Cara Lugo [Complete]

Chapter Four: Your Majesty

Storyline:

"You do know this plan is utterly bonkers and mum will probably have your head."

Cara scoots back a little until her head is hanging off the roof of the Beast. She watches her brother work, sweat already trickling down his face, while she herself has done nothing more than hoisting herself onto the roof.

"Oh, I know, but you're in this too." The Beast shudders and Cara grapples for purchase as she starts to slide off a little more than she really was comfortable will. "Could you try not to kill me?"

"I could try," Robert agrees. "I really could. I don't want to, though. It's too much fun to tease you. You won't die if you fall from this thing."

"I might land on my head and break my neck, you never know." Cara counters. "All sorts of things can happen. Who will you blame for your misgivings when you cause trouble when I'm dead. Mum will find you out."

"Mum will never find me stirring the shit-pot. She'd more willingly believe you caused trouble from beyond the grave than ever think about me doing anything remotely bad." Robert lightly taps his sister on the head with the tool he was holding. "That being said, I'm totally putting any and all blame on you if this goes sideways."

"If this goes sideways, it doesn't matter what you say." Cara willingly slips down a little further, hanging half her upper body off the Beast now and taps Robert in return. "You could take the blame with a detailed recount that matches literally everyone else's, and I would still get the blame. You know this, come on."

"And that is why I can watch over you. And why I should." Robert shakes his head exasperated. "You're too wild for your own good. You'll be lucky if you make it out of this alive."

"But I always have."

"Yes, so it's a wonder that your luck hasn't run out five years ago."

Cara opens her mouth to argue her point, but quickly shuts it again and straightens when the door swings open to reveal their father. He was an intimidating man, who stayed quiet most of the time and just agreed with his wife. Being easygoing, it was easy for Camron to just let himself be swept away in the whirlwind his children brought (well, according to him and most others, just one child).

Perhaps he was where Cara got her demanding presence, but how could one categorize her to the different traits of each of her parents? She neither parent and both at the same time. The outspoken, demanding ways of her mother with the invisibility of her father contradicted each other beautifully when put into the same person.

"Cara," he says, simply.

"Dad," she answers, scrambling up to a seated position in the cramped space between the roof of the Beast and the ceiling of the workhouse.

"There is the strange man taking up your mother's time by chatting her up. She has sent me to get you and take him off her hands." He looks at his son, no change in the way he looked at the both of them, unlike what most people did. "He wanted to speak to both of you, so despite what your mother said, I think I would be best you both go to ensure he is mollified."

Cara wiggles and slithers out of the space, until she slips off the roof. Robert, quick to action, simultaneously moves back to avoid her landing on him, and grabbing her at the same time.

"You're the only adult person I know who has to free-fall from the top of this thing."

Cara stands, not even dignifying him with an answer, brushing off her black, loose pants. There wasn't any dust in the impeccable, almost gleaming workspace, it was a force of habit from all that work in the field she has never done her quota of. She inspects herself in the gleaming, chrome shine of the metal door, flicking an unruly strand of hair (despite never brushing it, there weren't that many of those to go around).