Canary relaxed in her chair, crossing her legs and letting her arms sit on the armrests of the plush green chair. Avery on the other hand was sitting straight, keeping her back rigid with her hands folded in her lap. Both sat in a still silence until Canary prompted the conversation to start.
She clicked on the camera behind her and spoke, "I've already been given the cliff notes about your life, I simply want to know how to fill in all the blanks. How about we start at the beginning, what do you remember about your childhood?"
Avery relaxed slightly, allowing a slight slouch to contaminate her posture, "One of my first memories, and one of my favorites, is seeing my mother lying in bed on her birthday, we let her sleep in as a gift while my sister, about four at the time, attempted to make breakfast with the assistance of my father. The smell of burnt eggs is prominent in that memory. She was a beautiful woman, my mother, blonde hair and eyes very similar to my own. She died a little over a year after that memory from a disease I do not wish to recall. Her death hit my father hard and made him stoic for another year and threw himself into his work as a doctor, think of Batman with male PMS."
The last part got a small chuckle out of Canary, she also made a mental note to tell Nightwing about that line later.
The black haired girl continued on, "During that time my care was mostly dictated by my siblings. I was born the youngest out of three children after all and was only about four-years-old at the time of my father's lapse. My memory from there is a bit depressing. The next thing I remember with specific happiness is my eighth birthday when my family chipped in to get me real drawing paper.
"Where I lived, it was discouraged for young girls to learn anything other than how to grow up to be a perfect lady and find a suitable husband." Avery's nose crinkled in distaste, "Since my mother was six feet under for both mine and my sister's lessons, our rude neighbor, who had a dissatisfying habit of pinching our cheeks to make them rosy, took charge of our lessons. She tore up my paper and used it to fill the bottom of her parakeet's cage, annoying bird, I hated the thing."
Canary interrupted, "Is there any other reason you disliked your neighbor?"
Avery stiffened slightly, "Well, she liked my father very much. A little too much if you understand. She was married herself and my father still loved my mother very much even if she was not alive anymore."
"You were angry with your neighbor trying to attract your father then?"
"In a word, yes."
The blonde nodded in thought. "Were you angry that she was trying to replace the maternal presence in your life?"
"I suppose so." Avery shifted in her seat, "May we move on now?"
"If you wish."
Avery looked down at her nails, as if inspecting the length. "A little after my tenth birthday we moved into the country to get away from the city. It was a good idea and allowed my family to bond more as a unit. We lived happily for a few years, my father treating patients that came through. They only came to my father when they were truly desperate, but he did not mind, so neither did we. My brother left for America during that period, just a few days after he turned eighteen. We wished him luck on his endeavor and he wished us luck on whatever we chose to do."
"How did you feel about your brother leaving?"
"I felt as any twelve-year-old would, like I would miss my brother. It was the last time I saw him after all."
Canary nodded in acceptance of the answer and allowed Avery to continue.
"A few years after my brother's departure our house was…" Avery struggled with her words for a few moments, the frustration of simply speaking showed on her face. "Our house was broken into, I suppose you could say."
"By who?" The super-heroine prompted.
"Nazis," Avery answered back with a strangled tone. "We had heard of them breaking into other homes nearby, but the closest house was kilometers away by far. We thought we had no reason to worry. All the men who broke in saw were one aging man, and two teenage girls; also they saw the symbol of our Jewish heritage hanging off of our necklaces we always wore. For some reason they decided not to shoot us on sight. To this day I don't know if I regret their decision or not. Back to the story though, my father, as I mentioned before, was a doctor. A very valuable person, Jewish or not. He managed to convince the soldiers to spare him by explaining his expertise and then us in turn."
"How did he do that?" Canary asked with a general curiosity.
Avery scoffed, "By pure miracle. Although in my father's pleads was an opportunity for the soldiers. They, like any working fellows, wished to climb the authority ladder. Three Jews, one trained in the medical field and two others who read medical books growing up. We were a catch in their eyes. So they loaded us on a train not to soon after. We were sent to the internment camp known as Auschwitz. My father was given the job of being a medical assistant; my sister and I were general laborers, occasionally helping out with the likes of medicine and such.
"It is a known fact that female prisoners were used in a… a rather explicit manner by guards," Avery tripped over her words, trying to put them in an understandable order.
Canary interrupted bluntly, "Avery, were you sexually abused at the camp?"
The black haired teen managed a small nod as she kept her gaze firmly on the floor while she rung her hands. She took a deep breath then continued talking before Dinah could ask another question. "I was only fifteen at the time the guards took an interest in me. My sister, seventeen at the time, always tried to volunteer when the guards would come for me. They favored her also, she was more poised, beautiful, and mature; an admirable and desirable woman. She went through an unspeakable amount of torture, both physical and mental, every time a guard took her up on the offer. But she kept volunteering no matter what. I still hold an unbelievable amount of respect for the lengths she went to so as to protect me."
Dinah sat trying to resist the urge to call in Nightwing and have him sit in on the conversation. "You're not the only one who holds respect for her," She said. Anyone who would go to those lengths to protect their family earned that respect. Canary gestured for Avery to continue.
"It is known that I have a rather bad habit of opening my mouth and speaking at the wrong times. Well, it is a familial trait, specifically from my father's side of the family. My sister did not have the trait as I and my father did, so she did not get in as much trouble for talking as we did. Both my father and I accepted any individual punishments we received for talking in stride, they did not deter us much. My father could not be killed because he was too much of an asset, doctors were becoming harder and harder to find. So were medical assistants, thus my sister and I were spared. The guards came to realize that, they also realized that the only way to stop one of us was to punish the other. For the last thing we wanted was for our family to be punished for our own audacity.
"The guards utilized that against me first. They whipped my father for my comment on how a particular guard may or may not have something up their buttocks. I did not speak so freely after that if I could help it. Neither did my father for we knew they would not hesitate in a punishment. But once, only one little time was all, my father slipped up and told a guard what he could go do when he was in private quarters." Avery chuckled slightly at the memory; she had been there after all.
She continued with a slight shake in her voice, "The guard had me in his sights in less than a second; he had a punishment in mind in half that time. One of the Nazi doctors on sight had a particular fetish for crude and lethal experiments. Dr. Mengele, the 'Angel of Death', he was called. Well he had been conducting an experiment to improve mortality rates in humans. All the subjects ever tested had died within days of the administration of the formula. So the experiment was concluded a failure. The guard asked the dear doctor to administer the remaining formula on me, guaranteeing me a certain death no matter how valuable I was thought to be.
"I remember every bit of the formula and every bit how much it hurt to become what I am today. It certainly is not an experience any normal person would forget in a day, or in my case, seventy-five years. Anyways, I was thought to be dead like the other subjects. The delight on Dr. Mengele's face when I woke up and starting fighting against my restraints was sickening. I had been the first and last success. He considered it an honor to be a success. He even nicknamed me his own 'Angel of Life', a paraphrase of his own moniker. I was his little eternal being and I hated every second of it." Avery unconsciously brought her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, effectively curling into a ball on the chair.
"How did your father react to you still being alive?" Canary asked tentatively.
"He was ecstatic. Less so when he saw the interest that Mengele had in me from then on. But eventually Mengele moved on to other experiments and all but forgot about me. Thank goodness. Then came the time me and my father lashed out again. That time we did it together, fed up about how little respect we were given when we were attempting to treat a patient near death. Instead of punishing us they went after my sister.
"They tore her away from where she was changing gauze on some patient's head and dragged her outside of the medical block. We too were escorted out by force. They stood my father and me seven feet away from my sister exactly. Without hesitation, they shot her in the head and gave us an order not to move. The only time we could move was when my sister's blood reached our feet or the next roll call. So there we stood for a little over eighteen hours, just staring at my sisters body, face down in the packed dirt, as her blood slowly poured from her body. In all truth, I still have nightmares about that incident in particular."
Canary checked the clock on the wall out of the corner of her eye, to her surprise they had been in the room for a few hours. So with the decision to quickly wrap up the session she said, "Avery, we've discussed a lot today, but there's still a lot to get through. How about I come back next week and we can decide if you want to keep up the sessions after that?"
"Sounds acceptable," Avery unwrapped herself from her little ball and stood up, shaking her limbs to return circulation. "May I leave then?"
Canary nodded and watched the door close after the black haired teen left. The heroine let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. Without having to call Nightwing, he came into the room anyways, asking for a report.
Dinah answered as carefully as she could, "She's been traumatized to a level that would make lesser people give up on living. I don't know how long she's held all that in, but even talking about it seemed to hurt her, a flashback to everything she's experienced. I want to continue sessions with her, make sure she's alright."
Nightwing nodded in agreement, and then asked, "How bad was it exactly?"
Canary simply popped the memory disk out of the camera and gave it to the younger vigilante, "Watch that and you'll know exactly how bad it was." With that she left the room, then the Cave.
Nightwing stared at the disk in his hands for a moment before going to his room to review the footage. He hadn't expected half the things that showed up on that tape.
A/N: I'm just going to end this really long chapter right there. I already have an idea for the next chapter so that should be up soon enough. Truthfully, most of the stuff in here is what I came up within five minutes. That, dear readers, is how sick and twisted I can be. I like this chapter in particular, mainly because we're getting back to the dark and messed up things that this character was made to be centered around. Angst for everyone! Have a good day.
Read. Enjoy. Review.