drifting away, he isn’t him anymore…
The mirror is foggy from the heat as he drags a towel through his wet hair, squinting at his blurry reflection in a mix of interest and revulsion.
It’s weird. This is weird. He was ten, he was Tommy Maximoff. He didn’t have any scars.
He- this body is older. Thomas Shepherd, not Tommy Maximoff.
This body has scars.
Water drips down his neck from his soaked hair, a thin line that sends a shiver through him as he leans forward, swiping the towel over the mirror to get a better look.
Thomas Shepherd looks back, with dusty eyes and bruises smudged underneath, with hollow cheeks and ribs that show. With a bruise on his jaw, and a healing cut on his shoulder, and cigarette burns on his arms- how does he know what those look like?
…why does he remember what those felt like?
He reaches out, traces this unfamiliar body in the glass, the starburst of scars on his chest- he thinks something got thrown, a glass or a coaster or something that his body protests against remembering -and the pale white mess or scar tissue on his knees- he fell, maybe, fell badly, and his mouth had tasted like blood -and the cut on his jaw, uneven and stark- a fight, one of many, but he isn’t sure because it didn’t happen to him and he shouldn’t remember that kid’s ring cutting into his skin.
Two lines on his chest, but he had wanted those- or Thomas Shepherd had, at least. He’s glad they’re on the same page as far as that goes. If he’d had to deal with this new body not matching him even more-
But it doesn’t. And yet, even so-
It isn’t his body.
They aren’t his scars.
But the memories come regardless, dull and hazy but there, flashes of color and knowledge in the foggy mirror of his mind. They scare him, but not because they’re terrible- they are, they burn -but because they aren’t his.
He shouldn’t remember this. He didn’t live this.
These aren’t his memories.
He runs his tongue over his teeth, turning away from the mirror and leaning against the counter, the tile cold against his bare skin. Bodies remember trauma. Is that what this is? Maybe it’s not that he’s remembering things, not really, maybe it’s just this unfamiliar body having been through so much, too much.
Maybe it’s not that he isn’t himself anymore.
Maybe it’s not that the edges of his mind bleed and swirl with something- someone -else, maybe it’s not that his watercolor-memories pool together and leave space for this, all these memories, in the gaps.
Maybe it’s not that he isn’t Tommy Maximoff anymore.
The knock on the bathroom door pulls him out of his head, and he grabs his shorts out of the heap on the floor, tossing the towel over the shower railing- he’s dressed before it even lands, because the laws of motion sure as hell don’t apply to him, pulling the door open to see Kate’s grinning face as she holds out her Walgreens bags triumphantly.
“Success,” she brags smugly, knocking his arm out of the way to get to the counter, dumping her prizes across the tile and into the sink.
“Would’ve been faster if you’d let me do it,” he says dryly, leaning against the doorframe as he watches her shuffle through the bottles of whatever-it-was that she deemed necessary for this endeavor.
“Sorry, zombie boy,” she teases over her shoulder, “but you’re on rest duty. Oh the horrors you must go through, having to put up with my ten minute trip to the store.”
“Zombie boy?” he repeats incredulously, and she laughs.
“I mean, you are back from the dead. So.”
“I’m not a fucking zombie, Kate,” he huffs, rolling his eyes.
She hums, pulling scissors out of the bag and gesturing for him to come over. “Nah, you’re far too mouthy for that, huh?”
He grabs the chair from the desk in the main room, pushing it into the bathroom and collapsing in it, only sitting up straight when Kate poked his side with a huff. “Anyway, a zombie is a dead body with no soul that’s still kicking. I have plenty of soul, hate to remind you. Ergo, not a zombie.”
“Ooo, ergo! How fancy of you! Okay then,” she asks, sitting on the counter and running a hand through his hair to get the worst of the tangles out, “so what would you call yourself? Since you’re not a zombie. What do you call something that’s dead with too many souls, hm?”
He fidgets, picking at a loose thread on his shorts, only stopping when Kate waves the scissors in his face with a disapproving look.
Okay, fine. He can stay still for however long this takes. Whatever.
“It’s like a ship of Theseus' situation,” he muses, his dad’s voice coming to mind as he tries to recall the paradox. “Like- the body’s still the same, but the inside’s new. Or rather, same soul, new body. I guess. So if I’m anything different now would depend on if you think I’ve changed, like on a base level, because I’m not my original self anymore.”
Kate is quiet for a moment, the metallic snipping of the scissors filling the silence. “Huh. I mean- I’d meant it as more of a cryptid question, less of a theological one, but. Yeah, I guess that’s a way to look at it.”
He exhales sharply, only remembering to keep still when Kate tugs on his hair with a frown. “Uh- I mean, I guess if it’s similar to any cryptid it’d be like. I dunno. The face-stealer guy from Avatar, or whatever the real world equivalent would be.”
“I didn’t watch that show,” Kate says apologetically, and he drags his nails across his thigh, watching the trails of red it leaves behind.
“I think I did. Maybe. I dunno. Mom preferred sitcoms, y’know, so.”
Quiet. It drags, or maybe that’s just him, not moving right through time. “You’re an odd person,” Kate says eventually, her voice forcefully light. “You know that?”
“Yes.”
“Hm.”
He chews on his lip, scratching a line into the side of the chair. “How much longer’s this gonna take, Katie?”
“You’re impatient,” she tells him.
“I’m aware.”
“A bit,” she huffs noncommittally. “It’s harder than it looks, okay?”
“It’s gonna look shitty either way, Kathrine.”
“Oh, shut up.”
He closes his eyes, lets time pool and scatter around him as he just breathes, timing it with Kate’s.
He isn’t Tommy Maximoff, not now, and he isn’t Thomas Shepherd.
Just Tommy. With no reason to run.
“Thank you,” he says, and Kate’s hands still in his hair, darting down to squeeze his shoulder.
“Yeah. ‘Course. Friends, right?”
“Friends,” he agrees quietly, and lets himself drift.