What's Said in Silence

Sera-XXXXXXX

This was stupid, I'm stupid. 

The icy wind whipped my hair in different directions and tucking it behind my ears had done little to help. I stared at the townhouse before me and choked on the memories that surfaced at the sight, my blood turning to sludge in my veins. This shouldn't be how someone looks at their childhood home. 

Home.

The word repeated in my mind over and over again. I didn't feel as if I could consider this place my home. I had lived there, but I was never welcomed and more of a burden on someones shoulders. A spiteful power move to hurt someone else. This wasn't my home, had never been. My home was currently waiting in a hotel room and had been reluctant to let go of my hand as I walked out the door. 

As much as I wanted to turn around and bury this in the past like I did before, I knew I couldn't move on until I confronted the other thing that had terrified me worse than Preston: my fathers hatred. There were wounds that never got the chance to close. Instead, they were left to fester and had grown infected. It had grown suffocating and if I didn't confront these tides, then I wouldn't be the only person that drowned in them. 

I walked up the steps of the town house, the cement more worn and cracked than I remembered. I stared at the black door, the same door that had been slammed in my face all those years ago. I stifled a wince and squared my shoulders. With one last deep breath, I raised my fist and knocked.

Regret and panic settled in as quickly as I'd done it. This had been a bad idea, a horrible one. Maybe I should have brought Vessel with me, if only to distract me from the cowardice voice in my head telling me to run. I could tell myself this would have been easier with him a thousand times but I knew if he were then it wouldn't be as effective. Some battles we must face on our own.

The door opened and I was met with those green eyes, Evelyn's eyes, kind and inviting. All too soon they recognized the person before them and icy hatred glazed over them. I hadn't planned out exactly what I would say, but any words I might have said died a quick death on my tongue. 

The door began to close and that same memory flashed through my eyes, only this time my hand went up and pushed against it, stopping it from closing. He kept pushing, intent on shutting the door in my face for a second time, but I shoved the door back open, surprising us both with my strength.

"Go the hell away." He tone was the farthest thing from polite, never had been if memory served. 

"I gave you space for five years, you can give me five damn minutes." My voice, while a little wobbly, came out strong and assertive. Polar opposite to the pleading teenager he'd tossed out all those years ago. He didn't bother with a response and I knew he had already begun a mental count down. An opening was an opening.

"I have spent half a decade on my own. Half a decade dreading the day when he would walk out of that cell, and he did. So I ran, but not to the only family I had left. I couldn't run to the one person who was supposed to protect me. In that regard, you failed me." There was a slight flinch in his eyes at the mention of failure. Of all things Johnathan Hale hated more than me, he hated to lose. 

I didn't wait for a response before I continued, "I can't change the past. I can't bring Evelyn back or undo moms mistakes. Or my own, for that matter. I can't go back and tell my sixteen year old self not to fall for the first kind words a man ever spoke to me, which was one of the many disservices you had dealt me." Tears prickled at my eyes and threatened to spill over, but I wouldn't let them. I had gone through so much, too much to let myself fall apart now. Not in front of him. He didn't deserve to see my weakness anymore. 

"I had told you to stay away fro-"

"You labeled me a whore before the age of ten. Why on earth would I listen to you when you had told me countless times that I'd be just like her? Opening my legs for any man that looked at me." Heat rose up through my neck and I took a deep breath, reeling the emotions back in. "And could you really blame me? Whether it was true or not, you would look at me as if I had done it anyways. So, yes, the first man that called me pretty was the one I listened to, because for the first time in my life I had felt like I mattered to someone. That someone loved me."