Dresden Academy

Who: Abernathy and Bernadine Ford
What: Abernathy calls to yell at her sister a bit.
When: Saturday afternoon, after Cinna's post went live.
Where: Abernathy's dorm room. Both of them. ;)


Bernadine expected the berating would happen sooner or later. She was hoping to delay it a bit, but Cinna was very good at throwing monkey wrenches into plans. She picked up the phone at her sister's insistence, though she let it ring a few times.

"Really, B?"

"Really what?" she asked in return. Bad decision or no, she was in the middle of it.

"You know exactly what, Bernadine Lorraine Ford. Don't even try to play stupid, sweet, and innocent with me."

"He knew I wasn't you the moment he saw me. What was I going to do? Keep lying? He's smarter than that."

Abernathy snorted. The Anastas she knew was nothing more than a bully and an oversexed jerk. "So you decided to jump into bed with him?"

"Jesus christ, Abby," Bernadine swore. "You're going to believe Cinna jumping to conclusions before you even ask me what happened. It's a game. We're tricking everyone into thinking we're dating, so they don't question why we're friends."

"And why are you friends?" Abernathy asked. She'd missed quite a bit of this conversation.

"He's keeping my secret. Our secret. He's been helping me out, casting magic for me if I need him to. Pretending we're dating makes it easier to be together all the time."

"You can't trust him."

"Just because he did something regrettable to you when you were 11 years old, doesn't mean he's not trustworthy now. I get a clean slate, Abby. Besides Addy he's my only ally."

"Funny how your allies are always my enemies."

"Maybe that's why they want to help me so much. I'm nothing like you," Bernadine shot back. She regretted it, regretted saying something so harsh to her sister.

"You are goddamn right you're nothing like me. You're being a fucking idiot."

Bernadine was quiet for a long time. She was tired of getting in trouble any time she did something outside of the plan. She was tired of pretending to be Abernathy and getting none of the benefits other than an education. "All the same, Stas has done more to help me in the past month than anyone else here. Your opinions aside, we're going forward. I don't care what you think of him, because he's a different person now."

That was the simple truth of it. Anastas wasn't the same person Abernathy knew. If she could take the time to remove her own head from her ass she might see that.

"That's it then?"

"Yeah, so long as you're done yelling at me for making my own decisions for once."

Abernathy sighed. This was the whole problem of it. They weren't her own decisions so long as Abby's name was attached it. It wasn't as if her sister wasn't just as stubborn. She wasn't winning this argument, no matter how just her frustration turned out to be. "Just be careful," Abby replied. "I love you."

"I love you too," Bernadine answered, but her sentiment was punctuated with a little more annoyance. "Bye."

She hung up her phone, laid on her back in her room and stared at the ceiling for some time. She wasn't going to go into this with Stas; he had enough on his plate with this ruse in the first place. They were going to keep this going until it wasn't a good idea anymore, even if it wasn't the best idea in the first place.