Flashback [Solo] Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

[Annabelle Hammond]

Noon, 27 Spring 507 AV Skrtch skrtch skrtch sk-- "Hold still." "Yeah, yeah." The room was quiet for a moment, save the distant gentle rolling of the lake water, and then Annabelle but the charcoal tip back to her parchment, and the scratching resumed. Skrtch skrtch skrt-- "Luca, hold still for me." "I am holding still, Annie." Annabelle paused, tapped the loose charcoal bits off against her free hand, and looked up at her Luca, whose face was absolutely different than it was before, despite his protests. He mouth was pulled tighter, lips thin and pressed together, and his green eyes were closed slightly, not even enough that the little wrinkles by the corners of his eyes had appeared, but enough to notice. Annabelle tugged her bottom lip into her mouth and dug her teeth gently in the swell of it, gnawing absently on her lip as she tried to decipher his expression. She knew she'd seen it before, she knew it, even if she couldn't quite pinpoint-- Oh. She released her lower lip and swiped her tongue quickly over the swollen skin. "Don't laugh at me, Luca." When she glanced back at her half-finished charcoal rendering of the boy, she spotted something off, but she wasn't exactly sure what it was. She quickly pulled the parchment up to see it better side-by-side with the real thing. After a moment's deliberation, she picked up her charcoal and closed one eye, then held it up and tilted it until it matched the angle of Luca's nose. Then, slowly, concentrating on not shifting the angle at all if she could help it, she laid the carchoal gently against the nose she'd already drawn. As she'd suspected-- the slope wasn't sharp enough. Annabelle rubbed at the pigment lightly until it was nothing more than a faint silver sheen on the paper, until the pads of all the fingers on her right hand were a nearly solid black. Luca cleared his throat loudly enough that she understood that he wanted her attention. If nothing else, that was one cue that she'd learned from her time with Luca. "I was thinking," he said flatly (and immediately her mind was racing, trying to remember what it meant when his voice was flat, or when his eyebrows were raised in that way), "I was thinking that maybe you'd want to come with me and meet my family today."

[Annabelle Hammond]

Annabelle froze for a moment, then lightly resketched the line of Luca's nose, paying careful attention to the angle this time. She looked up at him, and then back down at her paper, purposefully avoiding looking him in the eye. She hating meeting his eyes, hated knowing that by just looking at her, Luca-- and everyone else-- was capable of seeing more into her emotion than she was comfortable with, and yet when she looked at his, all she saw was dark green, highlights, and shadows. Even with the progress they'd made, the eyes were still a mystery to her. "I don't think that's such a good idea, Luca." She said quietly. Luca fidgeted from his spot at the foot of her bed, but when she looked up, his face was blank. "Why not? "You know why not, Luca. You know how people are around me." You know how I am around people, she thought. "That's not good enough anymore, Annie. You can't expect to get any better at this if you keep yourself huddled up in your room with your papers all day." Which, honestly, was one of the simplest things Annie had ever heard. Of course she was improving in her room-- what was the point of what they were doing now if Luca didn't think it would help her improve? A lock of hair dropped from where it was pinned at the base of her head, nearly reaching the smudged black charcoal on the paper. Annabelle tucked the strands of hair neatly back behind her ear, ignoring Luca's protestations. Before she could set the burnt wood back on the paper, a hand rested firmly on her wrist, stopping her. She looked up in shock, jerking her hand back. Luca had moved forward, close enough that she could see the flecks of blue in his eyes, and his features were twisted again, his mouth thinned like before, eyes squinted. A brief flare of triumph shot up in her chest at pinpointing amusement again-- she'd never had this much success before in so short a time. "I thought I said not to laugh at me," she said. Luca let out a drawn-out sight, his features collapsing back into their resting state, and just like that, the fire in her chest fizzled, and the smoke was choking her lungs. She'd gotten it wrong, after all.