Royal Disaster

the disastrous sourcing

a.n. i'd like to apologize for how short this is. i just... cliffhangers, man. i love having them. they just give the chapter a sense of finality. a dun, dun, done factor. y'know what i mean?

               

"Lee is your father?" I had to clarify. I couldn't—I couldn't just fucking assume that out of another prisoner. I couldn't, as much as I want to.

"Leland, I think, is his name." She paused, contemplating. "Leland Granados."

            Leland Granados. Lee Luther wasn't his real name. It was a fucking alias. No wonder it sounded too fucking television-y to be true. For this entire thing to be true.

The irony didn't escape me. He wasn't the real life Lee Luther, just like we weren't the real life, team version of Superman. That just made my hopes plummet even farther below what it had originally been before Lee had spoken to me in the fucking video.

"Are you... Are you okay?"

I shook myself, stepping away from the bars. The skin on my hand sort of stuck to the metal and grime surrounding the bar, tugging at bits of it before I could take one full step back. I winced lightly, rubbing the palm of my hand on my shirt. "I'm fine," I answered her, a slight bitterness tinging my voice.

That was unfair of me and, while I didn't know whether she was hurt or not by it, I apologized. "Sorry, yes, I'm fine. But I should be asking you that."

"Why?" she asked, sounding genuinely curious.

The way my heart squeezed at the sound of her sincerity had me wishing I could go back to the life I had complained about for so long. I knew back then that I was pretty fucking privileged but I guess my stubbornness and pride clouded my judgement about other things. Katrina's life... If I thought of mine, it's like I was living in Olympus.

"Because you're trapped here."

Over the sound of my breathing, I heard the light patter of footsteps moving. Being able to hear that, something so quiet that shouldn't have felt so close, indicated that her cell was probably a few meters down from mine. She was closer than I thought.

"Trapped?"

"Stuck, unable to go anywhere."

"Is there anywhere else safer to go?"

Years of brainwash. That's the only conclusion I could come up with that would make her sound so calm. "Yes!" I told her, walking back towards the bars. "Much safer places! Much brighter places and much happier places!"

She was quiet at my response.

I waited for a few moments, waited for her to process what I said. It wasn't very long before she said, "The places where my father gets my stuff, this bed, the clothes... Is that where the safer places are?"

"Among them, yes."

"And you have been to these places?"

"Yes."

There was another pause. A heavier one where I assumed she was thinking over what I was saying. "But Gabriel... he says otherwise. He says that the safest place is here. The safest place is here in my cell, in my room."

Her voice gained conviction as she went on. It sounded like something that had been continuously drilled in her head, a chant that seemed to be her only lifeline.

"Gabriel's lying to you."

"No—no, he couldn't be. He's... He follows my father's orders. He listens to him." Her voice got quieter. "My father wouldn't lie to me."