A/N: I always wondered how come Jason (or any of his loved ones for that matter), never dwelled too much on the fact that he has a different face, not even for a moment. I mean, the guy looks completely different...shouldn't there have been some kind of a period of adjustment for somebody? This came to me so I had to put it down as a tiny one shot.
I do not own the characters.
Reflections of my mind…and of you!
It was a simple act of walking past a mirror. There was nothing new, nor momentous, nor feat defying happening other than he walked past the mirror in his home…a mirror he rarely noticed was there most times…when in the next second he was stopped in his tracks and blasted with feelings he never even knew were buried deep inside him. He turned to fully stare upon the face looking back, seeing nothing new other than…it wasn't really him. Sure, it was the face he'd known for the past couple years, only face he'd known for the first one, until he learned who he was and saw pictures of what he looked like before.
Even then he had felt a sense of unreal, but there had been no unsettling emotional recognition - given that he couldn't remember being the man in those pictures. To him, they had merely been pieces of glossy paper with a face he didn't recognize that held memories important to other people…but now that his own memories had returned, Jason Morgan found it unnerving at times when he'd catch his reflection - or rather his reflection would catch him, off guard.
Moving closer to the man in the mirror, he ran his hand along a structured jawline that didn't feel all that different, but marvel and a subtle difference was indeed there. Blue eyes lowered to the old photo of him with his wife and son sitting on the mantle below, and except for the eyes and lips, everything about the face he'd known was totally different.
His hand kept stroking from one side to the next, almost as if he was expecting it to stroke his old face back into place. It was a quandary to him how the doctors had been able to reconstruct him to look like this, with practically no trace of the face he'd had before. It's no wonder no one had recognized him, no wonder his wife looked at him and had no inkling of who he was. He wouldn't have recognized a thing in himself either!
He lifted the picture of his old self and held it up against his new face, staring at them both in the mirror, trying desperately to find something to compare in the two. Still nothing, except for the eyes and the lips. It would have been impossible for his wife to pick him out by the eyes and lips, impossible for anybody. Still, Jason had to admit to himself that he sometimes thought that she should've known. Deep down, she should've recognized, sensed something about him. At least find something familiar and question it even - he would've settled for a comment about the similarity of their eyes - she had spent so much time looking into them that he had a hard time processing that nothing about her new friend's eyes had seemed the least bit familiar to her. Not to mention she was a damn better PI than that.
He knew it was unfair to lay any blame at those delicate, high heel booted feet, knew the circumstances that surrounded his reappearance were outlandish and biased, but he felt such a deep regret for all the time he'd spent away from his family. So much time was wasted not raising his precious son…not being part of his daily routine, not getting to know his tiny mind and understand his childhood fears and thoughts. So much time had been spent not loving his wife, not erasing her grief and touching her mind, not treasuring her.
So much time had been wasted on someone so unworthy!
Taking a deep, calming breath that released into a sigh, Jason stopped his mind from traveling the path of unconscionable transgressions against him and his family. Every time he went there, he got murderously angry all over again, and that raw, destructible emotion would unfold irrevocably if left unleashed, to the detriment of everyone involved. No, he moved his thoughts away from the evil deeds done to him by someone else's twisted, extorting version of love, and thought back to his finally rightfully reunited family, a sense of calm once again washing him before transforming to mild regret.
How many times would his tortured brain fail him and the woman he loved more than his next breath? How many times would she be forced to live through a bout of him forgetting her and everything they'd been to each other, to him pushing her aside because of it, hurting her without meaning to or even understanding how much? How many times would she find the strength and the resolve to love him through to knowing her again? How many times could he expect her to?
He stared harder at the reflection thinking angrily to himself, how could you forget her? She's everything! She's been your rock, your confidante, your fiercest defender and constant support…the unwaveringly true love of your life…how could you ever see her and not know her? Through anything, some part of you should always, always recognize her…seeing how she's embedded in every molecule of you!
Maybe he had. He thought back to the year he spent getting to know her, to how easy it had been with her from the start, how forgiving she had been to the end of the farce. He'd never known anyone more loyal, more sincere, more real! He had no guards with her, kept no secrets or doubts from her - she had been the greatest friend and most compelling companion. He should have known - it had been so very easy from the very beginning with her. The flashes of her had seemed out of place and bogglingly crazy, so he'd brushed them aside as simply his jumbled mind playing tricks…he hadn't yet learned that the euphoria in each one could never be fabricated or duplicated…they were as real as everything about her!
It was his face - she hadn't seen anything of the man she loved in the stranger's face. The face he lived with now. Lucky for him he'd never been one to hold onto sentiments or rested on emotions, or he would have one heck of a time coming to grips with the new him. There would have definitely been the need for a period of adjustment and he could even hear them throwing around the dreaded word, therapy. He was far from flip, but one face was as good as the other, if it meant he got to go home to her. Any face acceptable to her was one he'd gladly wear, for being with her was his life. Being a family with her was his destiny. Raising children and living a lifetime with her, was his calling.
It startled him whenever the mirror showed him this face, because in his mind still lived the other…but it was nothing he couldn't get used to. It was a good face and it had served him well. He probably even missed it a little, but in the large scope of things it was a small price to pay for the much larger blessings the new face brought him. His son was still young enough to replace one face for the other without trauma resulting from the switch, and his wife was loving enough to adapt to any package that held the man she loved. His mother and the rest of his family welcomed him regardless. Yes, he missed his old face at times…but his blessings were infinite!
Sam walked quietly through the front door and saw the man she loved doing something you never see…he was staring at himself in the mirror? Something in the way he was pondering his reflection moved her to not disturb him. She eased into the room and pushed the door shut softly behind her, bracing back against it, her hands clasping the knob as she studied him standing feet away from her. Instantly she could tell he was contemplating the changes to his face.
Admitting to herself how odd it had been for her too at first, she looked keenly at the reflection in the mirror. It was an handsome, angular face and she loved it dearly, but she had to admit that she sometimes missed the one he had before too. Her mind had engraved every line, every contour, every feature of that beloved face, had seen it in dreaming as much as in waking hours, had loved everything about it. It had been the face to the heart and soul of the man who'd changed her world and given her everything in it that she held dearest. It was the face she'd pick out of any crowd from a thousand feet away, the face that told the story of the heart he often kept so well hidden. She had loved that face!
But she loved this one now too! It held the eyes that held the window to the soul that mirrored her own. It held the lips that kissed the hurt and bestowed the love from the heart of the man who claimed hers. She should have known him from the start…she should've known those eyes. But they hadn't held the love she'd known them to before, hadn't held the memories of adventures and experiences that lived between only them. Without that shining from the blue, blue depths, she hadn't recognized the mirrors to her being.
But she should've known those broad shoulders, that broad, muscled back…that toned, chiseled ass…there is only one! She should've known him from behind…why had her brain turned off any recognizable feature of the man she adored above all others? Why had she blocked any sensory connection with any part of him? But even as she asked, she knew the answers too.
Her state of mind after he died had been perilous. She'd been on the brink of insanity the sole result of losing him forever. It was merely by a hair, by a thread, and her sweet babyboy, that she'd been able to hold on at all. One inkling, one minuscule moment allowing herself to think of him being alive would've snapped that thread in an instant, to send her back to the depths of despair and longing. Her child needed her present, so she'd lain everything into being that for him…it's what her love would've wanted too. She had to put her baby's needs first - above her own, above the love of her life, above her will to stop ceasing when he had.
Still, if only she had persisted, had permitted herself to allow her instincts to lead her, they would never have lost so much precious time together. It was easy being friends with Doe…now she knew it was because they had always been that first, before anything else. That bond had formed and held steadfast between them, allowing them the ease with which it had become so much more…just like the first time, just like the second. Their natural, seamless gravitation towards each other would always persist.
He must have sensed her or seen something move, but the next minute her eyes were locked on brilliant blue topaz that feasted on her, a mutual smile forming on both their faces as they shared a silent, unspoken hello. Both stood still for what must have been minutes, lost in the eyes of the one person neither would live without.
Suddenly he was turning from the mantle and practically sprinting across the room to engulf her in strong, supporting arms that wrapped her in entirety to him. His head swooped low and reaching lips claimed hers, swallowing her tongue that darted out to meet him in mutual thirst to connect and collide. They drank from each other and clung together like their bodies had fused into one, the hunger held in each for the other turning the burning kiss into a blazing inferno that ended only when the lack of oxygen got to be too much.
Gasping to catch his breath when they came up for air, his only words spoken, "If you ever leave me, I'll fucking die!"