Fic: Original - Identicals - The Universe Has Spoken - Evan, Kelly - PG
Title: The Universe Has Spoken
Author: ![[info]](http://www.inksome.com/img/userinfo.gif)
madeyemax
Beta: 
loony4lupin. Any remaining mistakes are my own stupid fault.
Universe: Identicals, my NaNo project
Characters: Evan and Kelly
Summary: Evan has just read Deathly Hallows and he is not a happy twin.
Rating: PG for a tiny bit of cursing.
Warnings: Some DH bashing here.
Word Count: 1,699
Background: Evan and Kelly are identical twin brothers, Canadian, in their mid-twenties, separated at birth, only recently found each other. They’re on a mission, flying through space, taking care of some business. I won’t go into detail about that, though, partly because I haven’t worked all of it out, heh.
Note: I think this was a therapeutic sort of thing for me.
The star-speckled blackness inched lazily by, undisturbed, for the fourth hour in a row. Kelly had long since given up monitoring it. “There’s nothing, here,” he’d kept telling Evan. Evan, however, had insisted on staying the standard amount of time for an area this size. Kelly had to concede that if not for Evan, nothing would ever get done properly. If Kelly had been paying attention to the control panel he was resting his feet on, he would have realized that his two-hour shift was over, that monitoring of this area was complete and that they were now free to go off and explore something potentially more interesting.
If someone had told Kelly a year ago that within the next year he’d be flying around the universe in an elf-made spaceship with his identical twin, he would have laughed and checked the dilation of the messenger’s pupils. He still wondered what he would’ve had the most trouble believing; the spaceship part or the identical twin part. Elves were magical creatures, after all. Not even Evan, whose best friend back on earth was an elf, knew the extent of what they were capable of.
The comforting hum of the ship and the dialogue of the television show Kelly was watching on his laptop were suddenly interrupted by the click-click-shhhh-woosh of the airlock opening. Kelly paused the video and looked up from the computer on his lap. He craned his neck, twisting in his seat a bit, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to see the airlock from where he sat.
“Evan?” he called.
“Nothing!” Evan called back. Kelly sat in his half-twisted position, perfectly still, listening. A moment later, he heard the airlock closing again and then the sound of another door closing; Evan’s room door.
“Hmph,” Kelly grunted and relaxed in his seat again. His brother had not, apparently, been accidentally sucked out the airlock. He figured Evan would tell him what had happened later on, and he pressed ‘play’ on his media player.
Several peaceful minutes went by, and then something larger than a star floated into Kelly’s periphery. He raised his eyes and saw something white and rectangular drifting across the ship’s screen.
Just then, Evan strode out into the Control Centre. “Why are we still sitting here?” he asked and took his seat on Kelly’s left. “We were finished monitoring the area ten minutes ago.”
Kelly looked from Evan to the strange object outside and back again. Evan was seemingly oblivious to the object outside, fingertips dancing across the control panel. He finally looked over at Kelly and asked, “We ready to go or what?”
Kelly’s eyebrows went up and he jerked his head at the screen. Evan glanced at it.
“Oh,” he said flatly and went right back to pressing buttons.
“Dude, what is that?” Kelly shut his laptop and set it aside. “Is that what you threw out the airlock?”
“How do you know I threw anything out the airlock?”
“Well, what’d you open it for, fresh air?”
“Can you get on your controls so we can get out of here?”
Kelly frowned and looked back at the screen. “You know, we might be in the middle of nowhere, but it’s still littering.” He leaned forward and squinted at the floating object. It slowly spun in space, and he soon realized that it was a book.
“So, where do you wanna go next?” asked Evan.
But Kelly wasn’t listening. “What did that book ever do to you?” When Evan didn’t answer, Kelly slid forward in his seat and began punching buttons of his own.
Evan looked sidelong at him. “What’re you doing?”
“What do you think I’m doing?”
“Kell, just leave it alone, let’s go.”
Kelly ignored him. He pressed a final button and looked at a small screen on the right hand side of his work station, where he’d magnified a section of the larger view from the main screen.
“Kelly–”
“Shh! What the hell…?” The book continued to spin, and finally the front cover was facing the screen. Kelly sat up and looked over at his brother again, who was determinedly not looking at him now.
“Didn’t like the ending?” asked Kelly.
Evan continued to press buttons.
“Evan, stop. Whatever you’re doing was done about eight hundred buttons ago.”
With a sigh, Evan stopped and looked over at Kelly. “What?”
“We made a special stop at earth to get that book for you.”
“I know.”
“We had to go out of our way.”
“I know, and I appreciated it.”
“So…” Kelly gestured at the main screen. “What the hell, man?”
“What do you care? You didn’t pay for it.”
Kelly canted his head and looked at Evan with mock sympathy. “Did he die? Did Harry die?”
Even frowned. “No, of course not. We might wanna stop somewhere soon and refuel.”
Kelly stared at his twin’s profile. In the soft light of the Control Centre, it was hard to tell, but he finally noticed the redness around Evan’s long, pointed nose, and the slight puffiness around the eye he could see. Evan gave a little sniffle, and Kelly turned his chair completely toward him.
“What is wrong with you?” He pointed at the screen again. “That book really made you cry?”
Evan sighed again and he looked sadly over at Kelly. “Can you just let it go?”
Kelly stood and stepped toward him. “Get up.”
“Why?”
“Just get up.”
Evan rolled his eyes, but obeyed. He stood and faced his twin, looking sheepish, barely able to make eye contact. He lowered his face and let his dark hair fall into his eyes. Kelly stepped even closer, raised his hands and cupped his brother’s face and forced Evan to look up at him.
“It’s just you and me here,” he said softly. “You can’t hide anything from me. I can tell something’s really wrong.”
Evan’s eyes, which were still trying to avoid Kelly’s, began to brim with tears. He sniffled again and whispered, “I can’t believe she did it.”
“Who did what?” But even as Kelly asked the question, he realized what the answer must be. He released Evan’s face. “They didn’t make it, did they?”
Evan wiped his cheeks as tears spilled onto them and shook his head. “No, they… One of them… Only one…”
Kelly stared at him, his mouth hanging open slightly.
“What do you care, anyway? You’ve never read the books.”
Kelly gave a small half-shrug. “I’ve seen the movies,” he mumbled.
“So not the same thing, Kell.”
“Hey, I know enough about the series to know who you’re talking about.” Kelly swallowed, trying to wrap his head around what must have happened. “Only one?” he asked in almost a whisper.
Evan nodded sadly at him.
“But… why?”
Evan shook his head. “I don’t know.”
They stood there for a long moment, faces lowered, until finally Evan wiped his face again and said in a much stronger voice, “It’s fine. This is stupid. It’s just a book. Come on, we’ve sat around here long enough. Let’s just–” But as he began to turn back to his seat, he felt Kelly’s firm grip on his upper arm. Before he knew it, he’d been pulled into an embrace. He stood there, mashed against his twin, hesitant to hug him back.
“This is so stupid,” he repeated in a whisper, trying to hold back tears.
Kelly loosened his grip and pulled back a bit to look at him. “Ev, this series has been part of your life for ten years.”
Even shrugged. “Eight years, actually, but who’s counting?”
“Well, that makes it important. That and the fact that you’ve become a blubbering mess over it.”
“I’m fine.”
“Shut up, will you?” Kelly pulled Evan to him again and squeezed him. “You’re not fine. You can’t be.”
“Why not?” Evan asked, still not hugging him back. “A bunch of characters got axed before Fred–”
“It was Fred?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus… Wait, which one’s that again?”
Evan laughed and wiped his face again. “It’s not important. Anyway, I was upset for the others, too. Why do you think I need a hug now?”
Kelly pulled back again and looked into his eyes. “You know why.”
Evan stared back in silence for a moment. “But they’re not us,” he finally said. “They’re not even real.”
“Hey, a twin is a twin. And it doesn’t matter that they’re not real; your feelings are, right? And… well, jeez, you just don’t separate twins.”
Evan nodded and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He took one of Kelly’s hands off his torso and held it.
“How did he die?”
Evan took a deep breath and exhaled heavily, his shoulders slumping. He was preparing to answer the question when Kelly took pity and stopped him.
“You know what? Never mind. Forget I asked.”
“No, I can tell you.”
“No.” Kelly shook his head and sandwiched Evan’s hand between both of his own. “Forget it. God, man, you look like you’re trying to psych yourself up for a root canal… or have just gone through one.”
Evan snorted. “Thanks a lot.” He turned his face away and looked at the main screen. Kelly followed suit. The book had made its way from the far right of the screen to the centre. They watched it trace a leisurely path across the field of stars until, from the upper right hand corner, something fast and blindingly bright zoomed into view, streaked across the screen and went right through the book, shredding it to pieces and sending those pieces careening off in all directions. The twins each jumped a little upon impact and stared, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, at the aftermath.
“Holy shit,” said Evan.
“What the hell was that?”
“I think it was a comet.”
“Wow. I guess the universe agrees, then.”
Evan gave Kelly a quizzical look.
“You just don’t separate twins,” Kelly said.
Evan’s mouth slowly curled into a smile, and suddenly he didn’t look quite so worn out. “Yeah.”
They both looked back at the screen and watched what was left of the book float away and out of sight, still clutching each other’s hands.
THE END
