I hate that no one talks about just how distressing memory loss from adhd actually is. I always see memes that are like “haha I forgot my phone, I don’t remember where my laptop is, etc”, but no one seems to talk about how it can really fuck you up long term to just, not remember things that are completely mundane to non-adhd’ers. The memory loss is, however, so frustrating to us. I cannot physically count how many meltdowns I have had over the sheer mental frustrationandtorture of not being able to remember seemingly simple things
in addition to the frustration and shame of the actual forgetting, there’s this constant background dread, because you know for a damn FACT you are forgetting something important at any given moment. racking your brain may or may not bring it to mind, but you can’t be dwelling on that 24/7 or you’d never do anything else, plus it quite often doesn’t even work. so you just. live with it. every second of every day.
you have forgotten something that is going to bite you on the ass at some random future moment. water is wet. this is your life.
i think the reason so many people with ADHD develop such an absurdist sense of humor is that you have to deal with constant uncertainty and absurdity while being low-key scared and high-key BORED AS FUCK. like if you don’t learn to laugh this shit off you just die.
That and there’s the aspect where it eventually affects your long-term memory as well.
My memories of my childhood are populated by precise layouts of rooms and buildings, the names and faces of people I know, a list of favorite things. The sounds of a church congregation singing. A map of the neighborhood where I grew up. The smell of my elementary school library. Facts. Sensations. Things carved into my recollection through repetition.
But events are largely a blank. I know that things happened. I know that my brother and I went swimming and caught grasshoppers in the summer. I know that we went to Disney World at one point. I know that we had Midnight Madness at Grandma’s every Christmas Eve until I was a teenager. I know that school was rough and that I used to hide in my closet when my parents fought.
I know these things because people have told me about them. There are pictures. There are stories. I was there. I participated. So they tell me. Once in a while, there’s a corresponding ping somewhere in my brain that pulls up an image or a sound or some physical sensation that seems to confirm what I’m hearing.
But so much of my life, especially my early years, is just…File Not Found. And that honestly terrifies me. Because I worry that it makes me way too easy to gaslight. How am I to know if what I’m being told is true? After all, nine times out of ten, I can’t remember.
I should be uploading Part 6 but I wanted more Beerus and Whis with seriously OOC Vegeta so here I am drawing the Part 3.5- just after Vegeta pressed the Hakai button
Always thought the destroyer earring meant Beerus was accepting Vegeta as one of his own kind
and the explanation for why Vegeta doesn’t look like he’s been blown up by a grumpy cat god in Part 4…
The King of Hearts is called The Suicide King because over a long period of time, through the printing process, his image changed to now seem as if he is stabbing himself in the head.
Btw, just answered a couple anonymous asks that sitting there for a couple months… Maybe. Anyway, can’t look at them from my phone rn for whatever reason. So I can’t see what We wrote. Don’t know who wrote them. Hopefully We didn’t offend anyone. Unless they were being rude of course. I don’t remember what We read either We took our ADHD meds this morning… Wtf brain?!
Living with memory loss is hard, I can’t reminisce about my childhood, I can hardly experience nostalgia. At least I get to make new, happy memories everyday. That’s the only thing that makes me happy and that’s enough for me.
The Great Melli could not believe he was once again traveling with the Sneasler Noble’s Warden. It was though he was asking for everything in what was shaping up to be an already miserable day, to go wrong.
And this heat.
“Why is it so hot?!”
Unseasonably warm for this time of year, Melli followed the bowed back clad in a heavy black coat in front of him as the sun climbed ever higher in the pale blue sky. The calls of various bug Pokemon vibrated the very air around them, accentuating the lack of any breeze.
“I could be taking a bath right now, instead of reeking as bad as the space cadet.” Fully aware that Ingo could hear him, Melli carried on, full of drama and flare as was his usual modus operandi. He couldn’t help it. All this sweat and activity was just asking for frizzy hair and chafing in places he’d rather not be chafed. He heaved an afflicted sigh.
“I do appreciate your assistance today, Warden Melli.” Ingo looked up at him from beneath the brim of his odd hat, impassive expression seeming to see beneath the carefully curated exterior Melli projected.
“Haa?”
“I was sorely needing this round of supplies. Without your aid, I would have been in dire straits.”
Oh! It was no wonder really, considering it hadn’t been that long since the uh, Alpha Luxray attack just a few weeks ago. Ingo hid the remaining limp surprisingly well. Where Melli had to look for it now, before he’d ached just watching the other Warden fulfill his duties in slow motion the few times they’d crossed paths out in the Highlands.
Let nobody say he shirked his duties to his fellow man.
Even one so strange as this.
“Well, count yourself lucky, Pearl Peasant!” Proud, on the knife edge of cavelier. It wouldn’t do if Ingo mistook this relationship as something resembling, dare he think it–friendship. “The true Sinnoh and I have taken pity on your plight and come to you as your savior–” He gave Ingo a once over, lingering on his tattered greatcoat and wondering quite sincerely how he wasn’t melting in the heat. “How are you wearing all that? It’s sweltering–that’s got to be a hazard!”
Don’t the elderly die from this weather?
How old was Ingo anyway? Gray hair aside, he’d been pretty spry taking on a Pokemon with his bare hands.
“Your concern is valid; however, I assure you that my engines do not overheat so easily.” Why did he insist on using those curious phrases? A deft hand lifted the brim of his strange cap. Was that surprise he detected? Or something more? “I run cooler than…” Oh, Sinnoh. Ingo’s voice faded like stars in the presence of the sun. “Cooler than most…”
Melli watched the almost unnatural light fade from his eyes as they went steadily vacant and despite seeing him waver, knowing intimately what was to happen next, failed to catch Ingo when the Warden tipped forward into the dirt.
Sweet, merciful…
Lord Electrode’s Warden landed on his knees beside the prone body, rolling Ingo over to get a good look at him. Cheeks dusted in a hectic flush. Breath shallow and fast. Skin so hot and dry where he felt for his Buneary-quick pulse. Of course he’d managed to give himself heatstroke. Why not. It was more than clear how little he cared for Melli’s extremely valuable time if he was so willing to throw himself left and right into danger!
Gently, muttering curses under his breath all the while, Melli dragged him into the shade and stripped Ingo of his ridiculous and tightly woven garb. Black. Dour and drab. He wouldn’t be caught dead in this color–smacking his face lightly in an attempt to rouse him and to no avail.
He debated hitting him harder.
But no. That would be taking advantage of the situation and Ingo did seem to bring out the best in him.
Against his considerable will.
Instead, he tipped water from the fool’s own full canteen drop by drop onto his tongue, laying a damp cloth against the galloping pulsepoint in his neck, each wrist. Over and over in a steady trifecta until Ingo’s bleary, unfocused gaze caught his eye. With a put upon sigh, Melli leavered him upright, catching him this time when he threatened to swoon again, and forcing another mouthful of water on Ingo while he collected his very limited bearings. Slowly, slowly. No good for either of them if he was sick from it.
They weren’t far from the river and Ingo had recovered enough to stand with his help and hobble to the bank, laying back in the grass, dizzy, while Melli removed his odd shoes and rolled up each pant leg before dropping them unceremoniously in the water with a dull splash.
Relief.
Ingo sighed in it, feeling quite sheepish and closing his eyes against the spinning of the sky above him. How had he ever managed to survive before in wherever he came from? Was he as hopeless? He very much hoped not.
“Honestly, you need an intervention, because you obviously can’t take care of yourself.” Melli was clearly miffed, rinsing a cloth and wringing it out repeatedly in agitation. “Don’t you think of your Lady Sneasler? If you dried out like a beached Magikarp she’d have to look for another Warden!” And likely murder him. Two Wardens lost for want of a sip of water. “It’s a hassle. A shameful preventable waste. Of. Time.” Drinking slowly, Ingo listened because it was the polite thing to do, but the words were beginning to fade into the background of his pounding headache. “If we could be privy to her words she’d say, ‘oh, this is nooo surprise. My chosen one has a mind of a dull spheal.” Melli’s voice slipped further and further away. “I just like carrying him around like an accessory.’ Is that why she picked you? Sinnoh works in mysteeerious ways, I guess!!!”
There was something familiar in the way he spoke.
In the way he extended his arm. Like someone else did so long ago he could barely remember.
“Here. Take this.” He could see them. This memory. Playing out before him as though he’d been transported back.
“I can’t believe you two! Listen, you have to take your coats off. It’s not winter anymore.”
Just past the person directly in his line of sight, was an image of the man who looked like him fanning himself with his white cap, tie pulled loose. No matter how hard Ingo tried, he couldn’t quite make out his face though he was fairly certain it would mirror his own. The young woman was familiar too, holding out a bottle of water and looking sweaty herself despite her bare arms. Long and trailing, her hair framed her face.
“We’re shopping for summer fits later. You can thank me then.”
Try as he might, Ingo couldn’t make these strange words reconcile in his memory. He knew he should know them. Pain sparked behind his eyes.
“Awww. But that is boring.” The other man whined, playful and moody and Ingo knew he’d been just as uncomfortable as himself. Vaguely he remembered shouting, the rumbling of a pack of Graveler beneath his feet and a great wash of dizzying heat enveloping the both of them until it was difficult to breathe.
“Then maybe don’t wear an insulated jacket when you’re battling against a fire-type in a closed train car.” Ire and disbelief lit her eyes from within even as the man in white tried to argue.
“It is air conditioned. Gets chilly in there. Even in the summer–”
“Still!” Finger extended to cut him off. Dazzling grin sheepish and chagrined. “When a challenger yells “overheat” they don’t mean you.” The pun went unappreciated even while she grinned bright and wide.
“Boo. Verrry bad. Do not do that again.” As hard as he fought for it to remain, the memory faded, leaving behind the vaguest impressions and a sense of sorrow for what he’d lost.
He tried to hang onto her smiling face, to memorize it like he’d been unable to do for the man in white.
“Drink up, Bidoofus number one.”
“Wwwhy are you looking at me like that?” Ingo blinked at Melli, his uneasy visage a mirror image of her’s, left holding a towel for however long he’d been away. “It’s…a wet towel.” He looked worried or perhaps perturbed, with his lilac hair framing his face. “Do you know what a towel is?”
“Thank you–” and he was cut off by the resounding slap of it hitting him full in the face at the same time Melli shouted.
“Stop staring, weirdo!!!” Melli looked upset, and rightfully so, Ingo supposed. Once again, he found himself in the other Warden’s debt as he wiped his face and a swath of cool relief spread outward in the wake of the damp cloth across his overheated skin.
“I apologize. I lost my train of thought.” How could he explain that it was so much more than just that? “A memory arrived to my station.” Melli watched his eyes become downcast and melancholy. He was secure enough to admit he’d been afraid when Ingo seemed to fade again, unresponsive to even his impeccable nettling. “The concern on your face…it reminds me of someone, a dear friend, from my lost past.” It was easy to forget sometimes that while Ingo was a, dare he even say it, strong Warden, he was also missing innumerable pieces of himself, left behind in the place he originally belonged. He observed warily, waiting for the amnesiac to continue, and, offhand, while staring off into the middle distance, ingo murmured, “she was quite beautiful, too.”
And just as quickly, Melli regretted every kind word, every gracious reflection, he’d ever thought about Ingo, panicking internally at the implications here. Sneasler’s Warden, oblivious as always, went back to dabbling his feet in the water, staring at nothing. Everything?
In truth, Melli couldn’t really blame him, could he? He was the most beautiful thing for miles around.
What kind of message are you trying to send, old man???
In all pasts and presents and futures and other lives: Sherlock loves John, even when John does not love him back.
Oh wow. Some fanfics are more like gorgeous pieces of tangibly visible artwork than simple writings. This would be one such pieces of work. But don’t be fooled by its immense beauty. It’s a tragic piece. The best way I can describe it is if you take a shard of glass, jam it into your chest, and just make a rough incision across your sternum. Because that’s what I feel like at this moment. Sherlock comes back to find John doesn’t remember him, but this is not like other fics with amnesia. I’ll say no more on that and instead move on to the writing itself, because that is what makes this fic utterly unique. It’s written from Sherlock’s perspective, giving a look into his mind as he comes to terms with what has happened. It makes the reader see everything through his eyes and feel right alongside him and it hurts. There are vivid descriptions of his inner thoughts, ones that only Sherlock would have and wouldn’t be terrifying, because it’s Sherlock. His emotions are as raw and as jagged as the wound left into your chest. Definitely one for super angst lovers and fans of jellyfish. A special thanks to Rachel for the suggestion. A warning of brief sexual content and mentions of gore.
Eskel and his elven lover Aniela have been together for some years when an accident occurs…
In which Eskel forgets something important, and PTSD and self-confidence issues are a bitch.
Angst with a happy ending. Geraskier took over for a few pages, I have no control over them..
See the Masterpost for content/warnings. Masterpost here. This is the longest chapter, as it was decided what was previously two chapters needed to be combined so things made sense to those who don’t live in my head, lol.
-
Aniela leaned up on her toes, hands resting on Eskel’s gambeson, to press a soft kiss to his lips. His hands rested on her waist, giving a light squeeze. She pulled back slightly to look up into his eyes, still leaning into him.
“Come back to me in one piece?” she asked softly.
“I’ll do my best,” he answered with a smile.
“You’d better.” She gave an answering smile.
“Stay safe while I’m gone.”
“I think I’ll stay in the room. There’s mending to be done, a bath to be taken, and I’m tired from the path.”
“Good. Don’t wait up for me, hmm?”
“I can’t promise that. You know I worry until you’re back.”
“I’ve fought many cockatrices before.”
“I know. Even so.”
“I’ll try to be quick, then.”
“Please do.”
He gave her a kiss on the forehead then turned and left their room at the inn, closing the door softly behind him.
The room was comfortable enough, and quite cozy with the small fire going. This was far from the first hunt Eskel had gone on, leaving her behind to wait: there had been too many to count at this point. And yet she couldn’t shake a sense of unease. Silly, she told herself. She was comfortable and safe here, and Eskel had been confident that the contract would be an easy one. Everything would be fine. He would likely be back before she even got into bed.
-
Eskel woke, confused and aching. He blinked his heavy lids open slowly, unsure of where he was. Dawn light was stabbing into his eyes, and he lifted a hand to shield them, wincing. Birds were calling and he was looking up at trees. He was camped out, then. Except when he slowly pushed his aching body up from the ground, his head pounding like he’d had too good a time with white gull the night before, he looked around to find no evidence of camp. No bedroll, no fire, no Scorpion.
He frowned. Looking down at himself, he saw that he was wearing all of his armour. His steel sword was still strapped to his back, and his silver sword, covered in dried black blood, was on the ground nearby. He must have fought something. A hit to the head, then. Hopefully he had taken down whatever it was he was fighting before passing out. He must have, he reasoned, as otherwise he wouldn’t have woken up at all. He grunted, pushing himself to stand, slowed by his aching body and throbbing head.
He started walking, hoping he was headed in the direction of the village that he had presumably taken a contract from. He did eventually find his way to the edge of the village. As he entered, a few people seemed to recognize him, nodding as he passed. One villager called out to him from a field.
“Oi, witcher!”
Eskel looked over.
“Took out the beast in the woods, then, did ya?”
Eskel nodded hesitantly. He didn’t remember, but he must have. He glanced around, gauging the size of the village from what he could see.
“Can you point me towards the inn?” he asked. It was likely to only have the one, being small, and he hoped he might have procured a room in it. Hopefully his memory would come back soon, but he wasn’t overly concerned. In a village this size it shouldn’t be hard to locate Scorpion and whomever had put out the contract. The farmer gave Eskel quick instructions and he headed on down the road.
When he got to the inn he was greeted warmly inside by the woman behind the bar.
“Took longer than ye thought, eh, witcher?”
“Hmm,” he responded. “I have a room?”
The barkeep nodded, a quizzical look on her face. “Aye, last door on the right.”
“Thank you,” Eskel replied, and headed towards the stairs at the back. He trudged up the stairs, down the hallway and opened the door that was indicated. As he walked through the door he saw a woman sitting on the edge of the bed, fretting at a piece of clothing. Honey-ginger hair fell in soft waves around her face and shoulders, and a pointed ear poked through it on the side facing him. What on the continent was an elf doing in his room?
When she saw him she jumped up, coming towards him. “Eskel! I’ve been so worried, are you alright?”
His hand had immediately gone to the steel sword on his back upon finding a stranger in his room.
“Who are you?” he asked gruffly. “What are you doing in my room?”
She stumbled a step back, wide eyes focused on his arm reaching for his sword. He heard her heart rate pick up. “Wh-what do you mean?”
He glanced around the room in confusion, wondering if there had been a mistake, but those were his saddlebags by the table, with the leather tooling Geralt had done a few winters ago decorating the fronts.
“What do you want?” he demanded. His head was throbbing and he just wanted to lie down somewhere relatively soft and quiet to wait for it to pass.
“Eskel,” the woman started, voice wobbling slightly, “do you not know me?”
“No,” he answered apprehensively, “should I?”
She gulped, pale-aqua eyes shining. “It’s… uhm… the inn was short of rooms, and so we were rooming together.”
He frowned at that. It sounded awfully improbable. And what woman would agree to room with a stranger, and a burly scarred witcher, at that?
“I’m sure you want to rest, so I’ll… I’ll get out of your hair.” She hurried about the room, stuffing items into a bag, then gave him a look he couldn’t parse as she came towards the door. “Goodbye, then,” she said, voice shaking.
She looked at him a moment longer before skirting around him and out the door. Her scent as she passed was a mix of lavender, upset and fear. He turned to watch her leave, baffled. She was obviously scared to be in his company. How it came about that they had shared a room, he couldn’t understand. Maybe after a bit of a nap, things would be clearer. Or maybe not. He wasn’t sure he cared at that point. He had a room, and a bed, and he was exhausted.
He closed the door, setting his armour and swords by the bed before dropping onto it. He was asleep almost immediately.
-
Aniela had had a short, fitful sleep. She’d stayed up late, waiting for Eskel to return. Eventually she had laid down, but her worried thoughts had kept her awake a while longer. She’d then tossed and turned, waking often from troubled dreams. When the sun had started to creep over the horizon and Eskel still hadn’t returned, she’d given up on trying to sleep and gotten dressed. She was fussing over a shirt she’d already mended when Eskel finally returned to their room. Relief flooded her as he entered the room looking relatively unharmed. She jumped up from her perch on the bed and stepped towards him.
“Eskel! I’ve been so worried, are you alright?” Her eyes searched his face and armour, checking for obvious damage. While he looked a little worse for wear, somewhat bloody and dirty, she couldn’t see any concerning gashes or tears. Her worry edged off a little more until he reached towards his swords and she froze.
“Who are you?” he asked gruffly. “What are you doing in my room?”
Watching someone reach for a weapon while looking at her set off flashbacks from the last day in her village. After years of mistreatment, being attacked solely for the crime of her birth, of being different. Called names, hit with stones, boots, hands, called slurs. She shook her head. Eskel loved her, he would never harm her. She willed her heart to settle its frantic beating, her mind to calm. What had he just said, though?
“Wh-what do you mean?”
She watched him look around the room in confusion and tried to understand what was going on.
“What do you want?” he demanded. She looked into his eyes and she felt fear take hold, shivering down her spine. His eyes held none of their usual warmth or care. He was looking at her with confusion, suspicion: as a stranger.
“Eskel,” she said, willing her voice steady, “do you not know me?”
“No,” he answered gruffly, eyes narrowed, “should I?”
She gulped. She didn’t know what had happened on his hunt. Had he hit his head? Did he have some form of amnesia? But wouldn’t he then be more confused and lost in general? He seemed like himself, it was only her that seemed to be the problem. Her memories were fighting to take over her thoughts, people shouting, throwing things, pushing, hitting… her heart was beating like a drum inside her chest. If he didn’t remember her… maybe it was best to leave it that way. She sometimes worried that she was a burden. Eskel hadn’t asked to be saddled with her and her issues: she’d fallen into his lap, and he’d been too kind to push her out. He’d saved her that day in her village, and had let her tag along with him, having nowhere else to go. Then her life had been linked to his, and he had no escape, no choice. It wasn’t fair to him. Her mind was clouded and panicked and screaming for her to run. He didn’t know her. He had no reason to trust her, let alone care for her. The logical part of her brain knew that Eskel would never hurt anyone without just cause, stranger or no, but when she had seen him reach for his swords, logic had fled.
“It’s… uhm… the inn was short of rooms, and so we were rooming together,” she fabricated. He frowned and she rushed on. “I’m sure you want to rest, so I’ll… I’ll get out of your hair.” She hurried about the room, stuffing her things into a bag. She snatched the glamour bracelet off the table and slipped it on as she left.
She looked at him on her way to the door, wondering if it was the last time she would see him. Taking in his beautiful golden eyes, strong jaw, full and soft lips…
“Goodbye, then.” She felt she might choke on the words as they passed her lips. She looked at him a moment longer before stepping around him and out the door. She hurried down the hallway and stairs and out of the inn, as if she could outrun her memories, or the look on Eskel’s face.
She sped through the village, not even registering her surroundings. As she walked, her mind whirled and fought with itself. She had left Eskel without confirming that he was unharmed. What if he had a hidden injury that needed attending to? What if his apparent memory loss got him into trouble? But what help was she really to him? She couldn’t fight monsters, like Lambert’s witcher lover. Didn’t bring in coin, like Geralt’s bard. She was only a worry and a burden. A drain on Eskel’s coin and energy. But he loved her, and she was abandoning him. And what was her plan? She would make it maybe a week, a week and a half at the most, being apart from Eskel. She would start getting weaker well before that, as Yennefer’s spell that tied her life to Eskel’s stretched thin: it would be maybe three days before her energy would start to flag. But she’d been living on borrowed time anyways. She should have died a few years back, it had just caught up with her. Nothing to be dramatic over. Everyone’s time came eventually.
She walked through the day, desperate to make it to the next village. She had nothing with her to camp out with, having only taken her clothing and personal items, no bedroll or blanket, and now having no witcher to protect her.
She made it into the next town late at night, handing over too much of the coin she kept for markets in order to procure a room. One more thing to remind her of how much she depended on Eskel. The remaining coin wouldn’t last long, and she didn’t have a plan. But she was exhausted, both from walking and from her panic. Making any sort of plan was a problem for tomorrow. Tonight she gratefully fell into the small bed, not even bothering to take off her clothes before wrapping the blanket around herself and passing out.
She woke sometime later, in the dark of night, screaming from a nightmare, alone. Without Eskel’s warmth and reassurance, back rubs and gentle words, it was a long while before she fell back asleep.
-
Eskel slept through until dawn the next day, waking with a muzzy head. He reached out to the space beside him, confused when he found it empty. As he blinked his eyes and his mind woke up, he wasn’t sure what he had been looking for, but couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing.
He ordered a bath from the innkeeper, and after bathing he pulled out fresh clothing from his pack. The first shirt he pulled out, however, didn’t appear to be his. Upon unrolling it, it seemed to be a woman’s blouse. He frowned at it in confusion. Did it belong to the woman that had been in his room? But how had her shirt made its way into his pack? Nothing about the encounter or the woman was sitting right with him, and it was giving him a headache trying to figure it out. Had she been going through his things? But how had she managed to put her shirt into his pack? It didn’t make sense. Not much did, at the moment.
As he shook it out to look at it, the faint smell of lavender met his nose. It felt comforting, which was further confusing. The woman had smelled of lavender, but he didn’t know her, and no-one else he knew used the scent. Lavender was meant to be calming, sure, but he didn’t have a personal connection to the scent. Not that he could remember, at least. So why did he feel warm and comforted by it? Why did his chest feel so tight? He drew in a shaky breath. He still couldn’t remember the fight he’d been contracted for, and he worried he was forgetting more than just that. He hoped he might run into one of his brothers on the path soon, if his memory didn’t return before then. He hoped it would: he felt uneasy.
When he went to the stables to get Scorpion, he was further confused and dismayed when the stablehand led him to a horse he didn’t recognize, a dun mare.
“Are you…sure, that this is my horse?” Eskel asked the stablehand sceptically, hoping it was some sort of mistake.
The stablehand looked at him quizzically. “Aye, sir, this is the one you brought to me two days ago.” They petted the horse’s nose affectionately. “She’s been a good girl, haven’t you, Acorn?”
He had never had a horse named Acorn. The horse, the woman in his room, nothing made sense. He was glad he was headed to Kaer Morhen. He hoped his brothers would be able to help him sort things out.
Look, if I introduced a WIP on here excitedly and then promptly never mentioned it again, it doesn’t mean I’m not working on it, it means I’m slowly rotating it in my mind like a rotisserie chicken and then went out to the grocery store to buy several other rotisserie chickens while I wait for it to cook and then slowly started rotating those rotisserie chickens and repeat
CW: Not much. Just grief, mostly, and only in the second half. If you just don’t read after the time jump it’s like I wrote something happy!
Second half takes place during Chris’s early days at the safehouse
-
Ronnie likes to sing while she cleans, and the little house is full of music blasting from the computer speakers while she sweeps the living room floor, dust bunnies and the debris of living caught under the broom.
“I’ve been living to see you, dying to see you but it shouldn’t be like this… this was unexpected, what do I do now?”Ronnie’s singing voice is a rasping, deep alto, and the piano and drums seem to drift around it, as though the song were written for her.
Tristan sits on the couch, watching her as she does a little spin and winks at him. His legs are crossed, feet pulled up off the floor so he isn’t in the way. He watches her with bright green eyes in a pale freckled face, smiling with one front tooth slightly crooked.
There’s been talk of braces, but Ronnie just isn’t sure what it would be like, trying to get Tristan through that experience. And he’s only got the little bit of crookedness…
She’s distracted from her thoughts when Tristan sings, too.
“Could we start again, please?” His voice is a soft high tenor, and he sways heavily back and forth, back and forth, moving like a metronome with skin. Ronnie laughs, losing the thread of the song for a second. She’s a bright light, his mother, in ancient blue jeans and a t-shirt knotted at the waist with a hair tie.
She’s not running the vacuum today because he’s home, knowing how he hates the sound of it, the heavy deafening growl overwhelming his thoughts and racing up and down his skin. Instead, she cleans the longer way, by sweeping and sweeping and sweeping until the broom doesn’t pick anything else up, finally, until there’s no more dust left.
She’ll vacuum on days Aimi Nakamura takes Tris to practice, stealing herself a half an hour to use every single item in the house that Tristan can’t stand the sound of.
She’s seen ads in the magazines she reads while she sits in waiting rooms during Tristan’s therapy and doctor appointments for this new generation of Roombas with some kind of weird artificial intelligence, but the price point of those things made her eyes just about pop out of her head. Maybe for their anniversary in a few years. She and Paul will have a big one right after Tris turns sixteen, maybe then.
Four more years isn’t so long to wait. Until then, she can sweep.
“I think you’ve made your point now,” Tris keeps singing, and she slows, watching him. His eyes drift closed, and she watches with joy how he dips his head as he sways, his body moving with perfect freedom here in their house, unfettered by the eyes of anyone who doesn’t understand him. “You’ve even gone a bit too far to get your message home, before it gets too frightening we ought to call a halt-”
“Oh, could we start again, please?” Ronnie picks up the next line, and Tristan bites his lower lip with his top teeth, words dropping into a hum, chin tipped up. Back and forth, back and forth, shoulders-first.
She wonders what air feels like over his bare arms to his brain, as he raises his hands a little, his fingers bending and straightening, again and again. He’s tried to explain it, but her own brain just doesn’t work the same way, and it didn’t make much sense to her.
It makes sense to him, and really that’s what matters most. She doesn’t need to understand it. She just needs to see in his face the serenity of music and movement to know enough. It’s the same look he gets during gymnastics, when she watches with some part of her heart still in her throat at the risks her only child takes as he swings from uneven bar to uneven bar. His body knows how to move in the world in ways her own does not, and his mind thrills at the moments he feels like he’s flying.
Some boys, Ronnie thinks, were born for wings.
Her tree-climbing, backflipping, always-moving child was made for discovering the world through the grip of his fingers and the placement of his feet, and it’s a crime he lives in a time and a place where concrete and broken glass demand he wear shoes and snapping adult voices demand he be still.
“I’ve been living to see you,” Ronnie continues, crouching. Her singing voice thins as she sweeps a little pile of dust into the dustpan, goes strong and solid again as she walks over to the trash can to dump it in.
Tristan jumps in, and he can’t quite harmonize and his voice is sharp and slightly off but fuck it, Ronnie loves his singing voice more than she cares about bullshit like that. They sing together, and Ronnie grins at him, pretending the top of the broom is a microphone. She dips to one side, dramatically cradling it, like she’s Adele at a concert. “Dying to see you but it shouldn’t be like this. This was unexpected, what do I do now? Oh, could we start again, please?”
Tristan doesn’t pick up the rest of the melody - instead, he groans and rolls his eyes, putting his hands over them, still swaying heavily, more than he even was before. “Mom, oh my-my-my-my God.”
Before she had a preteen, she’d had no idea just how much disdain a child could put into three simple syllables. She’s not looking forward to ages thirteen through eighteen, that’s not sure.
That’s a lie.
Yes, she is.
Watching him turn into a grown man is going to be the greatest thing she’s ever seen, and Ronnie Higgs knows it.
“What? You don’t like Mom being a pop star?” She laughs, and the sun behind her baby boy’s head turns his hair into a copper halo around him. Paul’s perfect little clone, her son, except for how tightly he hugs her, how he sings with her and sways to the music where Paul would just be puzzled. As confused about what she gets out of it as she is about what Tristan gets out of swaying.
Between the two of them, though, she has everything she needs.
He peers at her from behind his fingers. “Mother, please,”He says, and she knows he’s picked that tone up from Lisa Huang, who would never dare use it to her own mother’s face. But coming from Tristan, it feels silly, not sarcastic.
She sighs and leans on the broom, resting the side of her face on her hands over the top. “You over this one? Should we do a different musical? A singer or something? I still need to dust the fan blades.”
Tristan’s hands drop and he licks at his lips, eyes moving over the room, up to the ceiling fan, bouncing off his mother’s face and down to the floor. His hands tap over his legs, marking rhythm on his thighs, as pale and freckled as his face where they stick out beneath the loose mesh basketball shorts he wears whenever she doesn’t make him wear something else. “Um, what, what, what what what what about-”
“No Katy Perry,” She says, seeing the look in his eyes.
He groans again and flops over onto his side, with all the drama inherent in his age. He rolls onto his back and turns to look in her general direction, glaring without any real anger. “Mom, you, you, you said, you-you-… yousaid…”
“I know what I said. I’m also saying no Katy Perry. We had to listen to her for like an hour on our last drive to practice, and another hour back, so think of something else. I’m all Katy Perry’d out, baby boy. Pick a musical.”
He pouts, but it doesn’t last - it never does. Instead, he gets that smile on his face that means he’s thought of something he imagines is very clever as a comeback. She raises her eyebrows, waiting. His hair falls over his eyes. One of Paul’s coworkers used to call them his Irish eyes.
“Um, what, what, what about… wh, what about… um, um…”
She waits - he knows what he’s trying to say, he just needs time to get his tongue and teeth to cooperate with his racing thoughts, for his mind to slow down enough for the words to find their way out.
“What about Backstreet Boys?” His voice is innocent enough.
She bursts out laughing again. “Oh, you know my weakness, huh? Talk 90’s pop to me and I’m weak. Yeah, yeah. Let me switch up the album.”
She knows which one he wants, too - it’s the one she used to play nonstop while pregnant with him, a weeping seventeen-year-old who still had a CD player with bulky headphones listening to the saddest songs she could find over and over and over while inside her, Tristan’s tiny feet pressed all the air from her lungs and kicked so hard and so much she was half-convinced he’d burst out of her like the guy in Alien. She should’ve known back then he was never going to sleep.
When the incredibly of-its-time synthetics and drums kick in, with carefully orchestrated laughter over the introductory melody, she grabs a dust cloth and drags over a chair, clambering up to run the cloth over the blades of the ceiling fan, one by one.
“I may run and hide when you’re screamin’ my name, all right-… but let me tell you now there are prices to fame, all right-…”
She winks down at Tristan.
“All of our time spent in flashes of li-iiiiight…”
Tristan hums more or less with the music and watches her, his fingers dancing over his stomach, the couch around him, the air itself. He grins when she winks, pretends he’s absolutely embarrassed by her dancing where she stands, bouncing on her feet to the beat the same way he does.
“When you were a baby,” Ronnie says cheerfully, sneezing as dust settles in and up her nose, “I used to play this whenever you wouldn’t stop crying. You’d cheer right up. Used to tell your dad I sure you’d heard it when you were still growing, before you were born, that you knew the music as well as you knew my heartbeat.”
“I, I, I like your heartbeat,” Tristan says, slightly distant. He’s listening to the music more than he is her, but the upside to ADHD, Ronnie thinks, is he can half-pay attention to about twelve things at once, even if he can’t put his whole attention on anything unless that little switch in his brain demands it. And then God help anyone who tries to interrupt.
“I like yours, too,” she says, laughter in her voice, climbing back down and dragging the chair back to the computer desk in the corner of the living room. “Your dad absolutely hates Backstreet Boys, though, so that’s why they’re just for us, huh?”
“Just for us,” He echoes happily. The song switches to the next one, a little slower.
Ronnie hums, looking around, hands on her hips. “Shelves, bookshelves and then the kitchen, okay?”
“Okay.”
She hums along with the music, and halfway through taking the bookshelves from dusty to slightly shining and smelling of the lemon-scented wood polish she uses - the only one Tristan doesn’t hate - she catches herself singing again, too.
Tris sings with her, standing beside her, bumping her occasionally as he sways. She’s not sure what she did to deserve a perfect kid, but there are days like today where she’s sure no mother on earth has ever had a better son than him.
“Grandma’s Trinkets", a book my mom and I collaborated on is now available on Amazon!! Memory loss has been a topic close to home in my family, since my grandfather struggled with dementia, and my mom and I wanted to offer a book that gave hope and comfort to children in this situation. Any support would mean the world to us! <3
He looks down in horror at his leg that was still being held in place by a fist vlenched around his ankle. The stench of burnt flesh clings to his nostrils and the heat was intense.
The pain even more so.
He had made the horrible mistake of trusting the Professor, not once but twice now.
Curse Dragon, why did he have to suggest him of all people.
Tears slip as he remembers the desperation he felt to get his old memories back, to understand who he was. Claw was an empty shell of a man that had once been in his place. He wanted to know who he was.
He feels himself slip into unconsciousness as his thoughts wander. He was sure there was a way to get his memories back. There had to be. He couldn’t bear a life of not knowing himself.
The rebel leader had told him he could get them back here. He was a rather agreeable fellow, as charismatic as one might expect. Claw met him for tea on Fridays.
His eyes close but he is suddenly jolted back into the waking world when the brand on his leg is prodded by the man still wielding the iron in the other and.
“Wake up, Isaiah. I still have a lot of work for you to do.”
His wound is jabbed again and the Professor laughs as he lets out a scream.
“One on each leg now, Isaiah. You should know if you pull any more stunts like you did last time, I’ll put one right in your forehead so everyone can know who you belong to.”
Claw takes gasping breaths as he looks down at his legs, each horrible marked with the initials T.P. One brand still burning bright red.
He should have remained nameless. He never should have accepted the offer. His memories aren’t worth having to go through the hell of being the Professor’s pet again.
But he never could have known. It was an inescapable trap from the start.
The Professor presses a kiss to his forehead, a mock display of affection. Claw’s eyes sting with tears as he feels heat rising up him with humiliation.
“I can’t wait to put you to work again. We’re going to have so much fun together.”
