I cannot get it out of my head that every time Ryland looked in the mirror or saw his reflection after waking up on the Hail Mary, his brain always says something he doesn’t quite understand. “He doesn’t wear glasses” but he does wear glasses, he can’t see without them, were the glasses just new or something? “His hair was longer” when he first woke up yeah, he was in a coma for several years. Maybe he always had longer hair? Also, why was he referring to himself in the third person now? “Where are his scars” he had scars? That was one he couldn’t really explain, scars didn’t just go away. He does have scars in the Polaroid from his bag though.
It’s not until he’s heading towards Erid with Rocky, trying to remember more about himself instead of just his parts in the Project, where he starts piecing it together. His whiteboard is a mess of things about the “other me”, because he has no other way to describe it. He’s not a clone, that’d be absurd. But his brain is convinced these memories aren’t quite about him. People don’t see things in the third person, these memories are clearly him looking at another man who isn’t him but has his face. He’s looking at the Polaroid again, now pinned at eye level on the board, and suddenly it hits him that twins are a thing. A thing he had. He had a twin. He was a twin. That was his brother.
His brother, who had long hair the last time he saw him. His brother, who had countless little scars from his years of being a stuntman. His brother, who wore contacts instead of glasses because they got in the way of said stunts. “Makes me look nerdy, that’s your department.” And oh god, he can remember his voice now, so close to his own but so full of … life. He was so full of life and joy, and mischief.
And oh god, his brother, his twin, he was dead wasn’t he? He’d died the day before being put into the coma. He’d been framed for murder, because Ryland knew Colt could never actually murder someone, and had died in that boat explosion while on the run.
Colt. Colton Seavers Grace, though he was never known by their last name like Ryland was. Something about not dragging their mother’s name through the mud with him, since they’d changed to their mother’s maiden name after Court had put their father in the ground.
Courtland. For once, it was an appropriate time to say fuck. Maybe grief could happen twice because Court had been dead for years, ever since 2003, but remembering that felt like he was just learning about it now. Colt was his twin, Court was their older brother. He had had brothers, plural. Two of them.
They had told him he had no family. They told him this because they were all dead.
Suddenly, even though Rocky is right there with him, Ryland is so very alone again.
stormborns
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