Chapter Text
Death was majorly inconvenient, Rori Charles decided.
One life ends and all your hard work is like dust in the wind.
But the last thing she expected after being flattened by Truck-kun after a gallery opening was getting a second chance in life…let alone in a world she thought was fictional once upon a time.
—
Rori Chadwick was born October 12, 1989 5 minutes before her twin, Rikki Chadwick, in the Johannesburg General Hospital.
Even then Charlize wasn't a fan of the twins, especially when they were born with soulmarks, something that Charlize and her husband, Terry, hadn't ever been.
When they were 5 and Charlize divorced their father and signed away her rights to the twins, the twins were sure it was because of their odd marks.
Rori would remember that night, Rikki stared up at their shared ceiling before looking over at her, "It's our fault mom left."
Rori sighed, "Charlize never liked us."
A broken cry and sniffles came from Rikki's top bunk.
Rori didn't have to see her to know she was rubbing her soulmark self-consciously, the mark that said 'You look like trouble' in a chaotic script. Rori rolled up her pj sleeve and looked at her own: 'Tell me why you aren’t afraid of me' in a sharp slanted script.
A knock came at the door, and the bearded face of their father peeked in. His features growing sadder as he heard Rikki crying. He looked at them both seeing them rubbing their soulmarked arms and he sighed, running a hand over his tired face.
"Come here, girls."
Rikki sniffled as she came down from her ladder, and Rori sat up and walked to his side. He knelt and took a slightly oil stained handkerchief and found a clean corner to wipe their tears.
"I'm sorry, Dad." Rori pursed her lips.
Rikki nodded her head down, "Me too."
"Oh my girls, its not your fault. Its mine that your mom left."
Rikki ran into his arms and Rori shuffled her feet her lips pursed.
"Hey." Terry lifted Rori's chin, "I mean it. Your mother wanted more than I could give her. I tried, girls. I really did. I'm sorry I failed you two."
"Never, Papa!" Rikki shook her head fiercely holding Terry's neck tighter while he held out his other arm for Rori who stepped into his hug gazing past his shoulder at the apartment door their mother had slammed as she left earlier that day."
That night became the first of many where Terry fell asleep, his chair leaning against the wall outside their bedroom wall as if guarding them as they slept.
At five, Rori didn’t know what divorce really meant. But she understood tired and she knew her dad was constantly it.
Tired looked like oil-stained hands scrubbing dishes at midnight. Tired looked like cheap takeaway split three ways and apology smiles Terry tried to hide behind jokes. Tired sounded like muffled sighs after he thought the twins had gone to sleep.
So Rori started helping.
Small things at first.
Picking up toys before Terry tripped over them. Making sure Rikki brushed her teeth. Learning where the cereal was kept so breakfast was one less thing for him to worry about.
It felt… familiar.
That was the strange part.
Being called Rori felt familiar too, in the same impossible way Rikki seemed to belong to her sister like sunlight belonged to mornings.
Sometimes she would pause when Terry called her name, a strange ache settling in her chest, as if someone had called her that long before she had ever been born.
She didn’t have words for it at five.
Only the quiet certainty that she had done this before.
Helped, stayed busy, and loved people enough to make life easier for them.
The older Rori got, the harder it became to ignore the feeling that something inside her was… misplaced.
Sometimes memories surfaced in flashes so quick they vanished before she could fully grasp them. Bright city lights reflected in rain puddles. The sharp scent of turpentine. Music she had never heard somehow lingering at the edge of her mind like a half-forgotten lullaby.
Other times it came as knowledge she shouldn't have had.
At seven, she corrected one of her teachers on a color wheel without understanding how she knew she was right.
At eight, she reorganized Terry’s tiny bookshelf by genre and author instinctively, despite never being taught how.
At nine, she stopped pretending the strange familiarity was normal.
The local library became her refuge after school while Rikki learned to swim at the community pool…something else she already seemed to know how to do.
The library smelled like dust and sun-warmed paper, and by her third visit the elderly librarian stopped questioning why a child kept wandering into mythology and folklore sections meant for university students.
Rori searched for anything that explained:
- memory that didn’t belong
- old souls
- children born remembering things they shouldn’t.
Most of it was nonsense, but every now and then she found fragments that made her pulse quicken.
Legends of people who had twice lived.
Souls reborn carrying echoes of another existence.
And strangely the stories almost always circled back to the moon.
Moon-touched, moon-guided and moon-blessed.
The familiarity that settled in her chest whenever she read those stories felt dangerous somehow, though she couldn’t explain why.
Then one day in school they moved into art.
The first time her teacher placed paint into her hands, something inside Rori went utterly still.
The brush felt natural between her fingers.
While the other children smeared colors together carelessly, Rori found herself instinctively balancing shades and tones with unsettling precision. Warm against cool. Contrast against softness. Light pulling focus exactly where it should.
Her teacher stared at her painting for a very long time afterward.
“You have an incredible understanding of color theory,” she’d said carefully. “Did someone teach you?”
Rori remembered staring down at paint-stained fingers, unease curling quietly in her stomach.
“No,” she answered honestly.
But that night she dreamed of gallery lights and champagne glasses and canvases taller than she was.
And for the first time, she woke up remembering another name.