She was four and thirteen and sixteen and twenty-nine all at once. She was four and she was small and she was trapped alone in a closet with minimal light and no sound. She was thirteen and Five had left and she felt empty and lost and isolated. She was sixteen and her siblings returned from a mission without Ben and she was filled with grief and confusion. She was twenty-nine and she was safe and had built herself a stable life, working to manage her newfound powers with help from her siblings, but still she felt trapped in that closet.
She wouldn't say it out loud, but these snapshots in her mind had been her own creation. Long ago she had taken her memories and, like a surgeon, sliced them apart into different eras of Vanya, as if creating these different versions of herself would also separate her current self from all of the past hurts. Unfortunately, the mind doesn't work quite that way, at least not permanently. All of the other Vanyas had crept back to the forefront, out of the dark corners they had been shoved to, and now they all were forced to coexist.
"Hey, where'd you go?"
She looked up to find Five looking at her from across the kitchen table.
"Nowhere." That was a lie. She had been sixteen and staring at the new statue of Ben that Dad had commissioned for the courtyard.
"Your tea is getting cold."
"Oh! Oops." She picked up the mug to drink it down before it got too cold and rather unpalatable.
She'd often been called absent-minded in her life. For her, days seemed to pass in seconds, in blurs. One moment she was standing in front of her bathroom mirror getting ready for the day, then her mind would drift away in a fog, and the next moment that she felt aware of the world around her she was packing up her violin after orchestra practice.
Sometimes, when she didn't have any lessons scheduled or orchestra practice, she would lose track of entire days sitting unfocused on the dusty couch in her apartment.
A paper bag smelling of grease was dropped on the coffee table. Five plopped down on the couch next to her.
"When was the last time you ate?"
She shrugged. "I just don't feel like eating today." She slumped further into the couch cushions. It wasn't that she wanted to not eat and waste away, but sometimes moving was hard, even if it was just walking to the fridge, and sometimes she didn't trust she'd be able to swallow food down past the ache that developed in her throat from holding in so many thoughts all her life.
"Vanya, I don't know what exactly is going on in your head, but I can't watch you skip every meal." He pulled a paper-wrapped sandwich out of the bag and placed it in her hands. "Eat something, please. For me."
She nodded slowly. "Okay." It was nice to have someone in her corner watching out for her again after so many years alone.
