Burn Me (A Shatter Me Series Sequel)

Eleven

" Adam and Lilith never found peace together; for when he wished to lie with her, she took offence at the recumbent posture he demanded. 'Why must I lie beneath you?' she asked. 'I also was made from dust, and am therefore your equal.' Because Adam tried to compel her obedience by force, Lilith, in a rage, uttered the magic name of God, rose into the air and left him."

I recall reading this in one of the books that was supposed to be destroyed. I can't remember the name. But it told the story of Lilith, sometimes presented as a demoness, mother of all demons, or Adam's first wife. The one too wild and independent for the patriarchal  setting of religion. Replaced by the far more obedient Eve.

How very fitting. Never has a name sounded so right for its owner. And on any other day this would bring an amused smile on my face, but now her words are still hunting me. 

There are some things within us all that can never be unleashed. There are things that can never be told, words, moments, experiences that can never be shared. Not because you don't want to tell, not because there is no one to listen, but simply because some things cannot be understood if they are not personally experienced. It's not that people won't hear you or comfort you, or offer you compassion, but you will know that in this you will be forever alone. A big part of your life, the most intimate part of your life, will remain unshared with another human being. These are our qualias, the axioms of our existence. And, I daresay, they are the truest reflection of who we really are.

No one will ever know what I felt when my mother died. Juliette was there with me, she held me, she calmed me. But she can't understand. She never will. And I don't ask her to. No one will know how I felt the first time a took a life. I can explain it as vividly as possible, but it still won't be enough. This is a burden I will carry for the rest of my life. Alone.

And I certainly cannot understand or comprehend, or even imagine what it must be to watch your family die. A slow and painful death, their screams filling your mind, etching themselves forever in it. Waiting for death to take you too. Wondering why it's taking its time. Wondering if this is what dying feels like. I cannot understand but I can try to. I can listen. So we stay in her abstract greenhouse and she tells me.

She tells me about running to the woods after the fire. She tells me about making her living out of petty theft, about constantly running, sometimes even from one sector to another. Rarely spending two night in the same place. She tells me about crying herself to sleep many, many nights after the fire.

Then she tells me about the determination, the hunger that filled her.

"I thought that vengeance was the only thing that could make it right. That it would take the pain away. " she says "I made it my main goal to learn the expanse of my power and to harness it. To know its physical properties, to make the most of what I can do. I learned and I trained and I became very strong."

Then she goes on to telling me how she approached the Reestablishment. How she made herself noticed by them. 

"They made me a field agent. Which basically means a mobile executor " she grits her teeth "I was supposed to do exactly what they had done to my family. But it was the only way."

I find out that she quickly climbed in the hierarchy, causing fear and obedience in everyone. She tells me there was one quality of hers that made her so valuable.

"Ruthlessness. I killed whoever they told me. I didn't think, I didn't hesitate, I didn't speak, I didn't ask. If anyone did so much as interrupt me while I speak, I punished him. I had no mercy, so they took me as one of them."

Her story is so familiar, so very personal and vulnerable  and tragic.

"Now you know how I got here. Now you know why I am who I am."

So tormented and incredible, that I do something I never thought I would.

I wrap my arms around her and pull her tightly to my chest. She snuggles in like a wounded puppy and an almost inaudible sigh settled in the air around us. A sigh of relief.

As if somebody finally understood.