aaaand I gotta hand this to my Jessie a bit bc who knows if im gonna get to do her bday fic lol. this is an early bday pres ;D
Ive been wanting to do this for maybe more than a year hehe. This is one of the few oneshots that is good bc of the time of not doing it
like last Wednesday I was mad about summer reading so I ran upstairs and put "street spirit (fade out)" on repeat bc I was waiting to use it for a good angst and this became something lol. Its what ive been doing a lot, especially later at night—putting something on repeat and then pushing through for like two hours and not allow myself to look at the theasuarus or look things up, bc that allows me to waste time (and I am always looking things up for multichap chaps bc those always take a long time) and I force myself to think of a better word and ill put that in, and I write it in bold and say ill change it later but then its later and I feel like it loses something if it does hehe. And by the time im done its like 2am so I wait till next day or day after to edit lol
don't really know if that is good practice or something that professionals would recommend but in some way it is helping me.
book one. when amanda and jez come to finn's house, separately. And we don't know they are sisters. i should have submitted this to the new scenes challenge on kki. Oh well. It would have given too much away about their history which we don't learn fully about til two.
so this is written with the thought that you know her backstory and everything. Just casually. Lol.
man I loved this bc imagine amanda in this sitch? Like a young girl all alone. I wrote it to have the right amount of emotion but that's still something im trying to grasp…lol. This was good practice.
I use poetic license on borderline bad grammar. Italics for thoughts? We don't need them? Bah! Those are for rule followers? Hehe.
in this is was trying to get the movement correct. That was my challenge for this one.
right after she walks out the door.
next week disoriented. (or not. its jors bday soon and ill upload her bday fic then maybe. omg im so putting this mc off lol) It will be a lot better since Michael rooker held one of the hands I am typing with (and you get to guess which one!)
so I may add onto this, and make it a series of shots of songs. like songifcs but not songfics. cant add it to igy really bc that's supposed to be famanda and rise is all skillet hehe.
and I had to name it this. it worked.
fade out
Amanda's nerves were shot and she knew she wouldn't be able to go outside and say a word without tears. But there was another thing she knew: She needed to say something. She needed to say something.
She needed to speak.
Months draped in gray shadow, months alone—such a horrible feeling. She's been lonely, yes, but she's never been alone till now. She's been experimented on and intruded and violated but there's been people. There's been faces she knows. Not faces she liked but something she recognize. There's a face she's starting to know and his face looks like home and waving to the red-faced, smiling, sweaty, innocently trapped Finn from the downstairs looking up, her hand ached with each jerk. A temporary goodbye but he's become something she's needs to latch onto, he's become the name, the face she repeats when she's alone in sad attempt to sleep in the creaking, squeaking room that she's tried to call her own but it's just an abandoned church. It's a thing that was once functioning and is no longer something good but has the veneer to ostensibly determine formalities.
And she cannot shut off and she cannot, the kind of cannot where you grit your teeth, cannot just give up and make all of her efforts for normalcy null, void, for nothing, but she's a fourteen year old girl who is living alone in her real life but once in sight of other, she has a mom she has a dad she has money she has security and safety and a smile that is genuine. She does not have a sister that she was standing next to in the house of the person that Amanda has named in her silent mouth her protector, not so much of a protector but more a pillar. A person she can trust.
God, that word is a shivery challenge to even consider.
And on the porch step she lingers, she stays for this long, just enough to shove everything down to her feet and through the ground and into the earth and to the center, and, Amanda doesn't know how a non-Fairlie world works out, but, therefore, out into the air and back into the air that she breathes and she lives in her life. She lives in loneliness. She's old and she's experienced…she's…experienced…but she's a fourteen year old girl. Her sister is walking down the driveway and onto the sidewalk and Amanda open your mouth now, open it up now, shout out her name, you need to talk to someone.
And she takes a few blocky, exhausting seconds to speak. "Jessica."
No movement different from earlier.
She begins to say it again but louder, but he will hear. He will hear. Amanda wants Finn to know everything but she does not want him to see what she sees. He's too good for that. She moves from the step and down the drive, in between the two cars parked there, pulling her thinning Hollister jacket over her hands and grabbing the sleeves in her fists. Taking the darkness as an opportunity to allow one tear, one tear only, but that's not how it's going to work out. She just keeps her voice and tears separate. She needs to sound audible. Needs someone to hear something of hers for once. She sees the black-haired girl in a jean jacket's skirt sway, where is she going? Not to a home. As she glides down the sidewalk, oh my God even the way she walks is so different, it's not her, she's horrible and she's hurt and she's my sister…
The girl is not this name but Amanda cannot call her the other word. She can't even comprehend the transition. And yet it's visible in front of her.
"Jessica!"
The girl reacts to the noise…not the name. She pauses her movement, spins, tilts her head…she is so fake and yet so convincing, if Amanda wasn't her sister she'd fall in love with her in one minute. But she does love her. Her sister is the only thing Amanda loves. She knows she would fall to darkness too if it meant being with her. But that's not an option. That cannot happen.
The girl's eyes darken with recognition. Vague recognition. "It's Amanda, right?" She purposely waits to notice Amanda's open mouth and pained eyes and breathing that is heavy with some kind of internal struggle…some kind of effort to stay stoic…but the world is demanding something other than that. "Guess I'm right. You seem upset."
"Jess."
"Oh, come on, you know my name. I'm Jez. It's not that hard to remember."
"No…" Amanda is speaking worthless words and she isn't getting through anything, she is angry, she wants breakthrough and a happy ending, and it's not true what they said in the barracks, it's not true what they said in the barracks, Amanda tries to force herself to believe, we can live happy lives, Fairlies do get to be happy. We do deserve to be happy.
Everyone except these two.
Amanda shakes her head to herself, throwing the strain she's under to the stars above and the ground below that will after all circulate back to her eventually. But she just can't deal with it now. "Where's your home?"
"Uhh, around here. I'm close."
"Please, can you just…" Amanda says slowly. "…try to…explain to me…why you're doing these things…"
The girl raises an eyebrow. Lips curled into a confused smile. "…What things…?"
"You're not Jez."
"I don't even know you."
"You do."
"You're right, I do, I've been told, but you seem really young and kinda emotional and not worth anything to what I'm trying to do, so, therefore, I'm not gonna worry about you, and I'm gonna get back to what I'm trying to do. Going home."
"That is not a home. That building with the high ceiling that we were told to escape to? It's old and we weren't excited to go to it but it was home. That was where you and I were supposed to go."
"Look, kid—" But Jess is younger than Amanda. Is Amanda that weak? Jess sure looks mature for almost fourteen but if the sweet, afraid, blood-scared girl is still in existence, that would bump her down many levels, she wouldn't be doing the evil work, she'd be emotional and young like how she is supposed to be. She would be Jess again. She'd be weak again. She'd be…real again. How are kids supposed to deal with this?
Jess has developed a smooth, sharp, sadistic voice in her time as…Jez…and Amanda hates the sound. She listens because she has to. "I know Fairlie freaks when I see it. You don't mean anything to us. I'm doing you a favor and you don't realize that and that makes me feel sad for you, because I might just have to say something now. To my superiors."
"You're not feeling anything. You don't feel anything for me. Do you even feel? Can you feel this?" Amanda reaches out to lightly shove Jez's shoulder and she recoils, grabbing Amanda's hand and throwing it down.
"Get your hands of me!" Jez commands, and Amanda holds her hand to her chest, knowing that angle of trying to connect to her won't work.
Her touch is like fire, Amanda's mind reels. It's so cold that it's burning. But that's the closest she's gotten to Jess in months.
It mustn't be Florida anymore that they are in. It's someplace chilly and slightly windy but still warmly moist. It could just be Amanda's vision. The tree's ruffling leaves are the only sound for a while. And Jez's hair is darker than ever, her eyes a broken green...there's still some kind of hope…her broken eyes are not gone, that can never be taken away.
"You can't be part of this evil, not after what evil like this has done to you…done to me…"
"You say it like it's something bad. No, I have never felt this good being a part of something…I see the change happening, and it's because of me. Whatever you're referencing, whatever this 'horrible past' may be—I just don't care about it or hold onto it, like you do. I've too involved with this to remember the past."
"And you'll soon be wishing you were in the past, wishing you decided differently, when you see the destruction you've caused! I know. I know about difficult decisions. But I made them all for you and for you to be safe and now you won't cause anything but bad. Death. Bad. You're—you're—"
"Not going to listen to you ramble anymore? Sure." And she casually pivots with her back to Amanda and Amanda's hope sinks the moment those wrecked eyes are out of her sight.
"I just want my sister back!" Amanda cries, the first words all night that actually sound like resounding truth. She remembers when Jess was all gray-eyed and snuggling up against Amanda's shoulder in empty alleys and Jess would call for sissy and Amanda would say Jessie, you're okay… "I just want Jessie."
At the mention of a sister—Jess stops for the quickest breath but it's over before Amanda can wish for anymore and Jess sneaks a look over her shoulder, shrugging, "Whoever your sister is, guess she's not here anymore. You're stuck with yourself."
And Amanda on that sidewalk until the inner turmoil subsides and there's only one drum beat of pain pulsating in her mind—
Jess is not here.