I wrote this around 7 in the morning - you know, after having woken up earlier that day at 2 in the afternoon. Like... having slept, later on after writing this, at 7:30 in the morning.
Anyways, what I'm saying is, don't have any expectations.
He works harder than he has ever before – he's working two positions after all, filling in for the co-shop-owner who was unceremoniously hit over the head by a castle wall. His eyes are nearly continuously bloodshot, a result of endless one-nighters poring over detailed blueprints and sketches. He's retired entirely to the upper floors of the shop, leaving management to Verity and her god-sent cousin while he scribbles, double-checks, and crosses out ideas for new inventions. He rarely eats, barely sleeps, turns away owls bearing concerned mail and eschews invitations to family dinners.
Anything he can do, to dedicate his life to that one painting.
There is only one small window in his humble two-roomed setting and no mirrors at all. But he doesn't need a mirror – all he needs is to look at that stretch of canvas that's terrorizing the wall behind him, the dried oil paint that envelops his dreams and shadows his every waking moment.
Identical faces. The same sharp, jutting chins, the same flops of shocking red-orange hair, the same flashing blue eyes and wicked grins. Or, not so similar anymore – there's that one extra ear, and his own skin is paler now from lack of sun exposure. And, of course, he doesn't smile anymore. Not truly.
Sure, he offers the peremptory forced grin when his twin cracks another horrible joke at his own expense. But the impious twinkle in his eye, the smouldering vitality that added a jaunty step to his walk… that's all gone now. It's no more than a memory, sinfully echoed in a portrait that taunts him with every strikingly familiar laugh. Every remembrance of what he has lost. What he is losing every day.
He can't quite figure out why the portrait remains there; after all, it's quite in his capability to tear the dratted thing down from the walls and throw it out of the window, chuck it out of his life. Or perhaps that's being horribly, overly optimistic. More than likely. After all, every person is deep down inside masochistic, and he suspects wizards more than most. Why else are they the only ones whose dead can come back as ghosts, live on forever as portraits, be revived through necromantic rituals requiring horrible, penultimate sacrifices? Wizards live in the past, he thinks; a society where nobody finds it strange that students converse with deceased professors daily, where imparted spirits of dead souls leave an impact on those very much alive.
Cause them to die, too.
He cracks a joke back because he can't stand to see his twin upset. He tries his best to smile and to further their revolving, two-partnered masquerade. But the paint is peeling, and the clock has struck midnight long ago.
It's funny how even though his brother is dead, it's he who looks the most alive – fiery trails of orange and stunning shades of blue can never truly fade, not on parchment and not on canvas.
It is only memory that fades. A soul, that fades.
And it's funny how he's the one who's truly dying, the one whose smiles look more and more like they belong in dull art textbooks, the one whose colours are fading to a dim pencil sketch.
But he loves his brother. And, after all, he is the older twin. The protector. The shield. The level-headed one (relatively, of course). The one less impious, the one less noticeable, the one whose name came after 'and.'
He used to think that it should have been he who died instead. He who mattered less. He who would have been missed less.
And if he, somehow, can turn back the clock – if he can keep his twin alive, can give him back all that he has lost – then what would he not give, to make it so?
Not-so-identical faces. One softer forgotten smile, one grin more tantalizing and wicked. A pair of washed-out watercolor eyes, and a pair that spits blue sparks. One ear where the other has two. And, simply, one slowly fading soul.