Power and Lies

Three

"Some things scratch the surface while others strike at your soul."
-Gianna Perada

Freya did not sleep well. Her body cast her into the sensations of falling over and over until she finally succumbed into fitful rest plagued by nightmares. He knew her name. It was a fact that did not sit well with her. It was not until morning when she realized that things did not line up. Lee could not have simply struck him. No man would learn so much about a family because of a singular drunken punch. She would confront Lee about it, she decided. She was too far gone into the madness of the situation to care much about decorum. The feathers were starting to fall off of her angels wings, and she was struggling to fly on the path her mother claimed she must. She would die if she continued this way. One way or another. She was suffocating, and it was no longer a feeling she could ignore. Lee had brought violence into her home, and he would be met with violence if she had to. Fear had dissipated into anger, and she would not be ignored.

Lee was sitting at the table when she left the bedroom, a cup of tea sitting in front of him and a peaceful expression gracing his features. The desire to throw his cup against the wall came upon her and she stood for a second trying her best to overcome it.

"What have you been doing, Freya?" He asked her, not bothering to open his eyes. His question was pointed. She could not mistake the sharp edges of his words, intended to slice into her moral compass and provoke her to confess things she had not been doing.

"I do not know what you mean." In a swift movement he had sat up, throwing the very cup she had wanted to throw towards her. It flew past her head and shattered on the wall behind her and she shuddered as she looked towards the tea now leaking down the wall. Never had he presented these behaviors towards her, but now that he had, there was no going back, and looking at Lee's face once more, she could tell he felt the same way. They were in a new ocean, both trying to learn how to swim in it.

"Do not lie to me, Freya. What have you been doing?"

Once more she looked into his obsidian eyes and mustered as much contempt as she could before moving towards the table and slamming her hands on it. They were face to face then, only inches separating them. "I've told you Lee Smith, I do not know what you mean." She could smell his breath, laden with alcohol so early in the morning.

"I saw him here last night Freya. Standing out there, talking to you like you were old lovers. Is that it? Tired of ol' Lee who works his fingers to the bone for you so you go find Thomas fucking Shelby to satisfy you instead?" She laughed then. She laughed so hard her sides hurt and he grabbed her by the upper arm fingernails driving into her skin until she flinched. Her laughing stopped all at once but she would not cry for him. She refused. Instead she yanked her arm away refusing to yelp as his nails took a portion of skin off causing her to bleed down her arm. It was not a lot of blood, but it was enough to ignite a fire within her that was completely unfamiliar. She had not intended to go to the Shelby's today. Instead she had decided to allow sleeping dogs to lie, but now she was going. Lee stared at his wife, regret contorting his features as he wrapped his hands in his hair and began to cry again. She felt nothing.

"I am so sorry," he wailed. "It will never happen again." And maybe it wouldn't. Maybe it was a one off thing that happened in a fit of anger but never again could Freya overlook the possibility of it. She knew it and he knew it. There would always be a part of her that flinched at his touch now. She was never a particularly warm and inviting wife, too far into her head and mental escapes, but now, not she was not a butterfly, but no longer a caterpillar. She was going through a metamorphosis of her own and she did not know how she would come out, but she knew it would not come out being the perfect wife any longer.