Violetispersephone - Violetpersephone

Sophie Isabella FW25

Forward, but Never Forget/XOXO - Ch: 32 - Sunk Cost Fallacy

Snippet:

A tiny tremor—a temblor—rattles the dishes on the table.

Vi is hit by a different quake. As if the floor, the walls, the balcony are falling away. Everything, except Silco's words. Throughout the night, they've strobed at the back of her mind.

Vander, saying the same things. Vander, warning her. Vander, and Blut.

Blut.

Vi's mind, struggling against the epiphany, bursts at the seams. Memories burst too: a red tide gone blue. She'd spent all this time fixated on him. The man who's ruined her sister, and her life. The man whose accent—when it lapses from sterling correctness—bares the serrated edges of the Lanes. Whose voice—when it's not spouting convoluted spiels—becomes soothing as a bedtime story. Whose eyes—red and blue—are a mirror reflecting more than her hatred back to her, but the safety of a simpler palette.

"You," Vi chokes. "I know you."

"What?"

Vi's lungs seize. Gods, she'd been so stupid. She'd had the puzzle sitting right in front of her, and hadn't seen it. Because she couldn't accept what it meant.

The man who's taken everything from her, the man she's hated for seven long years, the man she's determined to hate until her dying breath:

They're the same.

She remembers him—Blut—tossing her to the ceiling to her gleeful shrieks. Sitting, crosslegged, with a comic book open in his lap, and reciting the dialogue in funny voices. Scooping her into his arms and carrying her into the Last Drop, humming a tune that's now embedded into her bones...

Silco's knuckles rap on the table. "What's gotten into you, girl?"

She wants to say, "Nothing." Except her throat is glued. So are her eyes.

This man. This murderer.

The stranger... and who he once was.

"It's you."

"Me?"

"Blut." She points a quavering finger. "The one Vander always talked about. God, why didn't I—?"

Silco's expression morphs from surprise, to understanding, to the smallest iota of apprehension. "What did he say about Blut?"

"He was Vander's childhood friend." Vi can barely squeeze the words out. Her heart is racing a mile a minute. "He was—the smartest guy Vander knew. And he—he was my friend, too. When Mom and I were staying at the Last Drop, Blut was there. He'd call me Pet, and tickle me, and make me laugh. In the evenings, we'd play in the cellar. Hide-and-seek. Sock puppets. Whack-a-mole. Sometimes, he'd read to me. The old comics from the trunk—"

Very quietly, Silco says, "Mavis and Mutthead."

"He'd put on a show. Like a vaudeville act. He'd do the funniest voices." She tries, and fails, to replicate the squeaky tone. "'Hoy, Mavvy! What'd the ceiling say to the wall?' 'Dunno, Mutthead. What?' 'Hold me up, I'm plastered!'" The laugh is a paroxysm. "Vander told me... he'd died on the Day of Ash. Killed during the blast on the Bridge. Nothing left but cinders."

Silco's jaw works, as if his tongue has burnt to cinders too. "Vander said that?"

"Every year." Her breath hitches. "I never forgot. But I never put it together. He—you—"

Silco's expression holds a shadowed emptiness. The shark-eye inverts: a trick of light. The blue blooms: bright as memory.

"It's a lie," he says.

AO3 - Forward, But Never Forget/XOXO

FFnet - Forward, But Never Forget (XOXO)

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the most fun a girl can have is finding parallels, noticing patterns, making connections, contemplating

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Slowly but surely I've been making progress on Blood Meridian. Junior year of college is kicking my ass but semester ending means more time to write! Very exciting!

Young Woman With Sword by Jules-Élie Delaunay (1828-1891)