Chapter Text
'it's actually kind of nice to have a 'patchwork family.' - Heidi, Johanna Spyri
Orion was walking down Main Street when he got picked up.
He told himself he was still searching, but in his heart he knew he was fleeing the Firefighter's picnic. He wasn't good company for anyone. The thought of having to put up with tense small talk for hours in the summer heat sounded horrific.
Thus. Walking.
He heard a car pull up entirely too close to the curb and keep pace with him, but he was used to assholes messing with him. He was the only blind person in all of Long Lily. His entire life since he went blind had been an exercise in being a sideshow act. So, being followed by a car that probably thought he was too blind to notice wasn't new.
The loud woop woop of a police signal coming from the same car was.
"Orion Simon?" a familiar voice called from the car.
Orion slowed to a stop, Canis heeling as well.
"Yes," they said slowly, already dreading to hear what came next. Lewie couldn't have possibly called the cops to help look for him, could he? He didn't think his brother would dare draw their efforts away from actual emergencies, but maybe his patience had run completely dry.
"I'm Ida Alvarez with the LLPD," she said, something lingering in the tone of her voice that they couldn't quite parse.
"I remember. We met at the Loose Change fire," Orion said slowly, tightening his grip on Canis' leash.
"We had some questions about that, actually. I was hoping you could come down the station to talk about it a little more," she said, that strange tone still hanging onto her words.
Orion sniffed. "Do I have a choice?" they joked with raised eyebrows.
"No, actually," she replied, whatever that tone was all gone. All that was left was dry as death business.
The bottom dropped out of Orion's stomach.
"What?" they asked faintly.
"Orion, it's in your best interest to come to the station of your own volition," Ida said, her voice serious but low like she didn't want anyone to overhear. "You can call Lewie from the phone at the station, okay?"
There was a long pause where she was obviously waiting for Orion to reply, but they couldn't. It felt like their thoughts were a record with a scratch in it, skipping over the same lines over and over.
"Am I under arrest?" they asked, their voice sounding like it was coming to them from the other end of a long pipe.
Ida Alvarez sighed heavily, but didn't reply. After a second, a loud honk startled both of them. Clicking her tongue, Ida put on her hazard lights and got out of her squad car to walk around to Orion. Gingerly, she took their elbow and began to guide them toward the backseat.
"You're wanted for questioning," Ida explained carefully as she pulled the backdoor open.
In a daze, Orion allowed themselves to be guided into the backseat, Canis hopping up onto the seat ahead of them. They sat in the air conditioned interior and listened to the familiar chatter of the police scanner while Ida Alvarez walked around the car to get back into the driver's seat.
Sighing heavily, Orion let their head flop back against the backrest. Despite knowing they were tempting fate just by thinking it, Orion wondered what else could possibly go wrong.
Ida Alvarez tried to make smalltalk on the short drive to the only police station in Long Lily. However, for once in their life, Orion figured that it was in their best interest to keep their mouth shut. He didn't know much about law, but he knew that the less you said during an arrest, the better.
At the station, Ida sat Orion down at a creaking plastic chair in front of her beat up desk.
"If you want privacy while you call Lewie, I can take you to the conference room," she said as she sat down heavily behind her desk and started flipping through what sounded like a massive number of papers.
Orion chewed on that idea for a second. Their cellphone was suddenly a heavy weight in their pocket.
On one hand, Lewie would almost certainly want Orion to call him in this sort of situation. On the other hand, Lewie would surely be furious to hear that Orion had been picked up by the cops and would use that as another reason to forbid them from walking around on their own.
Sighing heavily, Orion said, "No thanks," and did their level best to stare off in the wrong direction from Ida Alvarez in the hopes of unsettling her and reminding her of how sad and disabled they were. Surely she would have to go easy on a blind kid, right?
Ida sighed back, her sigh much heavier and more impressive than Orion's. "I know you're eighteen, so technically you don't need an adult present. But, I've gotta say, talking to the cops by yourself when you don't have to isn't the smartest thing to do."
"Then, I guess I'm stupid," Orion sneered, then quickly bit down on the inside of their lip.
Ida scoffed, sounding both unimpressed and charmed at the same time.
"Alright. Let's get down to business then," she said.
What followed was a series of questions that made it clear that Orion probably needed a lawyer sooner rather than later.
"Why were you at Loose Change in the hours preceding the fire?" Officer Alvarez asked first, an unfortunate place for her to start since it made Orion freeze.
How exactly does one explain that they were capable of receiving premonitions of doom due to ancestral magic passed down through the generations? Probably, you just don't ever explain that.
"I've been, uh, walking a lot," Orion mumbled.
"Walking?" she prompted. "In the middle of the night?"
"I get restless," Orion said defensively. "I'm full of teenage angst, after all."
Ida snorted, but otherwise the only sound Orion heard was the scraping of a pen on cheap paper. They tried to picture what kind of face Ida had made. Had it been an entertained snort or a disbelieving snort? Orion couldn't get enough context from an inhalation of air to tell.
"Can anyone corroborate that you were walking?" she asked, briefly pausing her pen in it's scratching.
"Lewie," Orion mumbled, "And Basie and Kit, I guess."
"And, did you see anyone while you were out walking near Loose Change that night?" she asked, pen pausing again.
Orion paused as well, that night unwinding like a yarn full of broken glass and needles in their hand. The nightmare that woke them in the middle of the night, their desperate charge through the damp night air, the way they tripped over and over, scraping their palms and knees on the unkind asphalt.
"In case you haven't noticed," Orion said dryly, the effect only somewhat marred by the croak in their voice, "I am, in fact, blind."
Ida huffed a laugh. "Sorry, poor phrasing," she said. "Did you meet anyone during your walk? Or, did you notice anything unusual?"
In truth, Orion had gotten to the store before the firefighters, but the smell of smoke had already been in the hair. They had panicked on the sidewalk before walking up to the door and trying to push it open. By then, the door was already hot to the touch only served to hurt their palms more.
Then, they heard the sound of sirens screaming out of the fire station down the street and quickly hid in a nearby alley.
"No, sorry," Orion rasped, fidgeting with the keys around their neck. They reached for the sharpest cut one they had, the teeth fresh cut and not dulled by time. They pressed the pad of their thumb into the teeth hard and let the dull ache ground them.
Ida Alvarez drummed their fingers on their desk, the sound dulled somewhat by the papers between her and the wood of her desktop.
"Some people saw you near the Loose Change before the call went out of a fire. It's caused a lot of rumors to swirl about what might have caused the fire," Ida said slowly.
Orion swallowed around a suddenly dry throat. That certainly didn't sound good.
"Can you give me anything, Orion," Ida said sincerely, leaning over her desk toward them, "anything to prove that you had nothing to do with this?"
Orion breathed carefully around the panic tightening around their chest and shifted the key in their hand from the pad of their thumb to their cuticle. They pressed in hard and pain zinged through their hand, clearing some of the fog of fear from their mind.
"I'm sorry," they said quietly, face turned down toward their lap. Canis pressed against their leg, their happy doggy pants a good anchor against the anxiety pressing down on them. "I had a bad dream that night. I couldn't get back to sleep so I decided to walk. When I got to Loose Change, I could smell smoke. I tried the door and it was hot to the touch. But, before I could say or do anything, I heard the fire engine signals. I didn't want Lewie to see me out in the middle of the night, so I hid in the alley. That's the truth."
Ida was silent aside form the tap tap tap of her fingertips on the desktop. Orion tried to swallow around the bile building up in the back of their throat.
It shouldn't be so easy to lie. Why was it so easy for them to lie like that?
"Okay," Ida said with a long sigh. "The hardware store across the street has security cameras, so we'll be checking those against your story," she said firmly. When Orion only continued to stare at their knees, she softened again. "Thanks for talking to me. I'll let you know if we have any further questions."
Orion declined a drive home, in the hopes that maybe their trip to the police station may remain something that only they and Officer Alvarez knew about. Unfortunately for them, small towns weren't great at preserving secrets.
When Orion stepped through the back door, they barely got a chance to kick off their old sneakers before Lewie was slamming through the door to the mud room with a frantic look on his face.
"Orion!" he shouted, a little too close for Orion's preference. His hands grasped at Orion's upper arms, his fingers digging into the meat of their arm. Orion flinched back, shrugging their way out of his grasp.
"Lewie," Kit's voice came from behind Orion, full of sympathy and warning at the same time. And, wasn't that great. Now, Kit and Basie would be there to hear the fall out this time too.
Orion wasn't sure what their face was doing, but they were sure it probably wasn't endearing them to Lewie.
"Who told you?" they snapped.
"Ida called me from the station after you left. After you told her you didn't want a ride home!" Lewie shouted, only a few inches from Orion's face.
They leaned back, their nose scrunching in distaste. They briefly considered going outside and circling the house to try coming in from the front door. At least that way they wouldn't be trapped in the claustrophobically small mud room, hemmed in by a million dirty children's shoes, the washing machine and dryer, and whatever other junk accumulated there.
Then, on the other hand, a part of Orion felt sure they deserved to be yelled at and penned in. They deserved everything Lewie threw at them, in all honesty.
"Orion, why didn't you call me? I would have dropped everything to be there. You can't tell me you don't know that!" Lewie shouted, his voice louder in the tiny room.
Orion wrinkled their nose. They held in the thought that maybe that was the problem. Lewie was always keeping at least three plates spinning in the air at all times. Who was Orion to ask him to let them all fall and shatter just for them?
Couldn't Orion handle anything by themselves?
"I'm eighteen. I don't need an adult present to talk to the cops," they said, reaching forward tentatively to feel for the doorway. Their fingers brushed against Lewie's shirt and he leaped backward to get out of the way.
Orion swallowed the way that made them feel. He couldn't remember the last time Lewie had reached out to touch them. It had probably been longer since they'd reached out to him.
Lewie let Orion take a few tentative steps into the kitchen before he hit them with, "You know they think you burnt down the Loose Change."
Orion paused. The way he said that, it almost sounded like he believed it.
Something sick and tight shivered through Orion from their stomach to their throat. They swallowed it down with a tight throat.
"Not that we think that!" Kit hurried to add.
"We just want to make sure you're okay, right?" Basie said, though it sounded more like he was asking Kit than trying to reassure Orion.
"Sure," Orion said, sarcasm thick in their voice.
"Rion," Lewie scolded, but Orion was already fleeing for the stairs.
They fled up the curved open staircase, free to move recklessly in the place they knew better than the back of their hand. They crashed through the door to their bedroom and collapsed back onto their bed. Canis jumped up beside them, nuzzling into their side, pressing her head under their hand until they started to pet at their soft ears.
Orion stared at the blurry smear of white that was their bedroom ceiling. The color was buttery with afternoon light coming through their window.
In the quiet of their own room, the fear and anxiety ratcheted back up and overwhelmed them. They let it come, tears and hitched breaths that were just for them.
"Mom," they said into the quiet of their room, "Where are you?"