Twenty-four years ago, I was brought into the world by Taavi and Jonathan McGrail. They named me Annabelle, my grandmother's name. I already had an older brother, Mike, who was two years older. Three more children would follow in the years to come.
Tseng advised his sister not to marry Jonathan long before marriage was in the picture. She didn't listen, lost in infatuation with a young Midgar man with sparkling eyes and big dreams to become the next world-dominating scientist. Tseng was only nine when they married, but he could tell that their relationship would end only in pain and bitterness. When she refused to listen, he refused to be a part of her life any longer.
I first heard the voices at three years old. They all came from the same source, but they all held different emotions. Some were angry, some protective, some sad, and others were warm and nurturing. At first, it scared me. I would scream and cry and demand that my parents find the woman hiding in my bedroom, but each time Taavi dismissed it as attention-seeking and put me back to bed. If it was daytime, I would be spanked and placed in a corner until I calmed down. She never understood, fearing the unknown. I could hardly blame her.
Mike used to lock me in closets and cabinets when my parents were out just to antagonize me. I would beg for mercy, not for fear of the dark, but for fear of the visions I was shown by the voices. I saw my family die over and over and over again, perhaps in a hundred different ways before I reached six years. By then, I knew exactly what death felt like, and it was terrifying.
Once my mother caught me conversing with the voices, she decided enough was enough. She sent me to Hojo with my father in hopes of finding a cure before it was too late. But it was. I was beyond fear. I wanted to know more about what Jenova had shown me. All the flames and the blood and the screaming… I wanted to know why. Hojo let me voice those questions, taking notes and asking for clarification. I thought he wanted to fix me, but all he was after was a new section of his thesis involving Jenova cells.
When I was eight, the twins were born. The year prior, my father turned to alcohol and spent most of his time stumbling around the Shinra labs or sleeping on the couch. My parents hardly spoke anymore, and my mother started spending suspicious amounts of time away from her children. After having her third and fourth children, Taavi decided she needed help that her drunkard husband couldn't give her—she called Tseng for the first time in twelve years. He'd been training with Turks at the point and he decided to answer her cries for help, showing up on our doorstep as a long lost relative in the eyes of me and Mike.
"I need your help, Tseng. You can say you told me so all you want, but Jonathan's no use, and I can't raise four kids on my own."
"I told you it wasn't right."
"Yes, well, it wouldn't be so hard if not for Anna." She sighed, tucking her hair behind her ear and letting her shoulders slump. "She's… different. She's still hearing voices and I think it might be because of what Jonathan did to himself in that lab."
"… I'm not raising your problem child for you."
"Tseng, please. I'm not asking you to. I just need a little help every once in a while."
"I'm working for Shinra now, Taavi. I don't have time for—"
"You don't have to remind me of your betrayal." She scowled, eyes sharp and voice laced with hatred directed at the Turks. "What're you going to do, hold me at gunpoint and demand I get a divorce? The kids will still be here." She placed her hands on top of his, begging. "Please."
Later that evening, while Mike roughhoused with the twins in the front yard, I sat on the front porch, watching in silence. I wasn't paying attention to them, though, as Jenova was whispering things to me about the way things would be in the future. How I would be alone, but I would be stronger than ever. How I would lose something, but have everything. It was confusing, and Tseng must have read my frown. The old boards creaked beneath his polished shoes as he approached.
"Something wrong?"
I shook my head, picking at my fingernails. "You're my uncle?"
Tseng nodded slowly, hands clasped behind his back tightly and eyes wandering to the boys in the yard before snapping back to me like they've been tied to rubber bands. "I suppose."
"I have a question." I crossed my legs, leaning back on my palms and looking up at the sky. Dad said we were lucky to live on the upper plate, and in hindsight, I realize that he's right. Back then, though, it felt like a curse. Everyone hated us because of where my father worked. It wasn't fair. "If drinking is so bad for you, why does Dad do it to make her quiet? Isn't there another way?"
"Her?" Tseng frowned, on edge.
"Yes." I shrugged, shaking my hair out of my eyes. "She calls herself Mother. She's a little moody, but she's not that bad."
"Oh." Tseng took a deep breath, his head tilting ever so slightly to the left. "People reach points where they stop caring. You're a bit young to understand."
"No, I think I get it. It's like how Mike stops cleaning his room because he's used to the smell. By the time he notices again, it's too much work to clean the mess up." I shrugged again, watching one of the twins shove Mike with a shrieking laugh. "No one wants to take responsibility for their own actions."
"You're very perceptive," he commented, turning to watch the boys as well. "Where did you learn that?"
"I watch people all day. Mother helps to explain things sometimes, but I can figure them out on my own a lot of the time. Reading people isn't as hard as everyone thinks."
"You know a lot more than you should at your age."
"Yeah, well…" I hugged my knees to my chest and gnawed on my cheek. "Mother says I'm special. I have to grow up faster so that I can become who I'm supposed to be."
"And who's that?"
"I dunno." Smiling, I turned my face upward and met his eyes for the first time. "Only time will tell, right?"
As the years passed and Tseng stopped by more often, my parents spent less and less time at home. I don't know when I realized that my mother was spending all her time with other men and that none of my siblings were from her marriage. It was as if I woke up one day and it was there. There was no moment of realization, no surprise. It was a cold fact that I'd always carried in my back pocket.
Tseng was always stricter with my brothers than he was with me. He would force them outside to give me peace, allow me to help him with dinner, and ask about Jenova. For once, it felt like someone genuinely cared about me. Sometimes I could feel him watching me when I spoke to others or when I sat alone, thinking, but I could never read the look in his eyes. He was good at hiding his feelings.
He decided that I needed to spend more time around kids my age when I wasn't being schooled and sent me outside. It was cold and my pockets jingled with change for the church—I thought perhaps donations would please the gods and fix my family. It never worked. Slum rats found me and threatened to hurt me. I was ten when I killed for the first time, heading home with my head on my shoulders and my composure kept cool.
Tseng knew what I'd done when I came home. He gave me a towel for my bleeding nose and had me explain. When I told him I was only obeying Mother, he believed me. She'd fed me information and comforting words for free—from there on out, she'd take her payment in control. He comforted me like any father would've and sent me to wash up before anyone could see me. No one ever came to take me away. I was safe.
Two years later, I killed Katie. I don't know if it was out of jealousy or spite. I do know it was Mother, her control consuming me and giving in to the craving to end the lives of those that tore our family apart thread by thread. My mother hated me for it. She never let me live it down. She'd attack me with words and her own hands. Tseng always defended me, but he couldn't always be there. I always made him stop. I was scared that Mother would take him, too.
One night, my parents were home together at last. They spoke for hours before they called all five of their children downstairs. They announced that they were finally getting divorced, that they were ready to divide our family. They couldn't take it anymore. They also told me that they were sending me to Hojo's lab full time to see what could be done—they were done trying to save me. They told me that they loved me. I screamed that I hated them, hurling curses and insults. I threw a lamp at my father; he threw it back.
Enraged, I headed upstairs and locked the door to my room. My back hit the wall and I fell to the floor, sobbing. The hateful echoes of my family's voices flooded my mind, a clear reminder that I would always be the outsider They never loved me.
"You're a freak, Anna."
"Why don't you go cry to Mother?"
"You're a mistake."
"I wish you'd never been born!"
This is what I was telling you all along. Had you chosen to listen, you would not have suffered. These people have betrayed both of us. They are mere stains on my world. You are one of the few loyal children left.
In that moment, I should have known. I wasn't a chosen one, I wasn't special, and I wasn't loved. But I wanted so badly to believe I was, so I obeyed. I didn't care anymore. I didn't want to feel their hatred burning through their stares any longer. I was done.
It wasn't Jenova that stole my father's gun from his closet. Jenova didn't haul the neighbor's gas cans around the house and soak the walls and floors. Jenova didn't light the first match that quickly grew into a monstrous flame that consumed my home and those that slept within as the light of dawn crept over the lip of Midgar's towering walls.
From outside, I could hear Mike waking the younger kids up, trying to escape. I knew they wouldn't, willingly allowing Mother to overtake me for the first time. I could hear Sarah's screams as the flames blocked her from an escape. Evan, the older twin, was crushed when a portion of the ceiling collapsed. Mike leaped from the roof, clutching Logan to his chest. His leg snapped in two beneath him. I watched the panic flare in his eyes when he saw me approaching with the gun.
"Anna?! What are you doing?" He eyed the weapon, gasping for air. "Tseng wouldn't have wanted—"
I raised the gun and fired twice, one bullet for each boy. "Cleaning up."
The neighborhood woke up to the sound of blaring alarms and roaring flames. I ignored the black column of smoke that rode from the house and walked through the streets until I reached the slums. It's as if no one could see me, a small twelve-year-old girl smeared with blood and soot and wielding a firearm. Even if someone was to stop me and demand what I was doing, to look me in the eye, they would find nothing. I wasn't there anymore. I was a machine driven by a new master.
When I reached the center of the slums, I opened fire. "Tseng never cared." An old man gasped, collapsing against the wall. "Your parents never loved you." A young girl's feet gave way and her hand slipped from her father's. "You know death better than anyone." Screaming, a boy with wild red hair falls to the ground, shaking a middle-aged man's arm as blood ran into the brim of his hat.
"Dad!" Eyes brimming with tears, he ran at me, throwing me onto my back. The gun skittered away, but I didn't reach for it. I couldn't react when he grabbed my collar and heaved me upward into his face. "What the hell's wrong with you?!"
"Off!" A soldier pulled him off and held him to the ground. An entire troop circles around me, gun raised. "She's coming with us."
There was trial after that, but I'm not sure why. I was clearly guilty and I never denied it. There were three options that were presented to me: death, prison, and the Sector Two asylum. The third was proposed personally by Tseng. He gave them the details of my struggles with Jenova's voice. After all I'd done, he still wanted the best for me.
I sat in a jail cell for two months before I was transferred. There I was placed under the care of Professor Hojo, who visited occasionally, Amy, short for Amelia, and Tyler Marx, Hojo's understudy. I changed my name to Kat. A year into treatment, Tyler started making promises of a better life. He told me that he loved me. And I believed him. He gained Hojo's permission to study me personally in his own home and spent most of his time manipulating me into giving him anything he wanted.
And then he turned. He plunged experimental concoctions into my veins, pushed me around, and shouted insults I hadn't heard in years. When I fought back, he threw me back into my cell and returned to the lab. He'd gotten his results and he didn't need me any longer. I realized that there is no such thing as love.
The first day I planned to kill him Tseng visited and told me about his engagement to Sonyeh Kisaragi, the eldest daughter of Emperor Godo of Wutai. It was a forbidden love, but she was willing to throw away her title for him. He took me to his home to meet her and she let me help her plan the wedding. I liked her a lot, and I didn't trust the feeling.
Over the next yeah, Sonyeh visited me dozens of times. We got to know each other, though I was usually closed off and chained to my seat. She took me home for a weekend, determined to see me as a person instead of a mindless shell. It was a grave mistake. I snapped when she told me they loved me, stabbing her until she stopped moving. I was out of mind, covered in her blood and dancing to the eerie silence of their home until Tseng came home. He didn't shed a tear, driving me back to the asylum in deathly still silence. He didn't say goodbye when the doctors dragged me back to my cage, refusing to look at me.
It wasn't long until I found a way to burn the asylum, too. I was fifteen and I'd lost all recollection of what I'd done. I didn't know who Annabelle or Taavi or Mike were anymore. I'd forgotten Tseng and Sonyeh and Marx by the time I reached the slums, on the run from something I couldn't recall. I'd been living on my own for three months when I first met Reno.
Our lives were okay for a while. We struggled to find food and to keep warm at night, occasionally sharing a ragged blanket and sleeping back to back to thaw our frozen bodies. Friendship was new to me, and thankfully, Reno made it easy. Everything was fine until he started selling drugs to another group of slum rats.
Two years after saving me, he was looking for ways to make money. No one was interested in hiring a homeless boy with an attitude. A boy he met in Wall Market got him into the business. He didn't use anything he was selling, save for a few frightening times, and he began raking in cash faster than either could have imagined.
Reno was chased by Shinra officials and forced to throw away a whole month's worth of income. A few days later, the boys in charge of the whole "business" beat the life out of him and left him to die. He managed to drag himself back to our abandoned schoolhouse before his legs gave way and his eyes refused to reopen. I was terrified. I bought potions with the money he earned and forced him to drink them, sick to my stomach seeing him in this condition.
I went outside, not caring that the rain soaked me to the bone, and I ran. I didn't know where I was going until I stopped short before the ruins of an old house. I didn't understand why I wanted to be there, but I collapsed on the remains of the porch steps and cried until I couldn't breathe, desperately searching for the comfort that sat just out of reach, taunting me.
I didn't know he'd followed me until I felt a soggy sleeve slip around my shoulders and pull me into a soaked shirt. He was a shoulder to cry on, my solid rock. He sat there with me for a century while I cried. I didn't know why I was so sad here, but I wanted to stay. I couldn't, but I wanted to.
The next year, Reno convinced me to take up training in Shinra's ranks. When we entered the building to sign up, I caught sight of Tseng and instantly recognized him, feeling a rush of relief and anguish. I didn't let myself touch him, but he redirected us to the Turks before we could be enlisted in the army.
When I was kicked out of the program for killing that boy Carlos, I went home to the apartment that Reno and I shared at the time. I waited for him on the couch, dreading his reaction. I shouldn't have been afraid. He came home with cake and coffee and a big, bright smile on his face. He was there for me through it all, refusing to be consumed by his anger and his fear.
Everything was looking up until five years passed, leaving us in the mess we're in today. Twenty-four years built up and burst through the glass box I kept them locked in all at once without anyone to shelter me from the blast. And still, he stayed, pacing back and forth at the end of my bed in hopes that I'll wake up someday.
Someday.
