((Author's Note: Here's a fun anecdote. I was falling asleep near the last paragraph, like legit eyes closing and drifting off and then when I looked at the page I had randomly written "Hitler is talking in the background." Sooo that happened. Emily VS Hitler anyone?))
Charlotte used to think she only saw in black and white, partly because of how she was raised and who she was raised by. Things changed but now it was like she was seeing in thermal, the colors bursting at the seams and harsh against her eyes. Easing back she sat against the park bench, the summer heat already making her flushed. Emily sat next to her, keeping her eyes to her knees as if she were ready to be punished or scolded. At least that was how it seemed to Charlotte who had to make her own assumptions up to now.
"Charlotte I'm so sorry…" she said again, her voice almost wavering, the second time she had said it in the past few minutes. She was beginning to lose hope. Jack had forgiven her rather quickly but things were still tense. She didn't know what would happen with Charlotte.
"Okay so you're officially Amanda Clarke," Charlotte said as she looked rattled, everything a bit bruised. She had been feeling this way for a long time, she was probably clinically depressed but she had to stay away from medication, strong ones at least after she had overdosed a few years ago.
Conrad Grayson, her father had told her that that was the scariest moment of his entire life and his own life flashed before his eyes. He was a good father. It was only when Charlotte entered high school that things started getting cold and distant between him and Victoria and she started to notice a pattern in them. She noticed their changes and figured her mother was just menopausal or something, or that he was having a mid-life crisis.
Looking at Emily she glanced over before remaining with eye contact as best as she could. She didn't think they had similar features but then again she never thought she looked much like Victoria. Emily's mother must have had blonde hair.
"Yes, officially, that was the name I was born with. Charlotte you have to understand, I thought your parents ruined my life, I mean they did but it was bigger than all of that. They were pawns but they chose their own path…" she said as she picked at her cuticles.
"I know," Charlotte proclaimed with almost a snap, not wanting to back pedal.
"Someone had to pay," she said with a sigh. "I was a little girl and my father was taken from me. I was locked up and trained, brainwashed to not love my father anymore. What kind of sick people do that?"
Charlotte shrugged, she didn't know how to answer her but she was glad that Emily or Amanda was opening up to her and not being cold and distant as usual.
"Did you really go to Juvie?" she asked her half-sister as she looked into the older woman's dark eyes that were once hell bent of destruction.
Emily nodded and took a deep breath. Exhaling, her shoulders sank with the weight of her breathing patterns. "I did… after I got out of the brainwashing trials I was moved from foster home to foster home like dead weight. The last foster home I was at, I was…16. I burned the place to the ground, no one was inside but I wished he was."
"Who?" Charlotte asked, making the wrong choice.
"The man who…." She gulped before saying anything else. "He deserved it."
Charlotte bit her lip, knowing what Emily meant, not needing details.
"I was locked up once again and labeled a sociopath. I stayed at Allenwood Detention Center for two years, made connections and learned how to take care of myself."
While Emily/Amanda had been locked up for only two years, she was locked up her entire life and still was. Things were clearing up though with time. Telling people who she really claimed to be was a big step in her recovery.
"And then what?" she asked, curious to know more details. She had missed so much in her sister's life.
"And then I met Nolan, he brought me a box my father had saved to give to me. Inside the box were details about your family, names, connections, and ways to prove he was innocent. I thought my father was a bad man, but when I learned he had been killed in prison I also learned he was good and remembered my past. I remembered being brainwashed and the people that had hurt me."
Charlotte bit her lip, thinking of David's face. Pictures were all she had. "Oh god…"
"Nolan set me off on the right foot. He gave me part of his business, said since my father invested part of it was mine. I was set, I had money but I used it all wrong. I partied too hard and got drunk too fast."
Charlotte nodded, she could understand that rebellious way of thinking. She had been very rebellious as a teenager. She dated the boy her mother would have never approved of, she got addicted to prescription pills, she became a giant bitch like some say her mother was and she broke up with the one person who understood her. There were countless other things, too many to name, especially when she was high.
"I got on the right track thanks to Satoshi Takeda and trained with him in Japan, I learned how to fight a bit more…Well with precision," she said softly.
Charlotte wondered what that was like. She wondered what Japan was like but more what dealing with a sensei was like, if she could even call him that. She knew him mostly as a business man but there were obviously many sides to a person. Emily was an eight sided die.
"After I trained with him I went to school, normal old college and got a degree in literature, I used that knowledge to later bond with your brother, to get him to fall in love with me."
"You used him," Charlotte said with an eye roll. "Your whole marriage was a scam"
"At first yes, but I did love him. Don't get me wrong, he was very good to me even when things went down with Grayson Global. Yes, at first he was a pawn, you're right Charlotte."
Charlotte closed her eyes for a moment, caught between a rock and a hard place. "You don't regret anything you've ever done, do you?"
Emily heard a twinge in Charlotte's voice. The girl was more telling her than asking her a question.
She turned to Charlotte, that passionate heated fire in her eyes, the kind that told a story. It was the kind of look that showed she was always going to trust herself first before anyone else.
"No."
Charlotte watched Emily go her own way, still finding it hard to call her ex-sister in law but actual sister Amanda. She had been Emily Thorne for so many years now. Everything would take a lot of getting used to.
Moving into an apartment she was going to be sharing with Daniel until they could figure some things out, everything very temporary, Charlotte curled in front of the television until he got home from work, and by work she knew he meant cleaning up their parent's messes.
The apartment was small but compared to New York City apartments it was giant and by the beach still so all was okay for the summer. They would take the rest one day at a time.
Charlotte thought about her half-sister, saying her name both ways. Amanda sounded weird against her lips especially since she thought her half-sister had had Tyler Barrol's baby and moved to Utah or wherever it was she moved to with her unborn fetus at the time.
Daniel walked in, the door slamming behind him and making her jump from the sudden noise. She thought she had the new apartment to herself for a while but that was not presently the case.
"Danny!" she said as she leaned against the back of the couch, her stomach pressed to it, clutching the top like a perching owl.
"This place looks a little neater," he said as he tossed his brief case down.
"I had a lot of cleaning up to do," she stated simply in reference to her life, Amanda and cleanliness in general.
"Oh, well you did good," he said as he roamed into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of ice water.
Charlotte followed him and he poured her a glass, still wanting to take care of her even though she was past college age. He wanted people to take care of him still; in fact he once had someone to do so but she was gone. They both were gone, his mother and Emily. He still hadn't taken off his wedding ring. He had let go but he was so used to it being on his finger. Looking down he noticed it and played with the white gold. It was almost stuck on his finger, perhaps he had gained some weight over the course of the five years, a lot of it stressful, more stressful then he would have liked. Twisting it off his finger he set it aside and let it look back at him.
"I talked with Emily," she said looking at him.
"You what?" he asked, getting a little huffy at her name, his life in shambles because of her. He had been betrayed and now his life was delayed, he wanted to have kids by this age. That was always the plan.
"She wanted to talk to me, I mean we are half-sisters as weird as it is to say that," she said
Daniel's hands shot up, "Yes it is weird, it is very weird…I can't wrap my head around anything anymore, so let's just not. Okay?"
Charlotte's head shook almost before he could finish his sentence. "No, not okay, we need to get past this. At the clinic we learned to make apologies and she made hers to me and I forgave her, you need to do the same."
"Easy for you to say," he scoffed, wallowing in his own despair.
"No, it wasn't easy. She lied for five years, you were married to her. You shared a bed with her, I get it but you know what…Mom and dad are good at making anyone crazy and that's what they did to her," she said with a sigh and Daniel pulled back, staying in the room, one foot out the door.
"It was part of something bigger; I'm not buying into all of it. There's a bigger picture, there always is…"
Crossing her arms she plopped back on the couch, eyes looking pensive, "That's what mom seems to think. She hired this woman, Marjorie something to help her out with something. Who knows what? The "Bigger" picture probably." She said in a mocking tone.
Daniel's eyes popped out of their sockets almost as he walked to her, almost gripping her shoulders. "What? Who is she working with?"
"Umm, some Marjorie woman. What's your problem Daniel?" She shrugged him off and he moved away, going into the dining room, a room they didn't need at this point since they had little to no friends left.
Daniel left the apartment and went out onto the porch, Charlotte was tempted to follow but she knew when he got in moods like this that she should just stay away and let him cool down.
Looking at pictures of David Clarke that Emily had given her right before they parted ways she looked for resemblance of herself in his face. She had thought they had similar eye shapes but she was trying to stretch, trying to think of him as a likeable person.
Out on the porch, Daniel paced like a mad men, fumes bursting from his ears like in the cartoons. Even his face was red but that could have been from the heat. Taking off his suit jacket he tossed it on the railing and rolled his sleeves up, everything sticking to him. Fabric stuck to his skin and beads of sweat got caught in his eyebrow.
"Damn…" he muttered to himself as it went to voice-mail. He knew exactly what was going on, he didn't even have to ask Victoria or Marjorie. He knew people were playing him again. Daniel was always a pawn in a much bigger game and he was getting really sick of it. It came to an end this instant.
Hearing the beep to send a voice-mail, Daniel spoke into the phone. "Marjorie, I just want to let you know that you will not be needed any longer. Your services are no longer required. Enjoy your time working with my mother, let me know how that works out for you," he said in a smug little voice.
Hanging up with a frustrated click he fought the urge not to throw his cell phone into his water and if it wasn't expensive and a pain in the ass to get a new one and set it up he would have thrown it straight into the ocean.
Picking up the pace, her heels on the concrete adjacent to the dirt and gravel she tried to stay on course, not getting distracted by her cell phone.
Sitting across from Conrad Grayson, a man she had hardly seen over the years but had mainly talked on the phone with, she admired him behind the glass. He was a handsome man and she could see why Victoria shacked up with him, same as socialite Lydia Davis, who hadn't been all that social as of late.
"Conrad Grayson…." She purred voice thick and rich as she flirted her way to the top through the glass wall.
"Marjorie Blaisson…just the girl I wanted to see…" he husked right back, not afraid to get down and dirty.
"I'm here to make a deal Conrad, nothing more, nothing less. I have a physical statement from a Miss Lydia Davis claiming she has affiliations to your little friends from Iraq because of a mishap with David Clarke all these many years ago. I don't think that looks good for you, your fiancée friends with terrorists, you might as well be Hitler. Either put on your little black mustache or shave." She said as she pointed at him, finger tapping against the glass and she basically told him his options.
"You're blackmailing me…" he said, not surprised and almost impressed. He leaned back in his chair and preferred the silence as she kept eye contact. She had been through so many job interviews that she nailed those stoic silent moments when nothing much could be said.
"Yes…I do believe you're on the right track. A cookie for you …"
"What kind?" he asked, enjoying the banter, at least he had that.
"Chocolate chip, without the chips…" she replied with sharp wit, quick to answer the man.
"Where did the chips go?" he asked as he toyed with the phone cord wondering if anyone had ever tried to choke themselves or someone else with one of them before.
"You earn the chips," she said as she stood up. "Name your price…what do you want most of all?"
Conrad took a moment to think, he had one feisty blonde in mind.
"I want Amanda Clarke taken out, once and for all…." He said, needing a sense of revenge of his own. He had a broken family, everything about him was broken. He had scruff on his face for god sakes and he never had scruff, not for 30 years or so.
"That can be arranged…" she said with a little smirk, creeping over her face. She had her own ulterior motives that would take a while to come out. Like Ashley Davenport, she too was opportunistic.
A banging and a whooshing sound came from downstairs as Emily woke up, back and body straight laced and nervous. It was hard enough for her to sleep without the problems of the loud noises and nearby construction.
Walking down the stairs Emily reached for a gun but was struck in the face with her fireplace poker. She could feel the blood spraying from her nose and it made her body almost curl into a feared position. Once she made contact with whoever was attacking her she could beef up and hand them the works Amanda Clarke style. Seeing a generic looking man in dark clothing who also looked like a stereotypical dark figure she fired the gun at him but missed as he leaned in to take it from her. He did not hesitate and nor did she.
They both still stood but he swept her to the floor, her body and mind still tired from sleep. He was large and powerful but also slick with his graceful motions.
The two fought for control and throughout the fight the power dynamic shifted multiple times. Losing the upper hand she fell to the ground and he rose what looked to be a shovel he had picked up by the front door. It was the shovel she used to clean up snow in the winter but the winter was long over by now.
She had left it there when she was in the city, she must have unless he was snooping around her home for a while. The shovel's head was aligned with her stomach and all she could think was to save herself. At this point in time Amanda Clarke did not want to die, she did not want to submit.
"Stop no please!" she begged…. "I'm pregnant."
And with that…he lowered his weapon.
