Hidden and Silent (SpyxFamily)

Ch. 15: Part Three

"Why not?" Damian demanded. "What's really going on? You've been avoiding me way before I found out!"

She shook her head.

"You gotta say something! How is anything ever going to be resolved?!"

She tensed.

Resolved.

Anya repeated in her head. As if she wasn't feeling the things she was supposed to feel. Acting the way she was supposed to act. She lived in a world full of outsiders and her behaviour would seem weird to them.

Resolved.

As if she could get rid of this weight in her soul and pressure on her shoulders. The nightmares that plagued her daily life and held her on a strict line. Her past that was crushing her with her memories and expectations that she still heard her father weaving throughout her mind.

"Uh—ugh. . ." Damian buried his face in his hands. "Please, just stop crying. . ." He implored wearily.

Resolved.

Anya shook.

As if it could all go away.

Why was the word so painful? So out of reach? Like a forbidden fruit she wasn't allowed to have? She shouldn't say anything. She should keep it to herself like she always did. Damian already knew too much, she wasn't. Supposed. To be getting attached to him.

But she was breaking. Her mind was dying. Her soul was cracking and ripping apart with too much to carry. She would drown with it in a sea of overwhelming depression and heartache because she couldn't handle it. The door was closing. The light was disappearing. She couldn't cut ties with her father and it would lock in her in that cabin forever until she died.

She physically couldn't do this anymore.

So she desperately clung to the doorframe.

"He said—" She hiccupped and Damian was instantly alert and attentive. "He said—" Anya couldn't get it out. The words were hampered by the saliva catching in her throat and the tremble in her shoulders.

Anya fell from her crouch to sit on the floor and hugged her shins. Damian didn't prod for more as she took deep breaths and focused on her knees. When her lungs were less clogged and she felt she could make coherent syllables, she crossed her legs and sniffled, wiping at her nose. She brushed the tears from her cheek with her palm, and swiped at the other with the back of her hand.

Now that she had a semblance of composure, she didn't know what to say. How much did she tell him? This was a bad idea. She continued anyway.

"A-at the lab—" She inhaled with a shudder and her voice shook. Damian was all ears and she fidgeted with her fingers in her lap. "I-it's—" she breathed involuntarily deep and hiccupped as a tremor rolled over her body like an avalanche. Why was this so hard? "I-it's different there."

Damian was quiet, focused on her words.

"T-the director—" Anya glanced worriedly through the hall, wondering how long they had until classes ended. "He—um. . ." She exhaled shakily. "E-e-espers—" She whispered.

Never mind. She wasn't being very coherent at all.

Damian waited patiently.

She took another deep breath. "We-we're supposed to follow the rules."

Damian stretched his words out apprehensively. "What rules?" He said quietly.

"We-we're not supposed to live l-like other people b-because we're d-different."

"What?"

"A-and if we d-do—" Anya inhaled unsteadily and held it before letting it go. "People g-get hurt. T-they can't d-deal with us." Anya fought to slow her heart and force her chest to stop heaving. She hiccupped. "I-I'm not—I'm not supposed to be friends with y-you." She cried and wiped at her face again. "O-or any—" She hiccupped and she couldn't help the drum of emotions pounding on her chest and throat. "Or anyone not from the l-lab. I d-don't belong h-here." She hiccuped and dissolved into gasping sobs once more as she futilely tried to dry her face. She struggled to compose herself, wiping at her cheeks that overflowed with tears and ran down her chin, mostly failing to prevent the hiccups that wracked her chest, and tried not to dwell on the mortifying fact that she had just spilled that to Damian. It was out there and she immediately wanted to snatch it back from the air before it could reach his ears.

"Forger. . ." Damian said. His brows had furrowed, mouth parting in concerned horror as if she'd told him something disturbing. "Is—is that what you've been thinking this whole time?!" He said quietly and she may have been hallucinating the waver in his voice.

Anya clutched at her shirt where her chest wouldn't stop shuddering and flooding her with emotions without her permission, and continued to wipe at her tear soaked face. She hiccupped uncontrollably and through the blurry kaleidoscope of colours that was her vision, Damian was suddenly pulling her into a hug, his stricken face the last thing she saw before she was buried in his shoulder.

"You—you do belong here. . ." Damian whispered roughly and she thought he might start crying too. "Why. . ." His voice grew crumbly like his words could fall apart any second and she felt his heartbeat pick up, his breath a little less steady. "Why would you think we'd get hurt?" He asked.

"It a-already h-happened." She shuddered, though she already felt herself relaxing when Damian had hugged her. She didn't know why or understand it. He was the embodiment of her worst fears come true, an outsider who knew too much, the very thing her father had warned her against, and while they were ever present in her mind, she had never felt more close with him.

He had been at the lab. He had been there for her. She couldn't deny that they had survived something terrifying together, linking them, and she wasn't fully aware of the feeling until he was here. Hugging her. He knew her secret and he was going to keep it. He knew her secret and he held her in the same perspective as always.

No matter what he knew, when he held her, there was something intoxicatingly comforting about it. There was a familiarity there, a solace that only came from a shared understanding, a shared, haunting experience, and she was scared of how much she wanted to stay there and let him make her feel better.

She wasn't supposed to grow attached to him. She wasn't supposed to let him in. She couldn't dwell on his continued, steadfast, maddening efforts to be there for her.

Once she latched on, she wouldn't want to let go.

And she had to let go.

But he was so warm. And he held her so tight like he could squeeze her fears and anxieties out of her. And while disclosing this information between her and her father felt so, so unnatural, she hadn't felt so unburdened since the lab. She had hidden it deep inside, like a poison rotting her away and slowly killing her, and she had finally expelled it.

The damage was done. She hurt inside and it felt like it would never go away, but it was a relief to have it out.