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You couldn’t have imagined something like this, when you’d sworn yourself to him, when you’d promised all of him to you. He’d come into your life when you’d needed him most, this not-so-strange stranger, and he’d given you exactly what you’d been too scared to seize for yourself: a determination, an understanding of your faults, and the way that those faults could make you better, stronger.
Muscle tears under strain. Muscle knits itself back together with practice.
You come to associate the iron tang of blood, the metallic taste of rust in the back of your throat with his presence. He looks at you as though you are everything that is good in the world. He looks at you as though you are everything he holds disdain for. Perhaps both things are true, and perhaps neither. You do not trust your instincts to make sense of it. You trust him to make these calculations for you.
Your consent leaps to your lips before he even asks the question in full, and the way that his eyes flash, lightless and dark under his hood, the same shade as the blood drying in the beds of your nails, you can tell that he had merely expected acquiescence , not an eager agreement. You’ve been with him long enough to understand the downturn of the corners of his mouth, the way he looks through you instead of at you, like you might be something that he made up, that he is considering unmaking.
There’s a long silence. A warning. You are no stranger to pain, and you understand the risks. Giving your life for a cause like this seems like petty change, if it means that there’s even the smallest possibility that his work can continue through you, when he is gone. You will gladly do it. You would do it twice, if it would make his pride in you swell warm enough.
When it happens, it is just you and him, in the warehouse, the place that you’ve grown to call home. Your bed is made snap-sheet prim, and you lay on your back, eyes fixed on the fluorescent bulb above you. It flickers, randomly, rhythmically. You feel entranced. You can feel your heart beating in your chest. You can feel the blood pumping in your ears. You make peace with the fact that, on the other end of this, you will no longer feel such things, and you will live long enough for even the memories of them to become faded, to feel false.
It hurts more than anything you’ve ever felt. It is pain like you’ve never known, and you’ve known plenty. The venom licks wildfire flame up from your wrist to your chest, and from your chest, everywhere else. Your brain succumbs to it, and your consciousness wavers in and out. Time becomes lost to you. You lose minutes, hours, days, laying on your back on this mattress, but you are aware of every spring digging into the curve of your spine. Distantly, you perceive something that sounds like an animal whimpering, far off and shivery. You don’t have the strength to be embarrassed when you realize that the sounds are coming from your own throat.
He stays with you the entire time. He sponges sweat off of your forehead. He brushes back the tangled mess your hair has become in your thrashing. You hear him whisper, when you are able to focus long enough to listen, telling you that he has great plans for you, that you are the best he could have asked for, that you sit at the helm of plans that will extend through decades.
You fight.
After days, you win.
Your eyes snap open, and you grind your teeth at the sudden shock of light. You can smell the dank air of your alcove like you’ve never been able to before. From out of sight, you hear the whisper of linen brushing against linen. When he appears, you’ve already pushed yourself up, and your head is in your hands as you succumb to the knee-jerk, very human urge to weep. Your shoulders shake, and you bray and you squall. No tears come.
He pushes something into your hands, and when you look up at him, you see that his eyes have gone carmine. You tip the glass to your lips, and gulp the contents of it down. It’s easy work after the first swallow; you are suddenly a woman parched. You feel as though you’ve not had anything to drink in your entire life, and once you reach the end of the glass, you jam your fingers into it to hastily wipe the sides. They come out sticky and red, and you shove them into your mouth, lick them clean.
He watches like one might watch a beloved pet.
He takes the glass from you, and from inside of his robe, he produces a mirror. A small thing, gilded on the back. You look at him, and then hold it at your sightline to look at yourself. Your skin is smooth, like you might have been molded from porcelain, all signs of the vices of your past life gone. In your expression you can see a change, and from this side of the mirror, it looks like relief. Never before have you felt so cared for as you do now, seeing yourself, the self that he has molded you into, looking back at you.
Your irises are scarlet. The urge to sob returns when you realize that you’ll never have to look at your face and see your father’s eyes staring back at you ever again.
You want to thank him. You want to fall to your knees and press your nose to the cement and tell him how grateful you are that he’s chosen you, how thankful you are that he’s remade you not once, but twice.
He places his hand on your shoulder, and gives you a smile.
“Come, Amanda,” he says, and his tone tells you that he already knows. “We’ve got work to do.”