Work Text:
He imagines them as kids, sometimes.
Annie in pigtails, with skipping rope and scraped knees. Chris in a schoolyard football match, wiping mud off his jumper. Ray poking proudly at the peach fuzz ghost of a mustache. Gene terrorizing the smaller and weaker children into doing his bidding.
(Alright, maybe that isn't entirely fair, but he's got a fresh bruise on his arm and isn't feeling gracious to Gene at the moment.)
Perhaps they're windows into his psyche, but they aren't people with pasts, with childhoods – except what he invents.
Like Athena, they sprang fully formed from his head.