"I thought you quit."
"Well you know what they say, some things never change."
Booker leaned closer to Robert, holding out a cigarette.
"I don't smoke."
"Since when?"
"Since never. We may be twins, but that doesn't mean we don't have our share of disagreements. I tell her it'll kill her. She tells me she's already dead. Well it would have, eventually…"
But they didn't get an eventually.
They had the morning and Paris. The birds were twittering and a butterfly had taken an interest in him. It was obnoxious really. Robert wanted to go inside, read his books, but he didn't want the cigarette smoke lingering in the house.
Rosalind got an ache in her heart when he wasn't around. She feared that if they weren't together one of them would disappear. She became more like him when he was gone. She never let her hair down. She pulled her corset tighter. She left her face blank. She drank tea with a pissed-off expression. She thought it made her look posh. He just kept to himself and waited for her to return.
She was in her castle on a cloud, well a dark tower that reeked of bad memories to be exact. They were gentle with her, never leaving a bruise or needle mark. All her scars were on the inside. When she woke up from a nightmare, her chest heaving and her fingernails digging into the palms of her hands, it was a memory-not a dream. One she wouldn't remember until she was an old woman looking out on a world she barely recognized, gray skies, blood on the cobblestone, and death in the air. The pain made Rosalind nostalgic. It was her reality. It had been her past and would be her future. She had made it normality. She usually watched Elizabeth through the glass, but today she saw her in the flesh. She enjoyed the girl's company.
"Have you read all of these?" She asked, tilting her head at the stacks of books.
"Some more than once."
"Robert loves to read."
"That's your brother right? You talk about him a lot."
"That's how it is with family, they…get to you."
"I wouldn't know."
"A lot of physics, is that what you want to be?"
"I don't suppose I'll be anything, up in here."
Elizabeth had stopped asking Rosalind to get her out, but that didn't mean she had stopped regretting her for it.
The sky had darkened and a fog was coming in. She had stopped watching the sunset a long time ago. She knew time was all they had. She knew they didn't have enough. Bells rang in the distance; they made her feel hollow, kicking up dust in places she liked to forget about.
The first time she lost him was in a city of lights. It was loud and dirty. Voices spoke in a foreign tongue. They hissed in her ear and shot daggers at her eyes. An orange and red glow bathed her, the colour of fire, and the sound of honking horns filled the street.
She told him not to come here, with these people, but he never listened to her. They didn't belong here. They didn't belong anywhere. The wind had a hold of a skirt. It danced in the howling night and caressed her soft milky skin. There was a cold sweat starting at the back of her neck, treading down her spine.
There he was with his head split open. She cradled him in her arms. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She knew she would see him again, but that didn't slow her tears.
Her heart longed for him. Her heart cried for him.