Is That You?
A Mirror, Mirror fanfiction
~1919~
"Hey – hang on a sec." Jo's eyes lit upon something she hadn't noticed before, though she'd been standing much closer to it only a few moments ago, fiddling with the books on the shelf while she bemoaned everything going so very, very wrong with the drum, blaming herself. Now that she was sitting on Nick's bed, glancing across at the same shelf, she seemed to see it properly for the first time. "Is that you?"
There was a framed photograph of a little boy – a toddler – with long hair and round, cherubic cheeks.
Wearing what might have passed for a dress in her time, the kid in the photograph looked more like a porcelain doll than he did a proper person, and she wouldn't have recognised him – wouldn't have even realised it was a he, would have taken it at a glance for a picture of a little girl, really, and dismissed it – but something about the eyes, their shape, and the shape of the nose, too...
It was very, very like to the features of the boy seated on the bed beside her – same nose, same eyes, same chin, simply in miniature and set upon a younger, plumper face.
Nicholas shifted away from her, suddenly flushed and openly uncomfortable. Not even a minute ago, he'd been warm and reassuring, but now his face closed off, almost like he was afraid.
But afraid of what?
Of her?
Of her noticing the picture?
But why would he be afraid of that? Jo couldn't understand it.
"Yes," he said at last, quietly. "That is me."
Jo stood, smoothing the slightly rumbled front of her pinafore and straightening her skirts (she still didn't know how poor Louisa could stand to wear all fabric this every single day – at least she got to go back through the mirror to 1995 and wear trousers again).
She walked back to the shelf and studied the picture more closely.
"Where were you?" When he didn't answer, she made a rolling gesture with her hand and added, "When this was taken, I mean."
"On a ship," he said, his tone a mix of unease and dismissiveness.
"Yeah, I got that" – she flashed him a wide grin – "but where?" Jo thought, then, of the strange language he'd been speaking – shouting out – when he'd driven the hansom cab.
The colour rushed back into Nick's pale face – all at once growing open and friendly again so that it might never have been closed off or cold towards her at all and she might only have imagined it – and he said, all brightness and hospitality, "Jo, do you play backgammon by any chance? If so, I would be delighted if you would honour me with a game."
The subject could not have been more thoroughly – more decidedly, more absolutely – changed.