illicit | five hargreeves - EDITING

twenty one

chapter twenty one: flashback in a film reel

The Commission was a strange place.

It was big, cold, scary and Anthony never liked it one bit. The actual building was huge and had a weird sort of eerie vibe in it. The people in there were even scarier; they were so disassociated from the real world, and so desensitized to the violence of the work they were doing. In the Commission, no one even batted an eye at the constant planned assassinations and torturing; it was just so normal and apart of their everyday life.

No one ever questioned why? or how? And a lot of them didn't even remember how they had ended up at the company. No one knew how anyone got there,
because they didn't care enough to learn about each other's past lives. Everyone was just silently mourning their past self, the person that they had to leave at the doorway the second they stepped foot in the building and signed the fucking contract that bind them to the company for decades to come.

No one ever really made it out of the Commission.

Even those who could stick the twenty year contract, most either went mad or slipped into a state of crippling depression. But it was mostly the agents that were affected the worst. Because there's only so much killing and violence one can handle before they eventually break down entirely, and it happened to a new person at the company every week; and as sad as it sounds, Anthony was just counting down the days until it would happen to his husband, and it was almost inevitable.

Anthony hated the Commission. Not only for what they did to him, the literal torture of his body and mind, but also what they had done to his Five. Because he wasn't a killer, and he never had been one. But they had made him one, and he just did what he had to do in order to survive, and get back to his family.

It had only been a mere couple of days, five to be exact, since Anthony had broken his contract with the Commission. It hadn't even been a week since he had left the retched place, and it shouldn't have been such a shock to his system to be back there. It did feel as if he had been gone for weeks, and that just made coming back so much harder.

He didn't want to be there. Would who did? No one ever willingly wanted to be at the Commission, because it was a sad and depressing place; it was a place where only the most desperate and lost people went to find some sort of place of belonging. But no one else there held the memories that Anthony did.

When he first arrived, he had been mostly fine. Sure, he fucking hated the Handler and that was a problem on it's own, but other than that he was able to keep himself calm and under some sort of control.
He had walked with Number Five to the office where he had gotten his first assignment, and then Five left the room.

Anthony had been doing his work, and that's when the office intercom went off. It always started with its usual tune, a sort of dinging sound that was unique to it, and as soon as he heard that, he immediately just froze.

He felt his hand clench around the pen he was holding and his heart started beating even faster than before. He had fully expected to hear the announcement be something along the lines of "Anthony Baudelaire to the front office' or even worse 'Anthony Baudelaire to Doctor Smith's office'

He had left the room, and Anthony now sat on the ground in one of the bathroom stalls, his knees pulled his his chest and his head leaning against them. His hands were in fists in his hair, almost tugging at it lightly. One of his hands stung terribly and was dripping blood, but he had no recollection of how that had even happened.

No. No. No.

He trembled as he unintentionally made himself as small as he possibly could. His eyes were filled with tears and the stained marks were evident on his cheeks. He didn't look up, because he couldn't even imagine what he would see if he did, because he really had no idea where he even was or how he had gotten there.