tap-tap-tap
I looked up from burning the toes of my black boots with my glare and focused instead on melting Sally Regal as she stood - very uncomfortable - in the doorway of my office. "WHAT."
She flinched, and the action skewered a specific point behind my scarred eye to my brain. 'What do you want, Ahndra?! Can't you see I'm busy?' smack--
I lowered my gaze.
"Sorry to bother you, Fujin, ma'am." She stepped a little forward, bending and folding and restraightening a sheaf of papers in her hands. "Seifer told me to give this report to you right away. Did you want me to just put it in your in-box out there?" she asked as she gestured toward the door.
I continued to stare at the toes of my boots as I stretched out a hand. "GIVE."
"Oh. Alright." Sally stepped forward and placed the sheaf of papers within my hands.
I snapped it out of her hands and tossed it onto my desk. She flinched yet again. Throbbing... "OUT."
"Y-Yes, ma'am." Sally saluted and turned to leave, closing the door softly behind her.
I lifted my gaze to stare at that door...
...the wooden paneled door opens to reveal a young man in military-style uniform. A weapon is absent from the holster at his hip. The young woman in the hospital bed carefully pushes herself up. A bandage covers nearly her entire head. There's no smile of welcome. No expression of relief. Just chilling coldness. Deadness. Emptiness.
The young man steps forward, pulling a chair closer to her side of the bed. He turns and straddles it, resting his arms along the back of the chair. "How you feelin'?"
"FINE."
The young man lowers his gaze to the peeling upholstery of the pad on the back of the chair and picks at it. "The doctors tell you anything?"
The young woman with the silver hair looks to the window on the right side of her hospital room. "BLIND."
The young man clenches his jaw, pressing his lips into a thin line as he balls a hand into a fist. "Dammit," he mutters. He looks over at her. "I'm sorry, Ahndra. I could've stopped the bastard if I'd come straight from the station."
Ahndra looks over at him, but her expression doesn't change. "SEIFER." She slightly shakes her head.
Seifer looks away. "They tell you when you get your walkin' papers?"
"FOURTEEN."
Seifer moves his focus back to Ahndra's bruised face. "Days?"
"YES."
Seifer regards her. "What're you gonna do?"
Ahndra changes her gaze to the window and the outside grounds of the hospital in Deling City. "ENROLL."
Seifer seems to wait for something more. When it doesn't come, he adjusts his position in the chair. "What about your old man?" Ahndra doesn't move her gaze from the window. "The bastard belongs in jail, Ahn--"
"FUJIN."
"What?"
Ahndra meets his surprised gaze. "FUJIN."
"'Fujin' what?"
She looks away again. "NAME."
Seifer frowns. "What the hell for?"
"NAME."
"I heard that, Ahndra. I'm not deaf, dammit. I just want you to tell me what the hell you're changing your name for." He stands. "And what the hell's with the one word sentences?"
Ahndra/Fujin finally looks over at him. There is a hint of pleading in her expression. "...please," she whispers.
Seifer clenches his jaw, balling his hands into fists as he holds her gaze. He gives a curt nod. "Fine. So what're you gonna do about your old man... Fujin."
Fujin looks away. "NOTHING."
"Nothing! Are you crazy? He woulda killed you, Ahn--" He presses his lips together. "You can't let him get away with this."
"LATER."
"Later my ass," Seifer mumbles. He sits roughly back in the chair, watching her expressionless face as she stares out the window. ...
...I blinked and moved my gaze back to my shoes. 'It's been five damn years.' I glared. Later... Five years was enough of a 'later'.
I stood outside the small apartment in the bustling city, Deling City, and stared at the door. It had been repainted a dark burgundy since I'd been there last. The carpet had been replaced and the peeling wallpaper from my memory had been removed, the walls painted with a simple pale yellow instead. I pulled a key from my pocket and stared down at it. My brain was so quiet that it actually scared me.
I slipped the key into the lock and opened the door.
The apartment was just as I remembered, but it seemed even smaller. Stifling with memories of terror, rage, and violence. I closed the front door, setting my pack on the floor by it while my mind registered and relived each and every beating and violation.
I bent to pick up a beer bottle from the coffee table, feeling again the blunt force of the thing against my back. My fingers tightened around it briefly before setting it back down. A blood speckle on the carpet from a broken nose. A tear in the wallpaper from a thrown beer bottle that barely missed my head.
I made my way down the short hallway, pausing outside my room. Mostly everything was the same. There were extra boxes, but that was all. I stepped forward, passing the boxes as screams and cries assaulted my ears and numbed brain. I halted in front of the desk, a hand reaching out to touch the stained corner and then my patch-covered eye.
I balled my fist and turned, seeing again Seifer's frame filling the doorway. Hearing the crash of my father being thrown across the room. Feeling the relief... I pushed it aside as I looked around the room, gauging the things and the memories and the nightmares that I had actually lived. Lived and survived.
Survived.
My lips twisted in a sneer and my foot kicked something when I stepped forward. I looked down. Then I stooped to retrieve... a paper doll--
...a child's laughter... "ring around the rosie; a pocket full of posies"... drawings and tea-parties, doll houses and dress up... ...a small apartment in a bustling city... Deling City... Traffic sounds invade the small living room as a child with curls of brunette hair laughs and plays with a doll house made of shoe boxes, tissue paper, and marker-drawn windows with curtains and blue skies. Her eyes are bright with innocence and laughter; her face is beautiful with the grace of youth--
I balled the paper doll into my fist and looked up, releasing it back to the floor as I stepped forward to exit the bedroom. My father had done much the same to my childhood. Mashing it between his fingers when he should have done something much different. I shouldn't have had to survive my childhood. I should have...
I pressed my lips together and moved to stand in the middle of the room as I stared at the front door. I looked at my watch. I moved to sit on the couch, arms crossed as I glared at the coffee table...
...There was a fumbling of keys at the lock. I looked up and over as I adjusted my crossed arms. A familiar drowning wave of terror bubbled up. I fought it back with my rage and hatred. The door was shoved open and my father entered, balancing keys along with two bags of groceries. He looked different than I remembered. Older. More haggard. Anger still burned in his face and eyes, but there was something...
He dropped his keys onto the catch-all dresser to the right of the door and faced forward, taking one step toward the kitchenette before halting. He paled and lost hold of one of the bags. It dropped to the floor, contents miraculously staying within.
I slowly stood. His gaze followed the motion, and his pallor became green. "A-Ahndra?"
The expression in my eye couldn't have been colder or harder than granite. "DADDY." And I used the word as insult in both voice and meaning.
He looked suddenly very sick.
I stepped forward. He took a step back and to the side when I continued toward my pack. I knelt and unzipped it, rifling within the contents to find what I searched for. I pulled it out, staring at it a moment before straightening and facing him again.
I glared. "BASTARD."
But that wasn't enough. Sixteen years of hell on earth wouldn't let that word be enough.
I clenched my jaw, ignoring the throbbing within my eye... I reached up to pull the patch from my head. He cringed. I pointed at the scarred mess and then at him. "YOU. BASTARD." I fisted the eye-patch and reached over to jerk up my left sleeve. I pointed at the scars. "THIS." I bent to pull up my right pantleg. More scars. "THESE."
I straightened and stepped forward. He backed off yet again.
I stretched out my hand that held the previously retrieved item. It was a broken angel figurine. My throat tightened. "YOU BROKE." I brought it up to my chest. To my heart. My soul. Who I was. Who I would have been. "THIS." I pounded my chest. "THIS! BASTARD!" My voice choked, and I flung the pieces at him.
He flinched away, deflecting them from his face with raised hands.
I stood silent and still until he faced me again. I gathered all the words I had ever wished to say... "you... nothing," I hissed as I made a sharp gesture with my arm.
And then I spat in his face, daring him to retaliate. Daring him to strike out at me, so that I would have an excuse to kill him. He didn't move. He didn't even wipe the spittle from his face. He just stood there; one arm limp at his side while the other clutched his groceries.
I sneered and turned, grabbing my pack as I left the apartment and strode down the hallway, leaving the past behind. Leaving the terror. The fear. The hell. Little by little it flowed from me like blood, oozing from the wounds and leaving me weaker. And what would I be without hatred to drive me?
I reached the bottom of the stairs and slumped against the wall, my left hand releasing its vise-like grip on my pack. It thudded to the ground. Then I heard the footsteps. The same steady beat I'd heard...
..."Oh my god... Ahndra..." Steps approach a withered form at the bottom of the stairs.
The young woman barely has the strength to groan in pain as the young man moves her bruised and battered body, clothes ripped and tattered still clutched in place by gnarled fingers. The young man gathers her into his arms, ignoring her whispers of protest and her vain and weak attempts to push away. Terror and self-preservation drive her actions.
The young man turns and exits the three-story apartment to hurry toward the nearest hospital. "Hold on, Ahndra." He presses his lips together. "Dammit... Hold on..."
...I looked up. Honest intensity stared back at me. Calmness itself. A rock.
I pushed myself up from the wall and grabbed my pack as I started forward, Seifer falling into step beside me. Not taking anything. Not saying anything... Just being there. Seifer had always been there. Through the better times and the worse times. Through the beatings, the rapes, the broken bones, and the trips to the hospital. Seifer had seen it all. He was the only one who knew me.
The only person I trusted, if I even knew how to trust anyone...
My mind choked and stalled, so I simply headed forward. Past buildings, alleys, businesses, bus stops, and other blurred buildings. Terror still lurked; an unexplainable horror at a future I couldn't see to control. It was as if my father still controlled what I thought and felt. Though I had walked away from him twice, his angry eyes still made me do what I hated: give in--
I halted, slamming my fist into the wall of the nearby building. Pain and blood erupted, spattering my face and clothes as it sprayed the wall and sidewalk. I struck out again, but a firm hold on my arm kept my fist back. I pulled against it, a terrifying coldness throttling any word I might have voiced.
"Fujin."
I pulled against the restraining hold again, blinking away a slight mist. My eye began to throb; the piercing pain was all I felt.
"Ahndra. Stop."
My fight with the hold ceased, and my arm went limp as I stared at the bloodied spot on the wall. Mind silent. Insides cold. I should have felt something. Anger. Rage. Fury. Relief. Anything. But as I stared at the bloody wall with the memory of my father's shocked face burning in my mind... nothing.
I pulled my arm from the hold's firmness; it released. I lowered my gaze to the speckled white of my shirt and raised a hand to touch the spots of blood. Then the broken and bloodied knuckles on my hand caught my focus. Blood. Violence. Fury... That was all I ever remembered. All I ever saw. My only reaction to anything.
A hand reached within my field of vision to take hold of my bloodied one, but I jerked back and looked up and to my right.
Seifer presented a piece of cloth. "Here," he said simply.
I focused on the cloth for a moment before turning my head away and offering forward my hand. My skin crawled, muscles continuing to twitch as Seifer applied the makeshift bandage. I clenched my jaw, fighting back the nearly burning need to pull from the slight touch.
"You got your meds?"
I slightly nodded, teeth still clenched. "...pack..."
The makeshift bandage was tied around my bloodied knuckles, and then Seifer crouched to rifle through my pack in search of the pills.
I grabbed the pack from him. "STOP."
Seifer straightened. "Dammit, Ahndra--" He broke off, clenching his jaw as he balled his hands into fists. Then Seifer grabbed my pack from my hands.
"STOP!"
Seifer glared. "Stop what? What the hell am I doing?" He shook the bag at me. "Getting your damn pills! And what the hell is wrong with that? Nothing, goddammit! Now back off!"
'Goddammit, Ahndra, I know what I'm doing! Get your hands out of the way!' I flinched and backed off before I could stop myself.
Seifer actually went green. He released a deep breath. "Ahndra," he said, calmer, "dammit, I'm not sayin' you can't do it yourself." He handed me the bag again. "I'm trying to help."
I reached out with a slow action, not meeting his gaze as I took the bag from him and searched within. "DON'T."
"Don't help?" Seifer asked after a pause. "Don't give a damn?"
His voice became softer with each question, an overwhelming intensity hiding beneath. I fisted my hands around the found bottle of pills as well as the strap of the pack as I stared down at the bottle label.
"Don't blame myself? Don't hate the bastard who did this? Don't want to blast his brains out? Don't what, Ahndra?"
My head snapped up. "DON'T!"
"That's not good enough," he said. His voice was still calmly controlled, even though I could hear the nearly explosive intensity in it. "You finally stood up to the asshole, and I'm damned proud of you. But you're not done. You can't be half-assed about this." He pointed sharply at me. "And you damn-well know it."
I moved my glare back to the bottle of pills. I shook my head. "STOP."
Seifer crossed his arms. "Hell no I'm not going to stop, Ahndra. You've let the bastard control your life long enough. You're my friend, dammit, and I've finally pulled my head out of my ass far enough to see what I've got to do."
One side of my lips twitched upward in a surprising smile as I lifted my gaze to meet his. "SHOCK."
Seifer smirked. "Very funny." Then his serious expression returned. "But don't think I'm gonna let off, Ahndra. I'm gonna push, and I'm gonna push hard."
I turned away. "FINE." I'd been pushed around before.
*