Re: [Secondhand books: Hannah & Aleksi]
She knew he wasn't like others. From the first moment in the woods, in the dream, in that shared space that was like sleeping but not, she had known. She wouldn't be able to explain how or why she'd known, but she had, and she nodded a little bit when he said he wasn't like other people. "I know. We're different," she said, and she didn't say it like it was a bad thing. Her Rabbit had been a beast, and she'd been a crone, and maybe they were more things than one. They were certainly more than they seemed there, sitting over drinks and cookies and talking about Frankenstein. And she didn't know he couldn't sense her heartbeat. Others could, and she was built to mimic and mimic and mirror, but she wasn't real. The blood that coursed through her vein was synthetic, and her pheromones were crafted, but in her head lived a girl that had lived, really and truly and for years.
"Were the monsters what you feared in the dream?" she asked quietly, leaning closer over the table's flat surface and knowing the monsters were, in fact, what pursued them in the stillness of that wood. "What are they? What did they do and what do they want?" She thought it sounded worse than the house, monsters burning things to the ground, but it kind of felt like her house in the woods, too. The things there didn't set flame to people and places, but they did drive them mad and to death, and it was all endings.
But she liked how his face lost the shadows of sadness, and it was like turning a page in a story that was going well, better, and best, and she pressed her elbows to the table and cupped her chin in her hands as she listened. "Dietre saved you," she said, and there was a tiny question-mark at the end. He said it was the dog, the one he had said was important in the dream, but she thought maybe it was about the boy too, his partner, his beloved, and Hannah really terribly wanted to believe that love was real and true and lasting, and she thought this sounded like a really, really good beginning. "Do you love him?" she asked, and she didn't have qualms about posing the question. Others might consider the question nosy or intrusive, but Hannah didn't know those rules or follow them.
"I'm sorry about your mother. She didn't need to see all the bad things?" It sounded like the answer to that was no, and Hannah thought maybe it was a blessing. "When my mom died? I was six. My sister died a few years ago, too," she added. "She was killed, and I think we're a little bit cursed." A pause. "I died once," she added, and she was surprised the words slipped past her lips and spilled so easily upon that mundane table. "My brothers live here. I have two, my twin and Jamie, and I have another sister that lives here too," she added, because life seemed to be a good way to chase death, and so she did so, and then she took a new sip of her drink.