I don't own TVD.
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prologue
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The man in the painting is smiling, or perhaps it was my artist eyes which can see the way his jaw curved, the way his lids bunched every so slightly around the lidded sensual gaze, and the way one corner of the lip seemed an inch higher than the other. It wasn't a blatant smile — it was miles more mysterious than even the smile of Mona Lisa — but mixed with the expression coating his features, that smile seemed intimate, like it was only reserved for the bedroom in the eyes of a precious lover.
I look at the painting — my painting — and it should have been familiar, should have been recognisable, but no memory comes to mind. I know those strokes, those techniques, I can see my signature in the lower right-hand corner and I can smell my usual paint, dulled by age and sunlight… yet, the man in the painting stares, and I stare back, hollow, empty and definitely missing something.
Who are you?
But the man in the painting, hauntingly beautiful, does not answer me. He just gazes back at me with half-lidded eyes, shoulders drawn tight, hands clutching draped white sheets, head tipped back, silent and enigmatic, and frozen in his magnificence.
Frustration is usually a frequent visitor during the times when I grow the nerve to shift the curtains from the frame, but this time it does not appear. Instead, I feel an old and all-encompassing notion of defeat.
With a trembling hand, I close the silk curtain. My arm drops limply to my side, lively as a rock.
I feel run down, tired of living like this — tired of chasing after a blurred dream, but I have always been a curious person, and being unable to remember two years of my life makes that curiosity itch.
Two years of my life are gone…and all I have left is a painting of an unattainable man birthed by my hands.
