Talk to me,I sign.What's really going on?
He stares at me for a long moment, those blue eyes full of something that looks way too much like self-loathing for my comfort. Then, slowly, painfully, he signs:Don't want her to see.
See what?
My face.
The admission hangs between us, heavy as lead. I knew this was coming—it always does with him—but it still makes my chest ache.
She's already seen part of it,I remind him gently.In the loft, you said?—
Part.His sign is bitter.Accident. Mask slipped.
But not your whole face?
He shakes his head, and the movement is so full of shame and self-loathing I want to punch something. Preferably whoever made him believe he's something to be ashamed of.
The whole world. I’d have to punch out the whole fucking world.
Will you ever let her?I ask.
The question makes him freeze. I can see him wrestling with it, that internal war between hope and fear that's been raging in him since the day our parents took him in. His hands lift, fall, lift again.
No.
It's not defiance in that sign. It's defeat. Pure, crushing acceptance that this is how it'll always be.
Wraith—
She will scream.The signs are sharper, angrier.Everyone does.
I wish I could tell him I didn’t. God, I wish I could. But I did. I was a kid—we both were—but I did. And I know he remembers that day just as vividly as I do.
We were wrestling in the backyard, sparring and playing as alpha boys do. He was massive even back then, impossible to best once he got a hold of me. He had me pinned, laughing that growling huff of his as I struggled to get the upper hand, blue eyes bright above his equally blue bandana.
Give up? he'd signed with one hand.
Never.
I managed to wriggle free enough to grab a fistful of his hair. Just trying to get leverage, trying to flip him.
I didn't mean to tear his bandana.
I didn't mean to make the sound I made.
Just like everyone else, I thought he was a monster, too.
The guilt rears up, cold and fresh like a writhing snake uncoiling in my chest. I can still see it perfectly. My brother frantically signingsorry, sorry, sorrywith one shaking hand while clutching his face with the other, scrambling backwards into the shadows of the garage, blood dripping through his fingers from where he'd bitten his own tongue in panic.
I'd called after him to wait, but he was already gone.
He didn't come out for three days. Not even for food. Mom left plates outside his door that went untouched. When he finally emerged, he had a new mask, thicker, darker.
And he never let me see his face again.
Give her a chance,I sign finally, trying to put all the conviction I feel into the movements.She's not like the others. She hit Valek with a fucking fire extinguisher. She lived in maintenance tunnels. She's tough.
Not like me. At least not when I was a dumbass kid.
