Work Text:
Nathaniel Abram Wesninski—no, Neil Abram Josten, he was Neil now, let his cigarette burn to the filter without taking a drag. He didn’t usually smoke, but the habit was recently acquired as a way to remember and forget at the same time.
To remember his mother, her strength and her unwavering determination to keep him alive, to remember that he WAS alive. To remember the smell of the smoke from a fire eating its way through a stolen car containing a body and more secrets and lies and ghosts than Neil could count. To remember blows born of too much caution and paranoia and fear, as well as gentle fingers knitting broken flesh back together. To remember the ghosts of Alex and Stephan and Chris and all the other boys Nathaniel/Abram/Neil had been over the years, the twenty-one boys that lived in his skin—Neil the twenty-second mask hiding him from his father.
To forget that they were only ghosts, were nothing anyone but him. To forget that he was alone in the world, that the only person he could trust to keep him alive—safe?—was nothing but ashes and bones buried in the sand on a beach along the lost coast. The only person who’d kept him alive, not safe, never safe.
To forget Mary Wesninski, née Hatford. To remember her. To forget the way she’d been stronger than most people gave her credit for. To remember the way she’d taught him to be the same. To remember her kindness, the fact that he hadn’t died in her care. To forget that it had been painful, often at her hands.
Neil Abram Josten, or Nathaniel Abram Wesninski, or Abram Hatford, didn’t smoke. He didn’t smoke unless he was missing her. He missed her quite a lot.