[✔] PAPA (boyxboy)

25. All of You.

He wasn't there. It isn't happening to him. That was someone else on the mattress, crying. That was someone else enduring the pain. That person is not Lucca and he is not Luke. He is just an empty shell.

"I'm sorry, Lucca," Luke apologized. "I can't face him. I am afraid of him," he explained. Lucca sees no point in him commenting anything back to Luke. He only watches the boy suffer. They are still in the warehouse but it's like they're not there as well. It was like looking at the world through glass where they can see everything happening out there but no one can see what is happening inside the invisible glass. He had lost his faith in everything. In everyone. "Back then, when he killed mama, he handed you the knife. You didn't want to take it. So I took it for you. If I didn't do as he said, he will hurt you. So I took your place. And you were made to believe that you did it. He kept telling you it was your fault so you believed that it was your fault. You thought it was your doings and I had no choice but to encourage that belief on you so that you won't know the truth. All I had hoped for is that for me, for us both, to be stronger someday, to face him. To kill him. To save us. All three of us. I planned for it to happen, but look," Luke halted and for the first time, Lucca watches him broke down and cry. "I can't. I can't face him. I'm too weak," he admitted defeat.

Lucca can't care anymore. He feels like the whole world is closing in on him but at the very least, he wanted to know the truth. "Then what about Olivia? Tell me everything, Luke. Everything that you know. At least give me back my memories. If you've chosen to be such a coward, can you at least return that part that you took from me?" Lucca asked. He didn't know if he's pleading or demanding but the pain that he had avoided as a child, he thinks he is able to bear it now. He thinks he can be that boy on the mattress soon enough and face this. He thinks it's time to be strong. If he's losing, if he's at the edge of a cliff, he wants to go down with his pride attached. He will never let him win. Papa can't win. Even if he's winning, Lucca wants him to lose too. He won't go down without a fight. He will hold his head high and take it. He will face him.

"Very well," Luke agreed. "But, Lucca. This is goodbye. I will no longer be a part of you," he reminded him. Lucca smiles at him, amused and surprised at his own determination, for he had known strength now. Through the pain and sufferings and the acknowledgement of truth, he is strong now. "I no longer need you," Lucca whispered.

With their goodbyes, he was taken back in time...

The garden at the estate was filled with red roses. "Ah, there you are, my pretty baby," she said as she moved closer towards Lucca. Everything around him looked double their sizes and that was when Lucca realized that he was back in the body of a child. He couldn't tell how old he was though. The woman in front of him is his grandmother, Olivia. "What are you doing out here all alone?" She asked. Lucca sighed and began to sulk. "Papa is so busy. He has no time for me," child Lucca said. "No one wants to play with me. They're afraid if I fall and hurt myself and the bleeding won't stop," he complained.

She laughed. Back then, Lucca couldn't understand why she was laughing but to his child eyes, she was perfect. She was beautiful and her laughter was melodious. She captivated him. "Well then let me play with you," she suggested. Lucca frowned at the suggestion. "But you're old," he said naively. She laughed again, louder this time. "No I'm not. I'm your age, pretty baby," she indicated. That's when, to Lucca's child eyes, she turned into a little girl. Lucca believed her to be a little girl, his age, with a looks that matched to his own. Like twin siblings, they are. And they played. He had found a play-mate.

The last time he saw her, she said they would play a game. She placed a necklace of rope around his neck and hooked the other end to the ceiling. She had the same necklace of rope around her neck as well. She said they would kick the chair beneath them off in the count of three and who could hold on the longest will win. She had lost the game.