Rose

"I'm sorry I couldn't save her."

I lay there, still, unable to move. Was I dying? Was this what it felt like to die? Was I dying? Was I still seventeen or was I eighteen? Was I still on the bed captured by Tony? Did Dimitri get away? Was he safe? I tried to move my arm, it was too heavy. I tried to move my leg, not enough strength, I tried to move my toes by gave up after I couldn't move a single one, not even the smallest amount. There was light outside my closed eyes, my mouth felt weird. I could feel my hand being gripped, being wetted by droplets but I couldn't tell from what.

There was darkness, shouldn't there be like a bright white light? Isn't that what people say when someone died – go into the light? Was I going to hell? Was I really that bad in life that I would end up in hell and not heaven? I studied the underworld once, I know there are different areas there depending on how awful they were in life, at least the Greek version did so at least I won't end up being near Tony even if I was in hell, right?

When Tony dies, I know he will end up here – in hell, but where? Where was I going to? Would I end up? Was I in Taenarum right now? The entrance of the underworld – would Charon be bringing me across the River Styx? But I don't have a coin, do I? I patted my pockets, I didn't. Will he be able to bring me across the river? I mean, Tony still had me, didn't he? Or did Dimitri and I escape, I think we did but that couldn't have been that long ago, was I buried? Will I make it to Cerberus? Will the Underworld judges choose for me to be Elysium, the Fields of Asphodel, or the Fields of Punishment or Tartarus?

Tartarus, the worst part of the Underworld where Zeus banished all his enemies, his father, the Titians after he defeated them. I don't think I would end up there – I couldn't have been that bad in my short seventeen years to warrant me going there, could I?

The fields of Asphodel, the average part of the underworld. A place you go to if you didn't do anything great in your life, you just lived, didn't comit any crimes that warrants bad punishment. I could end up here, in fact it was the best possibility seeing as how I was only seventeen – what could I have achieved in my life to allow me to be anywhere else?

I know I won't go to the fields of punishments, mainly because I didn't commit any crime against any of the Greek gods – did I? I don't think so, so I wouldn't go there. I didn't do anything bad to the earth, I didn't start a war so there was no eternal punishment for me.

I also know that I won't end up in Elysium. I didn't do anything great in life to be allowed admission and I wasn't a Demi god or anything. I was just a normal kid living her life until I died.

Am I dead?

Now, I know what year it is, I know the Greek and Goddesses are all Myth and Legends, but Virgil and Homer we're incredible story tellers, gripping the reader with descriptions the made you seep into the world of Gods and Goddesses. It was a fascinating study I took on part time, something that allowed me to stay out my house longer before I moved in with my father. I was fascinated by the stories, the conspiracies, like Alexander the Great being gay? That was fascinating and the evidence there seems to leans towards that. Was he really a demi god? Touched by the gods? I'm not sure, I do know he was a great leader but was he just lucky? Possibly. Did you know Alexander did have a wife, although he never slept with her? Allegedly of course.

My mind switched from Myths and Legends, leaving Alexander the Great in the past. I was sitting down at a table, surrounded by Pythagoras and Newton as they walked around, mumbling their theorem and laws - oh and we can't forget about poor old Leibniz who helped Newton come up the theorem of integration (Calculus) and Lebesgue who invented the theorem for differentiation.

"First Law – Object will remain in a straight line unless and outside force causes it to change direction. Second Law – Force is equal to momentum per change in time. Third Law – forever action there is an equal and opposite reaction." Newton was mumbling to himself, well, not him exactly. His figure was, but he was saying my study notes when I did physics.

"The hypotenuse of a right-angle triangle is sum of the squared values of the other two sides." Pythagoras theorem mumbled. I looked around.

"You can solve ay equation as long as there is only one unknown variable." I mumbled to myself. The others around the room looked at me, turned and started to walk towards me. Then I was somewhere else.

The Bonnet Sisters, Charles Dickenson, J.D. Salinger and F Scott Fitzpatrick all reciting lines from their books. I tried to grasp the familiar words of thier stories to try and stay, to relax, but I was moving areas again.

I was in the past, my mother standing there, walking out the door.

"Will you be home soon?" I had asked her. I was so small, my hair short. My mom had a bag on her back, Tony was standing off to the side. I was four when this happened. I was holding her hand as tightly as my small one would allow.

"I can't, baby." My mom crouched down, putting a strand of hair behind my ear. "I'll come home as much as I can, I promise." I sniffled; my lip started to tremble. "I have to go."

"Will you be home for my birthday?" I got no response, just a hiss on the forehead before closing the door behind her. I looked up at Tony with tears in my eyes.

"Just the two of us, brat." He shoved me.

My mom didn't come back for my fifth birthday. She came back briefly for my sixth and then when I was fourteen and I told her to never come back. That's when Tony's abuse worsened. He was so angry because she decided to do as I asked and didn't come back at all.

When my mom did come and visit before I forced her away, I remember hearing crying, sobbing, yelling. The occasional time she had a phone to her ear and canceled the call before it could ring out, the time she stared at her phone and pleaded with someone to understand. This one time, I was hiding under my mom's bed. It was the day before my sixth birthday when I still thought my mom was great, that she loved me, that she left me to protect me, because she loved me.

"Abe, you have a daughter." She sighed. "Abe, we have a daughter." She grumbled. "Abe, I'm an awful person who found out she was pregnant, left you, taking our daughter to have an abortion, bring too far along and now I have to make sure I stay away so she doesn't get hurt." She sighed loudly, flopping back onto the bed. "I really am an awful person."

My eyes were closed now, I couldn't see or open them as lay down on what felt like a hard bed. It didn't take me long to realize it was a hospital bed. I think it was when I was hospitalized for my panic attack that I had in school after all my after schools were canceled, I couldn't get a shift in work and had to go back to the house where Tony was, probably drinking in front of the TV. I remember having a panic attack in the bathroom, Mason and Adrian finding me throwing up in a toilet, a slight pink tinge to the vomit.

"She looks so fragile." I could make out my mother's voice, a touch. "What happened?" Tony's harsh voice cut through the calm.

"Bulimia. I didn't want to tell you; I was trying to help her through it." Defiantly the first time I was hospitalized for my panic attacks.

"Maybe I should stay-"

"And have Abe's enemies come and kill her? You know they won't make it quick." My mom wanted to stay? Tony was trying to stop her staying? I thought he wanted her to stay? To be with him – isn't that the reason he kidnapped me in the first place? Started to abuse me? Because I was the reason my mom wouldn't stay?

"I can't just-"

"They'll make it slow and painful."

I was reliving my childhood, my youth. When I met Mason, then Adrian, when I first got a 100 and kept my grades up, when I won first place in a science competition, when I won a math tournament, when I was chosen to write a short story for the school newspaper which made it into the local newspaper. When I met my dad, when I met Dimitri.

Dimitri.

Mom.

She wasn't as bad as I thought, was she? She really did leave to protect me, didn't she? She loves me, right? I wasn't the nicest to her over the years and when she came back, I still didn't hear her out, listen to her reasons, but I was right, right? She hurt me; I was right to block her out.

"I'm sorry mom. I love you."

"I love her."