mother: n. 1. A female parent. 2. A woman having some of the responsibility or authority of a mother. 3. A creative source; origin.
It would have been easier, Near thinks, to have said he didn't remember her. Because when they dragged him into Roger's narrow, lightless office at Wammy's and asked him to explain himself, give a little bit about what you remember, it would have been too easy to sit and shiver and say, "Sorry?" over and over, wide eyes and looking lost. So he couldn't have played up the foreign angle, like he'd heard some of the others talking about doing; well, that wasn't necessarily true, he could have gone for French Canadian and they might have let it slide. They were only wanting to help after all. But well-meaning or not, he thinks, looking at the faces of Roger across the expanse of mahogany from him, and at the woman who brought him in, a short, dimpled kindly thing, divulging one's insides is where trouble starts. One could lose a lot. Of course, there wasn't much to be lost anymore.
But then, he just said it.
"She's gone," and he feels the tears prick at his eyes but he doesn't let them come and everyone stares and waits.
"Who did it?" the woman asked hesitantly, and Roger starts, rising halfway from his desk like he was going to tell her to stop, but he remains sitting, moving like he is only adjusting himself, and Near is left staring at the grains of his desk, pretending to be figuring out how to answer. He isn't. All he's doing is seeing what has happened, seeing the flames rise up hot and putrid and choking and waking not knowing where he is.
They've got it wrong. And though he wasn't planning on saying anything, though that's the smart choice, the choice he should make, he says, "That wasn't her. Not my mother. My aunt."
They only look at him, expecting more, and Roger says, in his attempt at a consoling voice, "I see. We were told... Where is your mother, Nate? Is she around, then? Is there some way we can contact her?"
Only something one would ask a genius child, Near would muse in retrospect, but at the time he opens his mouth to answer, to make the old man and the woman stop staring so much, he is flooded with a rush of images, of the white cotton curtains blowing in the wind, and her laughter, the sound of a puzzle being spilled out across the floor, the rough feel of the edges of each individual piece, the sound of singing close in his ear, "Mon petit enfant...". Then the smell of chemicals, over-scrubbed floors to fight infection, all white everywhere. Talks of custody he doesn't understand.
Sterile white forever.
"She's gone," he says to Roger, again, like a broken record, and then he starts to cry.
Roger does get up this time, and accidentally he knocks over the can of pencils on his desk, and they fall, showering Near's lap and the floor between him and the desk in an explosion of bright yellow and rubber erasers.
"There, there," the woman says, coming over, and moving to take Near by the shoulders. He flinches back, though she's too distracted by her own illusions of being a compassionate caregiver to pick up on it.
"Fifty-seven," whispers Near.
The woman stops, and Roger, a question forming on his lips, closes his mouth and opens it again in a new, a safer semblance.
"What was that, my boy?" He adds the last part like an afterthought.
"Fifty-seven," Near intones. His vision, still blurred, is fixed on a point behind Roger's head, but he lets his eyes drift down to the floor, only for a moment, at the scattered pencils, some of which have rolled under the desk and are now lost to sight. It doesn't matter. He caught them falling.
"I see," Roger says, some mass greed, some dawning of glee forming in his eyes. Near's vision slowly unblurs. It's over.
a/n: *disclaimer here* I don't own anything, obviously. Please review if you've read and tell me what you think! If I get enough reviews from people who'd like to see more, I'll update again soon : )