Post by StoryGirl83 on Aug 21, 2009 21:35:31 GMT -5
Chapter Eight – What She Said
Flashback
“That woman you hold so much in scorn, whoever she was had a profound effect on my mom,” Bianca began. “I don’t know what you know about Phoenix, but for the most part they are assassins.”
Piper scowled.
Bianca sighed and continued. “My mom was no different, though I never saw her kill anyone, not for years and even then it was only once. I understand she slowed down when I was born and when we lost my father, she stopped, for a while at least. She finally decided that he wasn’t coming back and changing for him would do no good. Then, you guys showed up, followed by that woman. We moved a week later.”
“How come?” Wyatt asked from his bed.
Bianca frowned. “I’m not really sure. She said she needed time to think. She went back to what she’d done before, accepting contracts and killing people.” She shuddered.
Lawrence put his arms around her.
She nodded. “Eventually I found out. And one day when I was eleven I asked her about it. She froze in her tracks and looked at me.”
Piper started to say something, but Leo stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. She sighed.
“She stared at me as if she wasn’t even seeing me. She sank down onto the couch and stared into the distance as if remembering something.
Lynn Donchi stared at her young daughter, remembering the words that the future version of her daughter had said when she’d asked if there wasn’t anything she could do to help. Yeah. Someday when I ask you what it feels like to kill, don’t lie to me. Don’t tell me you don’t feel a thing.
Lynn never knew what become of that young woman. She only knew that she never saw her, again. Now, the question had come and she didn’t know how to handle it.
“What does it feel like to kill, Mommy?”
Lynn looked at her startled. “Where did that come from, Bianca?”
“I saw you, Mommy,” Bianca told her. “That man. He looked surprised.”
Lynn hugged her daughter against her chest. “Bianca, honey. You weren’t supposed to see that.”
Bianca looked up with sad eyes. “It’s bad isn’t it?”
“It’s what I do, sweetie,” Lynn told her.
“Was he a bad man?”
Lynn started to shake her head. She stopped and sighed. “Bianca, you don’t want to go there.”
“Nina said I’m supposed to follow in your footsteps.”
“You can do whatever you want.”
They were words no Phoenix child ever heard.
“You can make your own choices.”
“Did Daddy choose?”
Lynn’s eyes slid shut. “I don’t know. Sweetheart, I don’t know what your daddy did. He just left.”
“Was it because you killed someone?”
“This is a very grown-up conversation we are having.”
“I need to know, Mommy. If I’m supposed to do what you do, I need to know.”
Don’t tell me you don’t feel a thing.
Lynn shook her head. “You don’t need to know. You don’t need to have anything to do with what I do. I don’t want you to.”
“Then tell me, Mommy,” Bianca insisted. “If you don’t want me to, why do you?”
“Because it’s what I do,” Lynn told her. “It’s what I was brought up to do, since I was younger than you.”
“Then, why shouldn’t I?” Bianca asked. It didn’t seem all that strange that they were calmly discussing why her mom had killed a man in cold blood. It somehow seemed normal.
“Because, every time I killed someone a piece of me died, until there is nothing left.” Lynn informed her, collapsing onto the couch, pulling her preteen daughter with her. “Because every time you look at someone who bares even the remotest resemblance to someone you killed you see them again and you see them go down and you feel sick to your stomach.”
Bianca stared at her, her eyes confused. “Then, why, Mommy? Why do it? Why not stop?”
“Because it’s all I know.”
Bianca remembered the hopelessness in her mother’s voice as she said that. She looked up at Piper. “When I asked why she didn’t lie, why she didn’t try glorify it or make it better, all she told me was that she promised when I asked she wouldn’t lie.”
Lawrence hugged his arms tight around his wife and daughter.
“I told myself, I would never get in that situation, but I soon learned for me, there had to be more. I wasn’t in a position to ignore the call to kill, so I didn’t.” She looked Piper in the eyes as she added, “I learned to stop them.”