Black symbolizes: mourning, sympathy, death, hauntings, wisdom, vengeance.
There’s a secret to being a good liar. It’s really simple: you’ve just gotta believe the lies you tell. Lie to yourself first, last and always, and then you’re not telling a lie; it’s just your version of the truth. I’ve done it over and over again
Which is why when Sonny came to me and told me I was gonna have to pretend he was dead, I realized the first thing I was going to have to do was kill him.
In my mind, of course. I had to make him dead. This was the biggest lie for the highest stakes, and I had to do it right. So I did. Pulled out widows weeds, thanked god I looked good in black, and killed Sonny Corinthos dead.
It wasn’t anything I hadn’t done before. Every time I reinvented myself, I killed off the ghosts of the past: Virginia, Carly Roberts, Tony Jones, hell, Caroline Benson before all of ‘em. It gets easier every time.
This one -- this time was the easiest of all.
First thing I did that night, after holding my husband’s dying body in my arms, was change the sheets. Sleeping on black satin was just a little too prescient. I pulled out this old set of flannel sheets I’d had since Tony and I lived together; they were faded and nappy in the center, and Sonny would never’ve slept on them in a million years. Best thing about them was that there wasn’t a single black thread in the whole set.
I made the bed, badly, and stood frozen for a long moment. Should I stretch out on his side, clutching my pillow tightly? Or should I curl up tight on my side of the bed, avoiding Sonny’s half of the bed all together? It was important, it mattered, and I couldn’t get it, I couldn’t get it.
I knew myself well enough to know if I stared at the bed another second, I’d go crazy, and I had a feeling that if I went off that end then, there wasn’t gonna be a return trip ticket waiting. I turned away sharply, skinned out of my clothes all stained with fake blood, and slipped into Sonny’s favorite robe, dark red silk piped with black. It smelled like him, like smoky-sweet brandy and spicy aftershave and just a hint of the apple shampoo I buy and he steals, and for just a moment, I wanted to rip it off, get it as far away from my skin as possible.
But I didn’t. Instead, I wrapped it closer about me and padded downstairs. I pushed open the French doors leading to the balcony; it was still raining outside, though not as hard as it had been at the church. I could feel the dampness on my face even standing in the doorway, and I wrapped my arms tightly around me. Stared out into the darkness that wasn’t quite black, more a misty grey.
Hope for the best, and expect the worst, my mama used to say. Standing on the balcony to my dark and empty penthouse in the rain, I finally got what she meant. Not about the hoping part, hoping for the anything was never my cup of tea. But, if you expect the worst, if you’re ready for it -- it doesn’t have any power over you.
Every single day of my marriage I woke up expecting this to be the day I lost my husband. I lived with fear a very long time. As I slid down the doorframe and cradled my head between my knees, the only thing I was feeling was relief. ‘Cause I didn’t have to expect anymore; I didn’t have to fear. The worst had happened, more or less. I was still breathin’.
As dark patterns swirled behind my closed eyes, the wind shifted and rain blew in my face. I didn’t move. Breathing there in the darkness, I realized for the first time that I could live without Sonny, if I had to.
It was a hell of a feeling.
Which was why, two days later when I left that damn safehouse after yet another farce with the PCPD, I was trembling. Fear or anger, I wasn’t sure which. It was deep and white-hot, though; I sure as hell knew that. Anger. Had to be that.
It wasn’t him. I mean, it was him, but -- I was the one who’d done it. Again. He’d lied to me, and I knew it, and I let it be. Again. Because ... it was easier than the alternative.
God. When did I ever start taking the easy way out?
He looked at me, and he told me to sit and stay. Like a good dog, I obeyed. It wasn’t business, or at least not just business. I knew that. I knew it. Something more was going on. I could hear it in the tenor of his voice, and I could see it in my husband’s dark, dark eyes that hold so many lies and secrets I stopped looking for them a long time ago.
He looked at me but didn’t see me, and he spoke of a woman who should have had nothing to do with my life, ever. A woman he’d just met, and Sonny spoke of her like he knew the way she cried and the color of her dreams. I could almost see her between us, a dark and desperate shadow who existed only to give some man somewhere something to obsess over.
It scared me. Hell, this dark ghost flat out terrified me. Me, who had not two days before, had the heady experience of breathing -- for the first time in forever -- without fear. And, the fact that I was scared pissed me off.
I should have told him. I should have told him. I should have looked my husband in the eye and just let loose, ripped the ceiling off that oh-so-ironically-named ‘safe’-house. Instead I let him hold me, and I told him I loved him, and then the incompetent idiots who call themselves police showed up, and the ghost was gone, and the moment was over. I didn’t tell him anything. It’s been so long since I told Sonny anything that mattered that I think I’ve forgotten how.
Instead I sat in the backseat of a car I couldn’t even drive without his bodyguards around me and trembled, full of all the things I didn’t tell my husband.
It was a hell of a feeling.
Take it from the woman who held a grudge for twenty years; you shouldn’t let things fester. Keep things in, and they eat at you, make this black place deep inside. You end up doing these stupid things you know you’re gonna regret later.
When that jackass Scott Baldwin waved that affidavit in my face, I didn’t sign it ‘cause I was scared he’d take away Michael. I knew how much water that threat didn’t hold. I mean, god, my son was currently out of the country on a beach Baldwin had never heard of and would never walk on. I knew he couldn’t touch him.
But, I knew other things too. I knew that signing that paper would hurt Sonny. It would hurt Alexis. It would be a way of taking power back. It would be my own little secret, my own thing that Sonny couldn’t control. It was that last thought that put me over the edge. He had his dark ghost; I’d have this.
So, I signed it. Grabbed a pen and scrawled it in black ink on the dotted line. Carly Corinthos. I stared at it for a moment, the name that was its own kind of lie, and then handed the papers back to him.
It was stupid. God, it was stupid. Even as I wrote my signature, I knew it was stupid, but I did it anyway. It felt like another way to be free, for whatever reason. It felt like...it felt like crouching on my balcony in the rain. It felt like another way to kill something, and it felt good.
Sometimes it isn’t lies that hold the power, sometimes it’s the truth. The truth, written so dark and bold and black that you can’t deny it. I never learned the secrets to telling the truth; lies and darkness are my stock in trade.
But, I’m starting to think -- maybe it’s time I learned a new one. I’m tired of dead husbands and dark penthouses and secrets not even whispered in the night. I’m tired of fear.
Next time Sonny Corinthos dies, it better be for real.
