. . .
"We never see others. Instead, we see only aspects of ourselves that fall over them. Shadows. Projections. Our associations."
-Chuck Palahniuk.
. . .
The first and last time William Veil and the newly turned goddess Proserpina had seen Rei Kashima awake and very much alive, the old man had tilted his head at them with a lazy grin, teeth all sharp white and despite his old age, eyes half-lidded as he silently looked upon the two of them for a while, his gaze staying and lingering on the former demigoddess...
"You two looked so much like your parents," Rei had told them, almost gushing, if it weren't for the grin that was all teeth completely at odds with his gentle, almost grandfatherly tone.
That is, if they ever met their grandfather... that's how William would have imagined he would have sounded like, was what William was thinking as he awkwardly glanced at his sister who hadn't torn her eyes away from the son of Hypnos for one second ever since they had stepped foot in his room.
...Half-sister, he supposed.
Doesn't really matter.
But it was true, anyway.
Before finding himself face to face with the god of the underworld, William had wrongfully assumed Winters simply takes after their mother the same way he was practically the splitting image of their... his... father.
Winters, Proserpina-whichever name she's going to use from now on. This is going to take him a while, a very long while to get used to-looked so much like her biological father, it's not even funny.
"Understatement," he muttered.
The old man laughed, as if in on some inside joke.
Other than personally knowing their parents before they passed away, William thinks the old man had never made him feel so uneasy despite supposedly being a 'family friend'. Despite being the one to take him in for some time as a legal guardian.
The amused, almost resigned looks thrown Proserpina's way only served to make him feel worse. It made his blood run cold, no matter how much he pointedly ignored it.
Childishly, he thinks:
If he ignore it, it will go away, right?
(Rei wouldn't look at her like that if she was still human, something awful and cynical inside William suddenly hisses, much to his guilt because it feels a whole lot like a betrayal to the one person who had done everything to protect him, even if the admittance was just in his thoughts.
Still, his shame boils and burns him over like a hot-iron brand searing against his eyes, making them water until he hurriedly blinks them away lest someone sees.
His skin prickles with a phantom pain.
Winters is Proserpina now. A goddess. She's not human-was never truly human to begin with. There is something fundamentally different inside the being that raised and protected William far more longer than either of his parents or the son of Hypnos that ultimately separates her from the masses they are to interact with from this point on.
She can talk and smile and laugh with him, she can go to school and classes with him, if that's what she wants. She can clean and cook and eat with him just like how it used to, but Winters will never be the same as him.
Sometimes, William finds himself wondering what Rei sees when he looks at them, at him, at Winters. And William fears Rei can see, can already tell that his sister wasn't really his sister, not fully at least...
