The Good Sister

many years ago….
Darcia’s fingers trailed along the wrought-iron gate of the asylum, her steps slow, deliberate. The world beyond its walls had become a hollow echo, muted and gray, since Nimdok had been taken. The rain that slicked the streets felt colder now, sharper, but it was nothing compared to the chill that clawed at her heart each time she saw her brother through the thick, reinforced glass.

The first visit had shattered something in her. Nimdok sat hunched in his cell, his frame smaller than she remembered, his face pale and gaunt. His eyes—once so bright, so full of dreams—had dimmed, a lifeless gray that stared through her as if she wasn’t there.

“Darcia,” he’d mumbled, his voice fractured, as though he were trying to piece together a puzzle with broken fingers. —-“They put birds in my head. I can’t make them stop singing.”—-

She had smiled then, bright and warm, her mask already forming. She told him she’d bring him books, sweets, anything he wanted, and he nodded absently, rocking back and forth as if her words were a distant breeze.

But when she left that day, something deep within her snapped.

Her mother’s words haunted her as she walked home. “He’s broken because of you, you know. Your brother is weak, a pathetic little shadow who clings to you like a leech. You’ve ruined him, made him sick with your... unnatural attachment.”

Unnatural. The word burrowed into her mind like a thorn, festering with every visit to the asylum, with every glimpse of Nimdok’s fractured state.

But there was more—always more with Mother. In the weeks before Nimdok was taken, Darcia had endured her mother’s piercing accusations. “You cling to him too much,” Mother had hissed, her face contorted with disgust. “It’s perverse, the way you coddle him. The way you look at him. As if he’s not your brother, but something else entirely.”

The accusations didn’t stop at mere words. Mother’s disgust became a weapon, wielded with precision. She called for doctors, insisting Darcia undergo testing for insanity, convinced her daughter harbored forbidden desires. The humiliation of being examined, interrogated, prodded for signs of madness—Darcia endured it all with a serene smile, never allowing the mask to crack.

When the tests came—questions designed to probe her mind for cracks, for signs of insanity—she answered them all with ease. Her voice was steady, her laughter bright, her demeanor unshakably calm. The doctors praised her resilience, her strength in the face of such tragedy.

But beneath the mask, she was weaving her web
-------
[Mothers gone]
It started with Mother.
Darcia had always known her mother’s heart was weak—she’d overheard the hushed conversations between the servants. A simple touch of nightshade in her tea, just enough to strain her already fragile heart, and the woman collapsed at the dining table one morning.

The family doctor called it a natural death. Darcia’s performance at the funeral was flawless: tears streaming down her face, her voice trembling as she delivered a eulogy that praised her mother’s strength and kindness.

Nimdok didn’t attend. He was still locked away, trapped in a nightmare that their mother had orchestrated.

But Darcia visited him the next day, her smile brighter than ever. “She’s gone,” she whispered through the glass, her voice soft and sweet. “Mother won’t hurt you anymore.”

Nimdok tilted his head, his brow furrowing. “Gone?”. There was a deep sadness in his broken eyes that Darcia could not pin. how strange..

Darcia nodded. “She’s gone. But I’ll keep you safe, I promise.”

He smiled faintly, and for a moment, she felt a flicker of the boy he used to be.
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[And Fathers Just Desert]

Father was more difficult. He was strong, domineering, and sharp-eyed. Darcia knew she couldn’t strike until Nimdok was returned to the house—he needed to see the man’s downfall, to understand that justice had been served.

When Nimdok finally came home, a fragile shadow of himself, their father barely acknowledged him. But Darcia saw the way her brother’s hands trembled, the way he flinched at the man’s booming voice.

The poison came slowly this time, administered in small doses over weeks. Darcia watched as her father’s strength waned, his once-powerful frame reduced to a sickly shell. He called her into his study one evening, his voice rasping.

“Darcia,” he said, his eyes sunken and bloodshot. “What’s happening to me?”

She tilted her head, her smile soft and innocent. “You’re just tired, Father. You’ve worked so hard for us.”

He died a month later, his body frail and withered, his death chalked up to a mysterious illness.

Nimdok stood at the grave, his expression unreadable. “I forgive him,” he said quietly.

Darcia’s mask nearly cracked. She stared at him, her mind reeling. How could he forgive? After everything, after all the pain and torment, how could he let go so easily?
But it was not a facade Nimdok held, the pain and torture forced him to be truthful to never hide….or else. how.

But she said nothing. Instead, she reached out and took his hand, squeezing it gently
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[And Her Own Sickness]

The town whispered of the girl with the bright smile, the girl who had buried both her parents within a year and inherited their modest fortune. They whispered of her charm, her beauty, her wit. But darker rumors began to spread, tales of a spider weaving webs to trap unsuspecting men, luring them in with sweet words and soft touches before discarding them like flies.

Darcia didn’t mind the rumors. They kept people at a distance, made it easier to protect Nimdok. To keep him close, safe.

But deep down, she knew she was no longer the girl who had clung to her brother’s hand in the dark. She had become something else entirely. Something sharper, colder.

A spider in the guise of a sister.
She knows it was her fault. she pushed Nimdok to stay with her.
it was her actions that made Father question Nimdok's manhood.
the sweet poison that she fed Nimdok at a young age.
she was sorry that Nimdok was beaten, ruined. he will never be the same.

Darcia would try for many years with her own medicine to silence the birds in her brothers head… but they where always there. His Bats in the Belfry.

 But Darcia can see the small child like shine in his eyes. it was enough, and she has all the time now