Same thing.
I swallowed hard, but my throat felt tight too, like everything in me had decided to close at once. You’d hate this, little Ghost. Not because it’s violent or easy to understand, but because nothing is happening on the outside and everything is happening where no one can see it. And you’re still here anyway… you always are. I dragged my eyes back up to him. He was still looking at me, and there was something in his face now I hadn’t seen before. Pity, or something close to it. It made my jaw tighten without me noticing until it started to hurt.
“What happened, Rowan?”He asked, softer now.“Where have you been all these years?”
It hit somewhere I wasn’t prepared for, not because of the question itself, but because of everything attached to it. It came in flashes, quick and uneven, no order to it. A room that smelled wrong, hands grabbing too tight, voices that didn’t stay consistent long enough to trust, the feeling of being watchedeven when no one was there, being moved from place to place like it didn’t matter where I ended up, just that I wasn’t someone else’s problem anymore.
I felt it building too fast, too much at once. Like it was all trying to come up at the same time, and if I let it, if I let even one piece settle properly, the rest would follow and I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t keep control of it. I straightened, forcing my body back into place before it could go any further.
Cut.
It.
Off.
Stop.
It.
“I don’t…”I started, then stopped, pressing my lips together for a second before trying again.
“I don’t understand.”My voice was steadier now, not because it felt better, I was just forcing it.“I was in an orphanage,”I said, choosing each word like it mattered more than it did.
“Later I was placed with a foster family.”
I held his gaze, refusing to let it slip.
“You must’ve stopped looking,”I added, and there was something under that, even if I didn’t push it fully.“You could’ve found me.”
My fingers curled slightly against my knee.
“There would’ve been records. Reports. Something.”I swallowed whatever reaction tried to surface.“They don’t just leave kids without tracing where they came from. They would’ve looked for you.”
I leaned forward a fraction without thinking about it.
“So where were you?”
Silence filled the room again, and of course it did. People never answer right away when the question actually matters. He justsat there for a second, looking at me like he was trying to decide where to even begin. Then he exhaled, long and tired.
“It wasn’t…”he started, then stopped himself, shaking his head.“It wasn’t like it is now.”
That annoyed me. How fucking simple he made it sound. He leaned forward a little, elbows resting loosely on his thighs, hands coming together like he needed something to do with them.
“When you disappeared, everything was handled differently,”he continued.“There wasn’t… systems like there are now. Nothing connected the way you’d expect.”I didn’t interrupt, I wanted to but I couldn’t.
“It was all paperwork,”he went on, glancing down briefly before looking back at me.
“Reports, files, things stored physically. If something was written down in one place, it didn’t mean it existed anywhere else. Not unless someone carried it there themselves.”
He paused, like he was checking if I was following. I was, I just didn’t like it.“There wasn’t any automatic matching,”he said.
“No DNA databases that could connect a missing child to… anything else. No central system that tracked everything in one place. It was all regional, separated. Police handled their part, social services handled theirs, and they didn’t always… communicate the way they should have.”
Should have… right. He rubbed his hands together briefly.
“To the police, you were a missing child,”he said.
“A case. A file that stayed open for a while, then…”His hesitation cut straight through me.
