#i could talk about him for hours no lie

a little piece of a character ive been thinking abt ! i meant to use this for angstpril but completely forgot to write anything for the whole month

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It’s quiet. He sits on the windowsill, hugging his knees and watching a pigeon try to pull a suet ball out of the birdfeeder in the garden. It’s a futile effort; it crumbles against the grate of the feeder, scattering suet and seeds all over the grass.

In a few minutes, Lulu will notice and shoo the bird away, then pick up the pieces and put them in the small bowl by the birdbath, leaving them there for a bluetit to have when the larger birds take over the feeder.

He doesn’t know what the pigeon sounds like, though. He knows that its call is loud and almost vulgarly unfamiliar, especially when compared to the silent stillness of Sir’s house, but he doesn’t remember exactly what it sounds like. This house is strange, filled with mismatched cushions and doors that don’t quite fit into the frames, filled with noise.

Filled with noise, but quiet now.

The sun is creeping over the horizon, and the garden is filled with a pinkish light that burnishes the grass and dyes the white of the windowsill a faint peach. If he were to touch the window, he would find it damp with condensation, cool to the touch from the frigid night. He doesn’t, though, and instead watches his breath turn the glass cloudy, obscuring the pigeon from his view.

It disappears, and for a moment, Auden is entirely alone.

He wonders if, even for a second, he could abandon the identity crafted for him. For a moment, he could relinquish being the person that Luca and Lulu believe him to be, could return to being Aurel in the hopes that he could return to Sir’s house, where the noise is measured and predictable, and where he knows everything he needs to know about the world around him. His world has imploded now, bursting into a supernova of people and places and sound. Sound unmeasured, uncontrolled, unpredictable.

Markus says that he just needs to give it time, that he’ll understand the ways of the outside world after a while. Markus doesn’t seem phased by the awful newness of everything, greeted Luca and Lulu with a smile when he turned up at the door and introduced them as Markus and Auden.

Markus doesn’t understand the way this outside world makes him ache.

The silence of the dawn starts to quell the way his chest burns, and his heart seems to creep back into his chest from his stomach as the stillness settles, and he watches the pigeon come back into view as the cloud of breath disappears from the window. For just a moment, it seems that he and the pigeon are the only two beings in the world, and just for that infinitesimal moment, Auden feels less alone.

When it’s quiet, he’s almost able to pretend that he’s back with Sir, that he can relinquish the identity created for him in favour of returning to the person he once was - the person he still believes himself to be. He knows that Auden is not him; a similar name, one he chose purely because if he ignored just enough of what people were saying, he could pretend that nothing ever changed.

Markus’s name didn’t change; he altered the spelling, but Auden would have never written it anyway. He was the one who pulled Auden from the comfort and stillness and quiet of Sir’s house, who decided that everything would change, who wanted everything to change; and yet he is still Marcus, only different in the few times Luca’s written their names down to keep track of dates and people. Markus was the one who wanted change, but Auden’s is the life that has been turned upside down and inside out.

Auden is now surrounded by people, but has never felt more alone.

He doesn’t understand how all of these people have been able to turn away from the people that chose them, that fed them, clothed them, even loved them. He feels traitorous to be living amongst them, knowing that they all hate or fear their previous owners, and still, Auden is filled with nothing but a hollow longing for the past.

He doesn’t understand why they all stand at arm’s length from him, why Markus won’t stay near to him. His skin burns with yearning, but hugging his arms around his knees and pressing them as tightly to his chest as possible does little to quell it. Nonetheless, he pulls his arms around himself and watches the pigeon as it pulls chunks out of the suet ball.

As he thought, Lulu comes through the sliding doors and waves a hand at it. She’s gentle, though, and he can make out a small smile on her face as she watches it fly into one of the trees, scooping the chunks from the grass into the palm of her hand.

She looks up though, and immediately the illusion is broken. She smiles at him, and he suddenly feels a poisonous disdain for his ability to be regarded and pulls himself from the windowsill.