Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ray’s sitting with his legs crossed, one arm draped over the back of the chair as he reads. His eyes follow the words on the page obediently, but in truth has begun to wander some time ago. He sighs, setting the book down and sliding a bookmark into it. He brushes his bangs out of his face with an annoyed sigh.

The hair covering Ray’s face had always been kept long. He preferred it that way, and, despite common belief, it’s not like he couldn’t see with his bangs covering his eye. He could still see. It was hair. Black, soft and thick, but it was still hair. It’s not like he was suddenly blind or something, despite all of the jokes his siblings had thrown at him over the years.

If it was really in the way, he’d just tilt his head or brush it away so it’d part in front of both of his eyes. In dire situations--Ray thinks to Emma, skin sliced open and blood pouring out like water from a broken dam--giving the emergency sutures that were needed with his shaking hands. His breath comes strangled and Ray feels his fists start to clench as he remembers hastily pinning up his hair. Right. He should think about something else. Anything else.

In situations that weren’t that dire--like cooking a particularly difficult dish, he’d take the time to pin up his bangs with some spare bobby pins they kept around the shelter. It wasn’t his favorite hairstyle and he’d take it down the second he could, but it did prove useful when Ray was more likely to be irritated by the feeling of hair touching his face.

He takes a breath and blows his bangs out of his face, and then he shuts his eyes, leaning back in his chair. Sure, they had downtime right now, but what Ray wanted was the attention span to continue reading, instead of losing his mind over his stupid bangs.

He sort of dangles there, feeling a bit like Emma as he views the world completely upside down. Ray thinks he’s seen her do this before, lay on her back on the bed, staring at everything upside down. Ray remembers her expression, her stupid grin and raised eyebrows--her whole face revealed, unobsurced by her bangs.

Ray wouldn’t ever, ever say it out loud, but he did think Emma was beautiful. She was a comforting and beautiful sight. From the freckles dotted on her face, to her emerald green eyes, her orange hair that Emma never seemed able to wrangle into shape--and her smile. That broad grin that Ray realized from a young age that he’d die for.

And now, it’s a smile that he’d live for, too.

Thinking about the things he loves about her appearance just brings to light everything he hates about his own.

Pale skin with a golden tint. Inky black hair, bangs grown out to conceal his expression and hide the hairline of his that he hated. Narrow eyes, permanently slanted into a glare. He loathed the purple of his pupils. His always present frown and lips that were such a prominent color of pink that Yuugo had once jokingly asked if Ray was wearing makeup. 

Ray hated everything about his appearance that made him resemble her. Which, in short, was to say that he hated absolutely everything about himself. He sits up, marveling at the way the blood rushed to his head. Hanging upside down had been a stupid idea, but Ray appreciates the way his world spins. It makes it harder to think.

Head in his hands, Ray feels his thoughts swirl around in his head. It’s surprising, really. That no one had realized--and if they did, they hadn’t said anything, and they’d hid their knowledge well.

Of course, people did compare the two. The way Ray walked, the way he read his siblings to sleep, the color of his eyes but more often the look in them. Ray knew he looked like her, Ray knew he resembled her in ways that weren’t just appearance based and every part of that felt sickening.

His voice. His speaking voice, his singing voice, how he pronounced certain words, how his lips curled up when he smiled, or the way his lips could straighten into an expression that was equal parts unreadable, equal parts clear you had said or done something you shouldn’t.

Ray cracks his neck and opens up the book again, willing himself to be drawn into the words.

...If it was Norman, he would have realized, wouldn’t he? That Ray was hers.

As time passes and Ray gets older, he realizes that he’s begun to resemble her more and more. Too often have his sleepy siblings mistaken Ray for their mother, saw Isabella’s silhouette in his shadow. Their casual comments felt like thorns in Ray’s skin. 

Norman would have figured it out. Would he have said anything?

Ray shuts his eyes, trying to imagine what the face of his best friend would look like as he asked Ray. But maybe he wouldn’t ask. If it wasn’t relevant, if it there was nothing to gain from that conversation maybe Norman wouldn’t ask. There was no point in wondering about this, really, because Ray’s heart twists in his chest when he imagines Norman’s face. 

Ray knows he’s dead. He knows he’s gone. There wasn’t any point in imagining something that was never going to happen; a conversation that could never take place.

He wonders if Norman would look at him with disgust, if he knew the truth.

Ray stares down at the book in his hands, trying to remember how to read words again. It feels like he’s forgotten, somehow. The pages in front of his eyes disappear as he instead imagines Norman’s face. 

Ray loved seeing Emma in front of his eyes. And he loved seeing Norman just as much.

He missed it more than anything else.

It’s always been easy for Ray conjure up a memory in front of his eyes. Sometimes he does it without thinking, intrusive thoughts that bring the visions to the forefront of his brain. Other times it’s on purpose.

Right now, Ray isn’t sure which it was, but either way, Norman’s visage comes in front of Ray’s eyes like a phantom.

His grey-white hair, kept perfectly styled and consistent every single day, unlike Emma’s. Norman never had bedhead, but the curl on the left side of his hair couldn’t ever be made manageable. No matter what methods Mama tried, it’d always curl right back into place. Ray feels himself smile, remembering this.

Norman’s blue eyes, bright, piercing, almost like he could see through you. And he kind of could. He was perceptive and calculating, but the kind smiles he gave out could almost make you forget what he was really capable of. He wasn’t as expressive as Emma, but really, no one was.

He’d be hard to read if he wanted to, but normally his face changed with his emotions. Especially for Ray, it was hard to forget the way Norman’s brows furrowed or raised with each corresponding expression. Truthfully, Ray had always found it cute. But he never told Norman that.

And he never would, now.

Ray shuts the book and stands. Okay. Fuck reading, apparently. He was going to go… take a nap, or something. Find something to do that didn’t involve thinking and it being unconscious was the way to do that then so be it.

When his head hits the pillow, he’s extra aware of the way his hair touches his face and he clicks his tongue and turns on his side, brushing it behind his ears.

“Ah, Ray!” Anna calls, and Ray looks up at her. She’s peeking her head into the kitchen, watching Ray as he washes their dishes from dinner. “I came to tell you. I’ve already told Emma, Gilda and Don, but I’m nearly finished with everyone else’s haircuts, so whenever you’re done with the dishes, can you meet us in the same place as last time?”

He nods his head. “Okay. It shouldn’t take me that long. Do you want me to try and grab those three on my way there?” Ray looks over the dishes. There weren’t many left to do, despite how many people there were in the shelter now. Maybe he’d just gotten better at washing dishes in a timely manner. 

Anna giggles. “If you see them on your way, feel free. But you don’t need to go out of your way to do it. They already know it’s their turn.” 

Ray finishes off the rest of the dishes and dries his hand on a towel and exits the kitchen, trying to spot Emma, Gilda or Don on his way to the room they used to cut hair. He doesn’t run into any of them, and assumes they’re already there. 

As he walks, he realizes that it’s sort of funny. They weren’t in Gracefield anymore, but some of their habits had retained. They still woke up and went to bed around the same time, and they still had a day for all of them to get their haircut. It wasn’t scheduled like before, of course, but it did happen all at once, like how it did in Gracefield.

He opens the door. “Yo.” As he expected, Emma, Gilda and Don were already there. They were all sitting down, but Anna was brushing out Gilda’s hair, scissors kept in Gilda’s lap. The only hair on the floor seemed to be Gilda’s--Ray guesses Anna had been sweeping it up frequently--so it seems apparent that Gilda had just finished getting her hair cut.

Anna hands a small mirror to Gilda, who happily takes it and examines her appearance with a smile. It doesn’t look all that much different, just shorter. Though, that’s kind of the point of getting a haircut.

“It looks wonderful, Anna! You did a really good job.” Gilda smiles up at the blonde, who returns the smile. As she stands up, she brushes the hair that had fallen into her lap onto the ground.

Anna holds the scissors gently in her hands, a soft, solemn smile on her face. “Thank you, Gilda. I don’t know if I can do it as well as Mama--”

And she stops, clamping her mouth shut. Silence falls over the room and none of them say a word to fill the stony quiet. Anna looks like she regrets her words, clutching the scissors tighter and keeping her eyes on the ground. 

Ray doesn’t have anything to say. 

Eventually, Anna’s lips part and she speaks again. “Ray, your bangs have been bothering you recently, right? Do you want to go next?”

He raises an eyebrow and shrugs his shoulders. “I’m fine either way.” It’s not a lie. It doesn’t really matter if he goes now or later. Truth be told, though, he never liked an audience when he was getting his hair cut. 

Emma beams. “I’m fine with it!” 

“Me too!” Don nods his head and Ray shrugs again, standing up and moving to the chair in front of Anna. He sits still, letting the girl wrap a towel around his shoulders and begin brushing through his hair. “You know, Ray…”

Ray looks over at Don. “What?”

“Maybe you should cut your bangs shorter. Anna said they were bothering you, right? It’s probably hard to see with them in front of your face all the time.”

“Not really.” He replies, looking forwards instead of into Don’s eyes. “I mean, it’s just hair. It’s not like I’m suddenly blind. I can see past it.”

Don crosses his arms, nodding to himself. “If you say so. But you have had that same hairstyle for like, all your life! Doesn’t it get boring?”

Ray doesn’t feel like pointing out that basically every single person in this room has kept the same hairstyle for their entire lives, but he does think about it. “Not really.”

“I wanna see Ray without bangs!” Emma shouts, her hand shooting up like she’s ready to ask a series of questions. “You’re always hiding your face behind your hair! That’s kind of a waste of your pretty face, don’t you think? Don’t you wonder how you’d look without all that hair covering your face?”

“Bad, probably.” Ray can feel himself grit his teeth. “Don’t call me pretty.”

He doesn’t think of himself as pretty. He looks too much like her. But Isabella was pretty, wasn’t she? It’s only natural that Ray inherited her good looks--but he didn’t want to be reminded of it. He doesn’t want to talk about this anymore. Ray just wants to get this stupid haircut over with so he can go drown his feelings in a book like he always does.

Anna hums under her breath, walking around Ray so that they see eye-to-eye. “Ray without bangs, hm?” She reaches out before he can stop her, before he can grab her wrist, before he can get up and run away. Anna lifts up his bangs, revealing his forehead.

Time feels like it’s stopped and Ray takes a second to look at the shocked faces of his siblings. With his hair up, he looked too much like her. The same color eyes. That same damned widow’s peak.

He can’t quite decipher the expressions on their faces. Shock, yes, but there was something underneath all of that. Something different for each and every one of them, but even with the wide array of emotions on their faces, Ray could see it.

Fear.

“A widow’s peak,” Gilda starts, speaking in a hushed whisper, as if they’ve all seen something they shouldn’t have. Something secret. Something no one else should know about. “Just like her…”

Ray’s overcome with nausea. He feels like there’s a million pairs of eyes on him and it’s making bile rise up in his throat almost violently as he tries to block out the look in their eyes. He can feel his face get pale and burn red with shame at the same time. He can’t handle it. He can’t handle how they’re looking at him. It makes him sick. It makes him sick. Ray wants to get up and run away.

And he does. Anna’s hand falls limply to her side as Ray runs out. The towel falls off his shoulders and onto the floor as he leaves. His heart is beating so wildly in his chest that it feels like it’s going to come out of his throat, or maybe like it’s going to explode. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Ray doesn’t have any destination in mind as he walks, brushing his bangs down with his hands and flattening them over his eye. He eventually finds himself in the archive room and grabs the first book he sees, not caring what it is. All that matters is that he had something. Anything.

Ray heads down to where the phone is--the one where William Minvera’s supports might call them. It’s unsuprising to see Yuugo there, sitting on a chair as he reads a book about astronomy. The older man looks up when Ray enters, brow raising. His legs are crossed, one ankle over the other as he slumps down in the chair. 

“Aren’t you kids supposed to be getting haircuts today? I don’t see anything different. If anything, your hair looks longer.”

Ray doesn’t know how to respond so he doesn’t. He just shrugs his shoulders and sits on the ground, a few feet away from where Yuugo was sitting. He pulls his knees close to his chest and opens up the book, willing himself to focus on it and nothing else.

It’s silent between them for quite some time. Eventually, though, Yuugo clears his throat. Ray looks over, confused.

“Are… you doing okay, kid?” 

Ray feels his mouth open as he debates on an answer. No, he’s not, but he doesn’t want to admit to that. It felt like, if he admitted that he wasn’t okay, then he couldn’t avoid the pain he was in. He couldn’t avoid just how shitty he felt in the moment. To Ray, if he acknowledged the existence of his feelings, his pain, it became something he needed to confront, to tackle, to overcome. And he didn’t want to do that right now.

He didn’t want to accidentally rip open the wound in his heart that he’d kept hastily patched up for all of his life. If it split open, Ray isn’t sure how he’d even begin to pick up the pieces. He doesn’t want to risk it. He doesn’t want to face it.

Again, silence settles in between the two of them.

“You don’t need to talk if you don’t want to.” The man says, softly, and Ray looks over. Yuugo isn’t looking in his direction. He’s looking off into the distance with a complicated expression on his face. An expression Ray recognizes because he’s seen it on his own too many times.

Ray feels his shoulders slump. He feels like a balloon running out of air. No matter how many times he tried to patch up the holes, air kept flowing out and he kept becoming smaller and smaller. Maybe one day soon, he’d have shrunk so much that he’d just… stop existing. But for right now, being told he didn’t need to talk about it…

It was enough to patch the wound closed, temporarily.

“Okay.” Ray says, quietly. He doesn’t recognize his own tone. He doesn’t know what his face looks like right now and he doesn’t want to know. The sorrow and hurt in his voice is already unbearable enough to hear. Ray feels like he’s going to cry, but forces himself to speak again. “Thank you.” Thankfully, he gets through the sentence without any tears.

When he looks over at Yuugo again, he sees that the man is glancing over at Ray with a small smile. “Of course, kid. Don’t sweat it.”

Despite himself, Ray feels his lips turn up in a barely noticeable smile. They go back to sitting in silence, and even though Ray’s urge to cry hasn’t fully vanished, his swirling thoughts have ceased somewhat. It’s easier to read now, to get lost in the words in front of his face.

Both Yuugo and Ray look up when footsteps are audible from outside the door. It opens, and down the stairs comes Emma, looking worried. Her expressions melts away into relief when she sees Ray, and immediately hops down the stairs to get closer to him.

“Ray, I’ve been looking for you! So this is where you’ve been hiding and brooding!”

The black haired teen frowns. “Actually, I’m not brooding. This is just my natural state.” He grins, smile chock-full to the brim with all sarcasm and snark. 

Emma smiles back at him, looking relieved still. She sits down on the ground next to him, reaching out to rest her hand on his thigh. Her hands are warm. She must have been running around looking for him.

That causes a pang of guilt in his chest and Ray does his best to bury that feeling down, too.

“I’m sorry about earlier, Ray. None of us meant to upset you by saying you looked like… You know.” Emma trails off, looking over in the direction of Yuugo, who looks a little bit awkward that he’s present while this conversation is happening. “Are you feeling okay, Ray…?”

Ray opens his mouth to reply and then closes it, unsure what to say. He pulls his legs closer, setting the book down. Right now, he feels small. It’s an unpleasant feeling, feeling so small that you might disappear. Feeling so small that you want to disappear into nothing. “I don’t know.” He admits, hoping the guilt he felt wasn’t apparent on his face. He felt like he was a child, admitting he did something bad or shameful.

Emma rubs comforting circles into Ray’s skin and he feels his hurt dissipate, just a little bit.

“It just… feels like if I admit that being compared to her makes me upset, it’ll just hurt more. It feels like I’m confessing something shameful.” Ray’s frown deepens, and he keeps his gaze glued on the floor, not yet ready to look Emma in the eyes. “It feels like… it’ll get worse if I talk about it. Because I know… I know, already, that I look like her. And I…” Hate it, he thinks, but doesn’t say. The words get caught in his throat like tar and he presses his lips together, hoping that his thoughts wouldn’t bubble out of his throat like vomit. 

He imagines his thoughts inky black, thick like tar or concrete. That how Ray feels. Tainted.

Emma reaches out to take Ray’s hand, entwining their fingers. With her other hand, she cups his cheek and moves his face towards hers, so that she can look him directly in the eyes.. Her eyebrows are furrowed. She looks upset. “I’m sorry, Ray…”

Ray feels himself laugh. “Why? You have nothing to be sorry for, Emma. It’s fine.” He waves his hand vaguely in the air, trying to explain with his hand motions that it really was fine. He’s fine. It’s all fine. Everything is fine. “What are you apologizing for? It’s not your fault that I’m upset. It’s not Don, Gilda, or Anna’s fault either.” 

She looks him right in the eyes again, bright green meeting elegant purple. Emma’s grip on his hand tightens, but it doesn’t hurt. It’s grounding, comforting. It’s Emma. “It’s not your fault either, Ray.” Her voice sounds almost heartbroken. 

Somehow, Ray feels like his heart broke too. He takes a slow, shaky inhale and leans forward, burying his face in Emma’s shoulder. He feels his shoulders tremble as he bites down on his lip, willing himself not to cry. But he doesn’t do a very good job. Ray’s hair covers his face and rubs against Emma’s shoulder.

She gently shakes his shoulder. “Ray, what’s wrong? Are you okay?” Emma waits for his response, but doesn’t get one. She reaches out to softly pet Ray’s hair. “Ray, are you crying…?” Her voice is so delicate, like she’s speaking to something precious. She speaks like she treasures him, and that hurts for a reason Ray can’t seem to place. Emma lifts his head, so she can look him in the eyes.

Ray then notices that there are tears dripping down Emma’s face, too. And in that moment he hates himself for making Emma cry. For making her look so sad, so distant. He shakes his head to answer her question, even though it’s obvious he is crying.  “I’m not.”

Emma brushes his bangs away from his face, tucking them behind his ear to examine his expression. There are tears slipping down his cheeks and his cheeks are flushed pink. He sniffles, avoiding eye contact. Ray’s embarrassed the she’s seeing him like this. 

He also doesn’t even want to think about how fucking awkward Yuugo must feel right now.

Emma wipes away the tears on Ray’s skin with the back of her hand. It’s still warm. It’s still comforting. Ray never thought of Gracefield as his home. He never felt like he belonged anywhere at all. 

Anywhere other than at Norman and Emma’s sides, at least. 

But right now, her touch feels like warmth. It feels like comfort. It feels like home, a feeling that Ray thinks he doesn’t know. But this has to be it.

“I’m sorry, Ray…” She whispers, gently smacking their foreheads together. Emma pulls him into a hug, her arms wrapping tightly around his waist. 

Ray doesn’t know how to reply, but his mouth opens and his body speaks before his brain can stop it. “Emma… I’m sorry too. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

He doesn’t even know what he’s apologizing for. Something. Everything.

Ray feels himself fall to pieces in his arms. Every part of him he worked so, so hard to keep together just crumbles in the comfort of her touch. He cries into her shoulder, hands clenched into fists around the fabric of Emma’s shirt. He can’t stop crying. He just can’t.

Eventually, though, he does. 

When Ray’s stopped crying, he pulls away, wiping his eyes with his sleeve and sniffling, hoping he doesn’t look too stupid after crying for, what, twenty minutes? Thirty? He takes a shuddering breath and Emma giggles at him, cupping his cheek in her hand. He leans into the touch, grateful for her presence.

“We should probably go back and finish your haircut, right? At this rate, your bangs will really start to be a hazard.” 

Ray finds himself laughing and he nods his head. Emma stands first, and she reaches out for him.

It’s not the first time in Ray’s life that she’s reached out for him like this, lifting him up back on his feet with ease. And they both know it won’t be the last.

Ray’s cheeks flush as they walk back into the room where Anna was cutting hair. The second the door opens, Anna drops her scissors on the floor from shock and Don yelps, pulling away from her. That was very clearly a second away from disaster.

“Ray…!” Anna says, running up to him. “I’m sorry, Ray, for earlier. I shouldn’t have done what I did.”

Gilda stands, too, walking over to Ray, looking genuinely ashamed. “I’m sorry too, Ray. I was being insensitive. I know I wouldn’t like being compared to her, either.” 

Scratching the back of his neck, he looks away from both of them, feeling self-conscious about how incredibly obvious it must be that he’d been crying. “No, it’s okay. I shouldn’t have run off so suddenly, either. I just got a little bit overwhelmed, but, uh…” He makes eye contact with both Anna and Gilda. “It’s okay, really. I accept your apology.”

“I’m sorry too, Ray. I shouldn’t have… joked around like that. It wasn’t cool of me.”

He looks over and smiles gently at Don. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

The air is light between all of them, and Anna goes back to cutting Don’s hair. It doesn’t take very long, and when she’s done Ray sits in the chair in front of her.

Quietly, she speaks to him so only he can hear. “Ray… I really am sorry about earlier, and…” Anna pauses, thinking through her words with a delicate precision. “No matter how much you look like her, you aren’t Mama. You aren’t Isabella. You’re no one but yourself, Ray.”

He’s caught off guard by her words but eventually smiles. “Thanks, Anna.” Out of the corner of his eye, Ray can see Emma smiling at him. Anna starts snipping away at his bangs, hands steady and practiced. She really was good at this. Maybe even better than Isabella was.

“I think you do just fine cutting our hair, Anna.” Ray admits, with his eyes closed.

He can hear Anna beaming. “Thank you, Ray. That means a lot.”

Ray knows she’s right. No matter how much he looked like his mother, he wasn’t Isabella. He was himself. No one else--and maybe he didn’t like himself all that much--or, well, at all, but… Right now, his brain has settled down enough for Ray to enjoy the feeling of Anna brushing his hair, cutting the strands with careful precision.

When Anna hands him the mirror when she’s done, Ray doesn’t see Isabella in his reflection. 

All he sees is himself.