Chapter three – Sad Story (Spitfire's POV)

I stood in my little kitchen filling up the promised orange-juice in a glass, but my thoughts were far away.

Could you tell me what it's like to have a family?

That had been a serious asked question. She didn't want to hear some old stories from him about how he celebrated christmas, when he was young or where he spent summer holidays with his parents (Bahamas or camping at a lake). Phoenix really wanted to know what it was like to have a family, how it felt.

"Geez, where the heck did this girl grow up?", I whispered to myself.

I closed the bottle and put it back into the fridge.

I guess it's just fine if you call me Phoenix!

Again and again I went through this little conversation, I recalled her reactions and actions in my mind. She didn't seem to be unhappy because of the fact that she didn't have any parents, she was just interested in what it was like to have a family, like someone was interested in what it was like to live in the South when he grew up in the North.

Finally I slightly shook my head and took the glass with the orange coloured liquid inside, then I made my way back to the bathroom.

I stopped in front of the door and knocked firmly.

"May I come in?"

A second passed then a quiet voice answered.

"S-sure, just come in, door's open."

Phoenix sat in the bathtub looking at me with her eyes focused on the glass in my hand.

"You like orange-juice?", I asked friendly.

"Yeah, I do . . . I don't like cherry-juice."

"Why?"

"Too red."

I passed the glass to her and she took a big sip of juice. "I don't like red, ya know . . . of course only as colour for liquid."

A small grin appeared on my lips when I remembered the colour of my couch and her excitement when she had recognized that furniture before.

"'kay, good to know, so I won't by any cherry-juice the next time I'll go to the supermarket."

"Oh, may I come with you then?"

"Sure, just as you like it."

I sat down on the floor of the bathroom right beside the door and watched Phoenix drinking the juice while she sat in the warm water, then I finally took the courage to talk to her about the details from our conversation before I had gone into the kitchen.

"Uhm, Phoenix, may I ask you something?", I asked softly with a warm smile on my face.

She looked up at me while licking some juice frome her upper lip.

"Sure", she answered and I recognized that she gathered more and more self-confidence every minute.

"Okay, so you told me you don't have any parents or family in any way . . ."

Phoenix nodded.

"Then where did you grow up? Have you always been living on the streets?"

"Oh, no no, absolutely not. I've been only living on the streets for the last three years."

Furiously she shook her head which made her already slightly wet red hair flying around, sending some little waterdrops my way.

"So, where did you live before these three years?"

"At Sleepy Hollow, I was born there."

A big questionmark appeared over my head. Sleepy Hollow? I mean, sure, I knew the movie, but I never heard of a village or at least an orphanage called this way.

"Sleepy Hollow? What is this, a house or something like that?"

"Yeah, a veeeeeeeeeeeery big one, but not a normal one I guess." She finished the juice and placed the glass on the floor in front of the bathtub.

"It had dark hallways and many rooms which all looked almost the same; it was pretty easy to get lost in there. I shared a room with a girl called Hawk back then. Every day there came people in white coats and white masks which covered their mouths and noses."

"What did they do, Phoenix?"

A slight fear crawled up my neck and I had a strange feeling about how this story would go on. It reminded me of my past back in the tower when I hadn't had any idea of the blue sky outside or of the wind which made the birds flying over different continents and the big oceans.

"What did those people with the white masks do to you?"

I tried to pretend just to be normal interested then horribly scared of the end of this story.

"They took us to different rooms and checked our blood pressure, eye reflexes, body condition, ya know, somethig like that . . ."

She didn't seem to notice my true thoughts and so I went on talking to her just as if the story she told was absolutely common to be heard.

"So, you did grew up in a laboratory?"

"Laboratory . . .? Oh, is that something like a hospital?"

Her excitement about that fact almost made me blowing my disguise and just tell her what really happened to her and that those guys in the white coats have only been damn freaks. So, I hestitated a short moment before answering.

"Yeah, it's kinda like a hospital, but in a laboratory . . . you're not only there because of an illness or something like that; in a laboratory you stay the whole time . . ."

. . . as an object of investigation! The bitter thought ran through my brain and pictures started appearing in my mind; pictures I had separated from my memory so long ago. I just shook my head a bit and those pictures vanished again immediately.

"Did you remember something painful again?"

Phoenix looked down at me with true worry in her eyes and her voice was soft like velvet. Of course she saw that move I just did, but . . .

"Why do you think so?"

"Oh, uhm, . . . I remembered that move. Hawk had done it pretty often when we were roommates and those people brought her back to our room in the evening."

"'kay", I managed to say, but then I suddenly recognized something.

"How'd you get out of there?"

I had no clear idea for what Phoenix was made to stay at that Sleepy Hollow-thing, but at least I was pretty sure that they hadn't let her go some day making her an homeless orphan this way.

With that question I finally got an emotion appearing on Phoenix' face which fitted the situation much more, in my opinion, than that easy way of talking from before. She leaned back in the bathtub and sank a bit deeper into the warm water, lowering her gaze to her hand. Her fingernails suddenly seemed to become pretty interesting, but at least after a few seconds she began to talk again.

"I don't like the memory of that day", she started with a low voice, "it was the day when I got a chance to escape, sure, but the circumstances . . ."

"What circumstances, Phoenix?", I tried to make her telling me with a soft voice before several horror fantasies got a shape in my mind.

"It's not the way that I didn't like it there, but then one day I've heard them talking about me, ya know . . .", she absolutely ignored my question , "They said bad things that day and I wasn't supposed to hear those things, but it just happened that I did hear them."

It seemed that she had forgotten about my presence at all; she was just talking to herself in a way.

"That day a young man found my standing in one of the hallways; I had gotten lost which had also been the reason why I did hear those bad things about me. The man offered me to take me back to my room. While walking he recognized that I was upset and so he asked me why I'd be so upset, but I didn't want to tell him what had happened . . . he patted my head and embraced me and . . ."

It was obviously that Phoenix didn't want to go on telling her story, but I was pretty sure that this was the only moment the next time I could get known something about her past.

"What happened then, Phoenix?"

I spoke with a soft voice, the kind of voice I could always make Nue telling me what bothered him when he actually didn't want to talk about. My thoughts slightly drifted away to an evening last week when that stubborn little Thunder King –

"Rape."

"WHAT!!!"

My thoughts suddenly were cut off when Phoenix did spit out only one single word which explained everything containing that day. She had been raped that day from that damn bastard and I guess then she just ran away absolutely trrified and finally found herself in the streets of the town.

"I'm sorry!"

As reaction to my sudden outburst she sank even deeper into the water, her eyes closed as much as it was possible and obviously waiting for getting hurt or something like that. I got to my feest as fast as I could and wanted to get nearer to her without the intention of touching her because it could bring painful memories back once more, but then suddenly my mobile phone rang. For a single secomd I was truly surprised where the song came from all of a sudden, but then I got the situation.

"Uhm, I'm sorry . . . "

I recognized Simcas number on the display and remembered that she had told me that she wanted to call me for something important yesterday.

"I have to answer this . . . I'll be back in a minute."

With these words I stumbled out of the bathroom, closed the door behind me and went on the balcony of my appartment.

"Yeah, what is it?"

"Hey, Spitfire; it's me, Nue, I borrowed Simcas phone – is everything okay with you?"

The Thunder king sounded truly worried and also a bit surprised, but my thoughts were still working on what I just got known about that I couldn't change the sound of my voice, which just werea bit shocked and a bit unsure.

"Spit, did you cry?"

I took a deep breath but then I had to smile imagining the surprised face of Nue.

"Oh, shut up; just tell me what's the matter?"

My voice got back a bit of her normal strength and so Nue just seemed to be convinced by that that everything was fine.

Which wasn't the case at all, but I didn't fell like telling him about that on the phone.