Morix: Web of Mistrust

Turnabout Masquerade, Part 20

November 23

Courtroom No. 6

3:00 PM

Yuri Rinko

I looked up to Detective Umber and Prosecutor Umber before letting out a sigh. Should I have even called by them those titles? After all, they were my siblings, so it would have made more sense for me to just refer to them by their names, right?

Abilene looked down to me with wide eyes, almost as if she was on the verge of tears. "I'm sorry about all of this," she murmured. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen. You shouldn't have been put in this position in the first place. Our father... I wish that he didn't treat you like that. He was wrong to act as if he had full control over your life, and I know that I should have done something more to make that clear to you."

"I understand," I commented. I looked up to meet her eyes with a gentle smile. "You know... I wouldn't be entirely opposed to inviting you to join me and my mother in our bonding nights from here on out. After all, you two have lost your mother now too, and with our father going off to prison for a really long time... I guess that this is all that we can really do, huh?"

"Are you sure about that?" Abilene questioned, her eyes wide even still. "I don't think that this is a good idea. I mean, don't get me wrong, I do want to be part of your family dynamic, but it feels almost invasive for me to want that in the first place. Everything at the agency was messed up because of us. You deserve better than to have to put up with the drama that comes with all of this stuff..."

"You didn't know that you were being used. Our father probably made himself sound reasonable the whole way through... He really did think that he was doing the right thing, but... I can't forgive him for it. Not now, and probably not ever. He's hurt the people that I care about the most, and I can't let him just get away with that after all this time," I said.

"We understand," Anthony chimed in after his prolonged silence. "You have every right to decide to act how you so please. After all, you and the other members of the agency have been the ones most impacted by our actions. I wish that I had been able to know that it would end this way though... The attack was not something that we were aware of. We had started to question his actions a few months ago, but Abilene was the one who started openly showing it. I didn't want him to figure out that we were having doubts."

"He went behind your backs because he's an awful person for this," I declared firmly. "That much I'm not going to change my stance on. If he really wanted to get to know me after all this time, then he should have reached out like a normal person, you know? That would have made things much easier for everyone. I said that it would have been possible for him to do something even if he was in danger. After all, he was able to connect with you two, right?"

"That's true," Abilene said with a nod of confirmation. "I guess he was scared of connecting with you or something. I know that's a weird thing to say, but... He seemed to think that this was the better choice all along. He didn't want to believe that it would be possible to just reach out to you and talk like the blood relatives that you are."

"I sincerely believe that while he thought it was the right thing to do at the time, he was acting selfishly," I said with a frown. "I'm not going to change my stance on that either. He's just going to have to deal with that. He was never around when we were growing up, and he doesn't have a right to just stroll right into our lives like he's entitled to everything that he missed out on. He should have tried to be there when we were growing up, but he only showed up when it was convenient for him... He might have thought of it as love, but that doesn't fit in my definition at all. He made his choice, and that's fine with me. It doesn't impact the way that I live my life at all. He's the past, and we're the future."