Cross

03 | By God, Holmes

"Sometimes carrying the burden of an upsetting truth, and hiding it, is actually a gift you give to someone else. You bear that burden, so they don't have to, in a situation where telling them will change nothing." - Cassandra Clare

               Chapter Three

I had heard that once a person gets entangled with the black, wispy threads of Depression and enters a unique pit of hell, tailored specifically to that person's nightmares and fears, it was hard to take a step back and become like one's old self again. That saying was right, but a little understated. Not only was it damn right difficult to ever recover fully from those days and nights spent in an invisible hell, but also impossible to revert to the person you were before you lost your sanity. I was the living proof.

My father was the magical rope that had been thrown into my circle of hell and eliminating Opaque was the motivation I needed to climb out of the pitch darkness, but was I the same person I was, or would've been, a decade ago? No, no I was not.

I had been reborn, but the stains of Depression were not only difficult to remove, but also quite impossible. The worst part of it all - talking about it, like many therapists advise their patients, achieved absolutely nothing.

As Agent Beta stood beside me, with a hand on her hip, and asked, "What do you think?" I couldn't tell her about the tornado wreaking havoc in my mind. As far as she was concerned, my past was exactly that - past. She felt the need to warn me when graphic material was present and she worried about my mental health, nagging me to go to a licensed psychiatrist to evaluate my mind, but beyond that, she knew I was a nineteen year old woman now and I could handle myself.

How badly I wanted to tell her otherwise! I wanted to cry on her shoulder until my eyes ran dry and all I was capable of doing was heaving and shaking and trembling. I wanted her to comfort me until I felt my past, present, and future were all safe. I couldn't bring myself, however, to do so.

It would've achieved nothing; and, so I carried the burden of my past between my shoulder blades.

Before I could come up with a carefully worded answer to Agent Beta's question, the door opened and in entered a female agent that I had never seen before.

"Agent A. Agent Beta," she said, addressing us with the rigidness of a soldier in the army speaking to his superior.

"I'm Agent Maxwell - recently graduated from the Academy at Quantico."

"Welcome to the FBI Headquarters in NYC, Agent Maxwell," I said, my firm and controlled voice foreign to me.

"How do you like it here so far?" I asked.

She looked around the room and at us, at the grainy computer screen, and smiled.

"It's been great. It's only my first day, but I like it so far."

It was as if a barrier had been broken within her. The persona of a focused, in control agent split in half and from in between a young woman thrust into a new, unfamiliar place emerged. I wondered what her background story was; being an agent for almost 4 years had taught me that every single agent (and, presumably person) had a unique story to tell.

"Great to hear that," I said, beaming at her.

The tornado was still on its destructive path, but the entrance of Agent Maxwell - an agent who reminded me so much of myself when I had first arrived - had numbed me from its pain.

"Did you come here to chit-chat, or was there anything you needed from us?" Agent Beta asked.

Irritation was crystal clear in her voice and the general apathy present in her aura was so sharp that I had to turn to look at her and wonder if something had changed deep inside of her. This was not the Agent Beta I knew and remembered.