"It made me forget, if only momentarily, that I should be dead" Jade admitted sadly.
"Why do you say that?" Beck asked.
"Because it's true" She simply said.
"I'm sure there are people who want to kill you, but you might kill them first, you've proven time and time again that you're quite good" He commented coldly and she knew he meant it in a negative way, but she wasn't going to even fight it.
"You are right but that's not what I'm talking about" She said and he looked at her confused so she stared at him with a sad smile. "You don't get it, but it's not your fault, I mean…how could you? How could any normal person?" She asked and sighed.
"Maybe if you explained" He said and she looked down shaking her head sadly.
"It's not something you can explain, you have to live it" She responded.
"Try" He insisted and she sighed.
"I never wanted this, Beck" Jade informed and looked at him. "You think I chose to have this life? You think I chose to be a killer?" she asked almost angrily.
"I don't know, Alexandra, you seem to enjoy yourself while you are at it, so even if you didn't choose it, you certainly have grown a taste for it" He said and she smiled sarcastically as she shook her head.
"It's easy for you to judge me" Jade said upset as she glared at him. "I know you expect me to have a normal reaction to the things I do, I know you expect me to feel bad for the people I've killed but I can't, I just can't" She admitted. "And you wanna know why? Because the people who raised me made sure to erase every last trace of empathy off me" she added.
"Is that supposed to make me feel better? You are still a psychopath who rejoices in the pain you cause" Beck said and she stared at him coldly for a few seconds but then she thought about it and looked down.
"Maybe you're right…" Jade said and took a breath "But I never wanted this, you know…when I was young I used to dream about having a normal life, I wanted to have a family, I wanted to have a puppy, I wanted to play and have friends, I even wanted an older sister…" She admitted and smiled sadly as she stared into space remembering. "They made us watch western movies and I remember feeling so jealous of all those kids, because they had a mom who hugged them and put them to bed every night, they woke up to pancakes on the weekend, they were loved, they felt safe and they all seemed so…happy, while I…" she added resentfully as her eyes filled with tears but she didn't finish.
"While you what?" Beck asked, he could see that topic hurt her.
"That just…wasn't my life, Beck" Jade said and looked at him. "I never had a mom or a dad who loved me, as far as I know they either sold me or they died, the kids I grew up with were the closest thing to a family I had and I couldn't even trust them, we grew up surrounded by other children but we were alone, all of us" She commented.
"Why?" Beck asked.
"When you are like us, you can't have friends" Jade said and sighed. "Back in the mansion where I grew up, when they realized kids were starting to grow fond of each other, they punished us and if that didn't work, they made us fight each other, sometimes to death, because 'at the end of the day, you are alone and you can trust no one', that's what they always said, every day of my life since I can remember" She said with a tear streaming down her face and Beck looked at her shocked, that was horrible. "And it's true, isn't it? You never should have trusted me"
"How old were you?" He asked.
"The first time I had to fight a friend? Ten" She responded and looked down. "Her name was Annie, our beds were next to each other and we liked to pretend we were actual sisters, she had blonde hair but we looked alike and we loved to imagine that one day they'd send us to America together, we even plotted our escape, we wanted to be adopted and we imagined what our life would be like with our new parents, we always dreamed about waking up on Christmas morning and finding all the presents and having our mom cook breakfast for us" She commented with a little giggle and he stared at her sadly, he knew that story wouldn't end well.
"And what happened?" Beck asked.
"Well, we hid our friendship for a long time but we weren't good enough, so they noticed" Jade commented. "And one night, they took us to the yard in our pajamas in the middle of winter and left us out there"
"In Russia?" Beck asked surprised.
"Yeah, they said only one of us could back into the house" Jade said and Beck looked at her mortified "We didn't want to fight at first, we thought they would let us back in if we resisted it or we would die together, so we just hugged and stayed on the grass trying to stay warm but it was cold and we were freezing, I remember feeling the numbness on my hands after only a few minutes" She commented as she remembered "It was in the middle of the night and we were tired so we just cuddled and I started falling asleep but then…I felt her hands on my neck, she tried to strangle me" She commented.
"And what did you do?" He asked and she looked at him emotionlessly.
"I smashed her head against a rock until she stopped moving and the snow turned red with her blood" Jade simply said and his eyes wide opened. "After I killed her, they let me back in and quickly warmed me up, they even gave me hot chocolate and cake to congratulate me, they said they knew I was better than her and that they were happy I had finally gotten rid of that burden, then they made me sleep on her bed and gave mine to another kid" she added.
"Oh my god, that's…sick" He said sincerely.
"Yeah, well…I missed her at first but then I realized they were right, so I didn't feel guilty anymore" Jade admitted. "Annie betrayed me, so she deserved to die and after that, I never had a friend again" She added and he took a breath processing that information, it was disturbing for him.
"You were locked up there the whole time?" Beck asked and she nodded. "How was it?" He asked and she looked at him confused.
"Why do you care?" Jade questioned.
"For the first time since I met you, I would like to get to know you" Beck responded. "I want to have an honest conversation with you, with Alexandra…not Jade" He added and she sighed, she didn't know exactly how to interpret that but she was glad that at least he wanted to talk to her. "So, tell me, did you have school?"
"Yes but it wasn't like yours, I woke up at 4am every day with a chain in my foot because we weren't allowed to leave our bed during the night" She commented. "Then we had to do physical training for hours...Be faster, be stronger, be the best and still get beaten because nothing is ever good enough" She affirmed as she looked at him. "At 9 we had breakfast but only those of us who had earned it during training, the others were made to stand in line and watch"
"Which one were you?" He asked.
"Both, I wasn't always good and I had to earn my place on the table, but when I did I never got off" She responded proudly. "At first, I felt bad for the others and one day, when I was eight, I tried to give Annie a piece of bread because she was usually standing in line, I thought they wouldn't notice but…they did" she said.
"And what happened?" He asked and she looked down.
"They said that if she wanted my food, she could eat it and they dropped all of it, then they forced her to lick it off the floor until she finished it" Jade said. "As for me, well, they made me watch her and then locked me up in a tiny dark closet by myself for ten days, no food and only two glasses of water per day" She commented. "After that, I never even looked at the kids in line, I just ate my breakfast"
Beck was just listening to her and feeling sad and angry, he could imagine all those horrors and it hurt him to know that had been her life, it was obvious it haunted her even if she tried to pretend otherwise. "That's just…" He started but he couldn't even finish a sentence so she chuckled a little.
"Yeah, well, empathy came at a high cost, we couldn't afford to feel it" Jade simply said.
"You only had fighting lessons?" He asked.
"No, after breakfast we had our 'America' lessons, so we practiced our English and watched movies to understand and imitate you" Jade explained with a little smile and chuckled. "That was fun, it felt like a game"
"A very real game…" Beck said.
"We also had more conventional classes because they needed us to be educated but that was the easiest part, we all liked to be doing normal school stuff, the kind of thing we saw in movies" She commented.
"Did you have spare time?" Beck asked and she laughed a little.
"You are so naïve" She said. "School was our spare time"
"What else did you do then?" He asked.
"I can't tell you everything, it would take weeks, it varied from time to time…there were different stages in the process, we were divided by age" Jade explained. "But I can tell you this, we had to master pain from a young age so what you saw at my basement started happening early on" She responded.
"You mean they tortured you as a kid" He said angrily.
"We are spies, Beck, we are always in risk of being caught and the most important part of the training is our ability to stay quiet no matter what they do to us" she explained.
"They electrocuted you back then too?" He asked.
"No, that came later…they couldn't afford to make us retarded" Jade responded. "They used different techniques to accustom our bodies to pain and the older we got, the worse the torture became"
"That's barbaric, no person can get used to that" Beck said and she chuckled.
"You'd be surprised" She responded.
"What else did they do to you?" Beck asked.
"I mean, I feel this is obvious but we had to beat the polygraph and every other test they threw our way, mistakes weren't allowed" Jade explained.
"What happened if you did make mistakes?" He questioned.
"Every now and then those of us who were deemed weak or stupid simply…died, they were poisoned during dinner without warning" She commented and Beck stared at her appalled, he hadn't seen that coming. "Then the caretakers grabbed their corpses from the table and simply dragged them throughout the hall so we would all see them"
"What?" He asked shocked. "You're kidding…" He added
"No, the next day they usually made us dig out holes in our yard and we buried them, then we could go on with our duties as if nothing had happened" Jade explained.
"Oh my god" Beck said completely appalled and she looked down.
"We lived knowing every day could be our last and that…" Jade said and took a breath as she tried not to cry. "That is a kind of fear you could never understand" she affirmed as a couple of tears streamed down her cheeks.
"God…" Beck whispered as he shook his head disturbed.
"In that mansion they taught us what real fear is so that nothing would ever scare us, we are always prepared to die" Jade affirmed. "We are just weapons in a mission that's bigger than us" she said and sighed.
"Nothing is more important than a life" Beck responded. "You can't believe that"
"I belong to them, we all do" She said. "They taught us everything we know: how to fight, how to kill, how to torture, how to deceive, how to manipulate, how to shoot and how to seduce"
"How do they even teach you to seduce?" Beck asked confused.
"In the beginning it's more psychology and things like that, techniques to catch people's attention, human physiology, the keys to pleasure and more…theoretical stuff, I started learning that when I was around eight" Jade commented. "But it couldn't be all theory, we had to learn from experience" She responded and sighed, Beck didn't like the sound of that, so he just stared at her nervously.
"Experience?" He asked and she nodded.
"Every person needs something different, we had to figure out exactly what that was and provide it" Jade said.
"And how did that happen?" Beck asked afraid of the answer.
"When I was eleven, I had to start getting older men to…you know, be satisfied, in all possible ways" Jade said ashamedly and wiped a couple of tears off her face, but it was obvious she could barely hold it together. "Then women too, everything they wanted to do with us was allowed as long as it gave us experience for the future, other times I was the subject for other kids to practice on or they were mine, it varied, sometimes we even had to be watched and they evaluated our performance, but those times only adults were with us and bad scores from them meant days in solitary confinement with no food" She said as she looked down.
"They raped you since you were eleven…" He said horrified and she took a breath as she held her head. "You were a child" he added and shook his head disturbed by those images. "God, I…" He couldn't even find words to express his feelings.
"It became easy with time, all the practice paid off, I was sent to solitary a few times and I learned my lesson" She commented. "I mastered it!" Jade said with a smile she was using to hide her pain, but he could see through her façade.
"Don't try to justify it, nothing can excuse what they did" Beck said upset. "Raping a child is not training, it's abuse, it's a crime"
"Well, if they hadn't done it, I wouldn't have been able to get crucial information out of several men when I arrived here" Jade responded.
"Did your 'father' do it too?" Beck asked angrily.
"No, John and I have never had sex, but when I moved here I was still young, so he had to keep teaching me things" Jade explained.
"And how did he teach you then?" He questioned coldly.
"We have a bed in our training room, you've seen that" She said. "He taught me positions and things like that, techniques I could use on the people I slept with, either to get them off or to kill them, but we were fully dressed all the time, it was theoretical, he's never touched me like that or had any pleasure from me"
"No, he just sends you out and allows other people to do it" Beck responded and she rolled her eyes.
"It's part of my job, I've been actively using sex as a tool since I was fourteen!" She exclaimed and he wanted to be angry because she was reminding him that she had cheated, but he couldn't, he only felt sad and upset that she'd been through that.
"And that was rape too, you were still a fucking child" Beck said angrily and she looked to the side, she didn't like to think of her missions as being abused.
"I'm not saying those were nice experiences, I hated every second of it but it was my job and at least I got to see the fear in those bastard's faces when I threatened to destroy their lives and when I killed them" Jade commented.
"That is so wrong in so many ways" He said and shook his head. "How can you be loyal to those people? They ruined your life!"
"I was told our bodies and our minds belong to the state because the state nourished them, we simply have to comply with our orders" Jade said and shrugged. "What do you expect me to say? It is what it is, it was my job"
"No, it wasn't and I'm so sorry you had to be there, no person should ever endure what you just told me" Beck commented angrily and looked down sadly. "I never imagined your life had been like this" He said and sighed trying to process it.
"That's okay, I still have hard time telling my nightmares and my memories apart sometimes" She admitted.
"I'm sorry, Alexandra" He said.
"Don't call me that name please, not you" Jade said.
"It's a nice name" Beck said trying to be nice.
"But that's what they called me in the mansion and that's what John calls me when we train, that name makes everything feel real and sometimes I just can't handle it, now is one of those times" Jade admitted because she felt really fragile in that moment. "Jade allowed me to escape my reality, it's the best thing that's ever happened to me and I know that makes me a monster, because the real Jade had to die for me to be here, but I don't care because I wouldn't trade my life as Jade for anything so you can go ahead and call my a psychopath again, it might be true after all" she said upset as several tears streamed down her face.
"Jade…" He said because he didn't know what to respond and she sighed as she wiped the tears away. "I…I don't know what to say" He admitted.
"You don't have to say anything, I already know how you feel and you're completely right" Jade commented and stood up.
"You don't have to pretend this doesn't hurt you" Beck said sincerely, he felt differently about her after that conversation.
"And you don't have to pretend you don't hate me" Jade responded.
"I've never said I hate you" Beck said and stood up as well. "I don't" he added and she looked at him emotionlessly.
"I have killed more people than I can count with my fingers and you know it, no need to act like you suddenly don't care about that because I had a 'sad childhood'" Jade responded coldly.
"You were abused since you were a baby, that's why you are like this" Beck responded. "You literally just told me, I thought you wanted me to understand"
"Maybe I did, maybe I wanted you to know I wasn't born a psychopath" Jade admitted. "But I didn't expect you to lie and act like you don't despise me anymore, nothing's changed"
"I know I've said that nothing could excuse you but maybe I'm wrong" Beck said. "I've called you a psychopath because of the way you react to violence and how ruthless you are with people; the truth is I can't understand you and you know what? You're right, I probably never will, because I didn't grow up in hell and you have no idea how much it hurts me to know you did" He admitted. "It's no my place to judge you, you didn't choose this life "
"I didn't choose it but that doesn't erase all the monstrous things I've done and I don't need your pity now" She said coldly and he looked at her mortified. "This is, after all, just part of my cover"
So, now you know what her life was like :(
I hope you guys enjoyed!
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