𝗗𝗜𝗚𝗜𝗧𝗔𝗟 𝗦𝗜𝗟𝗘𝗡𝗖𝗘

A Mouthful of Swords

After that day, time seems to fade in and out of place, and the miles just fly by. They don't ask questions, not questions that really matter, because neither of them wants to answer. James is lost in his own world, most hours, and Isabell usually just watches him.

She understands more than he wants her to. However, she's a good girl, a kind girl, and she doesn't push and press at decade-old bruises. She has enough of her own. Besides, she is happy so long as she has him, happy so long as she can read her books and sing along to the radio, and he is OK just to let her.

As the warmth of early summer stretches in, James starts to write.

He steals a notebook from a trashy gas station and at first, he is cautious. He jots down tiny memories he doesn't want to forget, funny things that Isabell says, songs from the radio that he promises to put on a CD for her, someday.

Eventually, he gets bolder.

He writes thick, heavy paragraphs of all the thoughts that matter; fractured forties memories, the way Isabell's eyes light up when she smiles, sometimes even Steve. He never properly explains his feelings, obviously, but he writes about what he remembers. He's too afraid for anymore.

Then again, maybe that's enough for him.

When he's done, he stashes the notebook below his seat and pretends it isn't there. Still, he gets skittish when Isabell strays too close, oblivious in her bored little habits of climbing everywhere. Some days, when it isn't safe enough to take the notebook out, he just scribbles Steve's name everywhere.

On the inside of his wrists, scratched on wooden picnic tables, James is losing his mind as memories swallow him whole.

Maybe. Maybe if he sat down and properly confronted his thoughts, maybe if he let go of the past, maybe if he wasn't so afraid of himself. Maybe if Isabell pushed a little more, he wouldn't have allowed himself to sink so deep.

Maybe she knows it too.

And perhaps, one particularly warm afternoon, this is why he wakes up from a nap to discover Isabell crouched in the passenger seat, his journal clutched firmly in her hands.

In that moment, he swears he feels his heart stop.

James is across the car in an instant, snatching it away from her and smacking her around the back of her head. She doesn't even flinch, just watching him with this catlike curiosity.

He glances at the page she's been looking at, frantic that he might've said something too suggestive, but to his relief, it's a relatively boring number. Something about one of Isabell's jokes and early mornings.

There is, however, a snippet of something more intriguing towards the end. Something about dancing, something about a 40s date that James barely remembers, and then, the last word on the page; Steve.

Steve.

Isabell leans over James' shoulder to look at it. She blinks at him.

"S-T-E-V-E. Stev-vee?"

"Hey, don't keep reading that." James snaps. "And it's Steve, not Stev-ee."

"Oh. Steve."

"Yeah."

"Like Captain America?" Isabell asks, in that awful way where she knows she's going to get whatever answers she wants, directly or not. She cocks her head at James. "Is he your friend?"

He swallows back the flush that rises in his cheeks. "Definitely not."

"Hmm." She leans back into the crook between the seat and the door, chewing on her nails. "Am I your friend?"