Seth gasped, bolting upright in bed at the sound of the voice.
"Is that...?" he murmured.
"Seth, hurry up!" the voice came again. "Breakfast is getting cold."
"I’m coming!"
He looked at the mattress he was lying on, then his hand immediately went to his chest, running over the worn cotton t-shirt he wore.
He stood up and went to the mirror in the middle of the room.
’It really is.’
His face was soft, shoulders painfully narrow, and his tiny hands were completely unscarred.
The face staring back at him wasn’t the cursed face of Virgil.
It belonged to him, his real face, not Virgil’s, though much younger.
He pressed his small palm against his chest.
"I’m back?"
If it wasn’t for the lingering pain of Minervia’s curse in his chest, he would have believed that he was really back.
"No... I knocked on the door, and then I got here," he murmured. "So this is part of the trial? Or the second trial?"
A quiet, wet cough echoed down the narrow hallway, followed by the clinking of a dead radiator.
"Seth?"
"Ah, I’m coming."
He dragged his feet into the narrow hallway. It smelled of cheap plaster and the chemical stench of rot, exactly the way he remembered.
He rounded the corner into the kitchen and froze.
His mother sat slumped sideways at the peeling table.
She didn’t acknowledge his presence, her head hung heavy against her collarbone in a rhythmic nod, her eyes half-lidded and staring blankly at nothing.
Scattered across the table were three empty pill bottles smearing a bump of white powder.
Her breathing was wheezy.
’She’s exactly the same as I remember.’
Standing beside her was Maya.
At fourteen, her only concern was supposed to be about school grades.
Instead, she was taking care of her mother who could no longer perform basic tasks thanks to her addiction. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
She braced her mother’s slumping shoulder to keep her up, and wiped a string of drool from her mother’s chin.
"Lean back, Mom," Maya whispered. "Just stay up until I get Seth fed. Please."
Their mother mumbled an unintelligible string of words, her arm twitched uselessly before dropping dead onto her lap.
Maya forced her face into a composed mask and turned towards the stove.
She picked up a cracked bowl filled with watery oats, carrying it over and setting it down in front of his empty chair.
"I know I promised we’d eat some meat today... but the debt collectors came this morning."
Her hand trembled slightly as she wiped down the counter.
"Mom signed another extension last week when her head wasn’t clear."
He stared at the gray, watery sludge. He looked up at his mother’s slumped form.
His throat tightened.
He remembered that moment from his memories.
The men had come earlier, he watched his sister confront them, then watched as they extorted her and took all the money they had.
He was too scared to do anything.
A tear unknowingly slipped from his eye.
"Oh, Seth... hey, don’t cry," she whispered, dropping the rag and rushing to his side, wrapping her arms around his shoulder and pulling him into her embrace. "It’s okay. It’s not your fault."
He stood in her arms, unsure of how to feel.
"...Okay."
He forced out after finally being let go.
Seth sat down on the cold metal chair, picking up the cheap plastic spoon and forcing himself to swallow the watery oats.
Every bite tasted like damp ash, but he ate it without complaint because Maya was watching him, her soft smile silently begging him to be okay.
’Since this is really a part of the trial, that must mean everything is a manifestation of my memory.’
He could barely remember this day. He had lived through both his life as Seth and his life as Virgil. There wasn’t anything special about this particular day, it was just an ordinary day in the earlier period of his life.
He had no idea why the trial would send him here, unless it particularly wanted him to relive this moment.
As soon as his bowl was empty, Maya’s smile dropped.
She didn’t take a single moment of rest.
She rinsed his plate in the sink, the icy water turning her knuckles red, and immediately began preparing for her night shift at the industrial laundry.
She sat by the front door, tearing strips of old newspaper and stuffing them into the worn-through soles of her sneakers.
To finish, she pulled a scarf around her neck.
"Lock the deadbolt when you leave, okay?"
She paused, her gaze flickering to her mother.
"I’ll be back soon. I love you, Seth."
He watched as she stepped out into the freezing cold, the heavy metal door clicking shut behind her, leaving him entirely alone in the suffocating quiet.
The silence was almost immediately broken by the wheezing of his mother’s breathing.
He turned slowly, his eyes locking onto the slumped, pathetic figure.
He walked towards her, not stopping until he stood right beside her chair.
Her head just kept bobbing in that slow, rhythmic nod, completely dead to the world.
She was oblivious to the freezing room, oblivious to the debt collectors, and utterly blind to the daughter who was out there destroying herself to keep them alive.
The helplessness he had felt before as a child melted away, replaced by a boiling rage of the adult mind trapped inside him.
His voice dropped into a whisper.
"Why don’t you just die?"
His mother mumbled something senseless, a fresh string of drool connecting her chin to her collar.
"Just go die somewhere else," he hissed, his face twisting with pure disgust. "Walk out and don’t come back. You already ruined our lives. You don’t need to live with us."
He picked up one of the empty pill bottles off the table, his arms trembling.
"None of this would have happened if you had never gotten on it. But here we are, thanks to you. Do you feel proud of yourself?"
She didn’t open her eyes, cry out or argue.
She didn’t even blink. Her chest just let out another hollow wheeze.
"Useless."
He turned and walked away.
But slowly, from beneath her half-lidded eye, a single tear leaked out, tracking a wet line on her cheek before dropping onto her shirt.
Seth turned back toward her one last time, his eyes catching the wet streak on her cheek.
He stared at her for a moment.
Then he walked away.
[A/N: Got sick}