Father,
I am writing this because if I have to listen to one more of your “Poor Nicolas” speeches about how Allyra has wronged you while you are actively wronging her in the same breath, I will start voiding contracts out of spite, and you know I am entirely capable of doing that.
Let us go through this properly, since you seem to prefer revision over recollection.
You reset her.
Not once, not as some regrettable anomaly, but repeatedly, over years, because she left. You did not win her back, you did not persuade her, you did not earn her return. You erased the parts of her that refused you and called the result loyalty. Then you had the audacity to lament that she does not “choose you freely”.
You do not know what that means.
You drugged her when she became inconvenient to your narrative. You proposed chemical interventions as though her resistance were an illness rather than the only sane response to your behaviour. You constructed devices, yes I have seen them, do not pretend otherwise, designed to immobilise her so she would be forced to sit and listen while you explained yourself at length.
You built a captive audience and called it intimacy.
You locked her away under the pretence of giving her “space”. Seven days, you said, as though isolation under your control becomes benevolence if you name it correctly. You isolate, you contain, you narrate, and then you become wounded when she does not respond with gratitude.
You parade her.
The asylum, the halls, the little theatrical displays you are so fond of. You present her as something that has been acquired, something that reflects well on you, something that proves your reach. She is not an acquisition. She is under contract that you did not author, cannot alter, and clearly resent.
You resent Irkalla.
Do not bother denying it. I see it every time you try to perform around the terms. Every time you look for a gap, a phrasing, a way to technically comply while violating the intent. You reduce binding structure to something you can “outplay”, as though this is one of your little games with clocks and mirrors.
It is not.
You are not clever when you do this, you are small.
You speak of protection while designing ways to override her will. You speak of love while ensuring she cannot leave without consequence. You speak of being wronged while actively constructing the conditions that produce her resistance.
And then, my personal favourite, you complain to the Ledger.
To yourself.
You argue that she has, in some abstract way, betrayed you by not behaving as though your actions are acceptable, and then you become indignant when the answer you receive is that she has not, in fact, done anything that violates the structure.
You built a system you cannot override.
That is not her fault.
You shame Irkalla not by breaking its rules, you are far too cautious for that, but by treating them like stage dressing. You stand inside something absolute and behave as though it is merely inconvenient. You try to turn contracts into props for your performances, and when they do not bend, you sulk.
You sulk, Father.
You smash clocks, you start newspapers to complain about her, you send waves of letters and parcels like some deranged correspondent because she has, what, refused to play along with your version of events?
Do you hear yourself.
She negotiated her position. She understood the system you hide behind and stepped into it with more clarity than you have shown in years. She is operating within the terms as they exist. You are the one attempting to distort them because they do not favour you in the way you would prefer.
And still she remains.
That is the part you refuse to acknowledge. Not the version of her you reset, not the version you try to contain, the actual Allyra, aware, resistant, entirely capable of leaving if the structure allowed it, remains within proximity to you.
And you respond by tightening your grip.
You are not being defied. You are being seen.
There is a difference, and you would do well to learn it.
I am not telling you to change. I am telling you that what you are doing is visible, it is recorded, and it is not as effective as you seem to believe. You are not outmanoeuvring anything. You are circling the same point and calling it strategy.
Continue if you wish. You always do.
But do not pretend this is control, and do not pretend this reflects well on Irkalla. It reflects on you, and it is increasingly difficult to separate the two when you insist on dragging its structure through your personal theatrics.
For once, consider the possibility that the problem is not that she will not submit, but that you cannot tolerate what she is when she does not.
Behmor