at Odd’s bed, where Odd was ever so helpfully sleeping. Which of course meant he not only walked in and found them, but he ignored the fact that Aelita needed to return to her own dorm room.

Ulrich glanced at the clock and noticed that it was still an hour before he normally got up, so he could still send Aelita back to her dorm. He turned toward her, only to freeze when he saw her position wrapped around him. He hadn’t been paying that much attention when he woke up, and to be honest this was pretty usual behavior, so no warning bells had been set off but he and Aelita were in very unfortunate positions.

Ulrich was really glad Odd hadn’t woken up. He prodded Aelita, who only groaned a little bit before she curled even tighter around him, hand sliding up further under his shirt. It was only the fact that he was now awake that allowed him to avoid his hand ending up somewhere it shouldn’t have been. Not that Aelita would particularly mind, because until Odd had pointed out the rumors, neither of them had ever been bothered by the positions they sometimes found themselves in. He hissed her name but gave up after she put a hand over (nearly in) his mouth and muttered “I’m sleepin Ricky”

Resigned, Ulrich just settled in to wait for his alarm to go off.

Jeremy Belpois was walking toward the library when he suddenly felt an arm go around his shoulders. He immediately tensed.

“Hey Belpois, got a minute to talk? You do, don’t you?” said the unmistakable voice of Ulrich Stern, star of the soccer team, well-loved throughout the school, and known for being scarily overprotective of his twin sister. Jeremy swallowed down his instinctual fear.

“O-of course,” he said, already preparing himself for the talk in which Ulrich would tell him to stay away from his little sister. Was she his little sister? The thought fleetingly occurred to Jeremy that he didn’t think anyone knew which of the twins was older before he realized that Ulrich had pulled him into an unoccupied corner of the library. Ulrich turned to look at Jeremy, who attempted to look as though he wasn’t half terrified of the older boy in front of him. There was silence for a solid seven seconds before Ulrich began to speak.

“My sister mentioned you,” Ulrich said, his voice oddly light. Jeremy opened his mouth to speak but closed it at a sharp look from Ulrich. “She said you were really nice to her, and that...” a pained look flitted briefly over Ulrich’s face before it was shut down. “She said that she enjoyed talking to you about computers and whatever.”

Though he was still afraid, Jeremy felt himself relax a little as he felt some sympathy for the boy in front of him. Ulrich Stern was not stupid by any means, but it was clear to everyone that he wasn’t as intelligent- or at least not as computer and school savvy- as his sister. Ulrich was probably both frustrated and hurt that he couldn’t provide his sister with the sort of mental stimulation she would likely thrive off of, especially considering how close he was to her. Jeremy got so wrapped up in his sympathetic thoughts he almost missed the rest of what Ulrich said.

“-warning you Belpois, if you ever hurt my sister, I’m going to make your life a living hell.” Ulrich was saying.

“Wait,” Jeremy held up a hand. “Are you giving me

?” Jeremy asked in disbelief. Ulrich rolled his eyes but answered in the affirmative. “But you don’t let anyone date Aelita!”

Ulrich’s irritation was far more pronounced this time. “I don’t chose who Aelita has contact with, I ward off unwelcome advances so she isn’t constantly battered with unwanted suiters.” Jeremy’s skepticism must have shown, because Ulrich huffed at him. “Look, if Aelita really wanted to spend time with someone, I sure wouldn’t be able to stop her. The people I tell off usually annoy her. I’m not some kind of an asshole, okay? I want my sister to be happy. If you make her happy, then I’m willing to put up with you, but if you hurt my sister in any way I’ll make you wish you were dead. Understood?” Jeremy nodded. “Good. I’m out of here.” And with that, he was indeed gone.

Jeremy looked after him as he left. That... had actually gone pretty well, all things considered. Plus, he could stop being terrified of Ulrich next time he saw Aelita. Now if only he could stop being intimidated by Aelita herself....

Still, now he at least knew for sure that Aelita liked talking to him.

Yumi and Aelita were hanging out in Aelita’s dorm room while Aelita worked on something and Yumi watched, listening to Aelita as she rattled on about her day. Yumi was trying desperately to think of a good way to bring up the next topic of conversation with her best friend. Aelita had always been a bit of an oddball, but it’d gotten to the point that Yumi was genuinely concerned that Aelita might have some problems that needed to be addressed. Before she thought of anything to say, Aelita brought it up herself.

“I fell asleep in Ulrich’s room last night by mistake.” Aelita said, though the grin that popped up on her face told Yumi it hadn’t been much of a mistake. “But Jim says I’m not allowed to do that anymore.”

“Why did Jim let you do it in the first place?” Yumi asked, looking at Aelita incredulously.

“I don’t know,” Aelita responded cheerfully, “but he never wakes me up. Perhaps he thinks it’s cute.” That was not something Yumi really wanted to contemplate, if she was honest.

“Doesn’t it ever strike you as weird when you and your brother sleep in the same bed?” Yumi asked Aelita, who looked genuinely confused at the question.

“No, why would I? Ulrich and I have shared a bed since we were two.” Aelita didn’t seem bothered by this idea. Yumi, however, was.

“Why not since you were born?” she asked, though that was not the most pressing question, it was the first one that came to mind.

“Our parents thought we might be subject to that sudden infant death syndrome or something and wanted us to be in separate cribs. We were until finally we were old enough to crawl into each other’s beds to sleep. We didn’t like being alone at night.” Aelita said all of this as though this is perfectly normal behavior, and Yumi supposed that to her, it was. Yumi decided maybe now was the time to approach the real topic.

“Have you ever thought that maybe you’re a little... too attached... to your brother?” Yumi asked carefully.

“No,” Aelita replied bluntly. Despite the nonchalance in her tone, the way Aelita straightens up, giving Yumi her full attention where before she’d been half focused on the computer program she was working on, the way she tensed, told Yumi that Aelita was on guard.

“I mean,” Yumi continued on hurriedly, “I just wouldn’t dream of sleeping in the same bed as Hiroki the way you do with Ulrich-”

“You’re not twins,” Aelita immediately responded, cutting her off in that same blunt tone.

“I know. I know twins can be different, but that isn’t all. Aelita, you agree with me when I say your brother is cute-”

“A sister can’t appreciate her brother’s attractiveness?” Aelita asked defensively. Yumi decided it was her turn to be blunt.

“No. Not normally. You know that isn’t all though Aelita.” Yumi lowered her voice, leaned closer to Aelita. “You told me what happened over the last break Aelita. That isn’t normal behavior, even for twins.” Aelita looked away, and Yumi knew she probably shouldn’t push it, but she was genuinely worried for her friend. “Talk to me Aelita.”

“It was just practice,” Aelita said shyly. “We wouldn’t- we know better than- it was just practice.” She repeated, looking quite self-conscience.

“You’ll get more attached to him romantically if you keep practicing,” Yumi countered dryly, and Aelita flushed. “I’m just worried Aelita. You know what people would say, what they already do.”

“Ulrich’s heard by now, I think.” Aelita said, looking upset. “He mentioned dating Emily... he doesn’t even like her that way!”

“He tries to protect you just as you try to protect him.” Yumi tried to soothe her friend. “He probably thinks it would help with that.”

“The only person I could ever be okay with Ulrich dating is you.” Aelita admitted. “You’re the only one I trust. I know how I feel about him is wrong, okay? I know it’s wrong to want to-” Aelita choked off on a sob as she leaned towards Yumi, who put her arm around her friend. “I can’t help it. It’s just how I feel.” Yumi didn’t really know what to say to that. She hugged Aelita to her and said soothing words while she cried.

It was common knowledge within Kadic Academy that the only people who went anywhere near Aelita at lunch were her female friends, Odd Della Robbia (who seemed to have special permissions only because he wasn’t going to date Aelita) and Ulrich. Ulrich enforced these rules with an iron fist, simply because otherwise Aelita and Yumi would never have a moment’s peace. He had been honest with Jeremy earlier. He just wanted Aelita to be happy, and if she honestly wanted someone to stick around, there was nothing he could do about it, which was why Odd had a standing invitation. Ulrich didn’t really understand the relationship between the two, but in the end he didn’t think it mattered horribly much.

Today though, he could feel things stirring in the air. He’d known when he’d talked to Jeremy that there was a likelihood, a strong one, that the genius would take Ulrich’s words as a confidence boost. In fact, Ulrich had been hoping for it. He wasn’t very surprised when Jeremy began to approach the table where Aelita and Yumi were already situated, and though he couldn’t hear what Jeremy was saying at first, a hush fell over the lunch room and soon Jeremy could be heard fairly clearly.

“-if I could sit with you?” he was asking nervously. Aelita beamed at him.

“Oh certainly, go ahead.” She gestured across from herself and Yumi. Jeremy sat down, looking a bit nervous but clearly trying not to show it. Ulrich chose that moment to saunter through the rest of the cafeteria, which was eagerly awaiting his reaction. While normally Ulrich would do what he could to intimidate- purposeful footfalls that sounded quite ominous, a slapping down of his tray, a good glare, not so subtle hints- this time, Ulrich walked calmly, placed his tray down normally next to Jeremy.

“So Jeremy,” Ulrich spoke in a calm, neutral voice, “you wouldn’t happen to have gotten any of those robots of yours working yet, have you?” Ulrich was more than willing to admit the stunned silence, followed by a cacophony of disbelieving whispers and shouts pleased him a great deal.

“They’re going to be absolutely sickening to watch.” Ulrich said to Yumi with a sigh as the two watched Jeremy and Aelita giggling over Jeremy’s laptop.

“Yeah, but I’d say that Aelita needs this. Maybe Jeremy does too, for all we know.” Yumi responded. Ulrich only grunted in response. Aelita was sending Ulrich a look, and he knew his sister well enough to know what she wants. Even now, he strives to please her.

“Yumi would you be my girlfriend?” Ulrich manages to say it all in one breath. He can barely look at her, but managed to make eye contact for a moment as she turned to stare at him.

“Do you really mean that?” she asked, and he nodded. “I know a lot of things about you and Aelita. Aelita’s told me things. She’s told me about her own feelings and I know... I know you have feelings for Aelita. Non-sibling like ones.”

This time, Ulrich looks straight at Yumi. “I know. If you can accept me even knowing that, than I can accept you knowing. Aelita and I need to move past this.” He looked over at Aelita and Jeremy again before he looked back at her, and there was some pain in his expression. “We can’t... we can’t do this. We can’t cross that line. It wouldn’t end well. I don’t know if those feelings will ever go away, but I do know that it doesn’t make either of us incapable of having feelings for others. I do like you Yumi. I do care about you.”

“Alright,” Yumi took his hand. “We can try.” Ulrich smiled at her.

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