PR15M: The Price of Freedom (Ice)

PR15M: The Price of Freedom

By Ice

It should have been a relief, the burden of ten years, at last, lifted from my shoulders. It was, instead, a nightmare. 

My days were filled with relentless questions alongside the equally relentless probing and examination by the medical staff. Despite the tight security, cameras frequently flashed from unexpected corners and doorways and nothing, nowhere, seemed safe.  Instead of the freedom I'd prayed and fought for, I'd somehow returned to the captivity I'd left behind and I had no idea how to voice my anxiety or my fears, and Taehyun's absence became an ever greater chasm in my heart.

If it wasn't enough that my days offered no relief, my nights were little better, a muddled confusion drifting between dream and reality, nightmare and peace. It was in the night that Taehyun would return to me, holding me close, his body pressed reassuringly to mine; his scent, his touch, his warmth, his whisper in my ear. 

And then I would wake to find Taehyun gone, my agony renewed until it would register that it was Ink who held me close and it was Ink who comforted me in the darkness.

I drifted into a guilt-plagued limbo, teetering on the edge of a chasm at the bottom of which lay oblivion. For all that I had spent ten years dreaming of home, here I was, supposedly free and home had yet to eventuate. The only face I had thus recognized was Ink's and, after I had apparently had a visit from my father, to which visit I had failed to respond, I had heard the doctors murmuring about post-traumatic stress and various other things which might require long-term confinement and treatment. Everybody talked at me and everybody wanted answers and yet nobody really seemed to be listening.

I wanted silence. I wanted peace. I wanted home. And I withdrew ever deeper into darkness wishing the noise would end.

Rationally or irrationally, (probably the latter but I was too lost in misery to judge accurately), my return without Taehyun had not brought closure or relief but instead only further grief and confusion. I began to wish, for everybody else's sake as much as for my own, that my chance encounter with Inki had never happened and that I had continued on alone until my death. I should have died with Taehyun, I told myself. I should have stayed with him till the end.

Of Taehyun's family, there had also been no hint or word and I wondered if they also held me accountable for his absence, only adding to my own personal burden of guilt and grief. I was the one to blame. It was all on me because I was the one here... and Taehyun was not.

By the end of the first week, I was contemplating what my options might be if I escaped my hospital confinement to return to the streets of Morocco, my brain fried and my nerves shattered.

Ink understood. I could see it in his eyes and sense it in the way he curled his body around mine in the night. It was in the way he said nothing when I woke thinking he was Taehyun. And it was in the way he heard my ever more profound silence, his expression mirroring the pain I felt in every nerve and fiber of my being. Ink understood far more than I had intended to tell and I was torn between even greater guilt and, at the same time, a sense of unexpected relief. 

Ten days after my collapse on the rooftop, Ink was able to give me the news I think I most wanted to hear. 

"We're going home," he said. "We're getting you out of here and we're going home."

I stared at him, the question in my eyes because I was unable to get it out of my mouth. 

He smiled and nodded. "Yes, the same one, Ai Xia. Nothing's changed. It's still the same as it was the day . . . " He choked and looked away and I caught the tears glistening in his eyes. He blinked and turned back with a smile. "It hasn't changed a bit."

I looked down at my hands knotting in my lap. Another question burned in my brain. Another I couldn't voice. The tip of Ink's tongue flickered across his lips. Nervous. I stared at it, fascinated, half knowing what was to come.

"They moved away," he said. "They sold up, changed their names, and moved away. I don't know where although I'm sure Dad and Hae-jin do. They gave up and got angry at us for not giving up, too. They said we were only causing more pain by not letting go, that there was a time to give up and move on." Ink took a deep breath and looked away, a tremor running down his jaw, the strain obvious. "They held a memorial service for him, Ice," he said. "To them, he, both of you, were already . . ." Again, he couldn't finish the sentence. 

"When?" I managed to whisper, the word shards of broken glass in my throat. "When did they hold the service?"

Ink swallowed. Hard. It hurt him and if it hurt him, it was going to kill me. "On his fifteenth birthday," he said. "Just after mine, ours. They didn't invite me and I had to get Casper to find out the details so I could sneak in.  I promised him, Ice, I promised him I'd find you both. I . . . " he choked, and once again blinked back tears, "didn't believe it. I didn't believe either of you were . . . " 

He couldn't finish the sentence but, if he hadn't believed then, I knew he believed now. He knew. They all knew. Taehyun wasn't coming home. Did they all also believe it was my fault?

Ink's words had gut-punched me. On his fifteenth birthday. They'd held a service saying farewell to him on his birthday and, shortly after that, he had died. Had they tempted Fate? Did I believe in such things? Did it in any way alleviate my guilt? I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure of anything anymore. Throwing my arms around Ink, I burst into tears. 

I'd cried previously. In fact, it felt to me that I found reason to cry most days, much to my shame. This was different. This was a flood. A deluge. I sobbed. My chest ached and my eyes burned and my nose ran. My breath came in great heaving gulps and cramps caught in my ribs and across my shoulders. My head ached and my stomach churned. I was ready to go over the edge and never return. 

Ink's grip on me merely tightened. Vaguely, I heard him demanding people leave the room and leave us the hell alone, and I was infinitely grateful to him. This wasn't me. This wasn't the survivor of the better part of nine years of captivity, several of them as a cage-fighter, or the survivor of nearly a year on the run. This wasn't me holding it together. This was me shattering into a thousand pieces and beyond the capacity to even wonder if I could ever be whole again.

I don't recall stopping. I don't recall the tears drying up. The last thing I recall was my face pressed into Ink's neck, my tears soaking his shirt, his arms tight around me, and his voice a soothing murmur, on and on and on, "It's okay, you're okay.  I've got you now. You've got me. It's okay."

I woke propped against Ink's shoulder, his arm around my waist and his cheek resting on top of my head. Without opening my eyes, I knew we were in flight, the steady throb of the aircraft's engines a familiar enough sensation. Master had had a private jet.  My stomach lifted with butterflies that had nothing to do with turbulence. We were going home. At last.

Careful not to move too abruptly, conscious of Ink's steady breathing, indicating he was asleep, I reached a hand up to the pendant at my neck. I could only assume Taehyun's dizi was with the luggage somewhere but the pendant was sufficient to link me to his presence. "We're going home," I whispered to him in my thoughts. "You'll always be with me, Tae, and we're going home."

A single stray tear hovered at the edge of an eye and I blinked it free to permit it to roll down my cheek.  No more tears, I promised myself. I was going home and I refused to face the world waiting for me with anything less than the courage Taehyun and I had always shared together. For Taehyun, for Ink, for my parents, and, eventually, for my revenge, my tears were done.

I'd once heard it said that the best revenge was to live life well. To me, that wasn't going to be enough. Not nearly enough. My life, Taehyun's life, the lives of those we had left behind, had been irrevocably changed by what had happened to us and the price of freedom had been Taehyun's life. I was owed and I intended to exact back the price I had paid.