S2/04. Old habits die hard

4.10 Frank Cage
Summer 1998, a retirement home, San Myshuno

Annette was sitting in a chair facing the window when Frank entered her room.
"What do you want from me?" She asked. Her voice was sopping with bitterness.
Frank didn't know what else he could've expected. Certainly not the big reconciliation Leroy'd promised him.

"She's our mother, for fucks sake!" his younger brother had insisted, "Don't you think it's about time to finally make up with her? I'm sure she regrets that she couldn't have treated us better when we were kids. She is different now."

As if it was even possible that Annette Cage was capable of feeling anything but hate and anger.

Still, his brother's persistence wore him down eventually; and today might be the last chance he'd get to visit her. Who knew if Frank would even return from his mission. The chance was slim, but not to be ruled out. Or if she would still be there.

She'd have him and then Leroy very late, closing towards forty. A last, desperate attempt to make a living – and by that, meaning to keep a man who'd make her living – when the last spark of hope of becoming a glamourous showgirl died amid too many wrinkles, saggy eyebags and puffy cheeks caused by too much liquor and God knows what other substances.

In any case, he could say he'd at least tried.

Annette slowly turned around and looked at him. Anger deformed her once pleasant face. "As soon as you left the city, you forgot about me!" she cried out. "You let me rot in this dirt hole! Your own mother!"

Frank looked around. The nursery home was anything but luxury, but it was clean and its inhabitants well taken care of. Better than he'd expected from a state institution. Not that he'd cared much. After all she'd done, she could've rot in the streets, for all he cared for, but Leroy thought different.

"You weren't really much of a mother to us," Frank said, deflated.
What a waste of time. He'd better skipped this visit and spent it with Linda instead.

"You!" She shot, full of venom. "How dare you! Do you know how hard it was for me, all alone with the two brats of you?! You, specifically, with your big mouth, always talking back! You only caused me trouble!"

Frank had a hard time calling hiding quietly in a corner and hoping to not to be found by their completely sloshed, raging mother ‘causing trouble'. He snorted. Just before he turned around to leave, she started to whimper.
Her eyes shot around, a desperate smile on her face. "But not Leroy, my sweet, sweet boy! Where is he? Where is he, Frank?!" Her voice grew louder and sharper. "Did you keep him from coming here? Are you riling him up against me?!"
It reached a shrill, ringing pitch.



Pathetic, Frank thought. Sad, and pathetic, how she sat there, so old, almost senile, and still full of so much hate and bitterness.

She shook her head again. "You're just the same as your father," she spat. "Always have your nose up in the sky, as if you're something better than everyone else, just because you got a diploma, huh?"

That was unexpected.
His mother must've been more confused than he'd thought already.
Although –

"Jerry didn't had a diploma," he corrected her, but he was all ears.

She instantly stopped her ranting, and a nasty gleam glistened into her eyes.
She cackled, first inaudible, than getting louder and louder.
"Jerry? Jerry?!" She guffawed, "No, no, no, he was just another a piece of shit but he knew he belonged into the gutter; just like us!"

"Who else are you talking about, then?" Frank asked, his heart in his mouth.

"About your father, that cheatin', lyin'- " here she stopped abruptly and became quiet. Carefully, she examined her son.

Frank withstood her staring, doing his best to keep unfazed. If she'd just get the hint of an idea that it might matter to him –

He'd fucked up, somewhere.

That woman still could read his mind, just like when he'd been a child.

Annette's mouth corners crept up into a sly smirk, her eyes sparking with gleeful spite. "Wouldn't you like to know who he was, huh?" She snickered, and it was so obvious how much she indulged in the little power she had over him. "I'm not telling you!"



"Whatever," he mumbled, then turned around and left.

Maybe it didn't matter, after all.  

"You'll never know!" Annette cackled behind him.

She'd said already enough.
Frank didn't really care who was his father.
Why would he, after all, it was just another asshole who'd abandoned his kids.
The only thing that mattered was who was not his father.

Suddenly, so many things made sense.

When Jerry had left them and Leroy couldn't stop crying for his daddy until one day Annette snapped at her son. "He's not even your daddy, you useless brat! Just another shit piece of man that made me false promises!" By a hand's breath, Frank'd succeeded to protect his brother, catching the full share of their mother's hate and disgust she'd put into her fist instead.

When they'd met Jerry again, raising his daughter Diana alone, and times and times over again insisting he wasn't the boys' father.
Something Frank had taken very badly then.

When the brothers found out later that the box for the father's name in their birth certificates was blank.

Leroy's and Frank's father, and Diana's father weren't the same.
Leroy and Frank, and Diana weren't related.



Frank sat down on a bench in the hallway.
He had to gather himself.
The only thought swirling in his head was that Diana wasn't his sister.

Diana wasn't his sister.

Suddenly, everything they'd had, had changed.

She'd always been the most important person in the world for him, she and Leroy, who came only a close, but undeniable second, but that was because Diana was the youngest one, and more vulnerable, so much more vulnerable.
At least that's what he thought.
But now, all the things he felt and did for her; fight or die, hell- he'd kill for her if he had to; he couldn't explain it away with her being his sister any more.

She wasn't.

However, this new revelation didn't erase how he felt about her.
On the contrary.
It was more as if it'd tore down something, something that in hindsight seemed to be rather an obstacle than a connecting thread between them. And it let a tiny stream of a faint, brand new feeling seep in.

It frightened him.



Fuck.