The chemical mist that burned my body.
The photos they took of me in that state.
My bones broken, one by one.
My fingernails and toenails torn out.
The blood that poured down my body from every cut of his scalpel in my face.
My dignity scraped away with every plastic bag I tore into like a starved animal.
“You’re safe now,” she whispers, voice trembling but resolute.
Safe. The one-syllable word crashes against everything I've conditioned myself to expect. My body doesn’t understand how to believe it. My shoulders continue to quake as though bracing for the strike of a fist as the memories crash through me, and my legs shake with the urge to bolt even as she holds me up, and my nails claw desperately into her skin because some wild, broken part of me is terrified that if I don’t hold her hard enough, she will vanish and I’ll wind up right back there.
A fresh wail tears loose, my throat raw and the sound harsh in my own ears, but her hand only slides firmer against the back of my head. Her palm is warm and unyielding in keeping me anchored against her.
The words pour out of me before I can stop them, tripping over sobs that rack through my chest, each one catching on the next until I can hardly breathe between them. “I’m sorry,” I choke out. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen, I should have listened. I’m so sorry.” The apologies tumble out over and over, senseless and frantic, as if saying them enough times might somehow erase the weight of everything I’ve endured and everything I’ve failed to do in my plan to come to this realm.
My throat burns with the force of it, salt flooding my tongue where tears slip into my mouth, and still I can’t seem to close the floodgate I’ve held tightly closed for too long.
Her hand cups the back of my skull, fingers tangling gently in my hair, the steady slide of her touch cutting through the chaos inside me, and her other arm wraps so tightly around my waist I can feel her trembling too. Her cheek presses into the crown of my head, warm and damp with her own tears, and when she finally speaks, her voice is low and frayed but steady enough to catch me.
“It’s okay, Briar patch,” she murmurs, the name wrapping around me like a memory I thought I’d never hear again. “It’s okay now. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
My legs finally give out with the nickname, the last thread of strength snapping as the sobs wring through me. She lowers us both down into the grass without ever loosening her grip. The earth is damp and cold once more beneath my knees, but I barely feel it. She folds me tighter against her chest, one hand cradling the back of my head as if she can shield me from the memories clawing up through my ribs, the other circling my waist to draw me into the steady rhythm of her breathing.
We sway together slowly, her rocking motion coaxing my frantic body into something calmer. My ear presses flat to her chest, her heartbeat a steady drumbeat beneath my cheek, the sound so achingly familiar I want to crawl inside it and never come back out.
Her lips brush the top of my head, and though her voice trembles, it carries enough certainty to root me in remembering I’m free of that place. “Shhh, you’re safe. I’ve got you. Nothing can take you from me now.”
I don’t know how long I cry in her arms, only that the sound of my own sobbing drowns out everything else. My mother rocks me through every jagged tremor, her whispered reassurances falling softly against my hair, but even as I cling tighter, the rest of the world begins to press back in.
Boots shift in the grass and a familiar voice cuts through the haze of my frazzled emotions.
“They can beg for a quick death, but they won’t be granted it.”
The words pierce through the fragile cocoon of safety my mother has woven around me, dragging my drifting mind back to reality. My breath snags, the flood of tears stuttering to silence as the words settle heavy in my gut.
Callum. Elias. Dante.
My head jerks up, throat still raw from crying, and I blink through the blur of tears. My fathers stand in a single line, metal pressed to the boys’ throats, their crimson eyes burning with the same fury.
In that moment the ache of my grief collides with a new terror, tearing me in two.
The sight of weapons pressed to their bodies wrenches me further from my mother’s embrace than I’m ready to be, dragging my mind into a battlefield that I’m not sure what side to stand on.
They were complicit. I know that. They stood by while Terrance bled me out, while restraints tore into my body in my attempt to break free, and while I slowly began to lose my will to fight back.
They watched and they let it happen.
My mind veers in another direction instantly.
They’re also the ones who carried me out when the chance came, the ones who turned their backs on what they’ve been taught to believe, the ones who risked it all to give us all the freedom we have now. They didn’t have to. They could have left me there and broken free themselves.
It would have been a hell of a lot easier without taking Terrance’s prize captive with them.
My breath catches, sharp and uneven as the opposing truths slam against each other inside me. Rage and gratitude. Pain and something dangerously akin to loyalty. I can’t untangle them and find where one ends and the other begins. All I know is that both feel carved into me as deeply as the scars littering my heart and mind.
