THE DREAM CATCHER

50.

Niccòlo didn't say a word during our way back to the church leaving me alone with my thoughts. I don't know how and I don't want to excuse my actions. They were just an act of desperation. I think. But he kissed me with so much passion, longing and feelings it's going to be much harder to hate him. He seemed off when we walked through the silence, through the woods and church hallway. Maybe I really shouldn't have done it. It will haunt me for the rest of my life. He leaves me in silence in my doorway. We stare at each other for a long while, each of our throats clogged by unspoken words. And then he simply says:
,,Goodnight Eden." Spins on his heel and disappears behind his door. I do the same. There hasn't been so much distance between us before, even though we physically came closer than ever. I wonder what made him so cold on an instant. And what made me wonder about it. Suddenly, when I'm left alone and the door closes, my heart starts to sting terribly again. Everything he told me shattered me. Shattered me to the bone, peeled my skin off to the flesh, cracked my very soul. I should expect nothing less from Noah, however, the truth is worse than what I can bear. So I throw my body on the floor, supporting by back against the bed frame and for a second time I sink into my fathers words on paper. I can feel the tears scratching my eyes. Reading those words once again was a terribly bad idea. I run my eyes through the reports, photos of my unconscious body attached to the chair, wires in my head. It was a terribly bad idea indeed. Tears burning my skin alive prove it. But then I come across the papers of the letter peeling off from each other. The dust, or my tears, or snow or all of those things must have glued them together. But now, as they're dry they separate easily. I once again sink into my fathers mind. But this one is the final nail to my coffin. The final bullet piercing through my brain after my whole body had been fed with lead. This one's fatal punch aimed at my soul.

This detail of the story will be probably the worst but it's necessary for you to acknowledge that as it all makes sense in the end. Noah was not a child of mine. He was a scientific production of your mother and her laboratory friend Mattia. He was an artificially designed and born form of a human your mother and Mattia created in order for him to be a living material for the tests. I'm so sorry that you have to find out about it that way. Your half-brother failed the tests your mother hoped he would pass. His intelligence score was not as high as she predicted it to be. I'm so sorry Eden.

I'm choking with tears as I read those heart-slicing words. Noah was not my brother. Not fully. No wonder why he never called our, my, father dad. He was a stranger to him. Noah was not mine. I reached for the hand, thinking that I already know the unknown and it turned out to be treacherous. It didn't catch me when I fell. And I'm also choking on disgust as I storm out of my room and into the one in front of me. Niccòlo sits hunched behind his desk and sketches something terrifyingly similar to my face as I toss the letter on his drawing.
,,You spared me the fact that my brother was also your brother in your story. Right before we kissed." The disgust in my voice is audible, venom burning his skin alive as he looks up at me, swallowed by terror. ,,You are revolting!" I scream and turn on my heel towards the door. The disgust towards myself is equal. I want to cut my tongue off. Right before I catch the handle of the door he appears behind my back and holds them in place. I have nothing else to do but look into his, now, disgusting eyes.
,,Eden please..."
,,You knew about that, didn't you?" The slightest amount of hope that he kissed me unaware of our, even the slightest connection extinguishes in a second his face frowns with remorse. I can't believe that.
,,I realised when I met Noah when I caught him with my sister. I swear I had no idea before." He pleads, he begs for my forgiveness and all I want to do is to rip him into million pieces. My intention to hate him before is actual. It's not the fact that our families are connected. It's the fact that he had hidden it from me.
,,Before we kissed?" I hiss rhetorically. I'm trapped between his arms that he holds next to my shoulders to fence me off from the exit and I've never felt so uncomfortable in my whole life.
,,We are not related Eden. We have different parents and you know that. Your half-brother's father is only a step-father for me. We don't share the same blood. I didn't grow up with him. You did. He was only a project of a man I had to call father and your mother. He is nothing but a stranger to me." I almost shed a tear. But instead, I laugh him off.
,,Don't you dare call him a project. And." I shake his arms off from my private space and push his chest so much he stumbles backwards. ,,Don't you dare to touch me ever again. Don't you dare to talk to me, look at me. I want you out of my life and if you ever try to interact with me in any way I'll kill you. Once my mother is killed and the mission over I don't want to see your face ever again. I will never forgive you for hiding this from me. I had every right to know." As I spit those words I storm out of the room I don't intent to visit ever again.
I spent an hour under the boiling hot shower trying to get rid of every remnants of him. I feel dirty in my very soul. And hurt. The only person I ever loved - my brother - isn't even fully him. The half of my soul is not him. It's just shallow, empty. Noah was never the part of me, he was never mine. And Niccòlo could even have been a pet of him. He knew. He knew the truth about the person I mourned the most in the world. And didn't tell me. And this is the lie I will never, ever forget or forgive.