Sky’s fingers continued to move inside of Star that morning, drowning in all that ever-increasing wetness his touch did somehow still manage to produce in her again now, despite how twisted their desire for one another had been by others. But it was when he bravely allowed his thumb to begin rubbing that tiny mound above where his fingers moved inside her, her body began trembling with that fast approaching orgasm they had barely been able to even make each other feel toward the end of their imprisonment.

Seeing his touch push her toward that inevitable climax once more, Sky almost pulled back from the task. But he hesitated, his desire to continue making her feel something good again, just barely outweighed his fear of it. And in that moment, her body shook uncontrollably as even more wetness poured over his own trembling hand, a loud moan of release leaving her throat as she somehow allowed herself to surrender to that pleasure again.

As that climax overtook her, every one of the numerous black candles surrounding them simultaneously ignited, glowing brightly in the still dim morning light. Seeing all those tiny flames light up the entire apartment then, Sky immediately pulled his hand back from her, eyes widening as he looked around the room.

“Sky...” she could barely form his name after her climax, but feeling him pull away, she forced her eyes open in response to the loss of that touch. That was when she too noted the candles all lit around them, Sky’s eyes darting between them, his fear of their own desire bubbling forth from where he had tried to bury it just beneath the surface. “Sky, it’s ok” she attempted to convince them both with her breathily whispered words.

“So much for being able to control it” he whispered back, his voice breaking as he moved away, to pull the sheet up over where his own body still showed the lingering evidence of the desire he had let himself feel for her again.

“But don’t you see...this is control” Star whispered, her breath still struggling to return to normal, “this, the candles, that’s something beautiful, not horrible. It’s still amazing and unbelievable that we can do that just by making each other feel...that. But it’s still beautiful, What we can do, it can be beautiful. You have to see that.”

She could see him struggling, wanting to believe her words, though there was still so much fear there; the damage was just still so immense that it would still be a long, long time before either of them would ever fully recover from it. But at least they had taken a step to do so. And that let Star hold onto that tiny bit of hope as tightly as she could...for both of them.

After the morning with the candles, it was glaringly apparent that Sky was afraid of spending another night alone with Star. He still wanted her so much he could hardly bear it. But he still was unconvinced of this ‘control’ she insisted they now had, and he didn’t want to let his fears be proven true in some new tragedy caused by giving into his desire for her. So, he had then taken to bringing a different couple they knew from the club home with him each night. When that night’s chosen companions arrived, Sky and they would disappear to Astrid’s bedroom and spend the rest of the night making love to each other, simply to help him to drive away that desire he still could not stop himself feeling for Star every time he looked her way.

Star’s first instinct was to feel hurt by him finally letting himself feel pleasure again, as long as it didn’t involve the two of them making each other feel it. But she soon realized that everything he did was because he did want her so much, and was just still too terrified to let himself. On that sad realization, Star began bringing her own companions home, and spending her nights with them in Kali’s room, driving away her own pain just as desperately as Sky was trying to bury his pain in other lovers as well.

The next night that they had to allow themselves to be alone in each other’s company once more was late in August; it was the night before Kali and Astrid would be returning to the apartment for their senior year. The two quietly went about making the bedrooms presentable again for the two women who were actually paying the rent. Once that task was done, they found themselves in the living room together once more, silently unfolding the sofa bed that they would once again be sharing for the first time since the morning with the candles.

“Are we sure we shouldn’t just be moving into the bedrooms with the girls once they come back? Not sure you want to be sharing a bed with me again, do you?” Star managed to ask him, but there was sarcasm behind the question.

“I’m pretty sure it’ll be easier to keep pretending to be irreparably sexually damaged, than to start that with people we’ll have to see every day” Sky answered her, though quietly.

“Pretending?” Star couldn’t help repeating that word.

“Well obviously we’re both still capable of having anonymous, meaningless sex with multiple men and women who are practically strangers, right? I guess that must mean we’re over it” he added under his breath, though his tone made it obvious how little he believed his own words.

That was when Star just broke down, the tears pouring from her pretty eyes as she collapsed to a seat upon the bed, burying her face in her hands as sobs wracked her body; proving exactly how not over it either of them were. At her complete break, as all her mental walls melted before his eyes, Sky couldn’t stop his own tears. He never could bear to see her cry, and still couldn’t, even after all that had been done to them both to more than justify those tears.

Wanting nothing more than to stop her pain, Sky moved to a place next to her, gathering her into his arms, holding her, as they both just let out all that sorrow. They just clung to one another for any strength they could possibly still give each other.

After several long moments of sitting there, sobbing in each other’s embrace, they finally allowed their tear-filled eyes to meet again. That’s when the two covered one another’s lips, their mouths moving hungrily against each other, trying desperately to chase all that pain away once more.

And that was when Kali and Astrid stepped through the door, their jaws each dropping more than a bit as their eyes fell on the two ‘twins’ holding and kissing each other with all the passion of lovers more than clear between them.

At the sound of the girls dropping their bags to the floor, the kiss ended as two sets of dark, startled eyes turned back to the women. “I think we’re just gonna go unpack right now....” Kali whispered as she and Astrid awkwardly gathered their bags from the floor, not able to rush from the room fast enough right then.

That was when Star buried her face in her hands once more. All the hopefulness of that kiss turned immediately into hopelessness for how their only friends would deal with what they had just witnessed between she and Sky.

More than a bit panicked himself, Sky tried to speak, voice shaking, “so we can just tell them. Tell them we’re not really twins. We can just tell them, right?” he asked her, though there was no confidence behind his words.

“And then have to tell them everything else?...About why they wanted us to think we were?...What they wanted to stop us from discovering once we realized we weren’t?...And what they wanted us to do...and how we had to do it?...We can tell them all that too?” Star whispered back, her teary eyes still glued to the floor.

And that was their last night there.

Eventually, that night, they found themselves at the place they hadn’t been since the day Sky took Star’s virginity; the last day they were ever truly happy. They wandered the mall in silence, until the lights began dimming and the stores began closing, and they had no choice but to go back into what felt like a very cold outside world, despite the humidity of the August night.

The two took a sad seat on one of the benches outside the mall. Sky lit one of his final cigarettes left in the pack, and they both sat speechless, neither knowing where they could possibly go now. They paid no real heed to the last minute shoppers leaving the mall doors behind them, as they were both just too lost right then to even look up from the pavement below them.

But, as one woman rushed to her car, she suddenly stopped and turned back to face them, “Sky? Star?” her voice broke with a few different emotions as the two looked up at the sound of their names.

Brie swallowed hard, approaching them cautiously, her face showing a million things like relief, disbelief, regret, fear, and anything else she was suddenly feeling as she saw the two children she had raised for sixteen years, and who were stolen from her over a year ago now.

Both just stared back frozen, not sure if they should run or stay, just knowing that they were definitely terrified of what would happen to them each now that their presence had once again been discovered.

Brie just shook her head as her eyes moved over them, trying desperately to find any words then, “I never wanted them to take you. We had no choice. I’m so sorry” was her first attempt at speaking any of what was racing through her mind right then.

Finally, Sky spoke, though there was venom in his tone, “we’re actually supposed to believe that you’re not gonna just call your bosses again, and have them take us away to be tortured for another year or so?”

“To---tortured?” Brie stammered, wishing she didn’t believe that claim, but afraid that it could very well be accurate. After all, that was what they had said; that Brie and Connor needed to take a ‘more aggressive approach’ with their two test subjects, and that raising them had removed their ability to be ‘properly objective.’ Feeling the tears that were so alien to her welling up, all Brie could repeat was “I’m so sorry.”

“Well I guess that fixes everything” Sky bit back, refusing to even look at Brie then.

Brie let out a few more breaths, trying to force back her emotions, as she had always been told she had to, “please, let me at least try to make some little bit of this up to you. Please?” she asked them in a whisper.

“Not fucking possible” Sky muttered, still not turning his eyes to her again.

Brie swallowed hard, trying to find any words to convince them of her sincerity, “I don’t work for the lab anymore. I’m not even living with Connor anymore. It’s just me. I just write a science blog now. I figure that was safer than my old job anyway, on a few levels.”

Then Star finally spoke, “so you went through a break up and had to switch jobs? What a rough year you’ve had. Would you like to hear about ours?” she told her with a bit of her own venom then.

Brie bit back another sob, her imagination providing her with a million ideas of exactly what that year must have been like for the two shattered souls now sitting before her. “I know you probably won’t ever be able to forgive....any of it” she decided on, “but please believe that I’m telling you the truth now...even if it is seventeen years too late.”

Having literally nowhere else to go, Sky and Star did grudgingly agree to follow Brie home, in a cab, that she would pay for, and give her one chance to try and earn their trust again; though both were still convinced that would never be possible.

Once they arrived at the tiny apartment she now called home, Brie awkwardly invited them through the door where they each stiffly sat at the kitchen table, their dark eyes on her the whole time and full of suspicion and anger.

She offered them each an unopened bottle of water and took a wary seat at the other side of the table. After a long even more awkward silence, Star spoke again, “You want us to trust you? Fine. Then explain.”

“What am I trying to explain first?” she asked nervously.

Then Star replied, her voice still full of anger, “for starters....us. Where we really came from, why we can do what we can do...what we even fucking are.”