Broken Family Tree

4 - Communicating

A half-hour had passed when their argument about their interests in music, and why they qualified as "music", ended in a draw.

Both of them had stayed true to their tastes, neither of them backing down from their arguments. Other things were discovered in-between, too: during the entire discussion, it wasn't hard to figure out that Thomas was never taught what each instrument was, or much of anything. While Malia explained the symphony of songs according to their instruments, Thomas tried to explain the sounds by comparing them to animals—and even then he didn't actually know the names of the animals. Even with this limitation, he managed to get his point across throughout the entire argument, an impressive feat in of itself. He clearly wasn't educated, but he found ways to persevere to make up for it, and that left quite the impression on Malia. On the other hand, Corinne clearly hadn't cared about teaching him, probably keeping him ignorant so that he'd be the perfect...what? Helper? Slave? Punching bag? All of the above? Malia didn't know how to approach the subject of his home life. The accidental meeting and the recent discussion gave her a more-than-good-enough picture, but she wanted to know the full story.

"Thomas..." she started slowly, "what was Corinne like?"

That immediately dampened Thomas' previously relaxed mood. His body became very tense, his posture practically screaming anger, fear and discomfort. His eyes filled with a darkness that, had Malia seen it without taking her eyes off the road, would have sent her sliding down the seat in shame and guilt. He answered nonetheless, but his voice was hollow.

"She was evil." He stated plainly. Malia held back a scoff, worried that she would accidently confuse Thomas with the action. She was fairly certain that he didn't know a lot, if anything, about socializing and recognizing social expressions. So she kept quiet as she let him talk.

"She was 'Hell on Earth.' She started training me when I was four, feeding me small doses of Wolfsbane to imitate a temporary loss of power, the same as hers. When I'd fail an exercise, she'd punish me. When I disobeyed, she'd punish me. When I didn't finish a task on time, she'd punish me. And 'cause of the Wolfsbane in my body, the wounds never healed right. She did that for a long time, but always made sure to help with my wounds enough to keep me breathing. To her, if I was breathing and standing, that was good enough. I'd usually hunt my own food 'cause she would only get food for herself, so I was outside a lot. It's actually why I'm so good with my wolf—I depended on it to survive, so my body and my senses became strong. Strong enough to help me catch food quickly, at least. Besides, it became the only friend I had, and you have to know your friends to call them that, right? I heard that a long time ago—I can't remember when, though..."

Malia didn't know what to say to that. It was...disturbing, for lack of a better word. Heartbreaking, even. No—heart-wrenching. Poisoning your own child to have the advantage during a training because you were weak was sickening. Barbaric. Inhumane. And apparently, she demanded a lot from him, resulting in him being abused for the majority of his life, going outside to hunt for his own food. She had the odd feeling that he wasn't saying everything, even if what he was saying was enough. It was similar to what happened to Malia, but only barely—she was out in the wild because she felt guilty for killing her family, and forced herself to survive; he was out there because he had no other choice if he wanted to live another day. The thing that bothered her, though, was that she couldn't smell any whiff of Wolfsbane in his scent or any hint of being sick from the alleged poisoning. Seventeen years of constant Wolfsbane-poisoning was a long time, bound to leave severe health problems. She made her thoughts known to him:

"If that's true, then how come I can't smell any Wolfsbane on you? If you really were poisoned since you were a child, then you'd be pretty weak, wouldn't you? That's a total of seventeen years of being exposed to that poison—and yet you don't look or smell sick, and you seem physically fine." You sped through the woods with no problem too, and healed yourself while in your wolf form...you're pretty damn strong, if you ask me. She kept that thought to herself.

"Malia, do you know that were-creatures can hide their scent?" Thomas asked, not sarcastically.

"Yeah, I know that." Malia replied.

"After you confused me for Dad—for Peter—could you smell my scent again? Can you smell it now?" he asked. Confused, she sniffed the air. 

He was right: she couldn't smell any Wolfsbane or any indication of sickness on him because she couldn't smell any of him now, except for the animal blood and filth stuck on his hair and body. That would mean that he hid his scent as soon as he changed to a person, not that she was paying much attention after she mistook his scent for Peter's, despite the strange rotting smell she had picked up.

"And besides, I—I don't want you to smell it; it's a pretty bad smell. If I stopped hiding it, I'm sure you'd throw up."

"So you are sick?" Malia asked, wanting to confirm her previous inquiries.

"Yes. Have been for a long time now." He confirmed. He didn't sound sad about it, instead he sounded resigned, having long accepted the fact. "But I didn't want to die, so I asked the animals if they knew any helpful food that would help me, and they showed me many medicine plants that helped me. If it weren't for them, I'd be food for coyotes right now. In return, I didn't eat them or their babies, and I protected them from other predators that would come into the woods. No human goes in there anymore because of that, and the animals're thriving much better now because of it... The plants in the bag are actually the same ones they showed me." He finished saying, tapping the leather bag at his feet. 

They both fell into a contemplative silence, each in their own world, one thinking of everything they had divulged to the essentially-stranger and one thinking of everything the other had divulged. It was a lot to process for the two of them, both the mortifying history and the easiness of communicating it to the other. The latter especially surprised them, Malia thinking he wouldn't be so willing to speak about something so clearly traumatizing. 

Maybe the music discussion did more than I thought. 

They both had the same thought. 

Their silent thinking went on for another hour. Cars continued to whizz past, the sound of their engines filling the otherwise heavy silence within the car. Finally when Malia felt she had had enough time to process everything, she asked her last doubt that she just couldn't register to be true:

"Is Corinne really dead?" she asked softly. Thomas turned away from the window to look at Malia, Malia side-glancing at him. 

"She will never try to kill you again or try to hurt me again. I promise you that."

He said this with such surety and conviction that it sent a not-so-pleasant chill down her spine and she finally believed it. She focused entirely on the road now, Thomas going back to staring out the window, the silence descending on them once more, but not before Malia whispered something to herself, summarizing how the two siblings felt about that reality:

"Thank God." 

She didn't expect him to answer back:

"Indeed."