Work Text:
A snowstorm was raging outside, the violent wind making the frail wooden windows shake and let some of the cold inside. Huddled near the fireplace was the small figure of a child, his arms wrapped around his knees, and small, freezing fingers gripping the ends of the blanket he had thrown over himself. The fire was warming up his tiny body but couldn’t comfort the freezing wreckage of his broken soul. And as if to soothe his loneliness, he hummed a sad, familiar tune while thinking of a city that belonged in the past, of the happy laughter of children who were now lost in the Abyss, of families and friendships and a precious pair of siblings.
In Jack’s mind, Lacie was like the bright sun; she would effortlessly radiate a dazzling shine all over you; a brilliant ray of light that brings consolation to your sorrowful heart and warmness to your freezing body, and you would love her with all your heart, blinded by the sunshine to the growing shadow in your back. The black shadow of your ruin, that one that grows the biggest as the sun sets, that one that will make you hate her light for having taken your sight away.
Oswald in contrast was the silent, soft moonlight. He lights your way after the sun sets; a gentle, beautiful glow in the grim night. He keeps you from completely losing yourself, and by casting his light on you gives you a fine luster the sun never would. And still, still it is not his lovely radiance you notice first, but the frightening dimness around, the lonely cold in the absence of the sun. You keep seeking the warmness and the brightness of the sunlight until you burn yourself, completely oblivious to how much you truly love that subtle gleam in the dark hours.
And in the cloudy days and moonless nights that followed the tragedy, in the utter darkness in which neither the sun nor the moon shone, how was he supposed to find the right path?
Closing his eyes, he tried to remember how light felt; he tried to think back to everything that set the Baskerville siblings apart, and everything that made them so strikingly similar.
That intense stare that made him feel sucked into those awe-inspiring eyes of theirs, so similar despite the difference in color. The unrestrained way in which Lacie laughed, and the faintest change in expression when Oswald smiled. How Lacie was ever so irresponsible, never to abide by the rules, and how Oswald was authoritative and righteous.
And how, ultimately, he had loved them both.