Chapter 3 .:Sleep:.

.:Sleep:.
Identity: Kestrel Falconer
Date: March 14th, 2022

It's not yet dark when Rook gets home. Early evening, around four usually.
When he comes through the door, Evi and Arrow are both sitting in the living room, lounging in the half-light of the lamps around the room. Arrow is working on a puzzle; quiet, concentrated, with headphones over his ears. The way he can devote such attention to something never stops amazing me. He's always had these subtle, intense concentration skills that I never could master.
Evi is sprawled out in the middle of the carpet, an array of paper before her, drawing five-pointed shapes with multicolored Sharpie markers. Stars, pentagons, odd twisting lines, all curled up inside each other. She is talking to herself again, quiet and subtle, indistinct words.
At the opening of the door, she raises her head and beams up at Rook. He takes off his coat and walks over to her, gazing down at her drawings for a moment, with that small, hidden smile. Evi reaches her arms up to him and he picks her up, swinging her over onto his hip. Evi wraps her arms around his shoulders, leaning her head onto his chest.
Rook kisses the top of her head. He reaches down, ruffling Arrow's blond hair. He barely looks up from his puzzle.
Rook walks over to me, standing in the doorway, running his fingers through Evi's dark hair as he does. "How are you, Kes?"
I look up at him, dark, straight hair falling over his narrow, silver eyes. His fingers play around the curls of Evi's hair, winding and unwinding them. He holds her in his arms obligingly like she's four, like she's much younger, much smaller. Her pink eyes glance over her shoulder at me. "Fine." I say to Rook.
He touches my shoulder lightly as he continues walking with Evi in his arms. He talks to her as if she's much littler too, asking her simply what it was she played today. And Evi fits the part perfectly. She is the little one, this is really who she is.
I glance over to Arrow and see that his deep gray eyes are gazing over to them, Evi in Rook's arms as he strokes her hair. As soon as Arrow sees me looking, he immediately turns his head down, falsely concentrated on the puzzle in front of him. But now he's just blinking at the pieces, his concentration has been distracted and he's not sure where he's at anymore. When I catch him at this, it breaks my heart. For just a sliver of a second, every time, I see something in his gray eyes. I can't name it exactly. His eyes are difficult to read. When his eyes were blue they were like windows, and he would look up to me and we would gaze into each other. Now, with his eyes deep gray, I can't look into them anymore. Like he has closed the curtains. But I catch that look, when he's gazing over at Rook and Evi; he does it when I'm with her, too, and when I look over Arrow ducks his head and ignores whatever it is that's hidden in his eyes. But he misses something.
The puzzle is only half-assembled when Arrow abandons it on the carpet. The sky outside the window is dark, the moon a silver sliver. Arrow stands up and pushes his headphones down, so they fall around his neck, the cord tracing a line down his chest. He looks over his shoulder and blinks at me, once, I am sitting on the couch behind him and trying to understand that feeling in his eyes. The moment is gone before I can catch his gaze.
I watch Arrow walk out of the room and down the hall to his bedroom, completely silent, his eyes almost still and looking at nothing in particular. He walks past Rook, who is still holding Evi in his arms. Rook glances at Arrow, follows him with his gaze. "Hey, you going to bed?" I have to give Rook credit for at least trying, a little, even if he's still holding Evi and running his fingers through her hair.
Arrow doesn't answer him, though, his gray eyes don't even look. His footsteps are familiar against the floor, evenly spaced between each other. He pushes open his bedroom door and lets it close slowly behind him, barely making a sound.
Alone in the living room, I close my eyes. Distantly I hear Rook and Evi talking to each other, Rook's footsteps as he walks down the hall carrying her. All of that energy should be poured elsewhere, I can't help thinking it, he should be giving words to his son, but instead he has her in his arms. I know I do it too. I know. I can't stand myself sometimes. I see Arrow looking on, right beside us, with that look in his eyes. But we've done something, I know what I'm doing, I'm continuing to do it, but I don't stop. That's the worst part.
After several minutes, the voices in the hall become quieter, scarcer, until it is just Rook's familiar voice, whispering. The words are unclear, and I know her hands are on his shoulder and he's talking softly into her ear as he walks.
I stand up and join them in the hallway. Rook's voice pauses when I approach, and then after that second of silence he continues. He walks up to me, blinks his silvery eyes at me, smiling subtly. Evi is slumped in his arms, her legs loose around his waist, and yes, her pale hands are on his shoulders. Her head is leaned against his chest, dark curls falling into her pale face. She's quiet now, completely limp in his arms, except for her hands which grip the cloth of his shirt and then release, grip and then release, her small fingers curling and uncurling. Her pink eyes are fading, half-closed, unfocused. She blinks at nothing and continues opening and closing her hands.
I step up to Rook, look up from Evi to him, at his soft silver eyes. Our gazes are met immediately, and both of us blink. There are so many things we could say to each other, but no words are exchanged. Instead we are just looking, holding the gaze, my eyes are dark and his eyes are light, completing each other.
Eventually, after standing in the dim-lit hallway for several more minutes, Evi's eyes close. Her long eyelashes rest on her pale cheek, a soft dark crescent on her skin. Her hands have stopped moving, settling on the closed position, the cloth of Rook's shirt gathered up in her fingers.
Rook brushes his fingers through her hair one last time before he carries her to her room. The walls and floor in Evi's room are covered in drawings, mostly stars and five-pointed shapes, some of them impressively complicated figures. They are drawn with everything possible; chalk, marker, pen, pencil, paint, calligraphy ink taken from Arrow's room...
Rook steps across the floor and carefully lays Evi down in her bed, prying her gripping hands off of his shirt. She is slumped on the mattress, unmoving except for her soft breath, her curls spread out behind her on the blankets, dark swirling lines. Her hands lie half-open, her fingers softly curled. Rook pushes back her fingers softly and both of us gaze at her palm, the strange distinct symbol that lives there. Our eyes meet again with similar bittersweet understanding.
We go back out into the hallway, Rook goes into our bedroom, but I linger. Softly I push open the door to Arrow's room.
His lamp is on, casting a cloud of light across one corner. He's asleep on the floor, his blond hair falling into his face, his knees pulled up to his chest. I bring one of the many blankets off of his bed and slowly pull it over him, covering his curled body. I stroke his blond hair, so soft, and whisper in close to him, "I'm sorry." His pale eyelashes flutter, I can hear him breathing. I gaze down at him for another minute, watching him slowly shift in his sleep, kicking at the blanket. After a moment he sighs and pulls the sheet up over his head.
I stand up and step around the clutter on the floor. I click the lamp off, and the room goes dark. I close the door as I exit the room, leaving him there.
If it was some other time, in the past, or perhaps if things were just different, I might have picked him up in my arms. Like Rook does to Evi; I'm positive that when Evi is Arrow's age, we will still carry her. She will still be the little one. But if it was another time, I would be able to sit with Arrow in my arms and run my fingers through his beautiful pale hair. I would whisper things to him, apologies and things he needed to know, it wouldn't matter, it could be non-sequitur or irrelevant, all that would matter would be that I was talking to him. He would hold my hand with his and listen, half-asleep, curled in my lap. And in this fantasy scenario, his eyes are blue.