Dead Girl Walking ― Aaron Minyard

54. still

it only falls into place when you're falling to pieces
you find love that lasts a while 'til you lose the reasons
saying god, i'm alive
but the whole place is quiet
― noah kahan

♦

MARA KNEW TALKING TO THE FBI wouldn't be easy. She knew it would take days to explain all that she knew of her father's circle and his work. She knew Aaron would never be able to look at her the same when he heard everything she'd seen and done straight from her own mouth.

But she'd made a promise, and though she cared little for bureaucratic justice, seeing her father's men locked away for life was a revenge she couldn't pass up.

She told Seung and Rogers—and by extension, Aaron—everything, leaving out only the Moriyamas' hand in everything. She told them how Nathan first contacted her a few minutes after midnight on hers and Neil's birthday. She told them how her tutor had been one of his men, how both had threatened the team to make her behave.

She told them how Romero, Jackson, and Lola had been in the Binghamton locker rooms, how her father had orchestrated the riot to cover Neil's kidnapping. She told them how she'd followed them to Baltimore.

She didn't tell them who killed her father or Lola or any of the men in the house. She let them fill the blanks as they saw fit.

From there, the agents moved onto the past. She told them how her mother and brother ran away into the night; how her father faked all their deaths and sent her to Evermore to make some use of her as an Exy protégé. She told them how he never truly left her alone, how he'd take her out of the Nest for missions—how he'd put a knife into her hands and give her orders she was too young and too afraid to refuse.

She couldn't bring herself to look at Aaron as she told them the monster Nathan had made her into.

Mara named every man and woman she knew who'd worked under her father. She identified every murder he or his circle had been apart of. She told them every horror story of hers and Neil's childhood. She told them how her father had been the one to slit her throat when she was ten years old. She told them how it wasn't the first or last time he nearly killed her.

It took the rest of Saturday and the whole of Sunday to go over everything. In all that time, Aaron never left her side for more than a few minutes. They were rarely left alone, and neither wanted to talk with agents watching over them like hawks. They were privy to most of Mara's life and past, but they wouldn't be privy to her and Aaron.

That, at least, she would keep for herself.

A medic came by one last time to check on Mara's wounds, and when she was cleared and the agents decided they had learned all there was to learn from her of the Wesninski inner circle, they offered one more time to put her into witness protection.

Like the three times before, Mara rejected their offer and threatened not to testify against any of her father's men if they tried to take her from the Foxes by force.

The agents were smart enough to let it go.

Finally, Seung closed the folder in front of her. "We're done here," she announced. "If we have anymore questions, we'll be in contact."

Mara only nodded. She didn't move until the agents did, following them up from the table and out of the FBI conference room with Aaron at her side. A glance at the clock said it was nearly midnight, which explained the bone-deep exhaustion Mara felt.

"Stetson will give you a ride to the hotel," Seung said, leading the way down a quiet hallway and into the cold night's air. Mara crossed her arms tightly over her torso, feeling the chill immediately through the thin shirt the FBI had provided.