Let's check up on Atria, and get another glimpse into her past...

P.S. As is often the case with Atria flashbacks, this one deals with some dark/heavy themes. Just so you all know in advance!

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Scene 4: Never Forget

A.D. 2015

Why was she even doing this? She wasn't sure, of that or of anything else anymore. Tonight's events had summoned demons to the surface, from the shadows of a heart she'd always struggled to suppress, but now she had to face them even if it killed her.

And she had to face them on her own. Couldn't talk about what happened, not to either of the men who mattered most to her — she had shut herself up in a room all alone, as soon as she and Axel had come home. Eldor had somehow found out where they were and had stopped by to see her, some hours ago, but she had told Axel to tell him to go.

While she festered with her issues all alone, she wasn't crying, curled up in a heap as any normal girl would probably be when grappling with such woes — no, she was sitting at a desk and working on a fυcking essay. Why? Hell if she knew. The prospect of law school admission could not have been farther from Atria's mind. And at any rate, these controversial and emotionally charged scribbles and scrawls should never see the light of day. There was no purpose at all in writing this essay. But here she was writing it anyway.

After causing the gunman's death, by use of this power that seemed to be some morbid form of mind control or telekinesis, or whatever, she had just felt irrationally compelled to do this. Maybe it was an act of what shrinks liked to call catharsis.

Her pen, which stupidly kept leaking and staining her hand, assailed the page, through every so often her blazing train of thought would crash into a dead end. But even when the words came to a halt, she sat and stared until new words emerged, and never once stood up. Felt no need to find another pen. The stains upon her hand were only fitting, the ink as dark and damning as the blood of slaughtered men.

Atria told herself that they deserved it. That because of all their sins, they'd had it coming. But the words that spilled onto the page attested otherwise, confessing what her soul more honestly believed.

She wrote about the first night she had killed, at eight years old, not in self-defense, but for a far better reason: to protect someone she loved, whose life had been threatened. And about how this traumatic incident had influenced her views on the value of life, her notions of justice, her stance on crime and punishment and the lines between the guilty and the innocent, which to her mind were never well defined, and in conclusion her position on the death penalty: that it was never just, for anyone, not even for those who might seem irredeemably guilty.

Maybe the wicked of the world, the criminals, the sinners, sometimes had it coming. Maybe in some situations, such as to defend the lives of innocents, killing such persons might be the best or the only solution. But that didn't mean that they deserved to die. That any guilt could ever be so great as to outweigh, to override, the value of a human life.

Death was a very final thing, leaving no room to redress or to regret the fatal punishment; and in truth, no matter how guilty or innocent, every soul had it coming. But every life had meaning. Death was often necessary — ultimately always necessary — but Atria knew, as she wrote: 'one of the darkest and most dangerous perversions of justice in this world is the notion that death could ever be deserved.'

She knew because, for far too long, she'd told herself that her first victim's life had been worthless, that killing him had been a good thing, that he had truly deserved it. For years, she'd believed it. And this belief was one of many things that had turned Atria into a monster.

The scary hand had been a monster, but for all the deathly darkness harbored in her heart, she wasn't sure if he was any worse than her.

A.D. 2000

"Stop it! Please stop!"

It never mattered how loudly she shrieked, or how hard she sobbed. She knew better than to even try, when the scary hand took her to bed and climbed on top — she stayed quiet for that, because the more obedient she was, the sooner he'd get off.

But this was different; this was her brother, the one person she loved more than any other. Far more than she loved herself, for sure. Which wasn't saying much, but whatever.

The master of the house only liked cuddling with pretty little girls, so for Eldor he invented different forms of torture.

On the night when Eldor had shot him in the leg, he had called foster care to make arrangements for the boy to be assigned another home. He couldn't stand for having a young man in the house who was growing big and strong.

In the few days just before Eldor had been sent off, he had agreed to teach his sister how to use a gun, practicing in the attic with a fake one, just as she had asked him. Now that he would be gone, he hadn't wanted to leave her behind defenseless. And he had told her where the real one was hidden, but urged her to only use it if her life were in serious danger — for any other situation would not be worth the risk of handling such a lethal weapon.

And then he'd been gone. For months, for far too long, Atria's only love and solace had been gone. But tonight he'd returned, all of a sudden, sneaking in through the attic window, finding his sister to tell her that he'd located someone who promised to take care of her.

They had rushed toward the attic to make their escape, but had collided with the master on the way. In the time that'd passed since he'd been injured, his leg had partly healed, which had enabled him to put up a fight against Eldor, and his strength had been further fueled by his anger. Seeing the damn boy in his house again had ignited a fury in him, especially since the boy was apparently trying to steal his his most precious possession, the prettiest thing that he owned, which simply wouldn't do. A scuffle had ensued, Atria screaming as Eldor was flung down a staircase, landing flat on his beloved face.

With the boy so badly bruised, though thankfully still breathing, the master had been able to drag him to the kitchen and begin brutally beating him, grabbing all manner of cooking utensils as improvised weapons.

To keep Atria from trying to stop him, he had pulled out the pair of handcuffs that he'd always kept in his back pocket, securing her to the leg of the kitchen table with it.

All the while he had kept scolding Eldor for what he had tried to do. "How fυcking dare you! You ever come back here again, I swear I'll kill you!"

"Stop it! Please stop!" Atria screeched, though she knew it would be no use. Desperate, she eventually resorted to screaming something else. "Punish me instead! Please, please just leave him alone!"

At that, the scary hand suddenly stopped. Slowly turned to face the shuddering little girl cuffed to his table. "What'd you say, baby?"

"Me," she repeated. "Punish me instead of him. Please."

He paused, started walking toward her, fist clenched tight around a meat tenderizer. "Now, why in hell would you want me to do that."

She shivered as he came near, heart swelling with fear, but more so with relief as he moved farther and farther from Eldor. She didn't need to say a word; in her evergreen eyes, the answer to his question was clear.

The master came to a halt and stared down at her, face twisting into a hideous mess of rage and horror. "You love him. Don't you."

Atria did not need to nod or reply to affirm.

"But baby," the master addressed her as he crouched to his knees, meeting her gaze levelly, "you're supposed to love me. Only me."

He reminded her of this, every night, and she hated him more and more every time.

"I've only ever given you love, baby. Is this how you repay me?" he demanded in a low and raspy whisper, leaning closer toward her. "Fυcking hell. I'm your daddy. Wanna know what my daddy did to me?"

The same thing, she assumed silently; this sort of 'love' likely ran in the family.

"He tried to kill me," the man stated plainly. "Did you know that, baby? Got raging drunk and pulled a gun on me when I was just a little boy because he said he never wanted me. Missed the heart, though — hit the arm. Old man's bad aim is the reason I'm alive today. Momma got his ass thrown in jail, and ever since, she promised she would always love me. Every night she would hold me and love me, like she always did, even back before what happened with my daddy. And you know what she told me?"

Atria stared at him in silence as she listened to the story.

"She said Daddy was jealous because she loved me better. Ever since that day she first took me into her bed, she stopped sleeping with the man, stopped loving him, and always wanted me instead," the man stated. "And Daddy couldn't stand it. He loved her, you see. So he hated me."

This tale was twisted in more ways than Atria could believe.

"Never thought I'd take after that bastard," the master muttered, shaking his head. "Swore I would never grow up to be like him, that I would always love my kids real good, just like Momma loved me — but damn if I don't know exactly how he felt right now. That jealousy."

Atria's heart sank, terrified of what she knew this implied.

The man stood up, slowly, and set down the meat tenderizer with which he had been beating Eldor. "Jealous as hell right now because I love you so damn much, but you don't love me. You love him," he spat, moving back toward her brother. "And that hurts. That kills, baby."

No, no, no... As he traversed the kitchen, Atria frantically tried lifting the table, but inevitably failed. Tried yanking on the cuff, hoping the leg might detach if she pulled hard enough, also to no avail.

Her best hope, she soon realized, would be folding her hand up and wriggling her wrist through the tight, solid circle; in recent months, withered by the sadness of having lost her brother, she had grown even skinnier than usual. There was a chance that it could work.

The master opened up a cutlery drawer, ran his fingers over the various knives kept inside, hoping to select the sharpest. He took his time. Meanwhile poor Eldor was all but unconscious.

As Atria scrunched up her hand, compressing her knuckles as tightly as she could manage, trying to fit all of them through the hard metal ring, she saw rivulets of blood begin to run across her skin. Her hand was not supposed to fit through such a ring; forcing it like this was chafing, scraping. But it was well worth it, so she kept on trying.

Moments later, the master had made his selection.

With one last desperate pull, Atria wrenched her hand through the cuff, as violently as she could, praying that it would be enough — and, notwithstanding all the bloody damage to her hand, it was.

Absorbed in his envious fury toward Eldor, as he pulled the best knife from the drawer, the master had not noticed.

The gun. She knew where it was hidden. And could not have been more grateful that its secret location was within this very room, in a cupboard that happened to have a false bottom. She rushed over toward it and snatched up the weapon, not hesitating for an instant as she swiveled and pointed it straight at the man who stood barely a foot away from her dear brother, knife in hand.

The master turned and froze at the sight, staring at her like a deer in the headlights, held at gunpoint for the third time in his life.

"Now, baby," he murmured. "Deep down I know you love me..."

She shook her head, hands trembling as she fumbled to remember how to work the trigger. "Drop the knife, or I will shoot."

"Come on, baby, you wouldn't—"

"I will. I said drop it."

He didn't. "But I know you ain't a monster like my old man was. You wouldn't shoot me in cold blood like that, baby. You couldn't."

She paused for just a second at the monstrous comparison. She didn't want to be a monster. But this was to save her brother. And this man, the master, he was the monster. He deserved to die. He deserved it.

"I love you, baby. So much," the man professed, shifting slightly, ever so slightly toward Eldor as he said it. "And that's why I hate this damn son of a bitch. That's why I gotta—"

Atria did not let him finish the sentence.

Click, bang.

She wasn't even sure where she had aimed. But straightaway, she knew this: if his heart had been her target, then she hadn't missed.

The blood burst into bright, brutal bloom on his shirt, the stain stark against the white cloth, thick and dark. He gaped down at the wound, knife clattering to the floor, and then looked up at her. And right then, in his wounded gaze, Atria knew that in his sick and twisted way — the only way he knew, in light of what he as a child had been through — just like he'd always said, the master loved her.

"My God, baby, look what you've become," he gasped, voice scarcely a whisper, mouth twitching into what almost looked like a smile, or a sad attempt at one. "You look so pretty holding that gun. Guess I deserve this, don't I — my mistake for loving you too much."

In the sickest and most twisted way, that was exactly what it was.

"Now look what love has done to us," he uttered ruefully. "Daddy's dying, and you — you're already a killer, so young... told you that's what love does. Makes monsters of the best of us. Love kills."

Atria's hands were still tightly gripping the gun, and though the blood upon them was her own, the stain ran deeper than the surface of her skin. It felt like sin.

"Never forget, baby," he urged her, sinking to his knees as he released his final breath. "Never forget that love is death."

She watched him die and knew she never would.

A.D. 2015

"Baby, what—"

"Don't dare call me that. Ever," she spat at her lover, pushing past him and bolting out the door, badly in need of some air.

It was way past midnight by the time she'd finished her essay, and as soon as she had, she had needed to get out of that room in which she'd locked herself alone with all her thoughts. To hit the streets, go for a walk, just get lost in the shadows of the night for a minute, as she often did, because they were so much less horrifying than the shadows in her heart.

Part of her felt a little bit sorry for Axel — he was worried about her, of course, and he meant well. And had no clue that the scary hand had used to call her baby. So it wasn't his fault at all, really, and she had been a raging bitch to him, more so than she had any right to be. But whatever; she would obviously make it up to him in bed later.

At the next corner she turned, absentminded as she was, she ran straight into — oh, fυcking hell, she cursed to herself as soon as the familiar halo of platinum hair in front of her came into view.

"Who — I mean, like — what the fυck are you, even?" she groaned.

Charliese spoke in her usual unruffled coo. "As I've told you—"

"Actually, don't answer that," Atria snapped, shoving her way past the woman and onward through the benighted streets. "The last thing I need to hear now is your fυcking mystical crazy talk."

"Mystical crazy talk?" the silvery-haired weirdo calmly echoed. "So you remember what I tried to tell you, all those years ago?"

Atria gritted her teeth and kept walking.

"Do you believe me now?" Charliese inquired, starting to follow.

"No," Atria immediately denied. She would never believe the freaking creepy scissors lady.

"Really?"

Atria didn't answer that time. And as she strode ahead, Charliese followed at a deliberately slower pace, lagging farther and farther behind. But her eerily dovelike voice managed to trail after Atria for a while, ringing in the darkest corners of her tortured mind.

"You know you cannot just pretend that all this isn't happening."

Atria scowled at herself. Damn it, she wasn't pretending anything.

"You killed a man today to save someone you love," Charliese asserted, as if Atria needed the unwelcome reminder. "If you would go to such lethal lengths for Eldor, then you must ask yourself if there's anyone else that you love even more."

Why the hell would that even matter, Atria inwardly snickered.

"Because if there is," the cooing creep continued, "then consider yourself warned: there are people who know of your formidable abilities. Vengeful enemies who may seek to exploit your greatest weaknesses. Ruthless foes who will not hesitate to threaten or to harm whomever you love most."

Atria kept walking, letting Miss Primor's last few words recede into the darkness, though she heard them clearly even from this distance.

"Love, weakness — these are luxuries that a girl with powers like yours absolutely can't afford."

She forged onward into the shadows of the night and didn't try to pretend otherwise, or to deny what the words meant. This was a truth that she already knew and would never forget.

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... Thoughts, feels? :(

Next scene takes us back to the Cave...

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