He was angry - I mean, obviously. But he was an angry person. And paranoid, and damaged. He was a holocaust survivor. My mother, too. He protected her in the camps, but they'd both lost everyone else.
I was their new start. And the world almost took me too.
He was obsessed. Anyone, everyone was a threat to us. To him, and my little brother and sister, who soon showed powers of their own, and to others he found. To his building dreams of a new world, controlled by mutant power, which would obviously be so much better than what had come before -
I didn't, though. Get powers, I mean, and he - he acted like I'd betrayed him. Mama, too. We were human, and that meant that if we were not precisely the enemy, we were still - weak, worthless, untrustworthy.
So I grew up like that. Surrounded by people who came to his cause. Who would keep me in my place if they noticed me at all. Who only didn't kill me because my Father wouldn't let them, even though he treated me with bitterness and contempt. Trying to control the twins - because Mama gave up and he was too busy planning his war to be a parent - and never allowed the slightest bit of contact with the outside world, except what I could glean building radios out of sight and then disassembling them again before he could sense the components. I was lonely and angry and terrified all the time and couldn't show any of it.
Once I gave on being like him, being special enough and powerful enough, once I was too angry to admit I wanted his love back anymore - all I wanted was to escape.
Not a bad thing to want. I did very terrible things to make it happen.
My brother did run away, and my father - let him. And commanded me, at the same time, to find him, because he was my responsibility. And I still wasn't allowed to leave.
Of course it doesn't make sense. He didn't even think about it long enough to care that it didn't, do you understand? The important thing was that it was my fault, my failure, easy to blame, easy to dispense threats and return to his real concerns.
I convinced myself that my sister was my enemy - she was the only one who ever even tried to stand up for me, and when she wouldn't tell me where my brother was - he wrote to her, for awhile - it felt like an even worse betrayal. I was. Not insane in any sort of - exculpatory way. But I was not at all rational, either.
I tortured her. My baby sister, who trusted me, who I'd raised, the closest thing to a friend - and when she still wouldn't tell me, I killed her.
[Her tone is quiet. Heartfelt, aching, but not overwrought.]
My father thought even more fanatical elements in his own organization had done it, as a message. He never considered me, of course. I was a nonentity, too weak to be a threat.
My brother returned home, grief-stricken, stunned, and I convinced him that our father had done it. Manipulated them both, used my brother's connections to outside news reporters and my father's paranoia to get everything I wanted. My brother shot my father on camera, fully expecting him to stop the bullet. And my father died rather than expose mutant abilities to the world before he was ready for their coup.
And then I walked away. And then one of his followers killed me, of course. Less than twenty-fours later.
And then I was here. And it's a prison, it is, some of the things it does to people without their consent are absolutely unconscionable, but it was away from him and his people, and it was so much more free than anything I could remember. I had people who were kind to me for the first time I could remember. Who treated me like a person, instead of - of an unfortunate pet, the kind you really ought to put down, save for sentimentality. I got to explore strange and amazing places and it felt like everything I'd ever wanted.
And it made me face what I'd done. And it hurt, fuck, it hurt so much, because I was a mess back then, and it was so much easier to blame everyone else and suspect everyone else and be a bright bitter little liar. But I did, eventually. I admitted that I loved my sister, that I'd done her enormously wrong, learned not to deal with every hurt by walling up and plotting deep-laid ruthless revenge at the expense of everything else in my life. I learned not to be my Father. I built a better family.
And then - I was free to go. But where else would I go? Everyone I loved was here. Everyone who'd taught me to love, again, rough and slow. And I had a debt to my sister to pay, and - I wanted to. I wanted to help someone else the way my warden helped me.
It's not the same for everyone, I know that. Not everyone needs it the way I needed it. Sometimes instead of a miracle it is brutal and ridiculous and entirely unfair. Sometimes it is farcical.
But for me it's - good. And I'm good at it, wardening. I can make this place a little better for the people who aren't as suited to it. I'll go someday - but there are other people here I won't leave, not until they're free to choose too. So for now, it's home.
no subject
I was their new start. And the world almost took me too.
He was obsessed. Anyone, everyone was a threat to us. To him, and my little brother and sister, who soon showed powers of their own, and to others he found. To his building dreams of a new world, controlled by mutant power, which would obviously be so much better than what had come before -
I didn't, though. Get powers, I mean, and he - he acted like I'd betrayed him. Mama, too. We were human, and that meant that if we were not precisely the enemy, we were still - weak, worthless, untrustworthy.
So I grew up like that. Surrounded by people who came to his cause. Who would keep me in my place if they noticed me at all. Who only didn't kill me because my Father wouldn't let them, even though he treated me with bitterness and contempt. Trying to control the twins - because Mama gave up and he was too busy planning his war to be a parent - and never allowed the slightest bit of contact with the outside world, except what I could glean building radios out of sight and then disassembling them again before he could sense the components. I was lonely and angry and terrified all the time and couldn't show any of it.
Once I gave on being like him, being special enough and powerful enough, once I was too angry to admit I wanted his love back anymore - all I wanted was to escape.
Not a bad thing to want. I did very terrible things to make it happen.
My brother did run away, and my father - let him. And commanded me, at the same time, to find him, because he was my responsibility. And I still wasn't allowed to leave.
Of course it doesn't make sense. He didn't even think about it long enough to care that it didn't, do you understand? The important thing was that it was my fault, my failure, easy to blame, easy to dispense threats and return to his real concerns.
I convinced myself that my sister was my enemy - she was the only one who ever even tried to stand up for me, and when she wouldn't tell me where my brother was - he wrote to her, for awhile - it felt like an even worse betrayal. I was. Not insane in any sort of - exculpatory way. But I was not at all rational, either.
I tortured her. My baby sister, who trusted me, who I'd raised, the closest thing to a friend - and when she still wouldn't tell me, I killed her.
[Her tone is quiet. Heartfelt, aching, but not overwrought.]
My father thought even more fanatical elements in his own organization had done it, as a message. He never considered me, of course. I was a nonentity, too weak to be a threat.
My brother returned home, grief-stricken, stunned, and I convinced him that our father had done it. Manipulated them both, used my brother's connections to outside news reporters and my father's paranoia to get everything I wanted. My brother shot my father on camera, fully expecting him to stop the bullet. And my father died rather than expose mutant abilities to the world before he was ready for their coup.
And then I walked away. And then one of his followers killed me, of course. Less than twenty-fours later.
And then I was here. And it's a prison, it is, some of the things it does to people without their consent are absolutely unconscionable, but it was away from him and his people, and it was so much more free than anything I could remember. I had people who were kind to me for the first time I could remember. Who treated me like a person, instead of - of an unfortunate pet, the kind you really ought to put down, save for sentimentality. I got to explore strange and amazing places and it felt like everything I'd ever wanted.
And it made me face what I'd done. And it hurt, fuck, it hurt so much, because I was a mess back then, and it was so much easier to blame everyone else and suspect everyone else and be a bright bitter little liar. But I did, eventually. I admitted that I loved my sister, that I'd done her enormously wrong, learned not to deal with every hurt by walling up and plotting deep-laid ruthless revenge at the expense of everything else in my life. I learned not to be my Father. I built a better family.
And then - I was free to go. But where else would I go? Everyone I loved was here. Everyone who'd taught me to love, again, rough and slow. And I had a debt to my sister to pay, and - I wanted to. I wanted to help someone else the way my warden helped me.
It's not the same for everyone, I know that. Not everyone needs it the way I needed it. Sometimes instead of a miracle it is brutal and ridiculous and entirely unfair. Sometimes it is farcical.
But for me it's - good. And I'm good at it, wardening. I can make this place a little better for the people who aren't as suited to it. I'll go someday - but there are other people here I won't leave, not until they're free to choose too. So for now, it's home.