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All of Lyta’s life is a bit blurry. She tries not to dwell on it, but it’s hard when Al brings up her dad’s plane or Jen reminisces on some old party or Hector ponders what trouble Trouble has gotten into.
Her head is filled with memories, each one backed up by someone else who has the same recollection by virtue of experiencing those same moments with her, but they feel wrong.
She remembers Silver Scarab threatening to decimate the world, but she doesn’t remember the details of how Norda stopped it. She remembers bragging to her fellow JSA brats about how they would never be able to go to her parents’ paradise island, but she also remembers racing Rick on kangas, learning mechanics with Al, and swinging through the trees with Hector.
Some lack any chronological sense, too. She remembers being told that her birth mother gave her away, despite knowing deep in her gut that never happened, but the timeline between that and when her adoptive parents took her in doesn’t align. She remembers marrying Hector, but the next five? Six? Seven? Years are all a blank.
Sometimes she’ll look down at her body and wonder where her scars came from. She’ll look in the mirror and wonder if her hair used to be lighter. She’ll think of her parents' faces and wonder if their voices always sounded that way.
Her head is filled with memories, but they’re all blurry and none align the way she thinks memories are supposed to.
Yet, a few things stand out that she knows deep down are true. Saturdays spent at the beach with Infinity Inc. Exploring the various sets of Stellar Studios. Her certainty that Mister Bones deserved a second chance. Her appointments with Beth. Her grief over losing Hector -- twice, she thinks it happened, but even that, she’s not so sure.
She remembers the warmth of the Atlantic Ocean during the summer, cheering for Al at his basketball games, nights spent studying at UCLA, jealously at her friends for her inability to fly like them, a home away from home.
It’s hard, sometimes, to see people recall the past so easily and not have to dedicate a significant amount of mental energy to dig up the memories they know are buried somewhere.
She tries not to dwell, but it's hard.
Especially when Hector does something so sweet and thoughtful like cooking a meal he claims to be her childhood favorite.
A meal she doesn’t remember.
It troubles her, enough that she wonders if she should ask someone for help. Hector already said that he can’t find anything wrong with her memories, and neither of them would dare mention Nabu’s name, but maybe someone else can. She sometimes wishes she could ask Hank, but Hector -- and Rick, to some degree -- have already made it clear why contact with their ex-teammate would be a bad idea.
So, instead, she smiles and thanks her husband, sitting down with him at the little table in the Tower of Fate’s kitchen and watching him eat.
When he looks up from his nearly finished plate to her barely touched one, it’s with a question posed on his lips that Lyta answers before he can utter a word. “It’s lovely, but I’m not that hungry.” Hector still doesn’t look satisfied, and Lyta does her best to placate him without letting on that the strange meal she’s never had before tastes simultaneously disgusting and like home and how it disconcerts her.
Instead, she reaches across the table and grabs his hand in both of hers. “This is how I want to remember us,” and Hector softens immediately, knowing the weight of those words. Of course he does, after days spent puzzling what’s left of her mind, what’s missing, and what’s new; after weeks spent consoling her, reaffirming his love, swearing it to always be there and never leave no matter what the heavens and the earth and the gods above lob their way, of course he knows how sensitive she can be in regards to her ailing memory. He knows how hard she tries -- and how often she fails -- to remember. He knows how important a moment like this would be, how important those words are, the full weight behind them and the reason why their utterance is significant.
He grabs her hands in both of his as he exits his seat and kneels on the ground beside her. He brings both to his mouth to kiss the knuckles tenderly, with much more care and reverence in the single action than most people experience in a lifetime, then lets go to frame her face.
“Then let us remember,” he says softly, sincerely, his love and adoration written across every part of his body and heard in every syllable of his words. Lyta feels her eyes water, feels Hector brush away the tears with the pads of his thumbs, feels herself lean down to meet Hector halfway for a kiss.
He knows, he knows it all, he knows every aspect of her and he loves her regardless, and she loves him all the more for it.
And although it’s not guaranteed, although Lyta could wake up tomorrow with another gaping hole acting as a dug up grave in her memory and no idea where it came from or what used to lie there in the unmarked pit, she knows she will try her best to remember.
Hector’s soft and tender hands that gently hold her together, Hector’s lush and electric lips that speak of nothing but love and safety, Hector’s gross food that tastes like home, she will try her best to remember it all.