Brought Down

21. Family Matters

Julian

I wake up in a dark room, sitting in an armchair. I take a deep breath and blink the last traces of sleep away. Garrett's room, right. I shift in my seat, my muscles stiff from spending too much time in the same position. It's probably still night, although it's hard to tell without any natural light. I don't feel rested, but I'm leaps and bounds better than I used to be. A meal and a few hours of sleep have worked their magic.

My eyes find a shape on the bed. I can distinguish Garret's face on the pillow. He's lying on his side, his eyes closed, covered up to his shoulders by some quilt or a blanket. I can feel the chill of the air on my cheeks, but overall, I'm not cold. As I look down at myself, I realize there's a similar quilt thrown over me for warmth.

I look at it, stunned. This gets to me, somehow. Of all things, the quilt gets to me.

"Why are you being kind to me?" I say.

For a few seconds, there's no answer, and I begin to suspect he may actually be asleep. Then, without changing his position, he opens his eyes.

"I'm not sure myself," he says.

"It's...generous of you. I doubt we would've treated you kindly had we captured you."

He shrugs. "I do what I deem right. You do what you deem right. That's all there is to it."

"I'm not sure what I deem right anymore."

"What was right before?"

I think about it.

"Basically, whatever my father pronounced as right, was right." I smile. "But his opinions are of no use to me in my current situation."

Nothing is of any use. I have zero influence on what's going to happen to me. I saw where their hideaway is, so they can't let me out of here. What else can they do?

"I will talk to general Rykar in the morning," says Garrett, as if answering my thoughts. "See if we could find some work for you, perhaps. Somewhere you could cause no damage."

I nod, trying to keep in check the hope that flutters inside my chest.

Garrett draws himself into a sitting position and leans with his back against the wall. He rests his elbows on his knees and rubs his face, then shakes his head, banishing sleepiness. He still wears a long-sleeved tee shirt and loose grey trousers, the same outfit he had on when he came to take me out of my cell.

"At least you don't need to be afraid of being shipped to Burnface anymore," he says.

His choice of words stings. "Well, I wasn't afraid, per se. I was more like...reluctant."

"You were shitting your pants," he says. "I was there, remember?"

"You must have misread my body language."

He looks at me for a while.

"What happened between you and Burnface?" he says. "Where it all started? Was he your rival, your enemy, your superior?"

Now is my turn to be silent. His face is a bright oval in the darkness with two dark shadows for eyes. I shift, and the quilt he'd covered me with slips off.

"He was my husband," I say.

He leans forward, frowning.

"What?"

"My. Husband." I shouldn't be telling him that. Now everybody here will know, just like everybody there knew. They will laugh. Yet I need to spill it out.

"Aren't you both...men? Wow," he leans back again. "I've heard about your decadent ways, people, but that's something new."

"There's no same-sex couples here?"

He shifts uncomfortably. "There are, but it never goes as far as an actual marriage."

"It's not common with us, too. You can have whatever kind of lover you want, but marriages are for procreation and for strengthening alliances between families."

"Yet your love was strong enough to bend the rules, huh?" He grins.

"Didn't you hear what I said about alliances?" He's not getting it. Waste of time. Yet, having started, I might as well finish. "See, about a decade ago, Burface was one of the most prominent generals. Extremely successful. He had a huge support and following. Predictably, he began plotting to overthrow my father, but the plot was uncovered in time, and he was jailed. My father could have destroyed him, but that would have enraged Burnface's many supporters. So, he chose to bring Burnface to his side by making him his right hand and the second most prominent person in the government."

"And he threw an arranged marriage into the deal?"

"It was one of Burnface's demands when they negotiated the terms. And since my father happens to have no daughters..." I spread my arms. "His youngest son was to become the daughter he lacked."

"Wait," he says. "You were what, eleven years old? Holy crap, this is horrible."

"Twelve," I say. "But, you see, Burnface is many things, but he's not a pedophile. The marriage was registered, but it wasn't... well... consummated until years later."

"But eventually, it was?"

I roll my eyes at him. "Yes, but the worst thing for me was not that. You see, once my father decided that I was his daughter, it kind of had to become the truth."

"Holy crap, did they castrate you or something?"

"No." I snort. His unaffected reactions make it feel surprisingly good to share the story with him. "No physical mutilation was involved. But he announced that I was his daughter, and from that moment on, everybody started to treat me like one."

I pause, biting my lip. Remembering that time makes my blood boil, even after all those years. 

"It was surreal, you know? It's like he flipped a switch, and I was ejected into a different reality. People who knew me all my life were suddenly calling me Juliana and complimenting my looks. I couldn't go to the regular school anymore, and I couldn't hang out with my friends anymore, and I was just to move into my husband's quarters and take private lessons in dancing and singing and freaking sewing! They even tried to make me wear dresses!" I realize that my voice has almost reach a shouting level, and I go quiet abruptly.

Garrett watches me silently, his expression unreadable in the shadows.

I start talking again, trying to keep my voice in check. "I would approach the people I knew and go like—come on, you know me, you know who I am. And they would go—please, Juliana, stop talking nonsense. Just be a good girl. It was like I was going crazy, you know? I wasn't sure what was real anymore. When everybody claims the opposite of what you know to be the truth, you begin to doubt your own perceptions. And they just laughed at me behind my back, but they couldn't contradict my father openly, so they played along. It's like my father's words have redefined the reality. Like there was no absolute reality, only his vision of it."

I pause, panting. This is no good. I shouldn't be talking about this. Those feelings and memories should be locked again, and the key thrown away. I can't deal with it. I thought I could, but I was mistaken.

The silence hangs for a few moments. Then Garret speaks.

"They were wrong," he says. "Your father, and all the others who played along. What they did to you was very wrong, and you're right to be angry."

His words do something to me. The simple act of another person acknowledging out loud what I've been feeling all those years makes something inside of me break. As if a dam that held an enormous pressure for years finally burst.

All of a sudden, I'm shaking, and hot tears stream down my face. I wipe them away, will them to stop, but it's no use. The dam is broken, and the stream floods the valley.

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