Final Call for Mercy

12

"Listen," I said through gritted teeth, "you know. But I'm not talking about it. I don't want to talk about it. I've been fine for a very long time. I haven't needed any of you to help me get through it and it won't change anything simply because you know."

My father scoffed, "you think there is a choice here?"

"It's my life," I scoffed right back. "I decide what I speak about and don't. You told me yourself, Dad. I don't owe anything to my trauma. I don't owe it the time of day or the acknowledgment."

"That's not what I meant and you know it." He took a step towards me. "You don't owe anything to Michael. You don't owe it to him to keep his secrets. You don't owe it to your trauma to keep it inside you. You said it yourself, you are full of anger and that anger makes you sad. Those suppressed emotions are only killing you, Anastasia! Soon you'll become exactly what he wanted you to become and you won't be able to turn back."

"I already am." The power in my voice caught my father off guard, a look of shock on his face. "I've become what he wanted a long time ago. Michael's plan was to make me a stone-cold killer. To make me so ruthless and so dark and lethal that I'd be too far gone to ever go back. Dad, I'm one of the most feared assassins out there. The people out there don't want me to lead because they find me unpredictable. They find me limitless. They fear me. What I can do and what I'm willing to do to get what I want. That's exactly what he wanted. And I already am."

"You've studied human behavior enough," Dad said. "You know the consequences of undealt-with trauma. You know how crippling it is. What do you owe to Michael? What does silence do? What does torturing yourself do for him? For you?"

"What? You think I'll become some sort of prisoner to my feelings? Please."

"You already are." The shock of my mother's words rendered me speechless. All eyes went to her as she cleared her throat and met my shocked stared head-on. There lay a fire in her eyes that I rarely ever see. A look full of so much power that it took control. "You're angry, irritable, you disassociate yourself to cope, you suppress your emotions, and, that look of shame you gave your dad just now? They're all signs of your suppressed trauma. Textbook symptoms. I thought it had to do with Mussolini and what he did to you, but it goes so much farther than that."

I didn't say anything, just stared back as her eyes welled with tears and she looked away from my face. "And it's too late now, to say this, but please forgive me. Forgive us," she gestured between Dad and her. "We thought that by putting you with Michael... that by keeping you away from us it would k-keep you safe, but... but it didn't and--"

"Mom," I sighed. Wiping the little tears that began forming in my eyes, I shook my head. "What happened to me wasn't your fault. You couldn't have known. He and Mussolini had planned it so that it would leave you no choice but to take that decision."

"It wasn't your fault either," Dad interjected. The softness, yet fierceness of his voice resonated deeply in me. "What Michael did to you, it's on him. You should not feel any shame, any responsibility for what happened. It's not your fault."

I couldn't hold it in me anymore when he said that, everything inside me feeling like it was shattering. Every piece of the person I had built broke down in this very moment, destroying every base and foundation I had. All I had created for myself was dismantling to dust inside me as the tears burst from my eyes and the pained sobs erupted from my chest painfully.

How can it not be my fault when all I've ever done is enable him? When I've embraced everything he's made me into? When every piece of what I am is built on what he wanted? On what he expected of me?

When a deep part of my soul still craves the approval I never got?

I tried to swallow in a chunk of air, barely able to breathe properly before I spoke again. "I can't live with that."