Work Text:
She had greeted him with a flying hug when he got off the train.
He had just stood there.
Cashmere, of course, didn’t care at the time. She had been too caught up in squeezing him tight, having her brother back in her arms again after not seeing him for weeks upon weeks- some of which spent fearing she would watch him die.
”I’m so glad you’re home,” she had whispered, looking up at him. And he would look down and smile.
But no, wait, that wasn’t right.
He wasn’t right.
Her brother’s eyes aren’t green.
Cashmere had tilted her head, gazing up at him. That was weird. Very weird. But as he smiled down at her, finally hugging her back, she had decided it wasn’t a big deal. It was the light reflecting weird off of his eyes, nothing more.
But nothing more had turned into something more, and that’s how she ended up staring Gloss down from across the back porch, looking at his… green eyes.
They looked like someone had taken a fire hose to his normal eyes, spraying them down until they were muted and light. It seemed almost like a crude imitation of her own eyes, but more muted. More… off.
She decided she missed looking at Gloss’ real eyes.
She missed her brother’s deep brown eyes. Dark, but kind. His old eyes, that twinkled when he laughed and got shiny when he was upset and that were so uniquely him.
Her mom had told her once that eyes were the window to the soul.
In some attempt to be deep, she tries thinking about how it was like Gloss had put shutters up over his soul. She had even written it in one of her notebooks, a poor attempt to figure out why this was happening.
She rambled to her journal about how surely someone had just killed Gloss and taken his place. One of her teachers had complimented her for how poetic that was.
She didn’t want to be poetic, she just wanted her brother back.
”What are you staring at, Cash?”
She blinks. He’s looking back at her, with those stupid, no good, awful green eyes.
They don’t talk about it. She doesn’t bring up that someone had obviously ripped his eyes out and shoved new ones in, and he doesn’t seem keen to bring it up getting his eyes stolen either.
“I just… spaced out.”
“Thinking about anything?”
Cashmere has to break his gaze, not in the mood to look at him anymore.
”…Nothing that matters,” she settles on saying.
She settles on lying to him and herself.