“We’re supposed to find somewhere we belong,” he continued. “Where we can beourselves.”
Sila was watching him closely. “Maybe we can do that here.”
“We fucking cannot!”
“Maybe we just haven’t found the right person yet.”
Rin froze. “Hell no. Absolutely not. If you’re about to tell me you’re abandoning me for dick I swear I’m going to drown you for real.” He might go all sorts of ways, but his brother, like with everything else, was particular in his tastes.
He was only attracted to men, but he hadn’t been in many relationships. They didn’t last and they were too risky.
“I could never leave you,” Sila made a face, “just like you could never leave me.”
A sharp, humorless bark of laughter escaped him before he could help it.
Sila frowned.
“Nothing,” Rin said. “It’s just the two of you sounded similar for a second there.”
“Who?” He got it a second later. “Ah. The Imperial. You think he’s a sociopath.”
“Yeah.”
He tilted his head. “I’m not a sociopath.”
“Same dif.”
“It is not.”
“Sure.” It wasn’t, hadn’t been for a while since the Intergalactic State of Medicine had officially split them into separate categories, but Rin was having fun getting a rise out of him and after the blunt way his brother had all but suggested he sell himself for his tuition fee, he deserved it.
“If that’s the case, then you and I are the same thing as well.”
“Of course we’re the same.” He waved at him, noticing Sila’s droll look a moment later. “We are.”
“You know that’s not true,” Sila said. “You and I are different sides of the same coin. We might trick everyone else into believing otherwise, but we’ve always known the truth, big brother.”
Rin winced. “Whatever.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he insisted then, in complete juxtaposition to their earlier discussion about how they were both fucked up. “Mood disorders, of all different types, have been a thing for centuries on most planets. People who have them are different, but they aren’t bad.”
“Then why have we been hiding? Hmm?” Rin countered.
Sila looked away. “Because if we don’t hide, our differences are too noticeable. And we were unfortunate to have grown up on Tibera, which is a far less accepting planet when it comes to the inability to properly regulate or feel emotion the same way everyone else does.”
And by less accepting, he meant banishment kinds of levels. Hell, their Heir Imperial, the crown prince, had been rejected by his own mother for being imperfect, and he’d had an organ disease.
The twins simply had different brain chemistry than the rest of the people on their home world. It shouldn’t be enough, and maybe if they’d been born to someone other than Crate Varun or another political figure it wouldn’t have been. But they’d always known, from the moment Rin had shoved Stax Hyuk off the cliffs, resulting in a broken arm, they’d known.
He hadn’t felt any guilt.
Any remorse.
And the empty look in his eyes afterward…
“We also can’t be compared to other species who suffer from similar diagnoses,” his brother cut into his thoughts. “Tiberans were built to feel at extremely heightened levels and to process those emotions more quickly. We’ve got several dozen more neural transmitters that act as emotional breaks than the average being.”
“So we should be praised for not having already turned into crazed serial killers, is that it?” Rin drawled.
