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“I don’t look like him anymore.”
Elesa’s hand that has been mindlessly carding through Emmet’s hair stills. Only for a moment, though. She keeps her eyes fixed on the TV. They have chosen a movie that has intrested the both of them. Elesa likes the murder mystery portion of it. Emmet likes that the entire thing takes place on a train. The picture on the TV is still moving, there is still noise coming out of the speakers, but Elesa can’t focus on it much anymore.
There’s never a question of who ‘him’ is, not when Emmet says the pronoun in that sort of voice, this late at night.
“You don’t know that.”
Technically, it’s impossible for Emmet to know that. Nobody knows what Ingo looks like. Well, most people think they do. They think he looks like a rotting corpse somewhere. Elesa, personally, things he looks a chandelure, and a haxorus, and an excadril, and sometimes a crustle. Or he looks like Emmet, when caught from the corner of her eye, or early in the morning, or late at night. Emmet’s reflections when she isn’t expecting them. Emmet's soft frown that these days, when he's feeling particularly sad, tugs down at the corners of his mouth.
“I don’t look like him anymore,” Emmet repeats, and he does prefer to only speak the truth when he can, “Because Ingo looks like he did four years ago.”
There is a picture of Ingo. It’s right next to the door, and everytime Elesa comes over, she watches Emmet greet it or bid it farewell, depending on if he’s coming or going. Elesa does the same whenever she’s over. It hadn’t been there the first year, and she didn’t dare bring up it’s sudden addition after the first anniversary.
“Does he?” she asks. She looks down at him. First from her periphery, so she can glimpse Ingo for a painful heartbeat, and then full on and to establish him as just Emmet. That’s all he needs to be. He is not just the ghost of his twin.
“Yes, he does. And I’m older than that.”
He is. He has lines on his face. They had been so pronounced during that first year, but they’re softer now, like he’d aged rapidly but then had those years given back to him. Like a threat, or a blessing, or maybe just life.
“It’s been a while,” Elesa says.
Four years. Too long and too short. She doesn’t expect him when she comes over anymore. When she walks with Emmet down the street, they don’t leave space for a third person. Reservations for two are natural and roll off the tongue. But Ingo’s voice still echoes on the sound of a rushing train.
“We’re not twins anymore, are we? We’re different. He is always going to look four years younger than me. And then five years younger than me. And then six. And then- well, however many years I make it.”
Despite his words, there’s a small smile at the edges of Emmet's mouth. It’s just the way his face sits. He’s staring intently on the ceiling.
“Yes.” She does not lie to him.
“I miss him,” he says.
“I do too.”
They sit there, trying to imagine Ingo, trying to come to terms with never knowing him for another day. It’s something they mostly understand. Now it’s just these small things that sting. They’ll live through it, thank god they’ll live through it.
Emmet sits up, and now it’s Elesa’s turn to rest her head on his lap while he plays with her hair. He rewinds the movie.