Give and Take (poly) (bxb)

L's Take

Her room has yellow wallpaper. No special reason, only because we had the house before we had the baby. Adina believed the color was the happiest. I believed it was the most gender-neutral.

The sun shines in yellow, brings life in yellow, nurtures in yellow. So our baby grew up in yellow. Rose. Adina's gift to me, the life she carried for me, my gift to Adina, a potent flower a parting gift.

For anniversaries, birthdays, or whenever I would leave on a "business trip," I'd give her a dozen. I promised I would be back before they started to wither. I would be back before they died.

Red was my color of choice. Red is the real color of life because it's the color of love. It beats through our hearts, brings pigment to petals, pours out of our bodies. I'm red with love, red with life.

"Two dozen? You must be leaving for a long time." Adina spoke softly.

"I thought you were sleeping." And I did, it wasn't just to dodge her statement. But I couldn't dodge her. She was here in her blue nightgown I bought for her a month prior. Sheer and fur fabrics on her dark skin looked like expensive paints on a stolen piece of artwork.

"How can I sleep when you're not here?"

Adina didn't know how much her words hurt me, or maybe she did. How, on the contrary, I believed she'd be able to sleep better if I weren't here. It would be hard at first, but she'd get used to it.

When I saw Rose holding the handlebars of a broken tricycle, I knew this was my last chance. I rushed towards her. Flashes of her body sprawled out in a pile of metal and plastic blurring my vision. Cries for her or me on mother leaving her bloody lips as she lay writhing in agony. But she was okay. She never got a chance to get on the bike before it collapsed.

I pulled her close, her curly hair tickling my neck as she laughed that she was fine. But I looked down at the two engraved letters and knew things would never be fine as long as I was here, bringing the TLs to them, bringing the pain to them.

"Find a new job. Rose is getting older. You're missing the best moments of being a father, before she turns into a teenage smartass." Adina joked as she came closer towards me. "I hate it when you go away."

I wanted to tell her that I would. That I'd stop being a businessman, an FBI agent, hence the secrecy and the high pay. I'd stop being a gang member. I wanted to tell her anything but what I told her.

"This will be the last one."

Rose reminds me of Damian sometimes. Maybe that's why Adina is so afraid of her maturing. He was only there for one of her years at the orphanage but made a fair impression on her, darkness tainting the light. When he'd jump down three steps at a time, ride without a helmet, go outside in the snow without shoes, then turn around and tell us, "Superman doesn't get hurt."

"You're going away?" Rose questioned from small lips as she peeked down from the grand staircase. Little hands carefully holding onto the handrails just like I taught her. She never figured safety on her own, maybe because she was a four-year-old, maybe because she was also a daredevil, Superman. She probably would've still ridden her tricycle even when it was missing two wheels.

She lost me when I chased her, just to show that she could. Hid in cabinets filled with dust and daddy long legs'. Spaces I didn't know she could reach because I barely could myself. She ordered escargot from the adult menu, deciding the kid's one was too boring. Then swallowed the snails whole before coming home to try and find more of the things hidden under damp bricks and stones. She almost tore our driveway upside down, and I would've let her.

She wanted a farm, to fill it up with snails and cats despite her being terribly allergic to the latter. The runny nose, the watery red eyes, they didn't bother her. She wanted what she wanted, and she had to have it.

Maybe it was the hope I instilled in her. Stories from the orphanage featuring happy children bursting with energy and courage, sledding down mountains on pots and pans the same ones we used for our measly meals. Stories of a boy who got in so much trouble nobody wanted him, nobody but the greatest and richest adoptive parent anyone could ever ask for.

The endings where often fictional fairy tales but my daughter didn't need to know the grim details. She didn't need to know I was a slave to my adoptive mother and had to sign my life away in order to get out of the orphanage. That her uncle Damian, with all of the pretty drawing on his skin, had done the same. And she'd never be able to meet her grandmother. Her grandmother didn't want to meet her.

I tried to do it secretly; I try to do everything secretly.

"Family can either be used as leverage against you or as a weapon with you," Diana told me when I asked permission, the twelfth time I asked permission.

Adina wasn't someone who could wait. I'd met her in my last years at the orphanage. She didn't get adopted like Damian and I had, but she didn't need to. By the time I got to her, she was completely independent with two jobs and a studio apartment. She wasn't easy to get or to keep, but once I proposed, I sealed our fate.

Then Diana found out.

She took me to the dark room. I had only seen the room a few times before, each time it was used to torture. It was work I couldn't bring myself to do. Before, it was Damian's job but recently, it has become Seven's. The little fucked up kid. I loved him. He was cute, sweet, fresh-faced bright eyes, but he was also a psychopath and seemed to enjoy it enough. Removing people's toenails and impaling them with metal poles. Then he'd kill them after getting the information he needed.

Diana had me sit in the cold metal chair. All of the lights hanging from the ceiling seemed to shake with me. Damian and Romero were made to watch. She wanted to warn them of what would happen if they made the same mistake as me. She placed a blade on my finger, just below the ring.

Romero had to hold Damian back, but he couldn't. The boy was practically foaming out of the mouth, trying to get to me with sheer desperation.

"Don't touch him." He had taken the knife from Diana, thrown it at the wall behind her where it stuck erect.

Not a second later, Diana had him on the floor.

It wasn't the first time he went against her. Once at sixteen, he wanted to bring his girlfriend into the gang. He snuck her in, the blonde bimbo. Diana found out, invited the girl to dinner with us all. Damian dressed up, white suit on his then virgin skin. He looked like a ghost, but I couldn't bring myself to tell him. It was just two of us at the time, but Diana managed to berate us both the entire time over the five-course meal. Blondie never said a word. At the end of dessert, Diana shot her in the head.

Diana had her goons hold Damian down but keep his head up. Romero was allowed to leave. My best friend, my brother, had to watch as she beat the hell out of me for two hours straight. I got to keep all of my fingers at least, despite two ending up broken.

She let me keep Adina but promised to kill my child if I so much as thought about having another one. She knew Adina was pregnant before I did.

"Only for a little bit." I kissed Rose's forehead with the same lips that lied to her. She had come to meet me at the bottom of the staircase, to wrap her gentle fingers around my thumb. One last time. This was to be the last time.

After all of the prices I've paid for my family, to have them, to keep them safe and sound. I can't hold onto them anymore; I never could. I was young and defiant and stupid. If it's not Diana, it's the TLs, or the last gang or the next gang. This isn't the first time they've been threatened, but this will be the last.

This will be the last.