Tabitha and the Stepfords: Twisted Sister: Disturbing Quiet Time

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There sits the peaceful librarian, minding her own business, when trouble strikes.






"Shut up!"

It was unmistakably a feminine voice and a young one, raised in what would have sounded purely like anger if there hadn't been tears audible beneath the surface as well. The blonde girl who had shouted was not, in fact, crying, but the upset was clear on her face as she faced off against another blonde, her mirror image, right out in front of the A-E stacks where anyone in the library could see them.

It was, to put it mildly, more than a little strange. The Stepfords generally sneered down their noses at many things - telepathic ethics, common courtesy, consideration for their classmates or the staff - but their collective pride meant that they tended to at least restrain their behavior in public. And no one had ever seen them arguing, of all things.

The other Stepford smirked at her sister - almost triumphantly. "You know I'm right," she taunted, folding her arms across her chest. "You just have all these illusions. Poor sad little self-deluding thing."

"Hey now!" Tabitha strode out from behind her desk, alarmed. "What's going on here? You know this isn't proper library behavior." She couldn't decide which sister to watch. The phenomenon just had her completely floored.

"Oh, look!" said the smug Stepford, very brightly. "It's the librarian. Miss-"

"Tabitha, tell her to stop!" the other cried out. "She's being-"

"-mean, am I? Poor thing," the other sister cooed. "Poor, poor little thing."

She wasn't so much flustered by the conversational behavior as the things beings said. "Okay, I know this is a new concept for you, but one at a time." She pointed to one at random. "You, what's your story?"

"She's saying horrible things!" the more upset of the two sisters said, and astonishingly, those were tears glimmering in her bright blue eyes. "That we're freaks, and that we'll never have a normal-"

"Life, of course we won't," the other Stepford scoffed. There was something unmistakably malicious in her expression. "I don't know why we ever thought we would. Except maybe because we listened to the old bald man. Professor-"

"-Xavier is a good man!" The tears were escaping now, the other sister sniffling. "He tells us the truth! He-"

"-lies, lies, lies, LIES!" The retort was almost singsong. "Lying old bald man!"

Tabitha put her hands to her temples. "Enough!" She resisted the urge to flail her hands about uselessly. "Can't you guys just-" She waved one hand around. "Go your separate ways for a while?"

They both gave her identical incredulous looks. The sister who was clearly in control of the conversation spoke slowly, oh-so-patiently, as if Tabitha was a small child who needed certain truths made very clear to her.

"We don't go separate ways," she said, almost sweetly. "We can't go separate ways. We're freaks, not people. Not even whole freaks. Because I'm a part of her, and she's-"

"-not a part of you!" the other sister almost shrieked, stamping her foot. "You're not right, you're not! I'm Celeste, and you're-"

"-right, and you know it, silly little Celeste. We've just been pretending, all this time. Look at what's happened? Doesn't that prove that we're freaks?"

"STOP IT!" The explosion of psi-energy was like a bolt of lightning, connecting one sister to the other for a half-second, no more.

Tabitha's hands covered her face before she realized the flash was gone. She lowered them, staring at the girls through parted fingers. Silence filled the air, Tabitha struggled inwardly, unsure. This problem is WAY over my pay grade.

The sister who was not, apparently, Celeste looked absolutely unfussed by the psi-bolt she'd just taken to the head. In fact, she looked amused, and oddly pleased. "See, that's better, silly little Celeste. When normality goes boom you go boom right back." Celeste burst into tears, and her sister gave her a nasty little smile. "Keep practicing, Celeste. Extra points if you get Mr. Marko pissed at you."

And with that she sauntered right back out of the library, without even glancing at Tabitha. Celeste sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands, sobbing.

Tabitha approached the remaining Stepford with the caution one might use to comfort a crying dragon. "Celeste?" she ventured, hand out. "Honey, can you tell me what's wrong? What just happened?"

"Her," Celeste all but wailed. "She-she, you heard her!"

She laid her hand on the girl's shoulder lightly. "It did sound very cruel." Tabitha had absolutely no clue how the Stepfords worked, but something didn't seem quite right. "Why would she be so deliberately awful, Celeste? Doesn't she know how much she hurts you?"

"We don't work like that!" Celeste sobbed, responding to Tabitha's thought as well as her spoken words. "She's wrong! She's very, very wrong, just like all of this!" She launched herself up out of her chair and clung to Tabitha. "She won't go away! She's there all the time!"

The librarian put her arms around the girl. "Shhh, it's okay honey. We'll get this figured out. Just take a few deep breaths, all right?" She smoothed Celeste's hair, firmly quashing down any thoughts unrelated to warmth and help.

"Celeste." The voice was deep and gravelly and not at all reassuring. In fact, Nathan sounded rather wary as he headed towards the two of them, gray eyes darting back and forth, scanning their surroundings. "Did she go?"

Celeste jerked back, away from Tabitha, and leapt to her feet. Her face was white and tense and she looked at Nathan as if honestly afraid of him. Her chin came up, however, almost defiantly. Or it would have been if her lips were trembling. "We don't have to answer that!"

Nathan stopped, sighed, and closed his eyes for a moment. "And that's going to help things, right," he muttered under his breath, rubbing his temples.

Tabitha angled her body between the two telepaths cautiously. "It'd be really, really awesome if somebody told me what was going on. I mean REALLY fantastic. I'd give out candy, even."

"Mindee," Nathan said, opening his eyes and staring hard at Celeste. "Right?"

Celeste's eyes went wide, and her face went white, then red. "LEAVE ME ALONE!" she screamed and then bolted out of the library like the proverbial invading horde of demons were at her heels.

Tabitha stared after Celeste. She realized her mouth was hanging open and closed it with a snap. Her eyes shot to Nathan. "That wasn't very helpful at ALL. Why did you have to scare her like that?"

Nathan sighed. "I didn't scare her. Mindee scared her." He rubbed at the back of his neck. "I think Mindee would scare me," he muttered, turning away. "I think. I may be reading this entirely wrong."

Mentally, she tracked the Stepford sisters. Celeste, Phoebe, Esme, Sophia.... No Mindee. "Are we all going crazy again? Because I distinctly remember an anti-insanity clause in my contract. Right next to the ice cream clause." Beneath the flippancy was a real question.

"I don't know." Nathan looked upset, suddenly, as he glanced back at her. "I don't know that this is... anything. Just forget it. It may just be them."

Tabitha stared. "You're kidding right? You DID see how upset that kid was? You want me to just leave it?" This time she really did flail her hands.

Nathan was looking a little white around the lips, all of a sudden. "The question is what she's upset about. Do what you think you need to do," he said, and moved slowly towards the door, without further comment.



Tabitha started to follow him until she heard a bell from her computer. She checked the wall clock. It was the signal for her lunch-time workout. She turned back around to get her gym bag from behind her desk. She'd think about the Stepford girls while she worked out. Then maybe bring it up to one of the senior staff members afterward.

She flipped the sign to "closed" on the library door, grumbling and deep in thought as she trotted away.