Nisa Vural.

There was no reason to be at the property line, staring at her parents’ home, but Bea found herself there nevertheless. It was as if someone had placed a magnet in her navel, drawing her with such intensity she couldn’t deviate from the path until she reached this line. The knife had been made, beautifully crafted and the last part of her quest for revenge seemed done. Yet, she didn’t feel finished. Her mother didn’t know it was finished and Bea hated stories that were never completed. She stepped through the line, knowing her parents would feel her there, just as she could feel those who came to her home. She leaned against their porch railing, a carefully constructed mask of calm over her as she waited. There was no need for her to knock, they would come soon enough. She had agonized over how she would look when she came here, her appearance would tell as much of a story as her words did. Wearing the white pantsuit had been an obvious choice, a reflection of her mother’s own fashion choices at her daughter’s age. Bare neck, scar on display had been a difficult decision, but one Bea made nonetheless. Let them see what had been done to her and let them understand that she was not ashamed of it. A symbol of power. Or at least, Bea was determined to make it one. As the door swung open, Bea didn’t move from her place, ankles crossed as she leaned. She wouldn’t have her mother see her as anything but in control here. “I believe it’s time for us to have a discussion in person,” She told her mother nodding to the seats on the porch. She wouldn’t be going into the home, that was giving her mother far too much control.

Somehow it was Nisa’s eldest daughter that was the last to return home. Even a pseudo-daughter in the form of Leah had come back before Beatrice had, demanding to know if Nisa had even cared that her daughter had died. That the other two had undergone more pain than the average person could imagine. And of course she cared. What kind of mother’s heart didn’t break to learn that she’s lost a daughter? That the girls she’d brought into this world to protect were facing all the hardships she’d never wanted them to find? It wasn’t so simple, but her daughters didn’t want to listen. It wasn’t surprising when it came to Nell. The youngest Vural had never wanted to listen. But Luce had always been eager to please, and Beatrice had been the most ready and obedient of them all, a star that shined so brightly it had given Nisa hope. But she supposed Beatrice had been the one with the most to lose, so it made sense that she would be the last to return. 

But Beatrice hadn’t come here to listen. That much was obvious in her choice of clothes, stance, and words. Nisa couldn’t help the sad smile that spread over her lips as she made the connection, already recognizing herself in her eldest daughter. Everything carefully chosen down to the way she wore her scar like armor, just as Nisa would have done. “Sure, sweetie,” she began as easily as any other day, though she couldn’t even remember the details of the last civil conversation her and Beatrice had. “What exactly did you want to discuss?” She’d let Beatrice think she was in control for now— no doubt that was the best way to find out why her daughter had come.

Nisa Vural was a dangerous woman and Bea was aware that as good as she was at control, her mother was better. She had taught her daughter some of the tricks of the trade but kept enough hidden to always keep the upper hand. The one thing Bea had in her corner was the fact that her mother had not seen her in months, she did not know her as well as she once did. The things that she could use to get under her skin were dull now from lack of use. Though, the eldest daughter knew that she couldn’t discount her mother’s ways. This was a battle and they both knew it. They both had weapons to wield and hurt. 

She pulled out the knife slowly, obvious to make sure her mother knew it wasn’t a threat. “I’m sure you’ve heard from the girls, but it’s done. The Hunter is dead,” She offered the knife to her mother to look at. There was no need for her mother to be told, to be given this closure, she didn’t deserve it, but Bea did. This chapter would be done after this. “I took a part of him like he took a part of me,” She smiled, pride clear on her face. 

A knife wasn’t what Nisa had expected. She recognized the non-threat, but it was still a surprise to watch the blade unfold from Beatrice’s hand. Reflexively she reached out to take it into her own hand, recognizing the bone of a man. This was the man who was responsible for her daughter’s death? A flame of vengeance ignited in her chest, pleased to know that Beatrice was no longer in danger from the man who’d stolen her life. But these movements didn't entirely match with the Beatrice she’d known. Nell had always been the one taking too much interest in the athames placed across the household altar, and Luce had her swords. Beatrice had always simply been flame, though she supposed killing the man who’d murdered her was simply another form of that fire. It was another thing entirely to learn that your daughters had killed. She knew Nell fancied herself some form of hunter, but Nisa had been kept on that outskirts of that, kept in the shadows for the better part of the last decade when it came to her youngest. There was something different about having physical proof lying in her hand. She was proud to know her daughter had solved the problem, ensuring that she would never be victim to the man again. And yet… “I never wanted this for you. To have to make these choices.”

Bea exhaled slowly through her nose, tears pricked at her eyes, but she would not let them fall here. She would not let her mother see how her words could still affect her. It was a good thing that they had taught her a poker face early in life. “I know you didn’t,” Nisa’s love for Bea was well known, it had been so great that her sisters had been left behind to fend for themselves. “But they were made.” Her rib cage felt cracked, broken and exposed to the world as though they could all feel the raw sorrow that these two women held for each other. “And you still made your own choices, ones we never would have made in your place.” That was the linchpin in all this, wasn’t it? All the horror that they had faced, accented with the betrayal from their mother. Bea, the most like her mother, could never see herself making these decisions as easily. She could not understand the disconnect, but perhaps her mother could explain some of the questions that had been rattling through her daughters for the last year.

There was the blame her other daughters had been so eager to thrust onto Nisa, unable to understand the choices she’d made when it came to the coven and their exile. “I know you wouldn’t have. I’m sure you know by now both your sisters have talked to me. Or yelled at me. Sometimes both.” It wasn’t pity she was looking for, but what Beatrice wanted was the truth. “Even Leah joined in, but I’m sure you already know that, as well.” Beatrice had always had Nisa’s gift to make friends in good places, to find those that were willing to go the extra miles she might need. “I can tell you what I told them, but I doubt you’ll like it anymore than they did.” Her conversation with Nell had been a disaster, with Luce not going much better. Leah had been the most productive, but that made sense considering her greater distance from the situation. Perhaps she could learn from the other talks with her daughters to make this one a success. “We can sit, gözümün nuru,” she told her daughter, heading towards the bench Beatrice had indicated when she’d arrived. 

“I was told,” Bea replied simply. She knew her sisters had spoken to their mother, she knew Leah had. She knew that her corner was stacked full of people who tried to handle this battle for her and for that she was blessed, but as much as this was her sisters’ fight too, Bea needed to handle their mother on her own. She needed to look into the mirror, she needed to see how who she had so desperately become was as flawed as them all. And she needed to see if they could mend any of the cracks they had both left. “I imagine you’ve had time to find a way to phrase your words in a less catastrophic way,” Bea quirked an eyebrow at her as she sat. “But why don’t you tell me your side and then I can respond. If we do it any other way, I think we’ll both be interrupting to defend ourselves.” Until this year, her mother had little faults in her eyes and now Bea could not remember something about her without it being tarnished. Was that the downfall of growth? Realizing the people that you had loved were more or less just as human and broken as you were? 

Beatrice’s fire had burned the brightest of her daughters, but the eldest had always been the most put together whether that was of Beatrice’s own design or Nisa’s, the one most in control of her flames. Even now it showed in the words she spoke, the careful choices she was making, and yet again the matriarch was reminded of their similarities. Somehow Beatrice was even closer to Nisa in these moments, finally taking the time to speak her own mind instead of giving her mother the words she thought Nisa wanted to hear. “Well I’ve always told you practice makes perfect.” Nisa had been a taskmaster of a mother, but she’d thought Beatrice had thrived under it. Handing the knife back to her daughter, she sat alongside the other woman on the bench, carefully gathering her words and thoughts until she decided on a path. “Did Lucinda mention your Uncle Tahir to you? I know I’ve talked about him less over the years, but maybe it’s time for you to know more.” She’d always been vague in the telling of her brother's death, worried that the details might push her daughters into a need for revenge, or frighten them into standing still. And she wanted her daughters to be scared of the world, but only in a sense of appropriate self-preservation. “You know I was pregnant with you when he was murdered?”

Her mother, her carefully put together and controlled mother, had had her brother. Bea had known this, been aware of how similar their stories had started and how differently they had ended. Tragedy in this family was a shared trauma, each colored similarly to another’s, but this was far too close and Bea had never thought of how her mother must have wondered what if after she heard the news of how far they had gone for Bea. “No, she didn’t. We didn’t go into details of how your conversation went.” That was too raw, too dangerous to dive into with each other. “I remember you telling me that, yes.” Her fingers held tightly to the knife, knowing the closure that she held as a lifeline was something that the woman next to her would never get. 

Nisa nodded along with her daughter's confirmation, watching Beatrice’s knuckles clench around her knife. “He was young with two children of his own on the way though he didn’t know it at the time- your cousins.” But he’d seen fit to sacrifice his own future for that of his sister’s and her unborn child. “He loved you even though he hadn’t met you yet, and I don’t think I could blame him.” He’d loved Nisa, too. “He died to buy us time- to make sure you and I could get away from Miriam while she was hunting us. I never wanted him to have died in vain.” She’d had the usual protectiveness of a mother, but also had the weight of her brother’s sacrifice hanging over her shoulder, trying to make sure that she and her daughters lived the safest of lives so that his death hadn’t been useless. “He’d died for you. For me, and for me to make sure you were protected. And to find out that you’d died despite all that-” Her shoulders were still perfectly straight, face carefully composed just as it always was when she spoke. “-I could only think of one way to make sure something like it never happened again. To take away one of the most important things in your lives’- your family. Surely it was a big enough consequence to have you and your sisters finally learn your lessons? To teach you to actually take care of yourselves and each other?” Of course there had also been the matter of the family’s pride, and the pressure of the coven, but she was certain Beatrice already knew those reasons.

Bea couldn’t help the tension that entered her shoulders when her mother mentioned her cousins, another part of her family unable to contact her. They had been close once upon a time and now she was treated like a stranger. Her lips pressed, unable to keep the disappointment from her face. “I’d like to think Uncle Tahir would understand better than anyone else why I dived in front of my baby sister. And I’d like to think that he wouldn’t think those actions should be punished.” She wished she could speak to him, he would understand her better than all the others did. She shook her head, “And you didn’t think we needed our family? Luce and Nell have always felt second best to me, they have always felt abandoned by you and you proved them right.” Her mouth felt dry, “What we did was taking care of each other. Those girls risked their lives for me, they went beyond what others would do for their family. How can you punish that? Would you have punished him for it?” She smoothed out her face and looked at her mother head-on, “You abandoned us, showed us that no one will be there for us if we need it. You put us in insurmountable danger by making us this vulnerable. You swept away our support system, our fallback for a lesson. What if the Hunter had come back for us? We would have no coven to help us, no mother or father to fight with us. Our cousins turn their backs to us and if we needed them you have made them decide to either let us suffer alone or face the consequences we do. You put us in more danger.”

“I’m not condemning you for wanting to protect your sister, Beatrice,” Nisa clarified. Perhaps she’d been unclear. “I’m saying that I wish Penelope would have taken my warnings to heart- that she would have learned the value of her life, and how fragile it really is, and all this could have been avoided in the first place. I’m not punishing the fact that you and your sisters were there for each other when you needed one another.” Her daughters had taken care of one another, but it had only been after the most dire of consequences. “It shouldn’t take the death of a sister to remind you all that you can do more than bring one another back to life. That sisters and brothers aren’t just meant for emergencies.” She’d seen the ways her girls had drifted with Lucinda distancing herself, and Penelope treating Beatrice more and more like she treated Nisa. As for her dedication to Beatrice, and Lucinda’s and Penelope’s feelings of being ignored...she supposed she could recognize that she’d been acutely focused on her eldest child. And yet… “You know Penelope shut me out as well. Once she decided to hate me there was no going back for her. But if they’d like to talk to me about such things, they know where I am.” Nisa was past the point of pretending that the coven rules would keep her from conversing with her daughters if they were careful.

“I ‘abandoned’ you, and how has it gone for your sisters and yourself? Are you still only actually talking to each other when one of you dies?” Nisa’s methods hadn’t been kind, but if they’d worked that was what mattered in the end. If they brought a stronger bond to her daughters that couldn’t be broken...they’d hopefully never have to worry about a hunter ever again. They’d solve the problem between the three of them before it got to the point of death. As for the hunter coming back… “I would have known if the three of you were actually still in danger. You think that just because you were exiled, I stopped watching? Leah has to have told you about the times I asked after you three as well as your other friends. I wasn’t foolish enough to think she wasn’t reporting back to you.” But her argument wasn’t air-tight, and she knew it. Still she couldn’t bring herself to admit that she’d been wrong. 

“Use the names we prefer,” Bea reminded Nisa, politely. Beatrice and Penelope didn’t bother the sisters, she knew that, but Lucinda did and it coming from Nisa would be far more painful than coming from her sisters. “I am aware that we aren’t meant for emergencies. I am aware of how my sisters treated me, but I am also so keenly aware of how I treated them. I treated them like they were burdens, people for me to mother and care for even if they didn’t want that. I would push someone away for that. Luce was right to push me away for that.” Bea had good intentions with her sisters, but that did not mean that she had always done the right things when it came to them. She had been so much like their mother that she had even thought of herself as separate from them, sisters but with hierarchy, and always Bea at the top. She might not have realized it at the time, but she had let her mother’s treatment of her sisters change everything in that family. She let out a soft breath, “Nell is not some coworker of yours that is acting childish. She was your kid, you were the adult in the situation, you can not blame her for looking at how you treated her and deciding to protect herself from your disappointment. Yes, of course, it is hard when a child is shutting you out, but she was a child. Everything there, in that power dynamic, leans toward you being the one in control. You can’t blame her solely for this.”

It was so incredibly like her mother to somehow twist this entire situation into being a good thing that she had done that Bea wasn’t surprised. “You did not lead to me and my sisters getting closer. Listen to me very closely, you did not do that. Your actions did not do that.” Hearing her own voice, Bea thought of the amount of times she heard this tone from the other woman. Every practice, every performance, every critique was done in this tone. “We understood what we had lost the moment I was gone. You taking something else from us did not teach us that we needed each other. We learnt together without you. We grew together without you. You do not get to take credit for the work those girls put into themselves and this.” She had pictured herself getting angry when speaking to Nisa and yet she was calm, standing within the eye of the storm. She controlled her emotions here, her mother would not break her. “Relying on my friend to tell you if we were in danger is a lame excuse for what a mother should be doing, Nisa.”

“If they’d like me to use different names, they can ask me.” Nisa replied sagely, not particularly wanting to fight this battle, but providing something of a compromise. Lucinda was the one who’d always objected to her name the most, and Nisa supposed she was grown enough to choose her own name nowadays, but she wouldn’t accept secondhand requests. “I’m more than happy to grant them the names they’d like now that they’re older. But they should be the ones to ask.” Nisa waited patiently while Beatrice outlined her various thoughts, tucking the few loose strands of hair the soft breeze had tugged from her intricate and braided bun behind an ear. “I never said I was blaming Penelope,” Nisa commented. Certainly it had been hard to raise a daughter that was always at odds with herself, always wondering how things had gotten so twisted, and being met with constant resistance. “Just providing a snippet of my own half of the experience. But if you don’t enjoy my answers then why did you come here, Beatrice? You said you wished to talk, but every time I do, you don’t seem to like what I say. 

“I’m not taking credit, dear,” Nisa continued on, beginning to wonder if any true progress would come from this conversation. “You asked for the truth, and the truth is that I did what I thought would best protect you. If you don’t wish to accept it, that’s your choice. But if it’s easier for you and your sisters to hate me whether it’s paired with knowing my side or not-” The mother’s shoulders raised in an elegant shrug that glossed over the place in her heart that missed her daughters dearly. The same one that held the grief for her brother, and her exiled mother. Did she miss them? Of course she did. What mother wouldn’t miss her own daughter, the precious life she’d cradled in her womb, and nourished into adulthood? But she’d learned long ago that aches such as these couldn’t always be helped, and matters only grew more complicated when her daughters had grown into their adulthood. “Like I said- I’m not sure what you and your sisters want, but I can’t change who I am. No more than I could change any of you. I did what I thought was best. I did my best.” 

A sigh slipped from between Bea’s lips, “They shouldn’t have to. You have seen what they prefer, you know it as well as I do, but you still choose to call Luce a name she doesn’t identify with.” Bea did too at times, maybe it was time to stop using it as a way to tease her sister. “Kindness is not something people should have to ask for,” She concluded softly, looking at her mother, hoping that she could see the plea in Bea’s eyes to for once listen to this. She was her mother’s mirror in so many ways, and she embraced it, used it as a shield, but it did not mean she was unaware of their flaws. The pride that Bea was driven on was taught to her by this woman. The inability to take criticism was an act reflected from mother to daughter. “Talking does not inherently mean we will agree,” She replied, that patient, borderline patronizing tone mimicked back. “I came here to air my grievances, to give you the chance to listen to me about how you hurt me. I came here to tell you the Hunter is gone. I did not come here to convince you that my way was right. I just wanted you to have peace, to hear that what happened was done.” She paused for a moment, “If you want to show Nell and Luce that you care, met me Saturday in the field near Stockholm street. They might need you.”