Janus 02.Redemption #Wattys2018

4.05 Phantom Limb Pain.

"I couldn't give birth to Max's child. I hated myself for what happened. I put the blame on me. I never accused you of anything even in my most secret thoughts and nightmares. I was too scared to even talk with you about it. I just wanted to forget it and this pregnancy kept reminding it to me. I didn't own my own body any more. I had to reclaim it even with blood on my hands. "

"I didn't know it but I realized it standing in front of that closed door. I know deep in my heart that regardless whose child was, it was your child above all. You made an impossible choice. You killed the most innocent part of you because you had to move on. I walked those shoes once in the past. I know the feeling."

Eden turned and faced Ed.

"Isn't it funny that despite all the blood that we have on our hands neither of us can use that word?" She asked Ed in sadness.

"Which word?" Ed asked her back without looking at her.

"Even after all this time neither of us can use the word "rape". It's like summoning a daemon. We are still both chained on Max's neck after all those years."

"Would it make you feel better if I used that word?" Ed turned and faced her.

"Would it make you feel better Ed?" She asked him back.

"We were both mutilated by that rape. It's as if Max, without any warning, cut off a limb of ours that can't grow back or be replaced. Sometimes a part of our brain still suffers from that phantom limb pain and another part of the brains reminds us that's long gone. So how could anything make us feel better my love?"

"That's why I didn't kill Cassandra before although I was tempted to do it when she threatened you. She gave you something that I couldn't. She gave you your son and that's sacred."

"I know. She hates you more than you suspect. She really tried her best to offer me everything but she wasn't you. She knew that I was crippled. She didn't care about that at the beginning when she still had hope that she could fix me. Once she realized that she couldn't do it, the possibility of you coming back haunted her. We were the King and Queen of the Lost Souls, ruling our own underworld but she always knew that you would come back to claim me." Ed removed Eden's head from legs and refilled his glass.

"I didn't come back to claim you." Eden sat on the sofa hugging her legs with her arms.

"You don't need to become defensive or to lie to me. Each time we meet, you claim me and I have no option but to surrender to you. I surrendered to you the moment you entered my house again. You knew it, that's why you chose to return here despite the fact that we have never burried our dead ones. This is your home. This is where you wanted to feel safe again before you die. You had to claim me in order to claim yourself again. That day you claimed your body but you didn't dare to claim yourself. You were too scared to do that because you didn't know what was left of her or us." Ed went on drinking as he was talking.

"Ed..." She hesitated for a minute.

"Tell me. You can tell me everything."

"What did Faceless ask you in return to heal me and let us both come back?" Eden asked him while fear sparkled in her eyes like the old days.

"He didn't heal you Eden. I wish he did but he would never do that. I never asked for his forgiveness for murdering his best friend so he never granted it." A tear appeared on his eye and then another one. "I wasn't enough this time either and I fear that this time you can't surgically remove it."

"Remove what Ed?" She put her feet on the floor and stood up searching her body inch by inch starting with her arms. Ed stood up, took her hand and walked her back to the bedroom in front of the full-length mirror.

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*  A phantom limb is the sensation that an amputated or missing limb is still attached. Approximately 60 to 80% of individuals with an experience phantom sensations in their amputated limb, and the majority of the sensations are painful.Phantom sensations may also occur after the removal of body parts other than the limbs, e.g. after amputation of the breast, extraction of a tooth (phantom tooth pain) or removal of an eye (phantom eye syndrome).