I do know is you are not alone. We will find a way.”
Lexia sucked in a breath, her lungs burning in protest. “Where do I even start?” she asked sadly.
Derrick clenched his jaw, forced his urge to comfort her away and spoke firmly. “First you are going to go clean yourself up, and pull yourself together. Wear your mask, Lexia, play your mother’s game, and when she grows complacent, you’ll find her weakness.”
“Walk with me,” she asked unexpectedly, dragging him toward the fence.
“We’ll be seen,” Derrick replied, planting his feet.
“I don’t care.”
Reluctantly, he went, following her as she jogged up the hill, asking her already exhausted body for more. Climbing the tree wasn’t an easy task for Derrick, but with a bit of guidance and a pull, she had him up beside her.
“Do you believe in God?” Lexia asked, glancing at him briefly, smiling at the death grip he had on the branch.
“No, and if he does exist, he’s not been very helpful,” he answered, looking straight ahead, as if a single movement would cause him to fall.
“My dad didn’t. He believed in science, in the things he could see and touch. I’ve heard God forgives all. Do you think he’d forgive me? Do I even deserve to be forgiven?”
“It doesn’t matter who forgives you, Lex, if you can’t forgive yourself,” he answered sadly.
Lexia struggled to breathe past the lump in her throat. She wrangled with her guilt daily. Sometimes living through it seemed an impossible task. “I’m not sure I can,” she whispered, resting her head on Derrick’s shoulder.
“Whoa, Lexia,” Derrick gasped, digging his fingers deeper into the tree’s bark. “I’ll fall.”
Laughing gently, Lexia rested her hand over his. “No you won’t. I wouldn’t let you.”
For a while, they sat silent, watching the day pass by. As the minutes ticked on, Lexia patched up her fractured soul, pulling herself together to survive another day.
“I can see why you love it up here,” Derrick said quietly, risking a quick glance at Lexia who was still propped against his shoulder.
“Up here, I can almost believe I’m still just me…almost.”
“What was it like?”
Her brow furrowed. “What was what like?” she questioned, sitting up to look at him.
He paused for a second and thought over how to phrase his next words. “Sometimes it was like you were two people. It was as if I could see the war inside of you. Not many would have noticed, for they have no concept of guilt and indecision.”
Looking at the vast forest, Lexia felt suddenly small and insignificant. She would rather not draw on her feelings of the past, but it was Derrick, and he deserved an answer. “It…it was, yes, like I was two people within one body, at war. Since my powers awoke, I always felt as if I had this darkness inside of me; this force slowly trying to claw its way into my every cell. But in the end, I let it win. I allowed Maura to fully take over, to become what she was.”
“To save Lincoln. Lucy would never have stopped until you’d given in.”
Lexia closed her eyes for a while, feeling tired. With shadows under her eyes, she looked far older than her twenty years. When she spoke next, her eyes stay closed, tightly squeezed together as if the horror of her next words were just too much to bear. She spoke quietly at first; a bare whisper until her words were forced from her mouth; until she fully admitted the truth.
“At first, yes, I stood looking at that funeral and saw no other way out without blood being spilt. I didn’t think of the innocent blood I would spill. I only thought of him. No, that’s not true. I knew what I’d release on the world if I gave in, but…but I didn’t care, not enough to take a different path. In that moment, all that mattered was him, not my recruits, not you. No one mattered. No one has really mattered since I met him…Lincoln.” She took a deep breath, revealing her deepest sin. “I…I’m not a good person. I’m just as bad as my mother.”
“That’s not true,” Derrick said sharply.
“Do you not see?” she answered urgently, needing him to understand. “I may have let Maura win to save Lincoln, but later, later it was easier to be Maura, to hide within her twisted mind and not deal with what I’ve done.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I am fractured, broken, dark and light. It hurts less to be only dark, to