I sit and I stare at the paper. I try not to think of anything specific. I let it surface... whatever it is that I'm gonna paint.
Sometimes I even close my eyes and let it come to me. Just like that. Usually, it happens. A sunset at the lighthouse down Riley's Cove beach, or my mom's garden in winter... all covered in snow. Or the view from my old dorm room, right by Kits beach. Sometimes it's even the face of a friend I haven't seen in a while. Usually happens when I'm feeling kind of lost. You know, looking for a familiar face.
But recently, I haven't been able to any more. I'd sit and really want to paint something, but the images just won't come to me. I'd close my eyes, yet... nothing. I'm wondering if this war thing, all this... military training is killing that part of me. If, somehow, I'm becoming less... human, you know, if I'm losing my ability to feel stuff and put it down on paper. No, I hope that's not it.
Besides, well, it's not exactly true that I don't see anything when I close my eyes. Or when I wait for the picture to come to me. It's just that it's always the same thing that keeps coming back... the one thing that I cannot paint... because I promised someone I'd never reveal what I saw.
It's been haunting me for weeks now. Ever since it happened. Ever since that afternoon, when he took off his mask for me. And he let me see... who he really is. Ever since I've known about him. I just can't get it off my head, how... indescribable it was... the feeling that he knew me so little, yet he trusted me so much, with something so important. So life-threatening.
I just can't seem to get his face off my mind. Understandable, maybe, considering the magnitude of the implications of it... of my friend being Mirialdo Peacecraft in disguise... hiding from the world until he's finished his training and he can regain his parents' kingdom... and stay alive in the process. Which is a task in itself, considering the whole friggin' Federation believes they eliminated the entire Peacecraft family 10 years ago. If they were to ever find out... No, they won't. I'm the only one who knows. And they sure as hell won't find out from me.
But that's why it's so bad that I have this desire to paint him. I don't know why, I just can't seem to let go of it... the sight of his face. I usually paint stuff that I want to make sure I do not forget. Stuff that I believe makes me a better person if I manage to keep it with me and not forget it. But his face... heck, talk about being better off not knowing a thing! And yet, I can't help it... not wanting to forget it... ever. I know it's against my better judgment, I know it would be so much smarter to just... erase the memory of it from my brain.
But I don't want to do that... not again. I let it happen once, and I lost so much more than the freedom I gained.
My parents. My own parents' faces. I can't remember them any more. I let them fade. Because it was better that way. Too difficult, too painful to handle. Especially when you're five. Witnessing it. Witnessing them being taken from you. I tried to remember for a while. I tried to picture them in my head... what they would look like now... what my baby sister would look like now, but I couldn't see. So blurry.
I know I look a lot like my mom. Dad used to tell me all the time... that we have the same eyes... that one day I'd grow to be as pretty as she was. But I look at myself in the mirror, and all I can see is me... not her. I can't even remember how I got to be like this, or if I still do look like her at all. I have a feeling she was a lot prettier. Well, a lot more feminine, for one thing...
Me, I just let myself become someone else. I let myself forget about my own identity. All I can remember is that the Federation took them from me. Don't know why. Don't know what they wanted them dead for... or whether they did, at all... or whether it was just a freak accident. Just more casualties of war.
I don't know why we were always on the run. I don't know why, when that soldier found me, he made me promise to never, ever tell anyone what happened, or my parents' names. And I don't know why that soldier risked everything he had, including his own family, to get out of the Federation Army and to adopt me.
But it's his last name I bear now. Not my parents'. I can't remember my parents'. It's him I picture in my head when I think of the word, Dad. Jarod Noin, who was part of the army that killed my parents... but who, nonetheless, saved my life and gave me another chance at a normal childhood. He took me in. Like his own daughter. Gave me his wife for a mother, and his children for brother and sister.
So I let myself forget. Where I came from, my first language, what my family was like, and how much I loved them. And how much they loved me. I let it all go, left it all behind when I boarded that plane with him to become his daughter.
Even now, I know it's not his fault, I know he did so much for me... I know he did it to protect me. But I still can't help resenting him for allowing me to forget. For making me make that promise. And I still can't come to terms with it, how I was, in fact, solely responsible for that. How I was the one who ultimately decided that I would try and picture Kaitlyn Noin's face instead of my own mother's before I fell asleep at night. It was me and no one else who decided that it was ok if I forgot.
Only, it wasn't ok. It'll never be ok. Too late to find them now. Too late to try and dig them out of the pile of memories and faces and events that clutters my brain. They're not there any more. I let them go. But maybe that's why now I'm so scared of ever forgetting anything again.
That's why I paint. So it won't happen again to anyone or anything else that I care about. So I won't let myself forget just because it's easier to. And maybe that's why I won't let myself close my eyes and not see Zechs's face until I've put it down on paper. Until it's safe from me. Until it exists outside of me and my selective memory.
No, I will not forget this. I can't paint him or sketch him... as much as I crave to... as much as the temperas seem to mix themselves in his skin tone and his eye colour every time I squeeze them out of the tube. I won't put his secret in danger by giving in to my selfish, irrational need to re-create him on paper. I promised him his secret would be safe with me. I won't betray his trust... ever. But I won't let myself forget, either. I can paint him inside my mind, where no one but me will see him.
I will. Just like I paint anything else. After all, it's the process that counts. Not so much the picture in itself. This time, instead of doing it, maybe I can picture the whole process, step by step... from sketching the basic shapes to mixing the base tones, to smudging the nuances and blending light and shade, to touching up the details to make it perfect.
That way, I won't let it go. I won't let his face fade out of my memories. And I won't have to wonder again... what it would be like if I could still remember my best friend's eyes.
