Golden Ink

The Society for the Betterment of Humanity

||Content warrning|| This section contains semi-graphic descriptions of torture (broken ribs/bones) and allusions to sexual assault

"Where are you going Kaori?" Viola demands.

I rise up and begin to walk away. "I'm going to... to get revenge, to make this right."

Viola scoffs and reaches for me but I shirk her hand off my shoulder. "You don't even know who did this!"

I spit a gob of metallic saliva out of my mouth. "I'm going to find out who did it. You should stay here. Father might be alive, you need to find him."

Viola just stands there, fists clenched. "And what if he's dead? What then, Kaori?"

Viola looks at me bitterly "If that's the case, I leave you the honor of ruling his domain." I say coldly

She scoffs and looks around. "You've left me the honor of ruling a creator" she spreads her arms out in a sardonic gesture. "Your pathetic Kaori. You always run from everything. Well you can't run from this anymore. Actually I guess you can, it's gone now!"

I feel my face flushes and I can feel tears spring to my eyes. "I don't know what you're talking about!"

She scoffs yet again. "You just left me, you just turned coat and left."

"I had to! He was going to kill me!" Father was a complicated man, but I'm not stupid.

Viola's voice cracks. "Well what about me? You just left me to deal with him. You abandoned me. Do you know what it was like?"

When she was little, Viola was forced to fight in an arena. Then she came here, then I did. We were happy for a little bit. Then I got older. Father decided we should learn to fight, practicing against each other. Viola was good at it, but she had bad dreams. And I had the reflexes and magic of a God. I became Father's favorite.

"Was it like before?" I ask.

Viola lets out a heart wrenching yell of anger as she kicks a falling apart chair away. "Don't you dare ask that! You left, you don't get to be the bigger person now. You abandoned me! You promised me we wouldn't ever be apart," I can see the tears forming. She may be older, but age never really mattered. We Protect each other. That was it.

"You promised. And then you left. And you never looked back." She breaks down, ending on her knees, a sad, pathetic, sobbing thing of a girl.

I want to protest. I want to yell that I did. I want to orate every time I wanted to come back. But I know it won't do anything. It doesn't matter that I wanted to come back, because I didn't. "Fight me now!" She screams through her tears. "Fight me now and prove me wrong. Just one blow, one blow and this will all be over!"

I look at her and then at the carnage around us. On the spot where the steps used to be all I can see is Caitlin's crumpled body. It's long buried by now but the image is burned into my mind. Then I look at my knife again. I catch my gaze on the blade.

I stagger backward. I do what I've always done and run. I run away from my sister and away from our past. Away from everything, as if it will make everything go away. "You're leaving me with nothing!" She yells. "I'm all alone now. You're really gonna leave me like this?" But I can't turn back no matter how much I want to. "You're a coward."

All that's racing through my head is one memory.

Father just got mad. I cried when he told me I was leaving. I liked the house staff there, some of them had kids that I was friends with.