Sorry for the delay in this, but my week has involved 14 hour days and it's completely mental. So here you go!
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Mag watched as her daughter progressively eased her way into acting like herself again. She checked off small steps on a list in her head. Every week there was new progress, the tiny quirks started to come back one at a time. Slow and likely unimportant to most, but these were what made her daughter tick.
-One week: She actually started to crack a small smile at a few of Mag's bad jokes, never a laugh. One morning over breakfast, she threw in a half-hearted comment about Rotti's fake hair. She brushed her teeth.
-Two weeks: It took less time for her to drag herself from bed in the morning. She no longer screamed in the night, though she still muttered things and walked around unconsciously. The pile of clothes on the floor of the laundry room looked slightly smaller. She still hadn't laughed.
-Three weeks: She started to hum again. Instead of hiding in her room, Jillian actually sat in the window seat facing the back yard while she read books. Her hair got brushed more often and she even went as far as getting dressed some days. The television got some use. A new schedule of longer rehearsals launched her into a full-on rant about Rotti and where he could shove his stupid cane. The dishes got done.
-Four weeks: She asked for her tutor to come back and start teaching her again. She didn't jump and look around in terror every time Mag came into a room unannounced. They spent over an hour going back and forth about the reasoning behind four-hour rehearsals when there wasn't a show for another month and a half. Eventually, she just shouted "It's like they think you'll fricking forget or something! What is it with those people?" and walked away with a frustrated groan. The dark circles under her eyes had faded and she was sleeping through the night without interruption. It was almost normal, but there was still a vital piece missing.
-Five weeks, two days: The memory of this moment was actually recorded, filed into the memory card connecting to Mag's eyes. After sitting with a book for a few hours, Jillian set it down and started pacing the house. She walked through the room Mag was trying to practice piano in.
She was almost wearing her normal clothes that day, black sweatpants and a matching sweatshirt layered over a green t-shirt from GeneCo's Corpus Crusade Tour. It was the one piece of show merchandise she had requested because the photograph on it was taken at a strange angle so that it was the only one that made Mag's eyes look completely human. (She had looked so normal that they hadn't even sold the shirts at the shows in fear of hurting the 'public image' of their star.) Muffled sound came from a pair of headphones dangling from her ears and she mouthed out the words to a song from some old opera about a 'ghost' living below a theatre. Then she paused in a sort of sudden realization. She pushed a button on her small music player and looked Mag straight in the face with an expression of deadly seriousness and irritation. Her heart stopped, waiting for something awful.
"Mom…" The pause in her words was nearly unbearable. "You drank the rest of the milk, didn't you?" Noticing her mother's look of shock, her concentration broke. The corners of her lips rose into a smile and it happened. She laughed. The sound of her laughter was like music, after going so long without hearing it. It was rain to the parched earth, sunrise after a seemingly endless darkness. And it was beautiful. Mag couldn't help but to laugh with her out of relief. It was the last step back to the way she had been before. She could almost watch the light spark back into those green eyes and it was amazing.
A week had passed since that day and she was still getting better. Jillian was sitting in the practice room in front of the piano. She plunked a few notes and then slammed her hands down and made a face. There wasn't anger or frustration in the way she did it. She was just amusing herself. Piano wasn't her strong suit. Neither was the violin. She had wanted to learn both from a young age, but she always got distracted and walked away without ever trying. Her mother had tried to teach her on several occasions.
"If you would just apply yourself like you do with your studying or your garden then I know you could be great at this!" Her face was the tiniest bit disappointed yet it brimmed with hope. Ten-year-old Jillian had stared straight down and pounded angrily at the keys before running out of the room.
After that, she no longer tried to teach her any instruments. Instead, Jillian took quickly to singing. It was so much easier to manipulate her voice than to learn something else.
She twisted around and got up from the bench. A song rattled around in her head and she started to sing it. She walked slowly from the room and into the hallway, raising her arms to brush the walls with her fingers. There weren't words with her tune, but she knew the story that the song told. Her eyes closed and she kept singing as quiet as she could. The story she felt could have been about her, but it felt foreign. It told of a girl held captive for her own protection, kept from the world by a guardian that was already kept in chains. This was who she was and yet she wasn't the one in the song.
The tune moved of its own will and she didn't even realize that she had begun to sing at full volume, pouring her soul out with her voice. And then she stopped. Eyes were on her and she looked up to see her mother standing in front of her. She lowered her arms and shrank back.
"What have I told you about this," Her voice held mixed emotions and Jillian thought she could see hurt behind her eyes. She was always so amazed and proud that Jillian had inherited her gift, but she was also afraid. Acting angry would be the best way to get the point across. "You know what would happen if they could hear you. As much as you hate them, Rotti would find a way to drag you in and use you. He would threaten and bully you until you signed yourself away. Your life would be his."
"I-" Jillian tried to cut in and stop where she knew this was going. Mag kept going, raising her voice until she was shouting. This was no longer about Jillian.
"There is no way out after that. He just takes and takes and he breaks you down until you're empty inside. The next thing you know, he cuts you off from your friends and your family and if you even try to resist he'll find a way to make you listen. He crushes everything that you love and uses it all against you! There will be nowhere to turn and no one left to talk to and he'll watch you squirm until you go insane with the agony of isolation! So much pressure and hopelessness that it pushes on your every waking moment! Eventually, it will all kill me!" She realized her mistake and stopped dead. "…You." She whispered. "I meant you." Her eyes were distant, lost in the dark truth of what she had just said. "Please, just… Don't give him a reason to pursue you." She turned away and left Jillian staring after her in silent, terrified shock.
This wasn't the first time she had flown off the handle like this, but it was the first time her words had actually struck Jillian so hard. Her mother was suffering. She was trapped into this life of being Rotti's slave and it was slowly destroying her.
Jillian sank against the wall and pulled her knees up to her chest. All this time she had felt like a victim, but it was all much bigger than she had imagined.
When she finally made it into her room and closed the door, Mag began to cry. She hadn't meant to scream, it just happened. After all the years of working for GeneCo, she was beginning to feel the depression looming just under the surface. The emptiness of her life hit her after Jillian got better. They were living from day to day with no plans for the future or any idea of the normal lives that existed on the outside of their cage. If Jillian had really died then there would be nothing. The two of them were the only things that were real in any of this.
She'd been trying to stop these thoughts, but they only seemed to consume her more each day. The bed looked inviting so she fell onto it and curled herself up against a pillow. A few deep breaths calmed her and she stared at the wall for a long time. In the stillness and silence of the room she could hear her eyes buzzing. They were never truly quiet and she'd begun to think that they were going to drive her mad one day.
The sound of careful footsteps approached her door and stopped. She knew that she had been cruel in screaming at Jillian. It was never her fault and she shouldn't have said anything. She waited for the door to open until she heard the footsteps continue back in the other direction. She sighed and buried her face farther into the pillow. Her outburst had been painful, sudden, and completely unrestrained.
How long would it be before she lost control completely?
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I hope this is a reasonable update. As always, reviews are appreciated and thank you for reading! -XTAPX