Peppermint And Gunpowder

Chapter Forty-Eight: A Woman Long Dead

"Maire, I've waited many years to speak with you." A lean woman with Asian features and dark eyes stands behind a desk, smiling at me in a way I cannot place.

"My name is Mercury." I go to leap across at the women, but Lean's hand pressed my shoulder to the back of my chair so tightly I begin to lose feeling in my arm.

"Is that the name your mother gave you?" Her eyes are hard but her words are soft.

"You have no right to speak of my mother!" I scream angrily, fighting against Leon's grip.

"I knew your mother, Marie." She sits at the corner of the desk, smoothing the creases away from the white fabric of her skirt. She lightly touches the nameplate on the corner, turning it where the fluorescent light shines on the engraved letters that read Airi Isoda: Director of Better Living Industries.

"You don't know me and you don't know my mother." I finally rest against the chair, yet Leon's grip does not release.

"I did know your mother, but it's you I don't know." The Director smiles and pulls out a manila folder from a drawer with the ease as if it had been planted. "I haven't seen you since you were a baby."

"Fine, I'll play your little game." I cross my arms. "How do you know my mother?"

"I always loved Sarah, we were very close. Almost like sisters..." Her smile falls faint and mumbles, "I thought I could bring her back to us. I really did."

"Bring her back?" I give her a strange look. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"She was a high-ranking officer here, a S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W/, to be exact. She was one of our best." A hint of anger crosses her face, though she maintains her composure. "That is, until she met Danniel."

Sarah Grace. Danniel. My mother and my father.

"She always talked about this Killjoy she met, a criminal! Someone she was supposed to kill!" The Director sighs heavily and runs a hand across her face. "Sarah spoke so highly of him, she said she loved him. She wanted to run away with him, run to the Zones and become a Killjoy. I knew I couldn't stop her..."

"You don't know what you're talking about. My mother was born in the Zones, she lived in the Zones and died in the Helium Wars. Your people, people under your command, are who killed her." I feel tears spring to my eyes as I try to remember something, anything, about my mother.

I touch the wedding band and imagine she is standing beside me and holding my hand.

"Yes, I do know. Sarah was like a sister to me." She makes an unsettled face before handing me the manila folder. "But if you still don't believe me, here's her file."

I take the manila folder in my hands but do not open it. I fear what may lay within and savour my last few moments of obliviousness.

Inside the folder, many papers are held together with a silver clip. There are two polaroid photographs layered.

A mask with a printed smile sits on top. No remarkable features of the S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W/ mugshot--the only remarkable quality is the fact that there is no remarkable features.

With reluctance, I lift the first polaroid back slightly and catch a glimpse of what lays beneath.

The smiling blonde woman catches me off guard. Her blonde hair falls in rings, framing her face. She smiles much broader, almost too broadly, for someone who is a registered worker for BLI.

My mother was a beautiful woman. A beautiful woman with many secrets.

"These aren't real." I say though I continue to look through the file. "You're lying, these aren't real..."

"They are, Marie." The Director's voice softens and she watches me with a look of pity in her eyes. I do not want her pity nor her lies. "Sarah was a strong woman, she just... fell with the wrong people."

"The wrong people?" When someone speaks of 'the wrong people' and me, they mean the Fabulous Four. They mean Poison, Ghoul, Jet, and Kobra. They mean Gracie and Bandit.

'The wrong people' to them are the people I love the most.

But now, as The Director speaks with soft words, I do not know who she speaks of.

"Danial, the man Sarah claimed to love." She scoffs at herself and the thought of Danial. "She went on and on about her Danny, how much she loved him. I thought it was just some foolish fling, something she would forget about in a month or so, but she didn't. I knew I truly lost Sarah when she told me she was pregnant... pregnant with Danial's baby."

The Director bites her lip and breathes deeply, fending off tears for a woman long dead. She sighs heavily before continuing.

"I will never forgive him for what happened to her." She gives a wayward glance to me and mutters, "For the longest time I blamed you, but deep inside I knew it wasn't your fault. You were a baby who was brought into the world under hellish circumstances. It was never your fault."

For a moment I forget who I am speaking with. I forget Leon's hand pressed so tightly against my shoulder I begin to lose feeling. I forget the battle going on floors below us.

"But it was your war that killed her." I say, still in somewhat of a daze. "Your war and your people killed her. And if the story goes as you tell it, someone held a gun to her head and called her a traitor and now she's dead."

"Marie, what are you going on about?" The Director's voice was genuinely confused. As if she didn't realize that, years ago, it was her command that killed my mother. Her people started the war, her government divided the world as we know it, and her orders killed my mother.

"Don't act dumb. You know what you did, you know what your people did." I all but yell. "Don't act like you're not the one who killed my mother."

The Director stands from her place behind the desk and walks around so she is standing before me, leaning on the front of her desk with a look in her eyes that say she thinks I've gone mad.

"Marie, you don't know what you're talking about." She touches my leg lightly, as if attempting to comfort me. It takes everything I have not to pull myself away. "Sarah--your mother--didn't die in the Helium Wars."

"My father told me she did. He told me it was your people who killed her, your people and your war. Why would he lie about that?" I hold her gaze for longer than I would have liked before continuing. "My father was a horrible man, but he loved my mother more than anything else. He would've given his life for hers. He said she died in the Helium Wars."

"He also said she was born and raised in the Zones and we found that wasn't true." The Director counters my words with a sharp tone. "He said that she was a Killjoy through-and-through, and maybe that was true, but you cannot hide the fact that she was a high ranking officer for BLI, or did he not tell you that in order to preserve the idea he had of Sarah?"

The more she speaks, the more lies my father has told me all my life come to light.

Everything he ever told me, everything he ever believed himself, was a lie.

What was the truth?

Against my better judgement and little voice wailing in my head, I ask softly: "How did my mother die?"

The Director leans forward and grasps my hand lightly, the look of pity from before returning to her eyes.

"Marie..." She swallows hard and breathes deeply. "Marie, your mother died in childbirth."

A strangled gasp is all that comes out of my mouth and I am able to mutter only a soft, "What?"

The Director holds my hands tighter, a bond between us formed as we share memories of a woman long dead. A single tear slips from her eye and rolls down her cheek. She doesn't bother to wipe it away.

"Marie, your mother was not killed in the Helium Wars." She pauses again and this time she doesn't look me in the eyes. "You mother died giving birth to you."