Mirror (character study)

He had never known what to think of his reflection.

Aria stood there. Regarded himself in the mirror, shifted his weight from one leg to the other, and squinted at his own image, judging it.

He wasn’t ugly, and he knew very well he wasn’t. In fact, he could really be considered quite pretty, cutesy, built by careful hands taking their time and sculpting every detail slowly and precisely.

His eyes were big, they were round, and they were glassy. The reflection of the warm orange light in his room laid over a subtle, painted shine near the iris, acceptable looking at it from a distance, but painfully artificial now, as he leaned in to look at it closer. Close enough and he could see the thin brush strokes, a soft mix between purple and pink paint used for the highlights tracing where the bristles had touched. His pupils, not made for absorbing light, but rather just added in to keep his eyes from looking empty, had a small dash of purple paint mixed into them, result of his irises not having been fully dry when his creator painted them in. 

Mr. Sundown had wanted him to sit still, let him fix up the imperfection and tweak the painting work until it was proper and clean, but he’d given up after trying it several times. Aria just couldn’t help it- The feeling of paint in his eyes, having them held open and not being allowed to move, was simply nightmarish. 

That kind of discomfort still showed up in his nightmares, where he was unable to turn his head away or force his eyes closed to make it stop.

…He closed his eyes for a moment, letting his hand grip the edge of the mirror. 

Once he was ready, he opened them again, and decided to focus on something else.

His nose was also very dainty, being small and relatively round. It differenced him from Melody, who had a pointier, slightly longer nose, and even his chin was a bit less soft than Aria’s. Melody’s features were a little more daring, and Aria, for one, was happy for his brother on that. They still looked very alike, but he appreciated the differences that made Melody look like Melody. 

As for himself, though. 

As for himself?

“…Of course you got treated like a doll.”

He mumbled it out, ensuring he wasn’t loud enough to be heard by the doll who was dressing himself in the other room.

His pale skin, painted blush on his cheeks and nose trying their hardest to give an illusion of warmth. He wished he had the guts to just scrub and wash at it until it was gone, sometimes.

The plastic gleam of his skin under the room’s light, the joints in all his limbs that he spent every day trying to hide.

His hair, that didn’t grow, that had to be carefully brushed to ensure none of it got ripped out, but was still smooth, its texture soft and glossy, but thoroughly man-made.

He didn’t have freckles, or a crooked nose, or even a large nose. Nothing like a tooth gap, no scars from stupid accidents, no little grey hairs from the kind of stress he’d dealt with. No scrapes on his knees, no fingernails that were just a bit too long from the nail clipper being forgotten.

Maybe he wouldn’t be happy with them, if he had them. Maybe they’d make him insecure, maybe if he had any of those things, he would have been looking at them in the mirror now, picking at them and wishing they weren’t there. But the lack of them was a strong reminder that he had never been built to be a person, a living being with all those little quirks that allowed them to relate to others. 

No, Aria had been built to be a toy, and a toy had to look good, to be something people would be drawn to, that they would want to look at.

A doll was supposed to sit there, and look pretty in the clothes it was dressed up in, in the chairs it was sat on. A doll was supposed to be prim, proper and charming in appearance.

And that was what he was.

For all his impolite, harsh language, he was still nothing more than an elegant toy with an attitude, wasn’t he?

Aria frowned at the mirror, and turned away. He’d wasted so much time on literally nothing.

And yet… he still couldn’t help but finish his words, speaking under his breath.

“You look like one.”