Chapter Text
Her eyes are dark brown.
It is not the first detail he notices of her, but it is perhaps the most significant.
She is tall, yes, of a height more common in a natural-born man than a woman, but he has seen tall women before.
Her features are such as he has heard others call ‘plain’ and ‘serviceable’ (though, his own countenance being what it is, he would never dare impugn upon another’s looks so), but again, he has seen such women before. And those called ‘beautiful,’ and those called ‘ugly.’
He has seen all colours of hair, and many shades of skin, a plethora of mouths and noses, of chins and cheeks and brows. All shapes of limb, all curves and straights of torso.
But from afar.
Always from afar.
Too far to see sighted eyes as anything more than dark or pale, and, should ever he venture closer, ever attempt cordialities of those who should be his kin, he is quickly given more pressing matters to attend to than a thing so trivial as colour. Indeed, sometimes the matters press him so dearly that they linger long beyond the screams of the crowd and the gleam of metal.
(He had wept as he wrestled that first bullet from himself. Wept for the pain of it, for the addition of a new scar to his overflowing collection, for having to press what rags he could find to bind the wound himself. For the lack of any gentle hand to help ease his pain, and for the fear that his life would end even lonelier than it began.)
Yet here, on this morning, this morning where he has been too like his creator and become bold unto folly, folly that would lead, so he thought, onto the blade of another scream within his battered chest, he has instead encountered the first miracle of his life.
The eyes of the woman standing before him, traveling his monstrous visage as easily as sunlight might traverse a meadow, are dark brown.
And she does not scream.
Indeed, when at last she has taken her mental tally of him and deigns to speak, the words that emerge are of such earthly things as ham and cheese, jars of pickles, a basket to hold them along with his pilfered bread and apples, and a cloth to wrap it all safe as a sparrow in its nest. When sharpness enters her voice, it is in accusation that he is more lean than a man of his size ought to be (though how can she possibly know this, when there has never been a man of his size, let alone his making, before?), and that he must be more mindful of his health (he near weeps to hear it), and that he must return the pickle jar when it is emptied.
Return.
A foreign word to him, hideous, sallow-skinned wretch that he is, a being made for casting out, not keeping. And yet here this woman is, bidding he return to her.
(And he will. He will return to her, he would die for her. Her eyes are dark brown, and he would die for her (or, perhaps more terrifying yet, live for her).)
Their hands brush when she hands him the basket after it is packed to her satisfaction, and this must truly be a day of miracles, for he dares- he dares think that this is not an unintentional occurrence. Not with how simply her fingers proceed to leave the wickerwork and instead trace one of the veins that strain across his hand, as if in blessing…
Yet, even in this moment of grace, he cannot help but soil it. For when his breath catches in his borrowed lungs at this first gentle touch of his life, the sound of it has her stepping back, colour high in her cheeks, eyes darting away from him as she clears her throat.
But then, wonder of wonders, her eyes return to him, still clear and unshadowed by the terror he needs no mirror to know lurks within his own.
“My manners have left me. My name is Gytha Lang, and it is my pleasure to meet you.”
She bobs, as women do (he believes it is called a curtsy, but he has never had opportunity to inquire as to the accuracy of this), before looking to him with expectation, and oh.
A name.
She is waiting for his name.
The name he does not have.
The name he was never given.
The name he never even took, for what good is a name if there is no one to call you by it, save to remind you that you are alone, and always shall be?
Yet Gytha, Gytha brown eyes, Gytha dark hair, Gytha straight spine, Gytha Lang, is waiting for him, has gifted him sustenance, her kindness, her touch, and he is not so wretched as to deny her the one thing she asks of him in return (save the return of her jar).
And so, he will be, “Adam,” he says, voice still an unpracticed instrument and rough with disuse, “I am Adam.” For his Creator’s Adam he should have been, and for want of any other name, so for Gytha, fearless Gytha, Gytha Lang, Adam he shall be. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Madam Lang.”
“That would be Mademoiselle Lang,” she tells him, the colour that had been fading returning to her cheeks for reasons he- for reasons Adam (Adam, he is not merely he, he is Adam, he is Adam) does not understand. The shade is bright, like berries, like the feathers of a bird, and the question wanders damnation-quick across his mind as to whether this shade would be berry-smooth or feather-soft if he were to run a finger across it. (He mustn’t, he mustn’t, such things are not for him, yet, in the darkest corner of him, next to the place he hides tears for a Creator who does not love him, he wonders.) “And it is my pleasure to meet you, Monsieur Adam.”
“You have already said so,” he says, Adam says, his tongue made stupid by the jostled thoughts within his skull, with the sinfulness of his nature, with the dark brown of Gytha’s eyes.
“So I have,” she says, she laughs (she laughs, he has made her laugh), and she smiles at him. “Then we shall simply have to meet again, to balance it all out. After all, it’s only practical.”