Iris

13 | parents

tw: mention of a PTSD flashback. please be careful while reading :)

     EVERYTHING HAPPENED so rapidly. One moment, Atlas and I were peering at the laptop screen, attempting to process the words scattered across its surface, and the other moment, Marcus was standing in front of us, flames of anger fuming within his hazel eyes, as he reached for the flash memory and snatched it away from our reach.

My limbs refused to move, and my eyes refused to leave the spot where my parents' images had been previously located. My blurred gaze blankly peered at the dark screen, and my ears took in the silence that had encased my brother's room—that had slowly crawled to each and every corner of its dark walls and clung tightly onto their surfaces.

I expected Marcus to blow up; that was what I had assumed when I first saw his figure walk through the door. When I held his gaze and saw the emotions that had tainted his hazel irises; the hurt, the anger, and the guilt. But none of that happened. He didn't say a word.

He didn't yell or scold us. He didn't get into an argument with Atlas. And he didn't say anything to me. Nothing. He said nothing.

And yet he seemed almost afraid. As though the simplest word he'd say would break Atlas and I. As though the slightest voice that'd leave his mouth would crack the dam his eyes had spent too long to build; let it crumble and ruin everything he had worked so hard for.

All he did was taking the flash memory and staring angrily at both Atlas and I. Was he actually angry? Or was he disappointed?

I had wiped my tears off and averted my blurred gaze away from him and towards the screen. I had been mentally pleading for my parents' images to appear again ever since, just so that I could get the chance to study their features; to know how they both looked. And to see if I looked like any of them—if I had gotten my eyes from my mother or my father. If I had inherited anything from them at all.

And even though I knew that the darkness wasn't willing to detach itself from the screen, I desperately asked it to vanish. To disappear. Because maybe, if I gazed longer at my parents' images, their features would get engraved on my mind and appear when I go to sleep—instead of my fosters'. Maybe, I'd get to have a conversation with one of them in my dreams. Or even hug them and get to know how would their embraces feel like.

None of that would be real. But any of it would still be something. Their voices could perhaps soothe me to sleep. And their embraces could perhaps be a source of comfort whenever I'd feel like my fosters had returned. All of that would be a result of my imagination but would still manage to fill the voidness that my heart held.

I swallowed harshly as I attempted to lock my thoughts away from my mind's reach; I pushed them away and forced their grip to falter, to loosen around my chaotic mind. For a moment, I believed that I had succeeded. And for a moment, everything went blank.