Whirlwind | W.M.

5

I've pictured that moment for seven years.

Every detail, I dreamt of— every word I was supposed to say, every look, every touch is what kept me going. Is what kept me away from countless ledges, from walking into oceans just to drown over and over because a lifetime of dying a million times would have been better than facing what I had become. When the waves touch my toes, I hear her voice. I hear my father, Lara, talking— laughing around the dining table. We didn't have much but It felt like the universe and more.

The last thing I remember of her were the tears in her eyes, her nails digging into the skin of my arms begging me not to go. She was so small, so broken and afraid to watch these big scary men drag me away. She held on with all her might that my father had to pry her off before she could complete drawing a flower onto my palm, she used to do that when we were afraid, in the dark of the night when the branches would scratch against the window pretending to be monsters she'd draw a flower onto my palm with the tip of her finger. That was the girl i left behind.

I used to think I'd be able to come home someday, when everything was over, fuelled by some torturous delusion that there actually is an end to something like me— to someone like me. I pictured it so clearly, walking through the doors and she'd be in my arms, the biggest smile on her face— maybe even tears. We'd sit by a fire and she'd tell me the stories of all i had missed and i'd forget everything else. All the years of cold isolation, of blood dripping from my fingertips, of monstrous looks begging me for mercy like I was the grim reaper coming to drag them to the pits of hell.

I could be me, or whatever was left of it.

I saved it for her.

I never, in a million years expected that I'd have nothing left to come home to. That it wasn't just me I wouldn't recognize, that it'd be her too. I didn't want to turn around, not in that lab, with those incessant machines and flickering lights. If I turn around, I'm afraid that every memory I had held onto for the past seven years would be buried by the truth. The truth that I fought for nothing, that I have nothing. The moment I turn around is the moment Lara's memory becomes tainted— and I wasn't sure I'd ever be ready to let go.

"Lara." I breathe out shakily, my eyes closing in pain as her footsteps ring closer.

"That's not my name." She replies, her once warm voice was now rough, hoarse, hostile— like she had been screaming for years and I couldn't hear it.

"Please don't do this." I plead, slowly turning around with my eyes still tightly shut. She's getting closer, the thud of her steps vibrating through me with every waking moment.

"Open your eyes."

"Please." I beg.

"Open your eyes." She repeats, harsher, sterner, with anger dripping from the tip of her tongue.

So without any other choice, I do.

I don't think any moment could have prepared me for such a sight— knocking the air out of me as my knees go weak, buckling beneath my weight. The ground beneath me spun violently but I stayed in place, watching everything slip out of my grip as my eyes focus on her, standing before me in a black sweater under an armoured vest. She was just as tall as me, just as big, just as broken. Her once warm brown hair, then completely black— chopped off by her shoulders and her scars– it peppered her bare arms, and some parts of her face.

I kept trying to search for something I knew, looking at every inch of her trying to dig up even a fragment of the girl I left behind but there was nothing. I could see her face, I still knew her but all at once she felt so foreign, like we were meeting for the first time. Her eyes were darker, the innocence that once existed was torn to shreds and replaced with nothing but vile anger, revulsion, hatred— hatred for me.