Chapter 306: I want to break free 3
FIA
I found myself staring up at the high window again, at the thick dark pressed against the glass like it had weight, like it could leak inside if it wanted to. It showed nothing back. No sky, no stars, no sense of ti. Just absence.
When I lowered my gaze, it landed on the woman across from , and the way she held herself made sothing inside
hollow out. She looked present and gone at the sa ti, like a shell that had learned how to breathe.
That was when I noticed her hands.
The marks were faint but impossible to miss once I saw them. Lines and shadows that did not belong to ordinary work or age. They sat against her skin like mories that refused to fade, and the thought that followed made my stomach twist before I could stop it.
I turned toward the younger version of my mother. I never spoke the question out loud, yet the words hung between us anyway, heavy and obvious. She watched
for a mont, and I felt the answer coming before she opened her mouth.
"It’s a choice she told
she regrets," she said quietly. "No matter how much she didn’t want to live anymore."
The room felt smaller after that. The air did not move.
"She stayed," I said, the words leaving
before I had ti to soften them. "Even when she could have gone. She stayed because of you."
Silence stretched out, long enough that it started to feel like part of the room itself.
"She was afraid of what they would do to ," my mother finally said. "If she ran and they needed to punish soone for it."
My chest ached.
"Every ti she got close to that point again," my mother continued, "I was what stopped her. She would get to the edge of it and then think of
and co back. But I think even that is getting hard for her. I have never known the outside world. Aside from words she has told , I don’t know what I am missing. But she has. She knows what she lost."
The woman sat so still it almost felt wrong to call it sitting. More like she had been placed there and forgotten. I moved toward her without thinking it through, the urge sudden and sharp, like if I did not reach her now she might drift sowhere I could not follow.
I lifted my hand.
For a second I thought I would touch her shoulder. That I would feel skin, warmth, sothing real and solid. Instead my palm t resistance that was not resistance at all. It felt like pressing against the surface of water before it breaks, that strange trembling barrier that holds for half a breath before giving way. My hand stopped there, hovering, shaking, the air thick and wrong between us.
Pain flared in my chest so fast it stole the rest of my breath.
"You cannot despair now," I said, the words cracking as they ca out. "It gets better. She escapes. Your daughter escapes. Muna escapes."
Saying it hurt. It hurt like forcing light into a place that had learned to live without it.
Athena did not move. Neither did she sense .
Mother didn’t escape with anyone. So that would have ant that Athena did but survive here enough to escape.
I turned to look at my mother in the doorway. Young and thin and standing with her shoulders slightly curved inward, a habit that had beco posture that had beco the shape of a body learning to take up less space.
"When did you know about her hurting herself?" I asked. If I was here now, could I change sothing? "When did you know that was what was happening?"
"Not until later. When I was a bit older." She said as she looked at Athena. "But knowing changes nothing."
The admission was quiet. There was no bla in it. Just the truth of two people who had loved each other inside a cage and made their peace with the shape of the walls.
I turned back to Athena.
I reached out once more. Even harder might I add.
My fingers stopped just short of her arm. The mbrane humd between us, thin as breath.
"She really can’t feel ," I said, though my hand stayed where it was, hovering in that thin space that felt like the surface of sothing unseen.
"Not directly." My mother paused before continuing, like she was choosing each word with care. "But she has. Before. In the sa way she felt . The way you’ve been here before without knowing it."
I did not pull my hand back. I could not. It felt wrong to give up the space, even if nothing in it would ever push back.
"I’ve been coming here," I said slowly, the realization forming as I spoke it aloud. "Since when?"
"I wouldn’t know. But yes."
I turned toward her. "And you knew. You recognized ."
"Every ti." Her voice softened even more. "You never stayed long. But you always ca when it was worst. When she... or even
beca close to the edge. You would arrive and sothing would shift and we would..." She hesitated, searching. "Hold on."
Sothing in my chest tightened until it felt too big for my ribs. Too heavy to sit quietly inside
the way it had before.
Had I been saving them? Was that what this was? Even if I never chose it, even if I never understood it, so part of
had been finding its way back through years that should have been unreachable. Back to a woman I had never known and another I knew too well, as if there had always been a thread pulling
toward them because leaving them at the bottom of whatever this place was had never been an option.
Before I was born, I had been finding my way back here.
The idea pressed in from every side, too wide and too deep to take in all at once, so I didn’t try. I let myself hold only the smallest piece of it and hoped that would be enough for now.
"What do you an when you say break the cycle?" I asked. "You asked
that when I arrived."
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