"Sometimes, I hated her for it," Quinn said. "She was always trying to change me, make me better, make me more like her. I tried. I just wasn't good enough."
"She was wrong to try to change you," I said. I hugged Quinn tighter. "You didn't do anything wrong. You loved your sister, and underneath it all, she loved you, too."
"We should have known. Everyone thinks it. My mother told me last night I should have done something," Quinn said.
"What could we have done? How could we have known? Sienna never shared her plans for herself. She only told people how to play their parts."
I was angry again. Sienna threw us into this horrible drama without a second thought. She had never thought about anyone but herself.
"I was going to be the nurse to her surgeon," Quinn said. She sat up and swept back her hair. It smelled of rose water.
"And I was supposed to be the trophy husband to her successful career woman," I said.
"Except you were supposed to go off and coach little league or join the Rotary Club. Not go and get professional sponsors to play video games," Quinn said.
"Yeah, I went off script."
"Me too," Quinn said. "I almost failed gross anatomy. You should have seen Sienna's face when I bombed the practice final."
"What are we going to do without Sienna here to organize us?" I asked. My arm was still around Quinn's shoulders. I didn't let go.
"Sit on the couch and play video games," she said with a weak smile.
We settled back, Quinn tucked into the crook of my arm, and restarted the game. Upstairs, the funeral reception continued. People shared stories of Sienna the perfect, Sienna the ambitious, Sienna the bright ray of golden sunshine. In the basement, we tried to forget how she hurt us, her death most of all.
#
It was easy to ignore everything else. Quinn was tucked under my arm. She fit perfectly. Dark Flag was open on the wide screen television. It had to be alright for us to disappear for a while. The upstairs world could go on without us.
"Have you seen the Black Fields?" I asked.
I felt Quinn's head shake then nestle in closer. "No. Could you show me?"
"Wanna get away for a while?"
"Exactly."
I booted up the game to a new entry point. Players from my clan popped up everywhere, but I repeated the same message: "Touring a newbie."
It was actually part of my job. In fact, within five minutes, I spotted the avatar of one of my supervisors. My sponsors had players in the game to see that I logged the required number of hours and mentioned their product enough times.
"Hang on. I have to tell that Cloaked Corpse about Buzz Fuel," I said.
"The energy drink?" Quinn asked.
I was glad she did not sit up, and instead, stayed nestled against me. "Yeah, it’s one of my sponsors. I get paid to mention it during play. There are even bonuses if I mention it a certain number of times."
"Your clan players don't think it’s weird?"
"A lot of them know it’s part of my gig. Though, it’s also pretty natural because a lot of the players log on after work and pull all-nighters. We talk strategy and staying alert is part of that," I said.
"Do you drink Buzz Fuel?"
I looked down at her scrunched up nose and laughed. "I go for plain black coffee. Keeps you from getting dehydrated. But don't tell the Cloaked Corpse that."
"I'm just following you," she said.
Her avatar stood behind mine. It looked surprisingly like her. Most people chose idealized body types and features for their avatars or decided to be otherworldly creatures. My avatar had a wicked spiked helmet, but if I removed it, the face was a composite created directly from a digital photograph of me. My sponsors wanted me to be recognizable.