42) Triangle
Far too lazy to actually particpate
In table and 101 challenges
But sometimes the prompts...
Abby remembers most of his life with the dim haziness of things that happened months or years ago. The details are words, not images, and the images are grainy and vague.
But, part of his life is so painfully clear in his mind, the sort of short term recall for something that happened only yesterday. He suspects they will always feel like that, far too fresh and real.
Because once upon a time, Abby Atalp, whose adoptive parents were too lazy to give him a middle name or call him Absinthe, was part of a duo that, inevitably, would have become so demonic it would have destroyed them both.
Once upon a time, Absinthe Hades Revlis had known how to tell what his favorite girl in the world was thinking just by hearing her breathe. He had known her better than himself, but that was okay, because she knew him too.
And, he remembers that his first kiss had nothing to do with a pretty redheaded French woman, that his first time with a woman was in no way related to a blonde girl twenty years younger than him. It was something much worse than being simply age inappropriate, and it was something he would always treasure, with the same passion that his first love had treasured him.
He also remembers things that are not his to know, thoughts and dreams, all pure as glass or ice.
He remembers a pale skinned forgein girl, who he had supposed he would grow up and marry one day. But, he remembers that she never did grow up, though she was wed in only way she could be, and raised a baby boy into a working example of a human being, more than could ever have been hoped for by a parent bound into this scientifically propelled hell.
He remembers loving her deeply, truly. Perhaps it was because she was the only one to love, everything else was so horrible. Or, perhaps He, she, they, would have loved her regardless, if they had lived the life they were entitled to.
He remembers the softness of Tes's body against his skin, which is not his own, but rather his sister's. He remembers it as clearly as he remembers the way green eyes and hair streaked with neon green dye hovered above his, her face, kissing him, her gently. Just as he remebers black eyes, still framed in a face of childish love, bored into him from the mattresss, begging him for something that they knew was wrong and couldn't possibly have cared about less.
He remembers all these things, so much more clearly than he remembers the way this little girl's face looked when he sprained his wrist and nearly broke his nose by running, literally, over her on his way to catch the soonest flight.
He feels the pain for these two lost girls so much more sharply than deaths that happened twenty years ago should be felt. He wonders if, having his emotional growth halted at fourteen is what led him to take one this pale Brit, or rather, Welsh woman, for he knew she would kill him for calling her British.
Perhaps every problem in his life stems from loving his sister, from knowing his sister's lover like his own.
Wide, yellow eyes flick open, dazed with sleep, and meet his gaze, eyes that he knows all to well are bright green and loving.
"Abby, why are you staring at me?" Alyssa wonders, her words slurred and lazy.
"You just happen to be occupying the space I'm staring at, Lyss-bliss." he responds, knowing that she cannot see the lie in his mind, because he is so much stronger, so much older and more practiced, than she is.
"What are you thinking about, then?" she asks, and he sees in her face that she is curious and annoyed by it, because she won't be able to sleep again until she knows.
"Geometry. Mostly triangles. Strongest shape in the universe." It is a lie, but it comes so smoothly that it even surprises him, an instinct long forgotten, made to cover his illegal indiscretions when he was younger, and left untouched for so long. Back then, the trangle was me, and Nephy, and Tes. he thinks, and in his mind, he can see the chart, where his little point stands in the center of an empty field, three lines comin off him, making another, new triangle.
"You obviously love your maths more than me." Lyss joked lazily at the look on his face, which she would remember always, though he would never see it.