Gnossienne

A moment of awareness that someone you've known for a long time still has a private inner life.

"You're reading the Iliad again?" Theresa piped up from the couch as Archie joined her in the lounge room,
"Yeah…" he mumbled lazily as he made himself comfortable on the opposite lounge.
"Didn't you finish it a while back?"
"Yeah… I always circle back to it when I'm between books, I've been doing it since I was eight." Archie casually explained as he flipped over a page.

"Greek poetry is pretty heavy reading material for an eight-year-old, didn't your parent's ever read to you when you were little? Like Charlotte's Web or the Wind in the Willows?"

"Not really… we didn't have that many books at home and my mom worked late most nights, so it was just me." Theresa analysed her friend as he sat barely lifting his eyes from his book. "Huh, just him and his mother… no mention of a father or siblings," Theresa silently noted to herself. Come to think of it, Archie never really mentioned his family much at all.
"Theresa… why are you staring at me?"

"Huh? Oh, sorry. It's just… I don't think I've ever heard you talk about your family much."

Archie eyed the psychic hesitantly, "There's not much to tell."

"Well, are you close with your mom?" Theresa questioned, breaking the short silence.

"I guess…I mean I call her every day."
"Wait, you do?" Theresa blurted out in astonishment.

"yeah…so?"

"I just didn't take you as a mama's boy is all," she chuckled to herself as he rolled his eyes.

"Well, if I don't call her, who else will?" He muttered before shuffling into a more comfortable position on the couch and putting on his headphones, effectively ending the conversation. It was then Theresa appreciated just how little she knew of Archie's life before the brownstone. For two years she had lived with the same seven teammates and yet none of them had much insight to Archie's mysterious inner life. "Well, perhaps Atlanta does," Theresa thought to herself. As her mind continued to wander through her library of memories from the past two years, Theresa noted how he never really told personal stories about his roots like the others did; he remained a calculated dark horse, never to reveal too much at one time. Although that's not to say there were not moments Archie disclosed small titbits of his world; passing comments of poetry he liked, anecdotes of injuries and scars pertaining to his troubled youth. He indeed left breadcrumbs of details about his past; small glances into the looking glass that for a brief moment is cleared of its smoke. Somewhere in the hallways of his personality is a door locked from the inside; a long staircase leading to a wing that few have fully explored.

"You want to order some pizza? I'm starving," Archie piped up, snapping Theresa out of her daze.

"Huh? Oh sure, I'll ask the others." To Theresa, Archie would remain a sealed attic, remaining maddeningly unknowable.

Well… For now, at least.