You've gotten this far, and now this is it?

It's been years since this updated, and now this is it? And if this is an update, why isn't it a new chapter?

Well, I have some news for you. I've been getting messages about this story to this day.

reeseremembers . tumblr .com might have some answers for you.

Chapter Twenty-Five: Truth about Lies

End of fear is where we begin

Small breaths blew on my cheek, warm, moist, and rhythmic. I felt it for the longest time before my senses even began to return. Brightness flew in through my lids and flooded my vision with red. It hurt too much to keep seeing that accursed color. In turn I forced my eyes open to be blinded by the white, and deafened by the cries of a baby angel.

"Brugger? Brugger! Brugger!"

Nevaeh my sister. Nevaeh my chrysanthemum. Nevaeh.

A chair was pushed aside in a hurry, accompanying a slightly strangled gasp. Disbelief filled her voice, and she found herself unable to say words. Instinctively I greedily drank her words in, as many of them as I could at a time.

"Ah…Ah, R-Reese! N-Nevaeh! Reese…! Reese…?"

Yumi, my companion. Yumi, my love. Yumi.

I felt tears appear under my eyes, and if I had the strength I would've burst. Nevaeh's face lit up with the strongest joy that I could comprehend, and the weight of her tiny hands on my shoulder intensified as she supported herself on them to see me better. Yumi started for a moment, as if to confront me and take Nevaeh off, but her smirk twisted painfully and she stepped back to allow peace between my sister and I. I watched her peripherally as she slinked backwards towards the door.

My mouth cracked open, forcing rusted vocal cords to work with my mind. I failed miserably at first, but as her hand graced the doorknob my desperation escalated to say my first words in forever.

"…Nno…,"

As pathetic and as soft as it sounded, the room fell stone silent. Nevaeh's eyes followed mine to stare at Yumi, who had frozen facing towards the door. Her hand gripped the knob fiercely, drawing her knuckles white. Nothing happened, so I spoke again.

"No…," grimace, "Don't…don't…" I swallowed, tried to continue, but couldn't find the strength. Yumi stood there, caught in between the decision to leave or stay. I shut my eyes in pain and swallowed again, a headache starting to butt its way through. The knob jiggled and my chest inwardly lurched.

Yumi's steps moved near me, and soon Nevaeh was lifted from me with her small protests. I cracked open my eyes again to a fading, blurry sight of Yumi's face with Nevaeh at her shoulder. Her shock was replaced with a distant regret as she stared at me.

"The nurse is coming," she explained, her voice twisted into mangled tones within my aching head, "we won't be able to stay."

Nevaeh waved a sad good-bye as Yumi turned to the door. Before she opened it she stopped and called back to me, sadly but with layers of hope.

"We'll come back."

By the time the nurse arrived I was all but passed out.

RISK-TAKER: It's annoying and frustrating

Oddly enough it saves lives

People came. People went. I was sleeping less and less as each day passed. The more they came the more I remembered. Tara, Aelita, Odd, Jeremy, Mrs. Periwinkle, Nevaeh, and Yumi frequented the most, though Tara didn't really show up as much. The only one who nearly beat Tara for infrequent visits was Yumi. The prize that goes to the most visits by a single person is…Jeremy.

Surprised? I was too at first…until he entered the room alone one day, a stern look on his face. His motions were stiff and business-like as he maneuvered the single chair in the room to sit next to my bed. It had been a week and a half since I first woke up—I had recovered quickly, and could sit up with the help of the hospital bed. There was always the dull pain of my arm and knee there, but otherwise I was healed enough for Jeremy to begin his visits.

"Reese…when you were to wake up I was going to converse with you about…sensitive subjects. I will be upfront, so don't be surprised if I go too far."

I blinked in response to him as he cleared his throat, scowling slightly while he avoided my gaze. Honestly he was confusing me by what he meant, shuffling the papers and files on his lap. I didn't have the faintest idea what he wanted to talk to me about unless it was about Aelita and that would be awkward.

Jeremy's aura told me that it wouldn't entirely have to do with the girl of his dreams. Nonetheless I waited patiently for Jeremy to tidy up and begin. After a deep, irked breath of preparation he took his glasses off, stared me straight in the eye and started the avalanche.

"I'm going to invade your mind now, but I was working when you were unconscious. Researching,"

"Researching…what?"

Jeremy let out a huffy breath as he stared at me.

"Your father: Lukas."

My muscles tensed, bringing newfound pain to my body. I didn't say anything in response to him save for a surly "oh." Jeremy expected as much, and let the silence slide for an agonizing long while before he explained why.

"On the factory roof you and your father shared words that…could only be heard by you two. Even the camera couldn't pick those words up. I can't emphasize how much I watched the recording over and I'm still confused by what happened. So in turn, I looked up Lukas's past to better deduce such reasons for harming mere children." Jeremy paused and leaned forward, narrowing his blue eyes, "Do you know what I found?"

I stared at him, slightly knowing what but only at the back of my head.

"I searched for Lukas Anders…and found nothing. No files, no names, no DNA records, nothing,"

Devoid of responses, I kept up my emotionless staring contest with him. He breathed loudly, his shoulders rising up and down with his excitement.

"The man with the closest profile to your father is a man with the name of Lukas Stern—ironically the dad of our late friend Ulrich. I wondered, Reese, what you had to do with each other, so I researched that as well,"

When Jeremy gets angry, his voice will escalate and get rough depending on how angry he was. However, if Jeremy was utterly furious beyond logic, his voice gets low, vicious, and scary. Jeremy leaned forward even further, his voice the lowest I had ever heard it in all the years I had known him.

"I searched for you, Anders, and guess what I found?"

For fear and knowledge, I still said nothing. Jeremy answered anyways as I expected.

"I. Found. Nothing."

Silence.

"Reese Anders, according to the city database, you. Don't. Exist."

What a coincidence—I haven't wanted to exist ever since I started lying about everything.

Jeremy huffed a few more breaths, the edges of them reaching the bridge of my nose. His cheeks blushed to a bright color of anger, and he sighed in irritation before gathering his papers and glasses and standing up. He didn't say another word as he slammed the door behind him, leaving me alone in the silence that followed for the rest of the day. I had that for a brief interlude until he reappeared the very next morning, papers in hand, flustered and a tad on the clumsy side. The irritation had left most of his features this time, even though what he was about to share with me was something he had known far before he ever started researching about my father.

After he sat down again with that same business-like attitude, he took in another deep breath of preparation before confronting me yet again.

"How much do you know about Lukas, Reese?" he asked, leaving the previous subject only half-buried. I sighed heavily, feeling the backs of my mended ribs against the soft mattress.

"I don't know," I replied, "Not much. I…I don't like him. Didn't like him."

"…Do you mind, Reese?" Jeremy asked. Stunned, I turned my full attention on him at the question. His eyes, which here highly irked yesterday now showed a certain level of sympathy and pity reserved for those without basic needs such as the hopelessly homeless. From anyone else I would've hated such a stare—but from Jeremy it meant something different. It meant…progress. Perhaps retribution. Another chance in friendship with my old, lost, friend.

After I got through the initial shock, I shook my head against my pillow to say that he could continue. Jeremy nodded to himself absent-mindedly and pulled out a file.

"Lukas, Reese, the one who you called your father…well, I'll just make a run-through I suppose…," Jeremy began, fixing his glasses back on his face, "whether he was your father or not…,

"I think, ah, the most important thing to cover would be that, well, he moved here from Germany to France because of his father abusing him and his family. The uh, neighbors apparently called on it and the mother took his family to France for relative's sake. You know, there's uh, statistics that uphold this lineage of abusiveness in families…mostly for the males too…," Jeremy shifted in his seat, slightly nervous.

"So it's not that surprising that he ended up…abusive too," he concluded, sifting through some papers and muttering some things under his breath.

Lineage of abusiveness. Lineage of abusiveness.

God.

This meant that I could end up…exactly, exactly like him. There were the signs, weren't there? The mood swings, the harsh anger…the slap, slapping Yumi in the face, my willingness to blindly harm my own father, the hatred I felt towards Lukas, William, and hell Sissy too I bet.

My vision started to get dangerously woozy, and I moaned distantly. Jeremy immediately stopped what he was doing, dropped his files to the side of the chair and stood up, calling my name I believe. I felt his hand at my shoulder, and to respond to him I swung my head limply and stared pathetically up at him.

"Reese are you okay? Can you hold on?!"

"mmfmwegghh…," I gurgle, unsure of how to answer that truthfully, "those statistics…that statistic…what did it say, what were the numbers…," I asked in a moan.

Jeremy refused to tell me, but kept talking to me as if it would bring me back out of this terrible state. Keeping a hand on my shoulder, the other hand reached above my head to push the nurse button.

Sloppily but surely I raised my better arm and slapped down on his outstretched hand just in time. I looked him determinedly in the eye as I lowered my voice to a weak but meaningful growl.

"The numbers, Jer…give me th' numbers…,"

Jeremy looked at me, looked at the nurse button, and bit his lower lip. After a while he sighed, and nodded, retreating his hand. The fierceness of my glare didn't simmer down until he had seated himself again, to which I let out a breath of exhaustion and somewhat relaxed again. Jeremy coughed uneasily before he opened up a file again and read straight from it.

"Er…sixty percent of males abused by their fathers go on to continue the abusive lineage after they themselves get married and/or have a relationship with someone. Th-Then…you know, forty percent don't. Y'know Reese that isn't a bad percentage, that really isn't—,"

I was really far gone by this time. Sixty percent. Sixty percent. More than half. My vision blacked out but I could still feel I was conscious—I heard Jeremy's voice asking again if I was alright and I heard him reach again for the call button.

"Fine," I interrupted him, "I'm fine Jeremy, fine."

Jeremy backed up, stared at me, and contemplated whether I was telling the truth or not. I wondered myself if I was telling the truth. He nodded after a while, though he was still worried. I watched his blurred shape shuffle more papers, and barely comprehended his last few words.

"Reese I'm not saying that it's gonna happen to you, alright? All I know is that he also went to a local college here where he met his future wife. After that…well I haven't looked after that,"

He muttered to himself once again as he slid the files into his arms and walked to the door. In the midst of turning the knob he paused for a moment, thought of something, then turned to me—a fiery sort of irritation back in his eyes.

"But if it does happen to you, I swear Aelita will never be yours."

The door shut with a final click—not as loud as yesterday's slam, but far more powerful.

Jeremy left me there lying in the bed, torn up inside from the information I had just learned.

Lineage of abusiveness.

Sixty percent.

SYNDICATED: Imperfectly being perfect at the same time

Being Aelita; in line but out of line with everyone else

Those two statements glued themselves into my brain, and I was unable to break free of them no matter how desperate I was to do so. Even if my greatest friends were present to take my mind off of this world I was still…lost, shall we say. Even when Nevaeh was there my eyes were distant from the thoughts of the distantly real nightmare that now plagued my head.

Lineage of abusiveness, sixty percent.

I imagined her beaten, bruised, crying. I imagined a shadow standing over her, a shadow that did nothing but resembled me.

Yumi, being a faded ghost in the corner, caught my scariest attention. I imagined her bloody, broken, laying at my feet.

Mrs. Periwinkle, twisted, mangled, unable to scream at the bottom of a stairs I was standing at the top of.

Aelita, laying there unconscious, abandoned, forgotten.

Odd, head twisted backwards, smiles and laughter gone from the pain I had caused.

Jeremy, glasses broken, contacts removed, eyes blinded.

Nothing that ever could happen would tear my mind away from the two accursed lines I practically made Jeremy spit out to me.

Lineage of abusiveness.

Sixty percent.

Out of everything that people told me, that people showed me, from newspaper articles with my face on the front page ("Unlikely Hero Saves Two Girls Selflessly") to the latest news from Lyoko secretly shipped to me via Aelita, only a few select things reached my ears.

Nevaeh had reached her birthday, and I had missed it.

I could walk without crutches in a few days, thanks to the healing done as I was laying in a coma and afterwards physical therapy.

And the talent show had decidedly been cancelled due to lack of entrants—replaced with a belated memorial service for the student that was Ulrich Stern.

Lineage of abusiveness.

Sixty percent.

PERPLEXION: It's a talent when you learn not to show it

Jeremy has learned how to do that over the years

The knee brace and the cast on my arm felt totally alien to me, but after a day's return to Kadic academy I soon got used to them. What I didn't get used to was the stares.

When I arrived back here as Reese Anders I got some stares, but nothing too overly drastic, and soon all stares at me vanished like I did into the walls. It was something I had slowly gotten used to in public too—the stares of fear, pity and interest is nothing new for someone with overly abundant scars. In an overview, I was used to it.

These stares didn't go away. These stares were not because of my scars or my foreboding aura. The stares I was getting now all revolved around the events that happened only two months ago. Saving Yumi and Nevaeh had inadvertently made me a heroic celebrity, and as I soon found out the school was doing everything it could to keep the nosy newscasters away from me. Emotions such as admiration, astonishment, confusion, and just blank wonder stares all now tickled the back of my neck every time I turned around. It bothered the hell out of me, but there was nothing I could ever do about it.

As I half-limped around campus for the next week or so I became closer and closer with my original friends more than I had ever dreamed I would be. It was a false dream come true. Though the connections helped along with personal therapy, there was always such an abundant emptiness when I was around them, especially when I had to be pushed away when they needed to talk about Lyoko. It was nothing for me but one bright, shining, blatant reminder:

They don't know me.

Aelita knew that time was running short, and she had more than once taken me aside to talk to me about when it was possibly going to happen that I was going to come out of my shell so to speak. For the longest time I didn't know, didn't want to know how, until the memorial service drew closer and closer, and suddenly I had an idea.

I shared it with her. She froze, then slowly nodded, slowly agreed, then quickly made arrangements for it to be so. Aelita told me afterwards that Mr. Delmas and Jim were to speak first before declaring open mike to all friends. My eyes lit up when I heard this. The entire school would be there for reasons the principal really only knows.

It was a one-shot chance only days away.

In between those days, I had come across an unexpected event while thinking one day alone in the park. I wasn't expecting anyone to even pass by accidentally I was in so deep.

A rustling in the bushes behind me proved me wrong.

Startled, I turned around almost too swiftly and nearly fell over—especially when I saw Yumi standing there, staring at me with a sort of soft, unknowable complexion.

I opened my mouth to speak, but she shushed me with her finger to her lips. Taking a few steps toward me she tipped her head downward as she began to speak.

"You know, Reese...I never came back. I should say I'm sorry. I-I am,"

Instinct told me to verbally brush off her needless apology but the quiet, unsure tone of her voice shut me up. I was curious as to what she was going to say and do. I would never expect anything like she did.

Yumi took another baby step forward, drawing in a shaky breath.

"Also, for saving my life...I never...said...,"

Yumi's breath stopped short, and she looked at me, eyes shiny with unshed tears. She shook her head as she stared at me and tipped her chin downward again. After a while I was finally about to reply when she shut her eyes tight in preparation and stood up on her toes, craning her neck forward.

Everything in my body absolutely froze as her small lips tenderly brushed the heart of my scar, where the skin was still red and healing. There was enough gentle pressure for a light sting of pain to accompany it, but it only made the sensation that more everlasting.

My jaw shuddered as she held her lips there, dropping slightly open from shock. Yumi murmured something incoherent as she slowly pulled away, brushing a lock of crimson hair behind her ear. She didn't make eye contact with me, nor did she say another word. All she did was give a low, neutral hum, then walked off into the woods.

Lukas took away my scar, and Yumi gave it back to me.

The memory stayed with me for the rest of the days until the memorial service.

The auditorium was too humid and dark to think calmly that night. I squirmed constantly in my seat, sweating as Mr. Delmas set up a photo projector-overhead next to the podium that the microphone was placed on. Mr. Delmas gave a long speech, a speech I don't remember anything of due to my nervousness.

Jim spoke. Some blither-blather that I couldn't understand but still knowing that he screwed up at some points of the story. At the end he coughed then awkwardly announced open mike.

I jumped up out of my seat, and rather quickly advanced to the stage stairs. Aelita had hidden herself off stage to what was going to be my right as I slowly ascended up to the stage. When my face hit the blazing, bright light, gasps and scowls of disbelief and disgust could be plainly heard from within the crowd. I did my best to ignore them and approached the podium.

The podium was fifty meters away even when I was standing right next to it. Sweat that shouldn't have been there dripped down my forehead, but I forced myself to ignore it. My heart pounded at a thousand miles an hour, hitting against my sternum so hard it hurt. I took in a deep breath. Took in another. Then looked out to the eyes of the crowd.

One more breath, then I began to speak.