The Mansion On Drachmian Border

Many Ways Of Dealing With Pain

Maes toyed with the knife turning it around. It was a small combat knife with a black handle, and it looked like it's been used for years but sharpened regularly. He remembered when he fought using knives, it was so long ago and he wasn't sure if he knew how to anymore.

It wasn't even the first time when he sat alone with a knife in his hands. There were times in the past, when he sat like that in the mansion, thinking if he could really leave his children all alone or not.

But even that wouldn't be new for him. The very first time he was a kid, he didn't remember how old he was exactly, thirteen, fourteen? It didn't really matter, but he was sure it happened after his father yelled and hit him particularly badly. He sat there on the school night, holding a knife in his hands, trying to ready himself. It ended up with him hiding the knife under his mattress and curling up under his comforter.

It happened few times before he went to the Military Academy as a way to escape them. He wasn't able to look at his parents anymore. A mother, who never paid attention, smoking till the small, crumpled apartment smelled only of weed and his father's beer. His father, as much as it was ironical, Maes liked more. He had some good memories of him along with the bad ones.

He worked to fight off all of these thoughts, the want to just stop existing. He tried to name things he liked about himself, what he was grateful for each day, smiling and laughing more. Making other people happy.

Then he met Gracia and it got a little bit easier because he felt happy for real. He thought he knew happiness, when Roy and him dated in secret, so as not to hurt his reputation so early in his career. But, there was something entirely different about being able to tell the whole world how perfect the beautiful person he dated was.

He still sometimes wanted to talk to Roy about the bad days, but Roy just came back from the war then and he was struggling himself. Maes didn't want to burden him. But he had Gracia, who loved him and who was willing to listen to him.

Gracia... He would never forgive himself for thinking she never actually existed. He got so confused, he wasn't sure if he could even trust his own mind. Sometimes, he wasn't sure if he was Maes Hughes, or if his Master was right and he really was Van Flamel, a delusional man, she said he was. And that would mean that he really made all that up, the transumation, his life before, Gracia.

Now he was sure he was right, but... What if Gracia hated him now whenever she was? He had doubted her existence. How could he? She was always so good to him. She accepted him, all of him, all the weird habits and depression he was never truly able to get rid of. His marriage with Gracia was the best part of his life, no doubt about it. She was the sun, that brightened up his life.

His sweet Ellicia too. She used to be the cutest little girl following him around the house. He remembered her firsts word being 'mama' and how Gracia was so overjoyed. The way his daughter liked to draw with chalk on a sidewalk and how she liked putting her plushies in cute outfits.

...And he remembered how she changed in Master's mansion. At firsts, she was so scared, afraid to be around the woman, but later she became angry. She yelled and slammed doors and chopped wood with passion. At the same time, she was his biggest help. He knew that it was unfair, expecting her to take care of her younger sisters, but what else was he supposed to do? He had no say in when Master would call him. 

Elicia was really gone, wasn't she? His sweet daughter was gone forever.

It was so unfair! She was way too young to be gone!