Work Text:
My name is Hanna Heller.
It feels good to be able to say that, to not have to hide behind the identity that my father so relentlessly, ruthlessly drove into my head until I could recite it backwards and forwards, standing on my head -- and yes, he made me do it that way -- or even in my sleep, though thankfully I never did that. Could have been disastrous, that.
I say relentless and ruthless, but the truth of it is, my father was a good man.
He was not truly my father, I know this, but he raised me. He took care of me. Yes, he used me as an instrument of revenge, but I cannot say that were I in his shoes I would not do the same thing. He did what he thought was right; I cannot fault him for that.
All right, I could. Many girls my age hate their fathers for things they've done to them, but I'm not exactly a normal teenage girl. I wasn't normal even from the moment of my conception, truth be told.
It feels good to be able to say that, too. I know that I cannot do something as foolish as go around telling everybody I meet that I am genetically engineered to suppress my emotions and other such things -- for one, nobody would believe me; for another, it would draw too much attention to me -- but even I do not like hiding it now that I know it.
I will hide it, because I understand the necessity, but I do not necessarily like it. I do not have to like it, though. I just have to do it. While I may feel a certain curiosity as to what would happen were I not to hide it, I am hardly foolish enough to follow down that path.
Some might be confused as to how I can still have strong feelings, given what I am, but my answer is that what I am allows me to suppress my emotions more easily, to compartmentalize more easily. It doesn't take away my emotions.
I think my father would be interested to see me now, to see how recent events have colored my view of things and how my abilities helped me take on those recent events.
No, not "recent events". Since these words will never see the light of day, even I know that I can write it out.
I think he would be interested to see how my abilities helped me kill her. Truth be told, so would I -- experiencing things is entirely different from looking back on things, after all, and looking back on things isn't something I'm exactly good with. But I'm trying, simply because these words will never see the light of day. Nobody else will ever see my awkward, fumbling attempts to put words to feelings I do not completely understand.
All I know is that regret is not one of those feelings. Confusion, yes. Compassion, maybe. Not for her, but for my father. But regret? No, never regret. What happened, all of it, needed to happen for things to play out as they did.
Do I wish that things had been different? Not exactly. I sometimes think about what it might have been like to grow up in a normal family, doing normal things and living a normal life. I wonder what kind of girl I might have grown up to be in that kind of environment. But do I wish that things had been different?
No. Because that would be rather pointless. The past is the past, the present is the present, and my future is whatever I wish it to be. A rather intimidating concept, to be sure. My future is mine to shape, to create, to decide. For someone such as I, who had no say in anything, this could be almost heady if I let it be.
Thinking about the past overmuch is useless and futile, because you cannot plan for the past and I was taught to plan for everything. I can plan for the future no matter what, but planning for the past? Such a thing does not exist. How could it? How could you possibly plan for something that is completely and utterly behind you?
The answer is that you cannot. You can only look ahead, look to the future, look ahead and plan for every twist and turn and eventuality and only then will you be truly prepared to face the world in front of you.
This is something that my father taught me when he drilled my identity so utterly and relentlessly into me. He was making sure that I would be able to handle anything that came my way. He did this so that I could accomplish my goal, yes, that I could take that woman out, but I like to think that he was trying to prepare me, in his own way, for life in general. If you can be prepared, you can be all right.
I should destroy this paper, eliminate these words so that it is as though they never existed, but I think I will not. I will keep this piece of paper, these words, keep them close to my heart. It is perhaps a stupid, foolish, sentimental -- and maybe even dangerous -- thing to do, but I am a teenage girl. I am not a typical one, true, but I am a teenage girl and like many my age, I will rebel.
Not often.
Just once.
I will not destroy these words. But, if necessary, I will destroy whoever might read them. Destruction is what I was created for, by virtue of how I was raised. And yet, perhaps keeping these words on paper can be viewed as an act of creation, in a way. Or perhaps that is overly sentimental. I do not know.
What I do know is that my name is Hanna Heller and I will not destroy these words.