This Reality

21: The Freedom

A/N
Hello! So sorry it's been a while. Oh dear.
Aaaanyway, if you want you can find me on tumblr even though my blog's a bit rubbish (url same as wattpad)
I hope you like this chapter. It gets a bit emotional again *sniff*
Enjoy!
Kori.

I touch the photograph and this pain sears through my head, and is gone just as quickly as it arrived.

Something feels different. It feels lighter. Something seems to be missing from my mind.

At the same time as this empty feeling, I also feel free, as if a weight has been lifted.

I stand in silence for what feels like a few seconds but in reality it is several minutes.

"Are you alright, Astrid?" Milla's voice breaks the silence.
It's a few seconds before I answer.
"Yeah," I say quietly, "I'm alright."
"Okay, it's just that you had gone quiet and we were wondering what's up and if this is possibly too much for you and-"

"Seriously, it's okay," I cut in and say, reassuringly.

This doesn't sound right given the circumstances. My family isn't alive. I was arrested with my family and brainwashed and my brother died of a terminal illness.

But maybe, right now, surrounded by my new family, in this moment, I really am okay.

"Astrid, you're staring into space again," it's Tiger this time, speaking softly.

"Uh... I..." I stutter. I am overwhelmed, by everything I've seen. I look at the photograph in my hand again. My family, happy and at peace. Milla and Jax don't seem to know anything about the context of the photo and I don't either.

Somebody clears their throat behind me.
"Astrid," it's Tiger again, "say something."
This makes me jump. "Oh, right, er..."

What do I say? That I'm okay? That I miss my real family? That I don't mind being here? All true, but I say none of it.

"I'm ready to go home."

Without realising it, I didn't call my family's old house 'home'. I called Milla and Jax's apartment 'home'.

"Okay Astrid," says Milla calmly, "we can go home. But first I want to show you something downstairs in the basement. Don't worry, it's something that I think will make you happy."

Jax and Tiger stay in the living room and Milla takes me downstairs. The basement light flickers on and I process what I can see.

Boxes. Lots of cardboard boxes. Full of books. I may be tired and overwhelmed but it doesn't take a genius to work out who they are written by.

"Astrid, most of your parents books were secretly published in their underground printing office and taken to storage. But some of them made their way here, and when your parents were found out and arrested, the police broke into the house and searched the basement. This is what they found, and they haven't been touched since."

I look again, and across the wooden floor, and see a few books have been opened and thrown, torn and destroyed. I can imagine the police storming in, searching the house before rushing to the basement, while my mother clutches hold of me, terrified for my safety and cursing the police for choosing the week I was visiting to break in.

This image seems very vivid and familiar. Too vivid for it to be just my imagination.

I kneel down on the floor and pick up one of the books. It has the words 'A Brush With Magic' on the front in pale blue swirly typeface, with my parents' names at the bottom of the cover.

"Why did they do this?" I whisper.
"Why did they do what?" replies milla, equally quietly.

"Why did they go to all this trouble to produce books just for my brother? Why did they risk their safety to publish books like this just to be read by one person?"

Milla takes a breath and sits down on the floor of the basement and gestures for me to do the same. I guess this is a fairly long story.

"Apart from being part of the Permitters, do you know what your parents did for a living?" I shake my head.

"Your mother was a doctor, your father was a nurse in the same hospital. Almost every day of the week they would diagnose and care for terminally ill children. And it broke their hearts how these children might not ever experience something happy in their short lives, to experience the imagination and freedom that comes with being a kid. And they were compassionate for the parents of these children as they also had a sick child, your brother. So they shared their writing with the children at the hospital."

Now I understand why they printed so many books. They gave away their books to people who needed them for the same reason as they did.

I miss my parents.