InsaneJournal

a year to the day.
Amrothos straightened his jacket in the mirror with his remaining hand, gazing in the mirror with blind indifference. His once-impeccible fashion taste had been ruined, it seemed; he could not quite get his collar to lay flat against his shoulders as he tugged again and again at the dark navy coat. His dark hair was pulled back in a loose queue, a hairstyle he had worn since he was 10, and he realized with surprise that it was beginning to lighten, as if he was going to go gray. He squinted at his own face, watching the long white scar over his left eye twitch and pull his face into bizzare distortions as he tried to move the muscles that had been torn to pieces in the battle for the Bay of Belfalas, transforming from a man to a monster in a second, and human again almost as quickly.

A year to the day.

He'd gotten used to the rhythm of life one-handed, struggling with simple tasks; the empty aching of fingers that reached for things that were no longer there, the fight to daily feed himself, clumsy frustration over buttons and laces, daily the heavy knowledge he would probably not sail again, never play music again, never again climb the rigging and stand on the yardarm and laugh at the stormfront they were sailing into, daring man and earth alike to match wills to the one who had never been knocked down so hard he hadn't gotten back onto his feet for another round.

A year to the day. Aeriel was one year old.

He remembered her birth in moments when he was too distracted to actively avoid thinking about. The darkened room, the midwife, the smell of blood and his wife's cry of pain and the sudden well of joy at the first sound of his daughter's voice. The hand that wasn't there anymore remembered her tight grip on his fingers, her calloused dark hand crushing his fingers, and for a delerious moment, he wondered if now that it was gone, the ghost of his hand forever held hers in that vice-like grip of fear and faith, all hope and all pain, living forever in the moment of things unseen, things not yet certain, forever promised, forever in the act of arriving.

A year to the day.

Captain Amrothos, a hard, sad man -- not bitter, not yet, but this was more choice than miracle -- stared from the gray eyes in the mirror at the prince's son, who had almost managed to tie the black silk at his neck into a proper knot. Almost. And yet, never quite. His whole life was filled with 'almosts'. Almost perfectly dressed. Almost ready. Almost saving the world. He'd almost gone out the door, followed his wife, caught her and held her and told her he was sorry and he loved her and the lies stopped at last and he had almost made it off the ship in one piece. He was almost something more than a loose collaboration of flaws held together in the thin stuff of human flesh and blood, heartwrenching tragedy and loss walking around inside with too much love for a whole world, a love that no loss and no tragedy could exhaust for strangers and those who had made him fragile like glass and broken like rain.

A year to the day. And he couldn't even spend that day with his daughter, he had to spend it with a smile among strangers. Charming Amrothos gazed into the mirror, and the cold captain gazed back. You're a liar, his reflection said, she was right when she said you can't stop pretending.

Amrothos smiled at his reflection, the reflexive practice that followed realizations he was afraid, and wondered that people didn't recoil at the white scar that cut across his temple, over his eyelid, down into his cheekbone. It was one more painful incongruity -- he knew he was the only one who wasn't fooled into believing his own story.