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"You don't know?"
"I don't think so."
"You should know."
"I know what I don't like. Prickly sweaters, terrorism, the color orange-”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Jun huffed, head lying on his chest, hearing the rhythm of his blood.
Marcus smiled at her annoyance. His fingers wandered between strands of her hair, without even realizing when he’d begun to do so.
“I guess, I never had time to figure out what my favorite things are. Unless they were in some way useful to my uncle, they had no real importance in my life.” She said, feeling an odd taste of emptiness from her answer. So many things had been robbed from her. Her childhood and her sense of self being two of them. “I don’t like to kill. I know that.”
“When we are done here, you’ll have more than enough time.” The purposeful withdrawal of the word ‘if’ was uncharacteristic for him. He’d never been an optimist, but something about waking up beside her had granted Marcus a temporary pass.
Along with him, she allowed herself to hope for a time long after this was over. What had been left in her enclosure of acid would come back. Even if slowly, they would all come back in the end.
“What if I am too far gone to be a person anymore?” She whispered. Dread pumped through her system.
His hand stopped mid movement. “That’s not possible.”
Jun looked up at him. “I think it is. I don’t even know what my favorite food is, let alone what I am.”
“Start with the basics.” He suggested, pushing back a piece of hair that had fallen into her eyes. “You don’t like orange. Do you like yellow?”
“I like it better than orange.”
“What about blue?”
Jun pondered, unknowingly snuggling up closer to him. "It’s a good color, just not when I wear it.”
Marcus watched her, thinking that, if the world could occupy him for a second, understand how it feels to be in her unadulterated presence, it would surely realize there was nothing -no deity, no miracle- better than she. “Why is that?” he asked.
“I feel cold, I don’t know how to explain it.” the girl scrunched up her nose, puzzled.
It might not have seemed so to her, but the description was somewhat accurate.
“Do you feel good when you wear red?”
“Yes, I think I do.” She nodded, a tiny grin crawling its way to her cheeks.
