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The medics were busy tending to his father who was lying there nearly unconscious with shock, and Anthony slipped away unnoticed.
He felt nothing. He tried to summon the pain, and couldn't. Recalling some stupid advice he'd once heard, he tried to imagine what his life would be ten years from now, when he was over this, and couldn't. The numbness was vast as the ocean.
Just the other day, he'd been thinking about the outcome of the concert, the possible success and the further career. He'd been passionate about singing just a few hours ago. Now? He wouldn't feel a thing if he got told he'd just lost his voice forever.
Hell, he would be fine not uttering a word ever again, either. It would be so calm. Never to be asked if he's alright because he wouldn't answer. My sister just got shot in front of me, and bled out in my father's arms. I'm great, thanks for asking.
Vague thoughts bumped into each other in the white noise that filled his mind. He would have liked to talk to one of his uncles about what had just happened; they had seen death and suffering, they’d had to say goodbye to people who had been supposed to stay forever, and while he wasn’t sure advice could help, mere understanding would have been a gift.
But he had no uncles left, thanks to his father. Not even Tom Hagen, the adopted side of the family, supposedly free of the Corleone name and the curse that came with it, was around anymore. Remembering that was another straw in the load Anthony was already carrying; not that it made him feel worse compared to five minutes ago, but he genuinely didn’t know if he could take this much longer.
Talking to his parents was out of the question. His mother was probably half-dead with grief, and his father— Well, he didn’t want to talk to his father ever again. This was his fault, just like when Uncle Fredo had died. Anthony didn’t need proof, didn’t want to listen to objections; trusting the gut feeling he had about his family affairs every now and then was what had kept him sane throughout the years. He knew he was right. His father’s business had killed Mary just as surely as if Michael had pulled the trigger himself. There was no talking to him after that.
To think that this man had accused his mother of murder after she’d aborted a child she didn’t want. Michael had never been religious; his reasons for saying that had been completely selfish. Even though, in all honesty, a man like him should have never had children to begin with. Tonight, the count had gone down once again, as if once again proving the point—
Anthony blinked, realising the sight before his eyes was familiar. His feet had brought him—well, not home (he wasn’t sure there was a place in the whole world he could call that) but to the small house he occupied. He came in, his limbs continuing to work with very little input from his brain, and knew at some point that he’d left the phone off the hook and that the water was running in the bathroom, filling the tub.
The water was too hot. Not that Anthony cared. Should he fall asleep like this, he hoped he would drown and never face the light of day again; he was just too tired to carry on after everything that was wrong with his life had come back to him.
He’d clawed his way out of the mafia’s hold but remained his father’s son, and he was very, very afraid he would be made to take Mary’s place in the business despite his attempts to distance himself from the whole dirty affair. A half-baked lawyer could still be exploited. Anthony knew himself, and had no illusions about his character. One stern look, and his will would shatter.
Cousin Andy Hagen got the right idea. Turn to God and pray your father’s sins away; what could be easier? Priests were as useless to the family enterprise as could be.
There were many, many reasons he didn’t want to talk to his father ever again. He’d rather die. Anthony lay his head back and remembered, with a weird sense of yearning, all the times he could have died as a child. An unlucky dive here, an attempt on his life there; so many chances that would have led to him not being there now, not having to withstand the growing pressure inside his skull. The white noise was deafening at this point.
He didn’t want to open his eyes. Part of him was adamant the water had turned into blood. He’d had the nightmare before—not about himself; learning of Uncle Fredo’s death had been a greater blow than he’d ever admitted out loud, and he would often wake up crying and shaking, knowing that Lake Tahoe was a pool of red now that his uncle’s blood had stained it.
The first plague of Egypt, sent to teach a lesson to a ruler who thought he could challenge God. But a hardened heart had refused to listen, and here they were now, with another loss in the family after a row of many more. If that wasn’t a sign, he didn’t know what was.
He was left his father’s only child, the first son, the inevitable successor of a man who shouldn’t have had children to begin with, whose first one had died unborn. Anthony envied the nameless baby with every fiber of his being.
He became aware his eyes were open, staring into the blankness. His hand reached out and took something, and he didn’t want to know what it was.
If he died, everything would become so simple. His father would run out of children to order around, and his mother would still have the son she had with her new husband, whose existence was close to an unmentionable secret in the Corleone house. There were really no downsides.
The only question was how. Back in the day, the only way his mother could push back against his father’s all-encompassing, suffocating control was by aborting her child. Murder, Michael had labelled it.
Maybe he would say the same if his son—
Something slipped out of Anthony’s fingers and fell into the water, inviting him to pay attention. He’d taken apart a razor and dropped one of the parts; the blade was easily accessible now, ready to be used for whatever he might want to do with it.
He wanted to chuckle when he realised what he’d been thinking about all evening. The chuckle came out unrecognisable; not that he cared.
All he could think of was, the idea promised rest, and it was an offer he really couldn’t refuse.
The last plague: the death of the firstborn sons. Every generation of the family had that, starting with his grandfather or even before that; it was his turn, and Anthony felt vindicated by the mere idea. Nothing could be simpler than fulfilling his destiny, than finding a long, pale blue line of a vein on the inside of his forearm and drawing a red one over it.
Compared to the void in his chest, it hardly hurt.
A small sound fell from his lips, maybe a panicked gasp as he saw his prophetic nightmare come true and red swirls stained the water around him, maybe a laugh of relief now that he knew he was doing the right thing for once. Singing was a choice he’d made after many sessions of soul-searching; he’d wanted to be an artist, and maybe he was finally becoming one as he drew more thin red lines that grew and changed before his eyes. Or maybe it was his body’s faint protest as nausea filled him and his vision dimmed a little, his eyes unfocusing before he could once again see the red water in full clarity.
It wasn’t too hot anymore; he was starting to feel chilly. A shiver went through him, and with it came the memory of the last time he’d actually felt alive. The last time he’d seen Uncle Fredo smiling at him. It had been a cold, pearly grey morning, before the sunrise, and the sun never rose again since then.
Anthony didn’t know how he’d made it this far, and the relief of not having to do that anymore was immense, nausea or not. Drop by drop, the noise in his head was gone, as was the void and the pain and all the worry he’d carried around for way too long.
The only thought left in him was, and he felt the words form on his pale, shaking, smiling lips even though he doubted he could say them out loud at this point,
I should have done this sooner.