Maven
Feeling guilty is strange. It feels like someone steps on your chest and squeezes air outside your ribcage with the sole of a boot crushing your lungs.
He always hated it.
Normally it used to be relatively easy to soothe. Pull a switch and try to be rational about the wins and losses. Brutality doesn't matter when you are efficient. Just occupy yourself with something you can't have or with people that will never be yours truly. Because you will stay lonely anyway, and it is terrible because the need to have something that he will eventually break is so big.
Appearing like he is normal and functioning flawlessly. As if his insides runs along the cogs of a clockwork.
No one talks about the broken circuit and the dysfunctional disconnection that works its way through his head.
And that is fine. That is the best solution.
And if he can't rationalize his problems away and hide behind some fiery hostility, he just had to walk over to his mother and feel her appreciation like a hand on his shoulder, and the guilt or shame is erased.
But when you are all alone, the feelings still creep up.
It hasn't gotten easier since the first therapy session. Instead talking about feelings leaves some cracks for them to attack right at the vulnerable, soft spots.
There is a reason he sleeps too little and thinks too much even though he can't make sense of things.
Now there is only the hot water drowning the sounds, and his hands pushing over the watery film of drops on his brow. The water is scolding hot and pricks on his face.
It's almost too much, but not yet, that close second to pain that alarms the body to retreat.
Steam is filling the bathroom when he finally steps out the shower. He just moves lazily and too slow at first, feeling a little dizzy.
The news are circling for the next hour. People repeating themselves and eating each other's words trying to argue.
It's a coming and going, with his mother moving through the room and her voice silencing and her eyes burning. He watches her moving from the safe spaces along the rooms, one half hidden corner, sitting half turned away in the kitchen space a while.
She still finds him again. None of them can cope well with repudiation. That he is avoiding her is an insult to her demands.
"You did it," she says, harboring, prospering, all suffocating care, cold and with the tendency to sting. One strand of ashen blond hair has escaped the tight knot and falls along her sharp face. "Now there'll be an investigation. I hope you know what a hassle your actions are sometimes."
"I am devastated." He tells her cold, masking any kind of panicking heartbeat. Something irking pokes his stomach.
"Very funny." She is at least a little irritated. "But if I were you, I would take it a little more serious. We are still in this together."
"No, we are not," he forces himself to say." My name is not on the list of people you bribed and blackmailed."
That clearly doesn't faze her. Her brow is a smoothed line. "Oh, that list won't be the big problem."
And he knew that. "People will hold you accountable for everything." And then just because he can, he adds one more mocking remark. "Think about your reputation."
"You lied and accused people." She reminds him in return, frame hostile lurking too close to his chair. "And let's not forget how the towers escalated."
"You're the one that built up Corros, your name is under it. I just happen to know it existed." He shrugs and gets up. The chair creaks over the ground, shrieking. "Except morally, I am not in any position to be judged. And you know, mother? Everyone does that already."
For a friction in time, there is a dazed silence with her eyes following him move.
"You won't outlive this. And avoiding me won't help you."
You need me, is what she means.
It is useless to tell her he will simply say the truth for once when people ask. It's a judging, heavy truth, that much is sure. It's a truth made of fire and animosity.
His mother tilts her head when she sees him slipping into his coat and gripping his bag. "Where are you going?"
"None of your concern, mother." Is all he is able to say, even though it doesn't sound very defying or menacing on its own but very polite. "I'll be back shortly to answer any question someone may have concerning..." He makes a pause. "Everything, actually."
"We both know I'll not get arrested or punished as long as I can still tell them not to. "
"Let's wait and see, won't we?" He asks her. More of one of many slight matters of fact.
"At any rate this moment, there'll be arrests, after so many weeks of hiding." She attempts one more time. "I mentioned it, a few times, and it hasn't changed. Except for some new leads." Now she shrugs, and he feels something in his face twitch.
Yes, you mentioned it. You love to tell me who you threaten and the lengths people can go when you are on their tails, he could say.
She mentioned it and he remembers , enough, to just stop and move, and maybe, just maybe, tip people off one more time.
Not because he cares too much about most of them. But some of them take a lot of space in his thoughts, and whatever way, this needs to end. Because he hates feeling guilty.
"Maven." She demands. The difference in one little word and the way people say it, one name filled with sneering, and anger, and fear, with hurt and cold.
He feels like some small useless critter, with her hand ripping at the collar abruptly to make him tumble over the pavement.
He is very careful opening the door, stepping out quietly, not looking back. "Thank you for the warning."
"Maven." She repeats. And for the first time in forever she sounds panicking, short of breath. Following through the hallway and screeching in his ears unplesantly. "Maven! Come back. Stop it. That's just laughable."
Ignorance is bliss.
He focuses his eyes forwards even though he feels his back tensing and his shoulders slumping forward.
"Laughable!" She repeats. A crack runs along her voice.
And for only a moment he could almost pretend it doesn't have any power.
Even if that is a lie. And not even a good one at that.
The streets are so silent it is uncanny. Half molten puddles of snow and ice cake the world. They look polluted by the dirt, not white anymore but grey and corrupted.
The world is grey today, visibly.
The river is just as dirty.
He stares at the water, just a moment, dark brown and grey-blue smearing along the veins of the city, down under a bridge in the distance.
He doesn't even really feel the cold or the wind that rustles the skeletons of blank bushes and small trees along the street.
And for the second time this day he stares at the phone. It feels too heavy and too big in his hand.
Before he can turn around again he pushes the button. A single car chases by his left, howling engine and silvery shadow.
"Hello." He says, waging some small war with his own throat to get one single word out.
A long moment of silence follows, and he's sure both of them want to end the call right now.
"Maven." As if he is surprised about the civil greeting.
"I had a fight with my mother," He decides to be outright honest. That feels wrong, it's worse than lying or insulting or evading. "And your advice was useless. Everything is wrong now. Because you and Thomas always try to make me better."
"And you want me to do what?" His brother asks and his voice vibrates through some part of Maven's being and makes it hard and bristling under the pressure. The self-deprecating need to snap is big. "Apologize?"
"I-" Instead, he feels himself deflating. His voice sounds too weak in his ears. And isn't that terrifying on its own? Not even knowing what to say, stumbling over himself and his tongue?
Stop being stubborn and step up, Mave.
You're not frightening, you are petty.
It's a very responsible thing to do and try and step up.
His brother still waits for an answer.
He feels as if he has a migraine when the thoughts flicker through him again.
"I don't know." Is all that Maven says. "I don't know anything anymore. But if you want to stay safe, you should know some things."