Cougar Redfern was cleaning the kitchen with bad grace. Housework, he considered - even after three years - just wasn't something Redferns did, and that was both why he loathed it and why he did it anyway. Part of him was still trying to separate his behaviour from that of his distant and errant family; part of him despised being up to his elbows in a week's worth of food, dirt and washing up.

 "Well, isn't this cosy?"

 Cougar jumped, sending a plate skidding onto the floor where it smashed into smithereens.

 He'd known who the owner of the voice was the moment it spoke, a scowl already forming on his face. He'd heard it so often, after all, and was astute enough to hear echoes of himself in it; that ringing arrogance, and even something of the dark humour.

 Blue was sat on the kitchen table, as per usual eschewing chairs with a cat's peculiar eccentricity.

 "What the hell are you creeping around for?" snapped Cougar.

 Jealousy welled up inside him, and he tried to stamp it down. He'd learned the hard way that getting angry at Blue just made you more vulnerable to his whimsical cruelty. It made it that much easier for him to sneak inside your head and gather up all the thoughts you didn't want him - or anyone - to see.

 "How is walking through your front door creeping? Considering everything that's happened, shouldn't you be locking it?"

 That false concern really grated on his nerves. It was mingled with the sense of injustice he always felt; Cougar was the only one of his family who had ever shown anything approaching kindness to Blue, and it was as if Blue was that much nastier to him in retaliation.

 Do you resent kindness? he wondered. Or do you loathe the fact I saw you helpless?

 "It's been a while since anything horrible's happened to me in my own house," he said shortly. "Until you walked in. Why are you here?"

 "I thought we should have a chat."

 Chat. With Blue, that was a word that meant 'I'm going to threaten you, and you're going to listen.'

 Cougar was already wary, and he suspected he knew what Blue was here to needle him about. Or rather, who he was here to needle him about. He had expected his younger brother sooner, but now that he thought about it, his timing was as impeccable as ever.

 As long as Toya and I weren't talking, that suited you just fine, didn't it? he thought grimly. But I reckon it worries you that we're trying to repair the damage. For some reason, it really, really bothers you that she likes me, maybe that she can have the kind of relationship with me that she can't with you, even if that is friendship and nothing more risqué.

 Or are you afraid that it'll become more than friendship? That one day, when you've pushed her just that bit too far - and you will, because you're always pushing people, always testing them, always trying to drive them further into your power - she'll come to me, and worse, she'll do it willingly, gladly...and permanently.

 She keeps telling me you and I aren't so unalike. I think she's right. But usually you wind me up so goddamn much that I can't see it. I'm too busy clinging to my temper to do anything else.

 This time, I think I might let my temper go. Just a little.

 "I'll bet you did," he said aloud. "Whatever you've got to say, say it."

 Blue's eyes were frozen over, the silent, deadly cold of an ice-sheet. "Keep away from Chatoya."

 Anger spiralled up through his veins at the sheer haughtiness of the demand. "No."

"It wasn't a request."

"No, it was a bloody stupid demand." Cougar flashed a crocodile's smile, staring down his younger brother for as long as he could. "She's my friend."

 The words were cool, but cut all the deeper for it. "And that is all she will ever be. She wanted nothing of you, brother, because you have nothing to offer."

 Cougar gave into temptation, picked up the nearest plate and threw it at Blue with all his rage behind it.

 Only quick reflexes saved Blue; he ducked so fast, Cougar couldn't help but feel this wasn't the first time he had goaded someone to violence. Of course it wasn't.

 "If she wasn't your soulmate, you'd have killed her," he hissed, hefting another plate. "I'm sure you like to tell yourself that you put up with her because you can't kill her, but you know what, she puts up with you too, you bloody snake."

 He hurled the plate, and it smashed at Blue's feet, sending a hailstorm of porcelain chips whizzing through the air. It gave him a strange satisfaction to do it, to give into every childish impulse he'd ever had.

 "And you know what?" he carried on, not bothering to hold back his thoughts, saying whatever was in his mind before Blue could use it, "I hope you do love her. I hope it fucks you up the same way it does the rest of us, and I hope that when she leaves you, it haunts you. I hope you spend your every waking moment trying and failing to forget her. And I hope it doesn't make you a better person, because that's about the only thing that might ever tempt her back."

 He picked up Jepar's favourite mug and aimed it at Blue's head. It crashed against the wall, and more shards rained down onto the floor as Blue dodged, those eyes filling up with an inky, unreadable darkness.

 I'm pissing him off, Cougar realised. And that isn't smart.

 I don't care.

 "And what would you know about love," Blue said scornfully, his voice seething with that leashed, careful malice. "You, who've failed so spectacularly at it?"

 He darted sideways as another plate zoomed towards him. To Cougar's disappointment, it missed, and abused pottery shrieked as it hit the wall.

 "More than you," he snapped. "You know what, if I thought you had any intention of treating Toya like you cared, I might leave her to handle herself. But you don't. You just sneak in and out of her house every night like a goddamn thief, and please, don't think any of us don't know what's going on there, and I won't see her used that way!"

 Thom's casserole dish exploded into glass fragments and dust where Blue had been standing. God, he was nippy.

Under all his explosive anger, Cougar was realising with something of a surprise that part of him was observing Blue, part of him wasn't clouded by anger and doubt.

 "Brother dear, she's entirely willing." Blue's smile had the gleam of the moon about it, an incitement to madness.

 Cougar picked up a fork, measuring out the distance. "Yeah, and entirely stupid. I love Toya, but that doesn't stop me thinking she's gone completely nuts."

 He'd said it aloud, he realised with a shock, and a muted triumph flared through him. Deal with that - when I was trying to keep it secret, it was all too easy for you to use it against me. Now? I've dealt with it. She's chosen you, not me, but here's the difference: I know it can all change. You're too bloody arrogant to believe that.

"And so you'll love someone who can only pity you?" Derision, washing through his brother's voice, as he stood there, a predator always on the point of motion.
 
 And Cougar saw something he'd never seen before, which he should have known at once. It was one of Chatoya's foremost qualities, and in an odd way, it was what had got her into this godforsaken mess.

 "I don't think it's just me she pities," he said quite calmly. And he looked at his brother, and felt a surge of compassion, brought by sudden clarity.

 So here you are, after all these years. Brilliant and powerful and so very dangerous, all the things I always knew you were, all the things that always scared me. You're feared and admired and probably even liked by one or two people who don't know better.  

 And she...she has the sheer nerve to look right at all that, and dismiss it - to look at you, who she must know more intimately than anyone ever has, to love you for it, to hate you for it and worst of all, to pity you for it.

 It's never occurred to you to be anything else, and it's never occurred to you that anyone could feel sorry for you. But she does, and that must be crippling. To be brought down by her mercy, by her refusal to pretend to despise you.

 "I think you should go," he said to Blue, unaware quite how gentle his voice was. But he knew that somehow, he had won. Not for long, maybe, but for now. "You know what, I'm not going to stop telling Chatoya she should drop you like a ton of bricks. And I'm not even going to pretend I like you, because I don't, and I am going to watch you like a damn eagle, and the moment you screw up with Toya, I'll be there, waiting. But...I do feel kind of sorry for you."

 The fury flared in Blue's eyes so quickly, Cougar would have missed it if he hadn't been looking; a glimmer of gold, bright in the thunderous silence. "Don't pity me. I have what you want."

 "Yeah," he admitted. "You do. But you know...I don't think that means as much as I thought it did. She's still mine in a way she'll never be yours." He stared at the pieces of Jepar's broken mug, and it brought a wry grin to his face. "In a way all my friends won't ever be yours. You can scare them, and you can do your spooky thing until we're all jittering from caffeine and insomnia, and you can make them hate you, but you can't make them hate me. Hell, even I have trouble doing that."

 I was doing a good job though, he realised. I think they were starting to hate me because my problems with Toya were beginning to break us into pieces.

 Blue eyed him, and for a moment, Cougar could see himself in his face, in more than mere bone structure or DNA. "Your aim is off," was all he said.

 He got halfway out of the house before Cougar threw the fork after him, unaccountably nettled by that parting shot. It clattered against the door, accompanied by some healthy swearing.

 Cougar looked at the mess and grimaced. Explaining this one was going to be fun.

 Still, he thought. The plates might not have hit him...but I think the words did.