"I think we should just go home." Ronan said, his shoulders slumped and his hand covering the pins.

"You mean my house, right?"

"Yeah, yeah. That."

And it was just in time. The rain has started pittering while they were under the tree, and by the time they were through the door it was lashing against their backs.

Edith spat the hair out of her mouth and chucked the keys on the side table, "Latch the door, please."

She slipped into her mom's office. Her mother was sat at her desk, hunched over a bowl of stew with her red eyes glued on the screen and a set of headphones firmly over her ears. Edith waved a hand over the screen. Her mother jumped and slipped the headphones off her ears.

"You're back so soon?"

"It's pouring and Ronan ripped Ed's shirt. Do we have a sewing kit?"

"Middle drawer of the far left set. Do you even know how to sew?"

"Nope. But it can't be too hard, right?" She said as she dug through the drawers. Her mother smiled and turned back to her work.

"Bandages are in the drawer above it."

Edith's smile was strained as she carried the tin of 'cookies' and the box of medical supplies under each arm. Her mother was surely exaggerating. Surely.

She sat on a pillow in the middle of her room and held out her hand to Ronan, who quickly took off the shirt and handed it to her. All of her furniture had been moved whole or disassembled to the hallway because her room was so small that there would not be enough room to move around if the furniture was simply pulled away from the walls. She wasn't sure why they couldn't have just disassembled her bed and left her heavy bookshelves, but she guessed it was because it was a bad idea to have hazards in the area where you are painting and lugging around full paint buckets.

She wiggled in her seat and finally, finally threaded the needle.

"I'm bored." Emrys huffed.

Edith scowled, "There's monopoly in a cabinet in the hallway. Knock yourselves out." She muttered. The rip was entirely on the seam, fortunately. She probably wouldn't have been able to hide it if the actual fabric ripped.

"Oh! There's a book on sewing techniques, grab that too!" She called out, to which she got a thumbs up in reply.

The three settled down, Edith occasionally butting in if a game seemed too lopsided. Which, of course, made the game skewed in the other direction.

Edith was about a quarter of the way through her stitches when Ronan flipped the board and launched himself at Emrys.

"Don't!" Edith shrieked, "I have a needle and... I know which end is the sharp one!"

They did not stop. Ronan knee'd Emrys in the stomach and Emrys responded by trying to claw Ronan's eyes out.

"Don't underestimate me! I can and will stab one of you! I don't care which one!"

That mollified them, briefly. They were still shoving and punching eachother, but at least they weren't trying to inflict real bodily harm.

Edith kicked between them and put her legs down, refusing to budge, "This is the 'No Go Zone'. Neither of you can cross it." She declared.

Ronan decided to test her patience immediately by leaning over and smacking Emrys upside the head. Edith knee'd him in the chest.

"Now you two will sit quietly and read. Okay?"

"Read what?" Ronan whined.

Edith paused. The only book around was the sewing one, which she could not part with without risking fucking up her stitches.

"The room." She blurted out and swiftly hid her face behind the shirt. Her stitches were huge but even and she doubted Edward would pay very much attention to a random seam. If she hid the shirts and then slipped them in with a random load of laundry, he wouldn't even remember that she had taken them at all. Emrys sighed and sprawled out on the floor.

"Hi there." Ronan cooed. Her eyes flicked over to him, but he was focused on something behind her. She squinted at him, trying to figure out if there was actually something behind her or if he was trying to trick her into turning around so he could rob her. She pulled her things closer and went back to stitching. She was nearly done, there were only a few centimetres left.

She heard a trill and felt a bump on her elbow. She automatically reached down and scratched the fluffy monster between the ears.

"Hello, Venus." She purred. Venus scrabbled into her lap and curled up into a ball with her tail covering her face.

"You finally decided on a name, then? She's no longer 'Untitled Cat 2'?" Ronan asked.

"Yeah, I decided on Venus after she fell asleep with her tongue out and ate a fly that landed on it."

"Um, okay. I thought it was after the Goddess Venus." Emrys said with his eyebrows so scrunched they nearly merged.

"What? No. Plant." She mumbled as she tied off the thread.

"Ta-da!" She exclaimed as she held up the newly-fixed garment. It was certainly messy on the inside, but you couldn't tell at all from the outside.

"Here's your pins and here's your shirt, put it back on."

She flopped back on the floor, careful not to jostle the sleeping cat.

She sighed heavily, "Are you guys hungry? I'm starving."

"Well, it's a bit past one and none of us have eaten since the morning. So, yeah." Emrys said as he pointed his watch towards her.

She hummed, "There's pizza in the fridge?"

"Sure, whatever."

"You're gonna have to get it. Either ask my mom to heat it up or do it yourselves. I'm not waking her up." She said, gesturing to the sweet-looking cat that could get surprisingly vicious when startled.

"Fine, how much pizza is there and how much do you want?"

"There's a whole pizza and one or two slices. I want three." She said and Emrys raised an eyebrow, "What? There was a two-for-one deal yesterday."

They slipped out the door and Edith absentmindedly ran her fingers through Venus's fur. She snatched her hand away when it hit a snag but it was too late. Venus, likely already on edge from having strange humans she hadn't seen since she was a kitten in her domain, bolted off Edith's lap and scampered her way to the top of the bookshelf.

Edith hissed and slapped her hand over the most painful spot. She could feel her hand was wet and didn't like what that implied.

"Guys?" She called breathlessly. No answer. Her teeth dug into her bottom lip as she pressed her hand into the wound.

"Delivery for- Oh my God." Ronan gasped.

"What?" She gritted out, as if she wasn't entirely too aware of the issue for her own liking.

"You've got blood dripping down your leg!" Ronan exclaimed. Edith looked down and, indeed, there were red rivulets tracing their way down her leg and on to the carpet. She quickly looked back up, desperate to see anything that wasn't her own blood-streaked leg. Unfortunately for her, the walls were bare of any distractions and the only place she could look was Ronan's horror-stricken face.

"Could you look for me? Pretty please?" She pouted, just to sell it fully. His free hand gripped the doorframe as he stared at her leg. She could see a sheen of sweat on his forehead and he was paler than her in the dead of winter.

"You don't have to if you don't want to." She said sheepishly.

"No, no. I just-"

"What happened?!" Emrys exclaimed, poking his head over Ronan's shoulder.

"I'm not looking at it, I might puke. Bandages are in that box." Edith muttered. Emrys ducked under Ronan's outstretched arm and fell to his knees. He fiddled with the latch and flipped the lid up. Inside was an assortment of bandages and disinfectants. Emrys brought out a handful of packets and turned to face her.

Edith grinned and firmly looked away when he pried her hand off. Ronan still stood in the doorway looking like he'd seen a ghost. She held up her clean hand and gave him her best puppy eyes. His shaky hand slipped into hers and he melted into a puddle on the floor right next to her.

"This is nice." She said, her voice rising and falling as Emrys made it abundantly clear that he put speed over comfort. "But I'd really some of that pizza before it gets cold."

Ronan grabbed a slice and tried to pull his hand out of hers. Edith's hand tightened like a vice.

"I said 'This is nice', so don't let go." She murmured. Emrys paused only briefly. Ronan stopped moving altogether.

"Well?" She said as she gestured to the pizza that was hanging limp in his hand. Emrys snorted and Ronan lifted it to her mouth.

Emrys patted her bandaged leg and sat back, "All done."

"That was fast." Ronan commented. She wasn't sure if he was referring to Emrys' doctoring or the speed at which she demolished the first slice. She was more focused on getting another slice down her throat even faster than before, though, so she just gestured for another.

"That was pretty gnarly, what happened?" Emrys said.

She swallowed the mouthful of pizza. "Venus got spooked." She stated.

"It wasn't that deep so I don't think you need stitches but you should definitely keep an eye on it."

Edith shrugged, finished off her pizza and stood up, pulling Ronan with her. She poked the wall.

"I think it's dry enough. We should start painting again."

"Hold on a second. You might have eaten but we haven't. I, for one, am starving." Ronan said.

"I'm not. I think I need some time after seeing that before I can eat anything." Emrys said as he used the wall to pick himself up.

"Fair."

Edith unwrapped a paintbrush and handed it to Emrys before unwrapping one for herself.

"The bookshelves go here and here, so pick a spot and go wild." She said, gesturing to the walls.

Emrys nodded and went to the spot beside the door, leaving the wall next to the closet to her. Edith stepped over Ronan, who was so busy scoffing down both portions that he didn't even notice. She grabbed her stool and painted a thin stroke at the top of the wall.

She sighed. With the way things were going, it was going to to take forever to be done.

---÷---

She wiped her forehead once her brush left the wall for the final time. Emrys had decided early that he was going to explore her house and Ronan couldn't be arsed to get off his ass and help.

Edith poked her head out the window. The sun was nearing the horizon and she guessed it was nearing eight. That meant she had been painting long enough that the part she started on was already dry.

She nudged Ronan with her foot, "Get up, lazy. The hard part is done."

She could hear him groaning as she left the room. She jumped down the stairs and poked her head into her mother's office.

"We're nearly done. Have you seen Emrys?"

"Hm? I think so. If that wasn't you who poked their head in an hour or two ago it was probably him."

"Any clue where he might be?"

"Nope."

"Thanks. You were very helpful." Edith muttered as she shut the door behind her. She extensively checked the living room and poked her head into Edward's gym. It had a wall length mirror on the opposing wall and nowhere to hide so she didn't bother doing a more thorough inspection.

He wasn't under the kitchen table nor hiding behind any doors, so she ventured back upstairs. He was too respectful to go into her mother's room and too shy to barge into her brother's. That left the hot press, the bathroom and the spare room. She doubted he could squeeze his gangly self into the tight crevices of the hot press and a quick flicking of the bathroom light left only the spare room.

The locked spare room.

There were two keys hidden throughout the hallway, but she'd only ever mentioned one. The one hidden behind the nearby clock was, of course, gone. She pried the other key out of the crack she'd hidden it in and slipped it into the lock. It clicked open with some fiddling and she was greeted by a room with only Squid sleeping on the arm of her chair. Odd. She was really sure that he was in here.

But if he wasn't anywhere in the house, the dumbass must have left. She whipped her phone out of her pocket and shot him a text. She heard a chime from the corner and Squid jumped off the chair and weaved through her legs and out the door.

In the space Squid left was a hand and some strands of black hair. She tiptoed to behind the chair and poked her head over the back. Emrys was curled into a ball, asleep with his mouth wide open. She muffled her giggles and tiptoed over to grab a cheap disposable camera her cousin had given her for their upcoming trip. She took one picture, then decided to take another two from different angles before putting the camera back in its place.

She nudged his shoulder. He groaned and covered his face.

"It's time to draw on the wall. We'll do it without you if you insist on sleeping."

Emrys sighed and Edith nudged him off the chair and onto the floor. She turned and left, not bothering to wait because she knew he wouldn't miss out on a spot of consequence-free mischief.

She came back to Ronan holding a flailing and homicidal-looking Squid in his arms. Her paws were tinged green and Ronan was pressing one of her back paws into the wall while she tried to gut him with the other one.

"That looks like a terrible idea." Edith said.

"Yeah, it is." Ronan said as he dodged a claw to the face.

"Emrys, get a wet washcloth and a dry towel." She said over her shoulder as she sat down just out of clawing range.

"She stepped in the paint and I thought it would be cute to have pawprints on the wall." Ronan said quietly. Edith hummed, took the towel from Emrys and grabbed Squid out of Ronan's arms, swaddling her into a burrito as fast as she could.

"Wipe down her feet." She ordered. They complied, Ronan holding her thrashing legs still and Emrys wiping them clean. Once they were done, she wrapped up her feet and squished the tiny cat to her body.

"Did it at least turn out well?" She asked. Ronan looked to the wall and she followed his eyes to find three perfect pawprints trailing up the wall.

"Next time, stop when an animal is obviously in distress." She said sternly as she adjusted Squid into a more comfortable position.

Ronan flushed and focused solely on the words he was writing on the wall. Edith huffed and petted the rumbly cat.

"Can I paint here?" Emrys asked.

"A little to the left, yeah."

She laid back and let the furiously purring cat curl up on her chest. The shadows were lengthening and within minutes they'd need to have the lights on to see past their noses since it was a new moon. She propped up her knee and tapped soaked bandage. With the amount of padding, she couldn't feel a thing even if she dug her fingers in.