The Drawings on the Wall [Alex]

[Gabriel Constant]

And I love the way
you always wake me from those
stagnant, re-run dreams
-Dark New Day, "Breakdown"

What joy! The tip of the crayon went sliding along the wall. This one was a pretty color. Blue, as she had been told. She liked that one. And purple, and pink too. She would use all of those. Right now, though, it was all about the blue. The sky was blue. The song said so. The sky was blue, the grass was green, the sun was yellow, and the stop sign - what was that? - was red. The song didn’t say anything about purple and pink, but she saw those in places too, in big green things or on cars or in crayons. Crayons. That was what was important right then.

With a smile, Demeter Gabrielle Constant pulled the blue crayon along the wall. Sky! What next? Green for the tree. And grass, that was green too. She drew a rough circle and doodled in it. Under that, she drew a long purple line for the trunk, just like she had seen. Really she knew it should have brown, but purple was prettier.

Under that went a green line, for the grass. But then she looked up. The sky was fuller than that. So she colored in the sky, picking up the blue crayon again, and scratched in some color around the tree. What next? A house!

“Demeter! Athena!”

Demeter put the crayon in her mouth and looked up. Their father had found them first, sitting in the living room, drawing on the easel that was the wall. She looked up, and there was Daddy, standing over there with a cross look on his face.

“Daddy!” Demeter explained, the crayon falling out of her mouth.”Look! A pretty tree!”

It came out more like “a preddy dree,” but her meaning was apparent by what had been scribbled onto the wall. Gabriel sighed. They had grown used to coloring on the wall somehow. Once he and Alexandria first noticed the twins’ artistic leanings, they had bought the girls coloring pads and blank books. They had used that for a while but then went back to the wall. The new coat of paint in the living room had barely tried when they came at it again.And their room… Gabriel almost wanted to leave the drawings up in there. Just to see what would happen as they grew older and saw the kind of mess they had made as babies…. and as a reminder of what they had been like as babies. Time was passing so quickly. They would be two years old this summer. Gabriel wanted to remember these moments, as destructive as they were.

He picked up the crayons and placed them back into their boxes. “It is very pretty,” he told Demeter, sitting on his feet to talk to the girls. “But you have paper for that, remember? The paper makes it so you can keep it.” Otherwise, as the girls had noticed, the drawings went away under a fresh coat of paint. Demeter pouted but let her father put the crayons in the boxes.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Gabriel said. “I didn’t say you couldn’t color. I said you couldn’t color on the walls.” He glanced to Alex and sighed quietly. “What are we going to do with these two?”

[Alexandria Constant]

To say that the artistic gene was part of the Hardt family would be putting it lightly. Alexandria had taken to the science and art that came with the blade and killing, though she did not care to dwell on the latter much as of late. Eliza had been very much into drawing and scribbling herself before getting lost in the world of motorsports. Daymon... well he had turned into a bonafide genius, there was not much more you could say about that that was not already spelled out by the fact he was a real genius. Those did not come along just everyday.

The current generation of children, while bearing a different name, had acquired the gene. They had gone a bit out of the deep end with how they were expressing it though, using the wall as an easel over the blank pages and coloring books Alexandria and Gabriel had provided them. Alex was considering getting them an actual easel but until they showed they could keep their artistic expression from the wall and confined to paper, they would not be getting it. It would not be right to reward them even when they were still misbehaving.

Demeter was up to it again it seemed, with a very colorful display of a tree, the grass, and very vast sky. The paint was barely dried over their previous use of the wall as their painting grounds and Alex could hear a bit of exasperation in Gabriel's voice as he was verbally reprimanding the little girl. It was hard to believe that both her and her sister were going to be two years old in just a few months. Time was moving all too quickly for Alex' liking with her little girls, they were growing up way too fast.

"You knew they were going to be a handful. They have the best and worst of the both of us in them, moreso the best. Isn't that right my beautiful darling?" Alex bent down and gave her sweet child a kiss on the cheek. "Now dear, you know that you are supposed to use your crayon on the paper books you were given and not on the wall. We do not want to make daddy any more cross than he already is do we?" She gave Gabriel a grin as she finished speaking. Oh they definitely had the both of them in them with the way they acted.

Filing into the room was Athena, carrying another box of crayons for her own use. Yet she stopped in her tracks when she saw Alex and Gabriel already having found out her and her sister's activities. That took far less time than she had thought it would, she did not even get to start her own drawing on the big blank wall! Her mommy and daddy liked them so much, they had given her a great big blank canvas to work on again after her last masterpiece.

"Coloring time?" Athena asked and deftly snatched one of the coloring books before hobbling over to where Alex was and plopping into her lap. "Mommy colors with me and makes masterpiece!"

[Gabriel Constant]

With a mixed look of irritation and amusement, Gabriel observed their daughters. This time would not last long, he knew, even without his precognition. They were already growing up too quickly. They were as smart and savvy as their parents, and were clearly aware of their surroundings. His baby girls would soon no longer be babies.

But in what world? He had promised himself and Alex that he would, at the very least, turn the world into a better shape than it was. So far, his window for achieving hat had not yet opened, and he was beginning to grow impatient - and worried. What if his precognition was gone for good? Oh, he could get by without it, but the going would be so much more difficult. It would be like shooting in the dark.

When Alex remarked on his being cross, Gabe gave her an innocent smile. Athena and Demeter could never make him cross, not truly. Not here, in their growing childhood. But one of them had to be hard on them, and while that was usually Gabriel, Alex had her times as well. It was all about the love and care they had for their daughters.

Perhaps, once this was over - or begun - he and Alex would talk about having children again. He had not done as poor a job of raising the twins as he had always thought he would. In fact, he thought he had done okay. Maybe even well. The twins seemed as well-adjusted as Alex and Gabe's children could be, which was a little off-kilter, but perfectly fine for them.

Gabe picked up Demeter. She seemed to have more in common with her father, but no one twin was shown favoritism over the other by either parent. Gabriel was an only child - excepting his only recently-found half-family - but Alex had siblings. He figured she knew more about the sibling bond than he did.

"Mommy and Daddy got you some drawing pads. See, you can even lie down when you're coloring. And in this one, you can color in the pictures." Gabe smiled. "We'll even color with you."

Demeter frowned. She didn't care about coloring books. That was all they did in daycare. Color, color, color. She was an artiste. She required much more space and leniency than mere paper could provide. She stuck a blue crayon in her mouth.

Gabe took the crayon out and glanced at Alex. "Maybe if we covered the walls with paper...."

[Alexandria Constant]

Alex chuckled as Gabriel tried to reason with Demeter, to the expected result with toddlers. You could not reason with little ones, not even ones as bright and adorable as their little darlings. Athena was definitely the more clever of the two girls, she seemed to be taking after the Hardt genes as she seemed to be trending towards the genius end of the spectrum like Daymon had. Perhaps there would be two of them in the family, though she now thought maybe Daymon could be a tutor for the girls later in life. Provided everything worked out... for the better.

That was not to say that Demeter was not bright though, she definitely was intelligence, but she seemed far more mischievous. Athena was also mischievous but she had a way of being subtle about it or playing coy when found out. Like Alex suspected she was doing now with the crayons and the coloring book. With a smile, she sat down on the carpet and let Athena crawl into her lap and begin the coloring. It seemed like her daughter wanted to color in the plane page this day, maybe she had heard of her mother's profession a few too many times.


"Look, it is your plane mama." Athena said as she colored the plane a variety of silver and dark blue. She thought they called it navy but she was not sure if that was right. Mama liked her plane though, she always talked about having so much fun when she was flying it.

"We are going to have to be more careful about what we say in front of them it seems. They are hearing just about everything!" Were little girls supposed to be this smart? She knew that her girls were special, every mother thought that though, but what if they were really special? And what would happened if or when the pair of them developed abilities? That was going to be a very odd bridge to cross when they came to it, especially if they took after either of their parents abilities.

"I do not think that is a good solution, it will just encourage them." Maybe the easel was the right thing to do, if the pair were so intent on using their artistic talents on something besides coloring books. "You girls are all sorts of fun! Giving mommy and daddy so much to think about!" She shot a gaze at Gabriel to see if he had any other ideas. This was a puzzle indeed.

[Gabriel Constant]

I slowly break down following you
You get around so well without me
If I could break ground
and build a wall to keep you in this state
so innocent and pure
I’d build it that way
-Dark New Day, “Breakdown”

Glancing at Athena’s drawing of a plane, Gabriel felt both proud and unsurprised. Proud because his daughter had done a good job; unsurprised because he knew, as Alex said, that their girls knew more than their parents would have liked. Soon their baby girls would be fully aware of their world. Gabriel wanted them to realize that in a world very different from this one, and he was running out of time. Their baby girls were growing up, right before their parents’ eyes.

He suspected that the little girls were geniuses, or at least ahead of their time. They spoke much better and though much more quickly than other children their age. Of course, with who their parents were, that was hardly a surprise; a con man and tinkerer, a tinkerer and scientist and pilot, the future was open to them, with more paths before them - and paths yet to be made - than that of the average child.

Alex showed a dislike for Gabriel’s idea, but did take a moment to encourage the girls. Gabriel considered their options in that regard. He also dismissed the idea of an easel. If only they would stick to their coloring books, they would all be fine; but Athena and Demeter had other plans, higher aspirations. Just like their parents, once again.

“Maybe one of those drawing tablets. They might like being able to draw freely and erase and draw again,” Gabriel mused. “Or, well, I’m not sure beyond that.” He turned to Demeter and Athena again. This time, the crayon in Demeter’s mouth was purple. Gabe gently removed it and placed it in its box, then shook his head at her. “If I catch you doing that again, Demi, you’re going to lose all of your crayons.”

Demeter pouted. She was just expressing herself. So what if she was chewing on her creative instruments? They were hers to do whatever she wished with them! Then again, the crayons had been presents from Mommy and Daddy, so…

“Sorry,” Demi murmured. The apology earned her a smile from Daddy and a pickup where she rested on his leg.

“Just don’t do it again. It’s bad for you.” Gabe glanced to Alex. “Maybe we should consider giving them something other than crayons too.”