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Alex isn’t particularly sure what he’s looking at, at the moment. Whatever he came here for in the dead of sparkling silent night, a yawning Aaron in tow, has slipped his mind. Looking may be a stretch, even, seeing as the door to his mother’s room is just slightly ajar, enough for him to hear her voice.
And by the gods, it's beautiful.
Aaron creeps up behind him, looking at Alex sidelong as he shifts closer to the door, as if he were able to catch their mother’s voice in his hands. He taps the door slightly, opening it just a bit more. The dim lighting in her room creates a small triangle on the floor in the dark of the hallway.
She’s singing, quietly—she’s just loud enough that Alex and Aaron can hear, ears near pressed to the door. The words are no longer as muffled as they were before Aaron made the cracked opening larger, but Alex still can’t understand what she’s singing. He wagers it’s not something he can understand, but the why escapes him. How would his perfectly Necessary mother know a song, much less in another language? Even after moving to Artimé, to his knowledge, she had attended no lessons, practical arts, magical, or otherwise. He doubts she even knows how to write.
Even then, her voice is smooth and the lyrics slip through her throat like a clear river. She sings with such an ease that Alex would bet that she’s sung the song before.
Alex cannot help himself from staring at the door in a feeling of awe, almost. A quick glance back at Aaron, feeling as though the two were ten again and peeking through a door at their parents whispering to one another, confirms that he too is surprised. Aside from that rare, clear expression of surprise, his face is unreadable.
Alex, in his defense, tries to back away from the door. The moment felt domestic, quiet, a lovely little thing that he likely shouldn’t interrupt, as much as he wanted to. Aaron did not seem to get the message, however. Alex backs up, into Aaron’s foot, and the two come crashing down. Alex falls onto his back, while Aaron slams into the door, his sudden weight against it forcing it all the way open.
The singing stops.
“Alexander? Aaron?” His mother asks, quiet and meek-sounding as a mouse once more, as Alex gets off the floor and puts out a hand to pull Aaron to his feet.
Alex turns to look at her. She’s wearing a very simple shirt and pants, them, her bed, and her hair rumpled as if she had just crawled out of bed. She has one of the twins in her arms, likely asleep. For once, her expression is anything but blank. Rather, she looks like a deer trapped in headlights.
“…hello.” Alex says, plainly. Aaron stays silent.
His mother blinks at him, slowly. Her bedsheets are purple. So are her curtains, and there’s a spool of purple thread on her white desk. Different shades, all of them, but hues of purple nonetheless. Does his mother like purple? Surely, she has likes, but Alex is not privy to any of them.
“How long have you two been standing outside my door?” She reins in her expression after a moment of silence, though her voice sounds ever so slightly hesitant.
Alex opens his mouth to respond, then closes it. There seems like no right answer to that question. He doesn’t remember why he came here anyhow.
His mother is still looking at the pair, expectant. Alex is about to try again, some sort of answer at least, when Aaron clears his throat.
Alex glances at him, a bit surprised. Neither of them could truly be described as quiet, but ever since Alex forcibly brought him back from the Island of Shipwrecks, Aaron’s very clearly been more withdrawn. Every step he takes towards his mother, sitting down on the floor next to her, making a little motion for Alex to shut the door and sit down, it’s all a bit confusing, a bit surprising to him.
Alex complies anyway. The door shuts with a click as Aaron starts to talk in a quiet tone. He sounds almost soft.
“I didn’t know you knew how to sing. You’re very good at it.” Aaron offers. It seems like an olive branch of sorts. Alex sits down on the floor, criss-cross.
Their mother looks at Aaron for a long moment. Then huffs, setting her head against her knees. It sounds almost like a little laugh, if Alex didn’t know his mother well enough to know she doesn’t laugh.
But yet, she raises her head, and a little smile plays at her lips as she looks down at her daughter.
“Thisbe wouldn’t fall asleep. It helped you fall asleep once, when you were her age. I thought… I thought it might work. And it did.” She shifts the baby in her arms.
Alex can’t help himself from interrupting. “You named them?”
His mother tilts her head. “Yes. Some of your… friends helped name them. Thisbe and Fifer.”
“Huh? Who?”
“Lani, Kaylee, Sky, and…” She blinks. “The actor one.”
“Samheed?”
“Maybe?”
Aaron draws his legs up, wrapping his arms around them and setting his chin on his knees. “You sang to me? When I was little?” Aaron is more open with his emotions than Mother is, and a flash of confusion settles on his features.
His mother turns to look at him instead. “Twice. The second time, your father heard me, and asked me to quiet down.” She looks at the baby —Thisbe, her name is—then back at Aaron. Her expression is almost soft, now, talking about her late husband. Her eyes are the most striking jet-black, the kind Alex itches to sketch. He’d like to sketch his mother, he thinks. Title the work with her name, scrawl it on the back. He doesn’t know her name.
“He never turned me in, even though he’d seen me do all sorts of odd things. He’d just quietly tell me to stop it, and I did.” Her voice turns wistful. Alex suddenly feels like he’s seeing a different side of his parents, one where his mother is gentle in her actions and his father is gentle in his words.
“What were you singing? I didn’t understand any of it.” Alex asks, and tonight might be the most questions he’s ever asked her.
“Oh.” She blinks, again. Her eyelashes have a bit of white in them. Almost like the streaks in her hair. She looks at the door for a second. “I wasn’t born in Quill.”
Alex chokes on air.
“What?” Aaron asks quickly.
“What do you mean you weren’t born in Quill?” Alex vaguely registers that his voice sounds incredibly accusatory, as if his mother’s committed a crime. He does not know his mother’s name.
“I got here when I was… twelve.” She shifts Thisbe to lean against her chest. “I think.” She adds, quickly. “I came in through a hole in the wall, and the Stowe family took me in. They were Necessaries and they didn’t have any kids. No one ever questioned where I came from.” She’s staring at the floor.
The three sit on the floor, and Alex feels like the gap between he and his mother has impossibly widened. Aaron says something to her, but Alex cannot hear him.
He does not know his mother’s name. He never knew anything outside of Quill until he was tossed into Artimé rather than the Lake of Boiling Oil. But his mother? His mother did. His mother knew about the world out there, that not everyone was an enemy in the world, and continued anyway.
How? How could she?
Nevermind the semantics, how could she sit there, quiet, while they sent children to their death meanlessly? Her own child?
How?
Alex looks up from the floor, at his mother. She tilts her head at him. He doesn’t know her name.
A hand of vitriol grips his heart. “Who are you?” And there is no ignoring the malice in his voice, in the question. A glance at Aaron shows the cogs turning in his hands. He’d always been a bit better at managing his emotions. “I don’t—I don’t even know your name! You know that, right? How can you—how did you watch all those kids get taken to the Lake of Boiling Oil? You didn’t know Artimé existed. What the hell did you think they were killing them for? You knew there weren’t enemies outside, that’s just—”
“My name is Nadia.”
Alex pauses, swallowing down the urge to bite .
Her voice is stern, all of a sudden. She frowns, ever so slightly. She wasn’t like this the last time he blew up at her.
“It’s late. You two should go to sleep.”
“Mom.” Aaron’s voice too has an edge. There’s something there that Alex isn’t getting.
His mother— Nadia— gets to her feet, setting Thisbe on the bed. Alex and Aaron get up too. After a moment, she steps closer to Alex. Her hand moves up to his face.
He has half a mind to slap her hand away. However, it is only half a mind, and it is not winning at the moment.
She presses a kiss to his forehead. Alex freezes at the contact.
Nadia steps aside, towards Aaron, and out of the corner of his eye he can see Aaron bow his head a bit so Nadia has better access to the top of his head.
“Go to sleep, the both of you. You can come talk to me in the morning.” Nadia says.
Alex is frozen in place, but Aaron grabs him by the arm and walks him out the door, down the hallway, through the secret one. He’s silent, and it’s heavy. He feels heavy.
His mother’s name is Nadia.
Naa-dee-yah.
He rolls the name over his tongue, and Aaron looks at him funny.
“What?”
“Nothing. Go to sleep, Alex.” Despite his words, Aaron doesn’t move to leave either. After about a minute, he steps closer, setting his hands on either side of Alex’s head.
Aaron perches up on his tippy-toes, pressing a kiss to Alex’s waves just as Nadia did.
“There. Goodnight.” Aaron steps back, pauses, then books it out of Alex’s room.
He stares at the shut door in his wake.
“…goodnight.” He murmurs.