Tangled
Loving him had been her salvation. It had ultimately been her downfall. It shouldn't have, but that one thought brought her great comfort even as everything she'd built and things she'd never known she'd wanted disappeared more rapidly than she ever could have imagined. She placed her hands over her swollen stomach and felt the frenetic movements of the baby she wouldn't have a chance to raise, "it's okay little one," she tried to silently communicate to the baby, "momma loves you."
She knew the investigators were talking to her, she was aware of their mouths moving and their words formed a buzz in her head. She let her eyes roam the cold grey interrogation room before settling on the thick dingy mirror. She couldn't see out, but she knew he was on the other side. Watching. Hoping for an explanation she wouldn't give.
How could she explain? Even if she could somehow find the words he had stopped listening to her months ago, and despite his repeated demands for an explanation she knew that nothing she could ever say would make even a dent of a difference. He had given up on her without any hesitation, like she had never even mattered to him. Maybe she never had, it wouldn't surprise her. She could rip herself open and let everything spill out. She could tell him everything there was to know about her – about how her mother had been so in love with a man obsessed with another woman that she'd conceived her in desperation. She could tell him how her father had never even acknowledged her, never looked at her with anything but contempt and disgust. And that once her mother had realized her father's obsession would never wane she had lost any use of for the daughter she'd been so desperate to conceive. She could recount every slap her mother had delivered to her face. Replay every conversation in which one of them told her she was weak or stupid or useless. She had realized as a young child she would never be good enough for either of them, but it hadn't stopped her from working for straight A's in school or from following her mother's footsteps all the way to medical school.
The truth was supposed to set you free, but you couldn't do the things that she had willingly done and walk away with absolution. Not even the most real truth of all that somewhere along the way she had actually fallen completely in love with him would be enough. She closed her eyes briefly looking for even a slight reprieve from the interrogation. Her baby kept up its steady kicking. Like her mother she had deliberately gotten pregnant to hold onto a man who would never love her. This baby, even though it did nothing to help her hold onto its father, was the one true love of her life.
She continued to rub comforting circles over her stomach and tried harder to block out the din of voices surrounding her. She used her time locked in this room to worry about her unborn baby. She couldn't stop the thought that no matter how much she loved it she was just continuing the twisted cycle her mother had started all those years ago. "I want better for you." The thought wanted to tear out of her in an anguished plea.
Loving them had been her salvation – it had given her a taste of a life she had convinced herself years ago she hadn't wanted or needed. For the first time she had felt a purpose beyond just trying to please parents who would never be pleased. For the first time in her life she had felt love and given it with no conditions or expectations. She loved her baby just for existing, and she loved him for giving her this gift.
Loving them bad been her downfall – it had led her here to this locked room, the walls closing in with no possible escape. Her mother had been right after all. "Mother is always right, Britta." The voice filled her head taunting her. Loving him and their child had weakened her resolve to see the grand plan they'd concocted carried out to its explosive finale. The plan had been her parent's and she had stopped caring about it, and instead put everything she had into finding the impossible. If she had learned anything from her mother it should have been that you cannot force a man to love you, baby or no baby, but she had been so sure she could force a different outcome. It had been her undoing, and in the end she'd lost them anyways. He had never loved her and their baby would never know her. Her mother had ended up with more than she had – love and a baby had never weakened her mother.
"You have nothing to say?" The angry voice of Anna Devane broke through her thoughts. She blinked and brought the commissioners face into focus. The angry woman was leaning in close to her demanding answers.
She looked away instead focusing on the spot in the glass where she knew his eyes were watching her.
"We can't help you if you don't say anything." This time it was Dante Falconeri's voice that registered.
She turned her head in his direction. The only help they wanted to give her was a personal escort to prison for the rest of her natural life. "I'm ready to go back to my cell." She spoke her first words since being brought into the interrogation room hours ago.. Let them think they'd won, let them take their comfort in knowing she was in prison with nothing. She may be weak and stupid and every other negative thing her parents had ever said about her, but she refused to be broken by them, this town or the people in it ever again. It was her only victory.