Glorybringer AU ☆the fault in our stars☆

[36] Crime and Punishment

☆Deathbringer☆

"If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment- as well as the prison."

--Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

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I am a little boy, watching Quickstrike wash and clean the big house. To me, she is a deadly, talented assassin that can earn all the money in the world. To the world, however, she is only a high school graduate. 

During the night, she brings middle-aged men to our house. They have many things in common: they are slightly drunk and never come back. Some of them have rings on their fourth finger, but my mother doesn't seem to mind. They change once a week. I can tell that she doesn't like any of them, but if they like her, they buy her presents. Mother sells those presents and pays our bills. It is just enough to pay our rent.

I hate all of it.

"If we go to Battlewinner," I mumble one day, as she is cleaning, "She'll give me money. Maybe she'll give me one more target, but the money she'll give me will be enough for us to live an year without you working."

Mother turns to me and slaps me in the face. I stare at her, shocked and furious. My face is tingling with pain, but I don't even mind it. We stare at each other in silence for a couple seconds. After that, Mother opens her mouth, her face contorted in disgust."You're a monster."

It's one thing to know you're a monster. For Battlewinner to say I'm a monster. When my mother says it, however, it's enough to make my heart drop.

Even I-- a boy that killed two people-- am a kid, and I just stand there until tears are dripping down my face. I clench my fists, and I see Mother flinch, even though I have no intents to hurt her. The fact she does makes me even more miserable. "I know." I'm sobbing now, my entire body shaking. "I know that better than anyone, Mother."

She suddenly comes to me and drops to her knees, her hands gripping my shoulders tightly. There are tears in her eyes. "I'm sorry, child. You're not. Of course you're not." She presses her face to my chest, and I can feel it becoming wet. "I'm the monster. You've done nothing wrong."

"I just don't want you to do any hard work," I tell her, gripping her shirt so she doesn't let go. "I don't like the men you bring to our house. I know you don't like doing it." I try to wipe my tears, but they keep coming. "The people Battlewinner order me to kill mean nothing to me. If it makes you comfortable, I can do anything..."

Mother shakes her head. "You have to stop thinking like that, Deathbringer." She stares at me in the eye. She reaches out, gently, and wipes my tears away. It's the first time she has touched my face for months. Everyday, she becomes a little further away. She keeps making the distance between us bigger. As if she's scared of me. "The gun you point to someone else is destined to come back to you somehow. Taking someone's life-- you have to pay for it dearly. It's not so simple."

"I don't understand," I say. You're the only person in the world that makes me kill other people. Just to keep you safe. To keep in that small veil, so you don't have to face the world like I do. "I don't even know those people."

Mother just shook her head, taking her hands away. Staring at me with a sad look on her face. "I'm sorry." 

She repeated it, over and over. LIke I was an already ruined being, with no hope of turning back. After that, she never touched me or came close to me. She kept her distance, watching me as if I would begin to assassinate everyone.

Perhaps she was right. Maybe I was too broken to even hope of recovery.

☆

After Glory goes home, hell starts. Our dream is shattered, and I fall into that deep hole again, hating myself. Whenever I close my eyes, I see that man's green, green eyes. They now overlap with Glory's.