Pretender Fanatic- Don't worry Jarod about to have a talk with his daughter. Glad you liked the pop tart scene I had fun writing it.
morgan – Alex reveals all today
Mrs. Rhett Butler- Just to let you know Alex, Air, and Andy became pyrokinetics right around the time Alley showed up. I loved the pop tart bit too it was a last minute thing actualy I wrote it after my Beta had read the chapter.
THANKS JACKIE
CHAPTER 52
SOME SCARS NEVER FADE
January 24, 2004
9:13am
Charlottesville, Virginia
Russell Family Home
"You wanted to talk to me?" Alex said walking in to her parent's room. She was slightly nervous. She had the feeling that her mother and father had come close yesterday to finding out what Lyle had done to her. Now her parent's were just waiting for her to tell them. Now the question now, how would she? How would they look at her after they found out the truth? Would she still be their little girl or just another product of the Centre?"Sit down Katy-did." Jarod said patting the spot on the bed in between he and Morgan. Alex complied.
"So, what's up?" Alex asked trying hard to appear as though she knew nothing of what her parents wished to speak to her about.
"That's what we'd like to know. Alex, baby what are you hiding from your father and me?"
"Nothing, Momma." Alex said studying her hands. She hated lying to her parents. God knows they had been lied to enough during their lives.
"Alex look at me." Morgan said lifting Alex's chin to her eye level. "What ever it is I promise your father and I won't be mad at you. We love you baby, nothing could ever change that."
"What ever happened wasn't your fault." Jarod told his daughter.
"Daddy, do you ever get mad at Grampa or Gram's 'cause they never got you out of the Centre. They knew where you were but instead of rescuing you they raised another child. They never came for you. They left you there in that cold gray cell where there was no light and people came and hurt you everyday."
"Alex, where are you going with this?" Jarod asked hoarsely. His daughter had just managed to voice all of his deepest, darkest feelings of anger and jealousy towards his parents and sister. Feelings that he tried hard to ignore. Old scars that had yet to fully heal.
"I want for you and Momma to know that I don't blame either of you for what happen to me. And you two shouldn't blame yourselves either. You didn't know about us. You never knew we were taken from you. When you two found out about us you risked everything to get us out and you didn't even know we were yours. I love you for that and so much more. I love that you two try your best to keep us safe, to remind us everyday that we are not products of the Centre but our own person." Alex said, she then had to stop in order to regain her composure.
"Now that the Centre is about to be brought down. And even though they'll be gone they will always own a part of us. We on some level will always belong to them. During the day when the sun is out and you can feel it's heat on you face it doesn't seem so. When you go outside and feel the breeze on your face and taste the air you barely remember that you once spent time there."
"But then at night, in the dark just before you fall asleep you realize that what they did to us, what they stole from us will remain with us for the rest of our lives." Alex spoke her blue eyes turning almost black. "You remember the feel of the cameras. And you remember the screams, and sometimes when your at your lowest you remember that the scream didn't just belong to the person across the hall, they belonged to you. And it haunts you. It will slowly eat away at you if you let it. If you don't fight it. If you focus on the scars that never fade from your skin or memory it will kill you. And granted some scars will never fade away but that doesn't mean you must acknowledge them as representing some of the lowest points of your life. You could look at them and think 'I survived this and I'm stronger for it'. I am stronger for it." She said meeting her parents gaze.
"What are you stronger for baby?" Morgan asked not truly need to know the answer she had already had a vague idea of what Lyle had done to her daughter. Jarod did as well. He had heard of such things being done to Centre projects but as far as he had been concerned they were just stories told to frighten pretenders and others into staying.
Alex took a deep breath bracing her self for the onslaught of emotional vibes she would receive from her parents.
"He did it 'cause we tried to escape. Jake blames himself, but it's not his fault. I don't blame him anyway. This is why Jake wanted to get me out as soon as he could. It was when he realized that Lyle might kill me. We never told Aunt Jen or Uncle Sam. Lyle said he'd kill 'em if we did." Alex began she was now bracing her parents for what she was about to reveal.
"Sweetheart, what did Lyle do?" Jarod asked. Slowly Alex lifted the back of her shirt. Burned over and over, across her small back, was the symbol for the Black Files – fourteen stars in a circle- with the words 'CENTRE PROPERTY' written around it. It took all of Jarod's self-restraint no to storm off to Blue Cove in search of Lyle. Instead Jarod gently pulled the back of his daughter's shirt down and pulled her into his arms.
"You, your brothers, and sister, are the most amazing group of people I have ever met." Jarod whispered into Alex's ear. Jarod was trying his hardest not to cry. As far as he was concerned, Lyle had raped his daughter. Morgan too had done her best not to break out into tears when she saw her daughter's back. Morgan scooted closer to her husband and daughter wrapping her arms around Alex as well.
Jarod and Morgan held Alex until she had fallen asleep, or to be more precise until she had passed out unable to handled the emotional vibes from her parents any longer.
Once asleep, her parent's carried her to her room. Seeing that her daughter was safe in bed, Morgan quickly ran to the bathroom in her and Jarod's room and promptly began to retch. Jarod sat by her side, his hand on the small of her back, as his wife emptied the contents of her stomach. Once Morgan no longer had anything left to vomit and had finished dry heaving Jarod led her back to their bed, handing her a glass of water.
"How?" Morgan finally managed to say. "How could someone do such a thing to an innocent child? And of all of them, why Alex?"
"Because she was the one we all protected. She's the baby of our group and Lyle knew that to hurt all of us all he had to do was to hurt her." Aaron said quietly from the doorway, standing next to Andros.
"We begged Lyle to choose Aaron or I instead." Andros told his parents. "He did it because we tried to escape. Lyle caught us. He then took Alex and made us all watch as he branded her fourteen times."
"One for each of us." Aaron said quietly. "Afterwards he told us that we were nothin more than Centre property, that we would always be Centre property."
"Then he told us if we tried to escape again he'd kill her. Slowly. That's why we had to get Alex out first. It was our fault that Lyle hurt her, that she had to endure all of that pain. We were not going to let it be all for nothing." Andros said his eyes flashing red briefly.
"We need to go and check on her. She needs us now. You two kinda wore her out." Aaron said he and Andros then left the room to be with their sister.
"I'll kill him." Morgan spat. "I've done it before, I'll do it again. Jarod, Lyle knew who Alex was. He knew that she was our daughter. The boys think that Lyle chose Alex because she was the baby of the group. The truth is he chose her because he saw Alex as me. He hates me for the life I had. It wasn't a great life but it was better than his was. So he brands my daughter in retaliation. I don't care if he is my brother he will pay for what he did to my baby." Morgan said in a deadly voice eyes blazing with hate.
"No, you aren't" Jarod said taking her into his arms. "You won't have to kill him once we bring the Centre down, and Lyle is prosecuted I'll make sure he gets the death penalty. There is too much evidence against him for him not too. And if by chance the legal system does fail us, I'll kill him. I have plenty of blood on my hands anyway. I doubt that one more life will make much of a difference. Not Lyle's life anyway."
"Is there anything we can do to make the scars go away?" Morgan asked after a while.
"I need to talk to a few people but I'm pretty sure that I can do something. They won't completely go away. There will be slight scaring but over time most of it will fade away." Jarod told her.
"And her other scars, will they fade as well?"
"Not completely. But most of them will. I speak from experience."'
"She'll be up soon. We should be there." Morgan said. The two got up from their bed and walked up one floor to the children's room. Alex, Aaron, and Andros were sleeping on Aaron and Andros's beds. They had pushed the two beds together so that there would be enough space for the three of them.
As Morgan had predicted the children were beginning to awake. The set of children refused to meet their parents' eyes, for many reasons. Alex didn't want their pity. Over the past two years she had dealt with the scars she had carried and had grown to view them in the way one who had been badly burned in a fire would view their scars; with resentment and acceptance.
Aaron and Andros were afraid to meet their parents' eyes out of fear that they would be angry with them for not protecting their sister or even worse, disappointed. The boys could handle anger they had experienced it most of their lives, but to disappoint their parents was one of the worse things they felt that they could do.
Morgan could see where her children's train of thought was going and instantly derailed it. "Alex, you don't want pity so your father and I won't give it to you. This changes nothing about how your father and I feel about you. As far as we are concerned you are still our extremely tough little girl."
"Boys," Jarod began, "Your mother nor I blame either of you for what happened to you sister. It wasn't your fault. You two were five years old, had you two tried to stop Lyle he may have killed either of you or your sister."
"Dad we're grateful for what you're saying," Aaron began.
"But it doesn't necessarily make us feel any better knowing that Lyle could have killed us." Andros finished.
"Lets just out it this way," Morgan said "Neither of you are at fault for what happened to your sister."
"Can you make it go away?" Alex asked quietly. Though she had come to accept her scars if there was a chance that her father could find a way to rid her body of them Alex would take it.
"I'll try my hardest. Tomorrow we'll go to the clinic and check it out, alright?" Jarod told her.
"Kay." Alex replied
"Out of slight curiosity, did you boys feel what Lyle did to your sister?" Jarod asked Aaron and Andros.
"Yeah we did." Aaron said. "We even had the scars too."
"They faded over time. Up until a few months ago they were still visible." Andros told his father, to explain why they no longer had them.
"Has that happened before?" Morgan asked.
"Oh, all the time." Alex said. "If one of us gets a cut we all bleed."
"Depending on the severity of the wound it stays for a while. The scars stayed for almost two years, a paper cut will last for a day" Aaron said going further into detail.
"And this happens with Maddie and Mike as well?"
"It happens to all of us, because of our telepathic bond with our siblings. Although because of our bond with Mike and Maddie we feel when they are hurt." Andros said.
"Unless of course we choose for them not to. We can cut our telepathic bond that exist between them and us at times if we wish." Aaron spoke.
"As can we between the three of us." Alex told her parents.
"So when you were in a coma when you were younger, Alex, the telepathic bond you have with your brothers and cousins also caused them to be in a coma?" Morgan asked.
"Yeah, only they weren't in a coma for as long as I was." Alex said.
"Well, I find this completely riveting. So riveting in fact that that I have become delirious with hunger." Morgan told her children who began to laugh. "Anyone else hungry?"
"A little." Aaron said.
"Fine let's go and get something to eat." Jarod said scooping the boys into his arms as Morgan picked up Alex.
A little after four Will, Alley, Chris and Debbie returned home from school. The younger children were out riding horses. Jarod was sitting at the kitchen table reading up on skin grafts as he fed Zane. Morgan was thinking of the many ways to torture her twin as she fed Gabe. Every so often she would test her ideas out on Gabriel as Jarod tried to hide a smile behind his text.
"What about kidnapping him locking him in a three by three cell in which he can only stand on a six inch square with out being zapped. And each time he steps out side of the square the voltage goes up?" Gabe gave his mother a look that either said 'no' or 'You need to change my diaper.' Morgan took it to mean no.
"Okay, bad idea. How about getting one of your extremely smart brothers or sisters to whip up a drug that will make your Uncle Lyle's skin extremely sensitive to every little thing and in the end it will kill him?"
"Um, Mom. We love you, but we aren't going to kill any one for you." Will said walking in to the kitchen.
"So we take it you found out what Lyle did to Alex?" Alley said.
"Yes, we did." Jarod said looking up from his text.
"What can we do to help?" Will asked "Besides killing Lyle." He added hastily.
"The same thing you've been doing since the summer be there for your brothers and sisters." Jarod told the twins.
"Well, for once were going to do as you said, but don't get used to it." Alley said as she and Will went to check on their brothers and sisters
So that was what Alex was hidding, what do you think. To let me know just click on the little purple button.
By the way vote for me at the pretender fanfic awards please.