He stares at the words in front of him for a long moment. He can hear it in his head, in her voice. The exact way those words would sound if she could make them sound at all. How sharp-edged and exhausted it would be at once.
But. It brings back into sharp, perfectly clear focus, what he'd been thinking about earlier, too. Like a sack of bricks to the gut that threatens to steal all the breath from his lungs.
"I know." It's quiet, barely more than a whisper in the darkness, and for a moment, it seems like it may be all that he even says.
But it isn't. All of it. There's more, he just has to make sure his mouth remembers how to form the words. His jaw works wordlessly for the briefest second, and he's glad for how dark it is, that it gives him time. "She looked just like you." And as much as he hates it, he chooses the past-tense of that word on purpose. Not to hurt his sister, but to keep the reality and weight of it true. Because the truth is, as long as they're stuck, suspended in some other world, they aren't seeing what's truly on the other side of Five's jump. They aren't fixing the world they broke. And until they can leave here, they can't do any of it at all.
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But.
It brings back into sharp, perfectly clear focus, what he'd been thinking about earlier, too. Like a sack of bricks to the gut that threatens to steal all the breath from his lungs.
"I know." It's quiet, barely more than a whisper in the darkness, and for a moment, it seems like it may be all that he even says.
But it isn't. All of it. There's more, he just has to make sure his mouth remembers how to form the words. His jaw works wordlessly for the briefest second, and he's glad for how dark it is, that it gives him time. "She looked just like you." And as much as he hates it, he chooses the past-tense of that word on purpose. Not to hurt his sister, but to keep the reality and weight of it true. Because the truth is, as long as they're stuck, suspended in some other world, they aren't seeing what's truly on the other side of Five's jump. They aren't fixing the world they broke. And until they can leave here, they can't do any of it at all.