That Quentin wasn’t an especially strong other inside me like Demon, but that he was alive.
And thuskillable.
But that realization is a big one, and I’m fully aware that there’s probably still a part of me that's in shock about it.
It’s got to come out at some point, though. Because accepting that my “dead” grandfather was actually alive all these years doesn’t just have ramifications for the recent past.
It goeswayback.
I was five when I first started to have conversations with “the others”.
No surprise, Demon with his intense anger was first. But then came profound sadness. Shame and anxiety were next, and so it went.
I was seven when Quentin showed up.
He was different than the others, who had mostly just talked to me in my head, or who I saw only vaguely in the mirror on occasion. The “manifestation” of a dead grandfather I’d barely ever heard of was soreal. So tangible.
And since my DID has a way of blurring my perception of reality, I suppose I just accepted it. Especially since I was a kid in a broken home so desperate for a lifeline.
So when Quentin appeared and had answers and solutions, I listened. He told me about the Syndicate, and the safehouse, and how I could become part of a brotherhood that was bigger than me. He insisted that I’d been born to climb the ranks of this brotherhood, and one day lead it with him at my side.
Twenty-one years later, realizing that this “manifestation” was areal man, is…
Chilling.
Maybe a little embarrassing.
And a pretty fucking damning testament to exactly how fucking messed up my mind really is.
Evelina is crying by the time I finish telling her all this. She sobs against my chest, holding me tightly as she kisses my skin, telling me how sorry she is.
“That doesn’t sayshitabout you,” she hisses, looking up at me with tear-streaked, angry eyes. “It says your grandfather was a monster who manipulated achild, whom he knew had severe mental health issues, for his own purposes,” she chokes, angrily shaking her head. “You were akid, Vaughn.”
My jaw grinds. “Well, but then I was a teenager, and then an adult, and Istillperceived him as this part of my psyche,” I growl. “Because my head is so fucked up that I apparently can’t tell reality?—”
“Vaughn.”
Her soft hand cups my face, pulling my eyes to hers.
“Give yourself a little grace,” she says quietly.
I wrap my arms around her and bury my face in her hair, kissing the top of her head as she burrows against me.
“It was him, by the way,” she says after a moment.
I frown. “What?”
“I recognized Quentin’s voice when I went down there. I couldn’t place it until later.” She bites her lip. “The man who attacked me the other day, outside the party. He told me ‘you’re ruining everything’ and ‘stay the fuck away from Vaughn’.” She nods. “That’s who it was.”
Jesus.
Thank fucking God.
It wasn’t me.
It wasn’t US.
I never truly thought I’d be capable of hurting her like that, even if I lost total control. But still. It’s a weight lifted from my chest to know for sure.
