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”You look just like her.”
Ragatha had heard the phrase his whole life, constantly echoed to him by family, and friends, and people he hardly knew but who always seemed to know him. It had felt like a compliment once, ages ago, from a time that hurt to remember.
His father’s eyes, they said, he had his father’s eyes for sure. But his bouncy, curly hair, his tan skin, his soft round face he could hardly recall the details of, even his short stature in the real world, that had all been Her. The spitting image of each other, his father used to say. Sometimes with warmth, sometimes with malice, but enough that it still played in his head from time to time when he passed a mirror.
”She’s my mini me.”
It was one of the nicest things She’d ever said about him. So proud, so happy. He was surprised that memory hadn’t been buried like most of the good ones. Blotched out by yelling fits or hair pulling or other things he tried his hardest not to think about. She was always so proud of how much he looked like Her when he was still small. So young, so naive, just happy to seemingly be part of whatever the adults were doing. Looking back, he wondered if it was a way She fed Her own ego, but he didn’t want to spoil the memory by dwelling on it.
”You look just like her..”
It started to weigh on him early, long before he was even a teenager. He wasn’t sure what had truly started it, though. If it was his affinity for softball, his willingness to do the “grunt” work with his father when his brothers didn’t want to, how he complained about the dresses and doing his hair, if She truly did just start to loathe his existance more and more as he grew. Or perhaps she realized things about him that he wouldn't until he was older. For reasons that were as clear as a summer sky, and some that he would not fully acknowledge until decades later, he began to resent the constant comparison.
And so did She.
She made that very clear.
”You’re nothing like me!”
It was something that had been spat at him in the middle of an argument he could barely remember outside of angry barks and a vice grip on his arm. It hurt in the moment, like salt in an open wound, but when he had mulled it over with a clearer mind, some small part of him said good in a defiant voice he wouldn’t dare verbalize. He could dream, though, and in his dreams he was someone else. Never the same thing twice, but anything was better than Her.
It never stopped him from clawing for Her attention though. No matter how much She hurt him.
Pathetically. Constantly. Trying to make Her see him. As anything. He tried so hard to be the daughter She could want. He wanted so badly to be a son She would love. Anything at all. As long as She looked at him.
“You’re just like her!”
His father had screamed that at him, more than once, and that had always cut deeper than most of what She used to say. His outbursts, at least the ones directed at him, were far less frequent than Hers, and he’d never gotten physical with Ragatha like She did. But, in a way, that had made him so much scarier. She was predictable. Ragatha knew how to tiptoe around Her, and learned to navigate Her emotional highs and lows. Like dancing through a minefield.
His father was not so predictable.
Less frequently angered, but the anger lingered. Focused. For days. Sometimes longer. Before things eventually settled back again. Ragatha was never sure what exactly he did wrong to trigger those. He simply fell into the routine of self blame and apologies, hoping to say the right thing. To keep the peace like he always tried to. Even if it seldom worked.
Perhaps his father simply hated how much Ragatha looked like Her.
So did he.
”You look like her.”
He chopped his hair off one night, too long ago now for him to remember how old he was. It had been an impulsive act, done under the guise of unrecognized dysphoria and perhaps some level of pure, selfish, spiteful anger. For the brief moment between seeing his hair cover the marble counter top, and Her practically breaking in the door when he refused to open it, he almost felt.. Good.
A short lived moment for himself, shattered by the terrifying reality of the storm She would bring when She came banging on the door, demanding to know what he was doing in the bathroom in the middle of the night. He wasn’t even sure how she knew.
He supposed the outcome would have been the same if She’d found out the morning after. The only difference would have been not waking up the entire house with their fight. Though, he recalled it being mainly Her. Beating and screaming, dragging him through the halls and making a spectacle while She called him things he didn’t wish to repeat in his own head. He should have known better, he supposed. She always was fussy about keeping his hair “perfect”.
She made him grow it out again after that. He hated it even more.
”Just like her.”
When he’d first arrived in the circus, he wasn’t exactly sure what he’d expected himself to look like. Caine’s body was.. Unique, to say the least, if not a little horrifying at first. While Kinger’s was so simple. A giant pair of teeth and a talking king chess piece did not give much of a uniform idea of what he would end up being. He’d noticed his burlap hands rather quickly, though, and it would be a lie to say that, once he saw his full “avatar”, he wasn't a little disappointed.
He supposed a ragdoll was fitting, though. Something sturdy, made to be played with and tossed around. Something that could take abuse and still bounce back. Something expected to smile while it all happened, and keep smiling after. At least he was cute, with bright red yarn hair that stuck out to the sides, and a soft blue patched up dress with a matching bow. He ignored the discomfort he felt in the outfit.
Some sinking feeling said She would love to see him in this form.
”You look so much like her.”
Her bright, burning white eyes bored into him, body completely enveloped in darkness and backlit by a dull red glow within whatever hell Caine had sent him to. (He was similar to Her, Ragatha thought, though he kept that internalized.) He wouldn’t, or couldn’t, take his eyes away from Hers. Even as the knives stabbed through him like a pin cushion. Nothing was worse than the fear of what might happen if he looked away.
Even now, there was disapproval in Her eyes. A reminder of how he’d failed her, constantly, for years. How he still did with his mere existence. How all of the bad was his fault. How he deserved all of what happened to him. He hated how much it still affected him. He hated how much he believed it, even if this particular version of Her wasn’t one hundred percent true to form.
But most of all he hated the silhouette of a dress and the hair stuck out to the sides. A horrible reminder.
”You look so much like your mother.”