illicit | five hargreeves - EDITING

sixty

chapter sixty: all for nothing

A/N - before this chapter I think it's important to note that this would never happen in the show, it's possible but would never happen. I don't know if it even makes entire sense, but for the sake of Anthony's character development & his mental state, just pretend it makes sense :) 

also don't forget to vote & comment, I absolutely love reading all of your comments & reactions !

TW: this chapter also goes into some details about Anthony's life at the Commission, so there are mentions of abuse, conversion therapy, sexual assault & trauma.

Anthony had spent more time than he would like to admit thinking about how different his life would have been without the Commission. He could only imagine what it would be like just by comparing his life before to the life he had now, and even that was already too much of a difference for him to really think about for too long before it would ultimately send him spiraling.

He had been a very different person before the company had recruited him; a happy, hopeful and bright person who was excited to see whatever life was going to throw at him. Unfortunately that person inevitably got lost along the way and was left at the doorstep of the Commission, a huge part of himself that Anthony knew he would never be able to get back.

It was sad in a way, how much a person could change in such little time; eight years was all it took to completely break and wear Anthony down until practically nothing from before was left, only the lifeless frame of the person he once was.

Anthony tried to consider whether or not his life would be better or worse without the Commission, and he hated the fact that he was convinced that it would have been a lot worse. In his mind, the Commission had kept him safe from a lot of the hardships and tortures of the real world, protecting him in this small, confined, bubble where no one else could hurt him again.

There's really no word to describe the situation other than depressing; the way Anthony couldn't even fully comprehend everything they had done to him, even more the way he couldn't even remember half of the stuff that had went down there.

He understood on the surface level; they had hurt him from the conversion therapy and they had hurt his husband even more by his sexual assault. What had happened to Five hurt and affected him a lot more than anything he had gone through himself, which could've just been his huge empathy towards people, but was most likely because he couldn't remember most of what he went through.

Anthony always talked about the conversion therapy, but had never once mentioned the physical and mental abuse, the pills they kept him on, the tests they put him through. He thought too much about Five's assault, but he couldn't even remember his own sexual assault that he had gone through for too many years.

The people at the Commission weren't dumb, they were so unbelievably intelligent by taking close minded people, the people like Anthony who were too easy to break, taking these people and forcing them into submission until they could barely even think for themselves anymore.

They had tried to do the same thing on Five, but clearly it didn't work and only opened the man's eyes to what was really happening in the company. It wasn't right, so he had forced himself to do something about it: and he did that by getting close to perhaps the person who was the most affected and helping him out of it.

Anthony had been so detached from his own reality for so long, living in a delusion he had created himself where he couldn't tell the difference of what was real and what was fake in his mind. Five immediately saw right through the facade he was putting up, and he knew he had to do something.