☆Glory☆

Hospital room. The more I spend my time there, the more I feel I'm separated from the world. I can hear Grandmother talking to the doctors outside, just as she did yesterday and the day before. Their faint voices reach me like a buzz.

I look around the room, groaning and feeling the space around me with my fingers. I open the curtain slightly. A calender is hung up on the wall, and, despite myself, I think of Anaconda again. Perhaps mothers are people that we can never erase from our lives. Even if they're not very good at their role.

Suddenly, a date comes into my mind. It's the second audition for Gone with the Wind. I wanted to try out as Scarlett, to stand up on stage. Maybe a part of me wanted to show Anaconda how similar we were. But no, everything is ruined once again by cancer, my once best friend, the one that must kill me in order to stay alive. I suddenly feel very dizzy.

I wonder what Deathbringer's thinking right now. If he would come to visit me again. It reminds me of the time I waited for Anaconda, and I realize that I'm the one always waiting, the one marking on calendars, the one missing people because I can't take a step out of this damn hospital.

I search the room for my phone as quietly as possible. I find it on the lamp table and unconsciously dial Deathbringer's number. I'm about to click the call button when I remember the conversation I had with Deathbringer. That seems like a long time ago.

"I slit their throats."

Murderer.

Suddenly, a chill runs down my spine, and I throw my phone to the bed. I told him that I would have done the same in his position. But would I have, really? But what can I tell him? He matters more to me than those people that he killed.

Saying that, it sounds so simple. But to realize that your childhood crush has ever killed a person, reminding yourself time to time as you go through the day, is a very strange feeling. I don't know if I have to feel sad or scared.

I'm still sweating, and when the sound of the door opening reaches me with the slightly cold air, I shiver. Somebody is coming in.

"Can I see her?" I feel a jolt. Deathbringer. The murderer, the boy who rejected me, the love of my life. His voice is rough and he's speaking very fast. I can hear Grandmother's low reply.

"She's sleeping, Deathbringer. You know what state she's in. Come again next time."

"Is she okay?" I don't know if I should speak up, but my mouth seems frozen. "Is she...worse?"

His worried voice erases a part of my fear, and I realize that there's nothing in the world that I want more right now than to see him. "You can come in. I'm okay."

Grandmother runs into the room first, her eyes bloodshot. I feel a twinge of guilt. I'm the one dying, and yet Grandmother is the most miserable. "I'm feeling good, really." It's true. Today seems to be one of the good days.

"You know we have treatment today, Glory. Deathbringer can come later." Grandmother's voice is begging, but I know that I have to speak to Deathbringer. I lightly shake my head.

"It won't be long." Deathbringer is hesitating, as if deep in thought. I'm curious, and I muster the courage to finally look at him again. His face is thinner, he keeps running his hands through his hair as if he's very nervous. Grandmother also notices this, and looks worried. "Please."

"I'll be alright," I assure Grandmother. Grandmother nods slightly and reluctantly leaves the room, turning back to the doctors. Deathbringer doesn't meet my eyes and plumps down on the chair beside my bed.

A moment of silence. I want to press my hands to his face, but I'm afraid he'll pull away. He sighs, and finally looks at me. In his eyes there are determination.

"Glory." Glo-ry. He drags out the word, as if he wants to cling to it. As if he doesn't want to continue. His voice is low, filled with sadness and ashes. "I have something to tell you."

☆

"Glory, remember what I told you about the women?" I nod. Deathbringer is sitting beside my bed, not quite meeting my eyes. His hands are clenched tightly together. "In the assassination camp that I went to, the first thing put in our heads was that the only thing we could do was kill. The moment we stopped killing, we would be worthless. Even after we broke ties with the entire thing, we were broke. We sold our house, Mother came in late at night. I was literally slapped in the face by poverty, and I had never even seen it before."

I'm listening, closing my eyes. Leaning my head back on the wall. He continues. "Mother was who had it the hardest. She knew a lot of things, but nothing in formal papers. She was recruited when she was in high school, and to the world she wasn't even a high school graduate. Everywhere we went, people ignored us. After a while, she began meeting men. And, Glory, I knew she hated every one of them. So I went back to the assassination camp."

"You went back?" I ask in disbelief, my eyes snapping open. Deathbringer nods. "They were the only person I knew. I wanted money. The woman there asked me who I wanted to kill, but I refused. I told her that I would pay her back. But she insisted on me killing. And then she told me that the reason Mother broke ties with them was because she married my dad. I thought they had me on accident when she was on a mission, but I figure my mom never used those methods. After she met him, she wanted to stop the killings. And the woman-- we call her Battlewinner-- she told Mother to kill my father." A pause. "And she did. After Battlewinner told me that, she gave me the money." His hands are shaking.

I reach out to him, trying to grab his hand, but he pulls away. I stare at him, surprised. "If it's too hard, Deathbringer, you don't have to tell me."

"I have to tell you." He goes on feverishly. "I went back to Mother and gave her the money. She stared at me suspiciously and asked where I got it, and I told her the truth. And do you know what she did? She slapped me, even though I told her I didn't kill anyone for it. She said, 'The money that woman gives you is the cost of somebody's life.' And it is true-- that's how Battlewinner got rich. Mother threw the money on the floor, stomping on it. She crumpled it and ripped it. Glory, my mother had to work for months to earn that much money. And she just-- she destroyed it. She started to cry, saying that she didn't want me to do those things anymore. And she asked me why I would possibly want to kill for money."

"Deathbringer—" I try to calm him down, but he shakes his head violently.

"I have to say this at once, or I can't say it, Glory." A huge breath. "And I replied, because the people that I killed didn't matter to me. Do you understand? Because I didn't want her to live like that. For her, I could do anything...And do you know what she told me? She told me that the ones I killed might be important. She said, 'What if one day, my name is written on the envelope Battlewinner gives you? Would you kill me then?' And then she told me that I didn't know anything. That I'll someday kill someone important to me because I'll get trapped. And that I would start to regret everything and hate myself. And you know what? I had already done it before, when we broke ties with the group."

Deathbringer stops abruptly, his eyes searching for anything. The only thing they're not doing is not meeting mine. I speak quietly. "I'm sorry." 

The boy next to me snaps his head up, looking surprised. "Why? Why would you be sorry?" 

"Because you were only a kid when you did those things. You didn't want to do it. You just-- everything else made you like that."

"Stop." Deathbringer covers his face with his hands. "Don't talk to me like that. I don't deserve it."

"What do you mean?" I'm feeling confused, and I'm kind of wishing he would stop because he's shaking too much. "Deathbringer, listen to me. I get that you did those things, but you couldn't help it. The fault isn't yours, just the people around you."

"I killed your father." That cuts my words. He spits those words out like a curse. And it is.

My voice, in turn, is poisonous. "Don't joke around like this." I know he's not joking. He would never joke around with a subject that I am sensitive to. He would never make a joke with the voice he's using now. 

"Battlewinner told us to shoot a man. He would always drive a car in the afternoon, and our job was to make it look like an accident." 

Silence. There's this horrible, daunting feeling that just sits in my chest. A haunting thought that lingers in my mind: he's finally telling me everything. There's this flash of, this can't be real. This must be just a dream.

When I realize that it's not, I want to run away from him.

"Stop." Tears are swelling in my eyes. "Just don't say anything."

"They told us that we'll be killed if we failed. And if we succeeded, we would break ties with them forever. And in the middle of it, Mother refused to do it, and she was crying. But I took the gun from her hands and--" His voice breaks. "I shot him in the head, and he looked up, and I could see--" He cuts himself off, but I can no longer see him because I'm blinded by my own tears.

"STOP!" I'm reaching out, flailing my arms, trying to stop him from talking. "SHUT UP! I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY!"

"You know what's funny? I did that to keep Mother safe, and she doesn't even trust me anymore. After that, she thinks I would be monstrous enough to kill her. I can't ever cook in the house because she's afraid I'll poison her. She doesn't let me touch the knives. She wakes up during the night and goes around the house because she's afraid I'll kill her." Deathbringer's sobbing. 

I'm blocking my ears with my hands, but I can't help but hear his words. "I'm sorry, Glory, I'm so sorry. I'm going to turn myself in after a few days. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He's saying the words over and over again. I'm crying so loud, trying to stop his words from reaching me. Trying to drown them all. 

Father.

He killed my father.

My first instinct would be to doubt him, to laugh at his joke. But I can't because I know he isn't joking. That he's actually serious. 

Deathbringer killed my father.

He's the one that destroyed my life. 

I take my hands off my ears. I don't know what I'm trying to do, but I reach out and furiously hit him. Trying to hurt him just like he has hurt me. Wanting him to feel the pain that I went through. I can hear the door opening, probably a nurse or Grandmother, coming in to see what all this fuss is about, but they are all far away. Right now, everything is silent. It's as if we're underwater, Deathbringer and I. Slowly choking each other to death.

The only thing I can feel is Deathbringer. I'm grabbing at his hair, slapping his face, scratching him with my nails--and he just sits there. Still and quiet. Like he's just taking all my anger in, accepting it. Maybe he knows he deserves it.

I hate him for it.

I'm mumbling words that even I can't decipher. I hate you and I want to hurt you and I'll kill you. I'm screaming at him.

Strangely, at that exact moment, the email I wanted to send him after he rejected me shifts into my mind. Thinking of the time he saved my life. Loving him with everything I had.

You were there, breaking the horrible silence, the peace, the quietness that I struggled to keep because I wanted to hide everything- you were messing it around, shattering it, playing with it. You had reached out and heard my screams although I was screaming underwater.

Underwater silence.

Deathbringer, the one that pulled me out, is now dragging me under.