The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (105 page)

             
“So what do you want?” Elijah wiped the blood away from his mouth and laughed slightly in aggravation
, “Do you want us to shake hands? Do you want me to give you my blessing?”

             
“No. I just do not want to fight with you anymore. I am so tired of this never-ceasing familial strife. We have a chance here to start completely over. What Quinn said the other ni
ght was true; we are all we have from our old lives. We need to stick together. Do you all agree?”

             
She was so exhausted by the fight that had endured for hundreds of colorful reasons for seven years. It was evident in her eyes as she spoke. She had always
been expected to carry the brunt of the weight. Now, the fatigue was beginning to show. The fight between Elijah and James was yet another conflict that was up to her to resolve. I admired her strength as I was seeing it through an untarnished lens for th
e first time in years. But I also couldn’t help but pity her for how cruelly unfair her life had been. Tears ran down my cheeks at the thought of it.

             
“I agree.” I told her instantly after walking over to grasp her hand. “And I just want you to be happy, B
rynn. And James, you know I love you.” I wiped at my eyes.

             
“I know you do and I love you, too.” He told me, “I love you and Penny just as much as she does.”

             
“Eli, she’s right. We need to stop all of this conflict. It has gone on for too long. You were go
ne. She had to handle everything. She had to raise Penny and me. She had to take their abuse for what happened to Lucien…”

             
“I do not want or need any pity for all of that, honey…” Brynna started to say quietly.

             
“I don’t want him to pity you, either. I ju
st want him to understand that if you want to be with James, then you should be! Even now, you’re still the one taking care of us. You made the decisions that we couldn’t make. I wish that we had been able to save Mom. But I know that even if you deny it,
you do feel guilty about it. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been.”

             
She offered no response. She would never admit feeling any regret in her decision.

             
“I am tired of the drama, too.” Elijah told us wearily, “But I can’t accept him. He is too old
for you, Brynna. You’re nothing but his midlife crisis!”

             
“Well, I’m going to be stuck in midlife forever, so what does that say about our relationship’s longevity?” James shot back at him, “It’s a losing battle, ladies. Just throw in the…”

             
“You must trul
y think I am stupid.” Brynna told Elijah dangerously. “Your anger is at no one else but me. What you said about our mother proved that. You are projecting your anger onto him...”

             
“Yeah, I'm pissed about Mom!” Elijah interrupted her loudly, “You're right a
s always, Brynna! How in the world did you guess that I'm pissed about Mom being dead?! I can't believe that you left her behind. I can't even begin to understand how you can have so much evil in your heart, evil that could make you do something like that!
But I also know that
he
insisted on leaving her. You went along with it because he
insisted
.”
             
“Our parents were both barred from the ship, not by him, but by the group as a whole. Our mother would have been saved had she not chosen to associate with that
merry band of morons she called her colleagues. You hold our mother to a standard of God-like perfection, Eli, and you always have! You do the same, though slightly less so, with Maura. Neither of them are what you believe them to be. I can give you props
, however, because you do see our father for what he is. They are the type that have no place here. They deserved no new beginning.”
             
“How can you say that?!” Elijah demanded furiously, “How can you talk about them like that?”

             
“Because if our mother and h
er little friends hadn't pissed off everyone from America to Australia, we'd still be breathing the air on Earth. If they hadn't done everything in their power to destroy our planet...”

             
“They didn't know what they were doing!”
             
“And you think that they sh
ouldn't be faulted for that ignorance, which yielded such
catastrophic
results?!” James asked him in fury, “The entire world is
gone!
They started a goddamn
nuclear war! If they had just kept their noses out of other people's business...”
             
“My mother was t
rying to help people!” Elijah screamed at them, unable to keep the cap on his anger now. “Besides, we don't even know for sure that it was a nuclear war!”

             
“Brynna, what did Mom do, exactly?” I wasn't sure if I even wanted to know. I had been too naïve, to
o blinded by my need for her love to see her clearly. Brynna, despite her ill feelings towards my mother, would only speak the truth about her, for my sake. Unfortunately, the truth was so shameful that it beat any bold-faced lie she could have told that w
ould make me see our mom in the same dark light that she did.

             
“Now is not the time.” Brynna told me and her blue eyes were set in stone.

             
“Yes it is, Brynna. You're accusing him of holding her to a standard she doesn't deserve. Yet, here you are, protecti
ng her.”

             
“I protect her still because she was very weak. She believed herself to be so strong but she could carry nothing, not even the lightest of burdens.”
             
“She carried you, didn't she?”

             
“Are we speaking of carrying in the physical sense or in the met
aphorical? Because in regards to the former, yes, she did carry me for nine...”

             
“Shut up!” Elijah snapped at her, “And don't spread your lies to Violet! Don't try to make her see Mom the way you see her! You hated her for no reason! She wasn't home, yes.
She had a drinking problem...”
             
“She was a raging alcoholic, Elijah, and you know that to be truthful!”
             
“She said some things to you that she didn't mean. You know she didn't mean that stuff she said!”

             
“Which is why she spewed that venom at me for seven
years, if she spoke to me at all...”

             
“Well, maybe you should have kept your eyes open when you were watching Lucien! Maybe you should have stayed awake!”
             

             
“Is that what they told you?!” Brynna was screaming now, “They told you I was asleep?!”

             
“We all kn
ow that she was young and she shouldn't have been watching him in the first place, Eli...” I started to say in an effort to diffuse the almost excruciatingly strong tension.

             
“I was not asleep! What did they tell you about Michael?! Did they tell you that
he could heal sick children with a touch of his hand and raise the dead from their graves?! What did they tell you about where
he
went?”

             
“You shut up about him!” Elijah pointed at her with a shaking hand, “Dad was gone. He was the only father we ever had!
If he hadn't gotten killed in Iran...”
             
Brynna slammed her fists down onto the table that she had walked behind. Her eyes had finally turned completely red.

             
“So, now he is a war hero? Now, they put him up with the men and women who really did lose their
lives in that pitilessly stupid war they started!? That's what they told you!”

             
Oh, the conflict of so many years was erupting in a display of explosions that rivaled any that occurred in an action film. Every part of our history they disagreed on was goin
g to be shouted about now to no end. I knew very little of the truth, but Brynna knew it all. I was going to hear the secrets that had been kept buried deep, spoken of in looks and silences too heavy to understand at such a tender age.
             
“That's what they t
old me. So, where is he really, Brynna? I'm interested to hear this. I'm interested to hear whatever ridiculous lie you're going to tell about him now! You lie about all the people who ever loved you. Why?! He loved us like his own! He loved
you
like his own!”

             
Brynna laughed maniacally and threw her hands up.

             
“Oh, yes, he
loved
me, Elijah!”

             
“Let's go. Let's go get some air, baby.” James had grasped Brynna's arms gently, seeing in her what I hadn't yet realized: She was going to cry.
             
“There wa
s only one way for him to show me how much he
loved
me!”
             
I thought I was finally old enough to understand all the dirty secrets. But I didn't grasp what she
was alluding to.

             
“What are you even talking about? You know what, don't even tell me, okay? Becau
se it's probably just some insane lie that you thought up. In fact, he probably thought it up, just so he could help you lie to yourself! That's what you do, isn't it, James? You give her complete freedom from any responsibility. You let her believe what s
he wants to believe while everyone else reminds her what she did when she tries to forget it!”

             
James was on Elijah in a flash, grabbing the front of his shirt in both hands and slamming him down onto the table. I did not rush to his defense. I watched him
struggle to break James's iron grip only to discover that with that rage inside of him and with that new, brutal strength, James was impossible to fight.

             
“You need to take a very hard look back at the life you lived on Earth, Elijah. You need to start se
arching for some inconsistencies. All these things you're saying, all these ridiculous beliefs with no grounding in reality are the result of the fact that you are too young and too weak to see things for what they are. You accuse her of being so weak that
she needs me to lie to her while you stand back and lie to yourself constantly. I was led to believe that you're a smart kid. Stop hiding from it! Be a man for once in your goddamn life!”

             
“Because you're the authority on what constitutes being a man, rig
ht? You, with your girlfriend who is young enough to be your kid, who you...”

             
“When you finally do discover the truth about those people you're defending, this fight which you claim is in defense of your sister will be rendered completely useless. You'll
see that I am the only man that has ever been able to protect her. I am the only man that has ever treated her right.”

             
James released him and walked back to Brynna, who was grasping the charm on her necklace. There was sadness in her eyes that she was too
exhausted to hide. Intermixed with the sadness was the fear of a cornered animal waiting for the strike of death. I was starting to understand the sickening truth which, for Brynna, was
worse
than her own death. For me to see the true catalyst behind her
emotional coldness and arrogance was worse than me believing her to just be a heartless shrew whose soul had long fled her.

             
“Brynna!” I ran after her and James.

             
“I'm sorry. I had to say it. I couldn't take it, baby. I'm sorry.” He had been whispering to
her as he walked her along.

             
She cleared her throat before turning to me to reveal that the look in her eyes had only intensified the further away she got from Elijah. It took my breath away for a moment. When I swallowed and tried to take a breath, I disc
overed that my throat had tightened under the threat of tears.

             
“What?” She asked, her voice neither rising in anger nor falling in sadness. There was simply nothing there when she spoke.

             
I needed to ask for a confirmation that would solidify what I knew
to be true; Uncle Mike had raped her when she was just a child. I couldn't begin to guess how long it had gone on. But I knew that the effects had reverberated through her young life, twisting and contorting her mind into what it was currently. The event h
ad spawned an alien creature incapable of learning the ways of those considered normal. It had made her an outcast. Tears leaked from my eyes that I furiously wiped away. I understood why she loathed the weakness of tears now; if she was pushing her way th
rough life with dry eyes, then I sure as hell had better do the same. There was no reason for my constant whining and crying.