TW: Attempted Suicides
Rated T
Headcanoned with Grace and written at one in the morning. It's probably crap.
She stared up at the foliage of a grand tree, her arms out by her sides, breathing lightly. Her skull hurt and she could taste blood but her fingers were working and she wasn't bleeding so why did she feel so dizzy when nothing truly hurt?
Hadn't she just been in that tree, up in the tallest branches, reaching for the sun like the birds did? She blinked a few times as she fought to remember, a headache, no, a migraine,as her mother often called her, coming on.
She let her tongue lick at her dry lips as she tilted her head back, her blue-green eyes on the tree, as she decided to not move. She wanted a few more minutes, even though the sun was setting and she knew she'd get yelled at for staying outside so long.
Hadn't it just been midday?
She shrugged mentally, shaking the feeling of emptiness off as best as she could, her fingers playing with the grass underneath her. She glanced sideways at her hands, having felt something slick on the ground, and stared at her red and bloodied arms, the tendrils almost black. She gazed back up, puzzled, mouth opening as she tested her jaw, moving it up and down thoughtfully. Her hair too seemed weighed down, and she reached back, feeling clumps of matted curls. Her fingers landed back in the grass.
She wiggled her toes, amazed at the way they seemed to ache almost like with the ghost of a touch. She didn't hurt. But she hurt. She couldn't quite explain it, not even to herself.
She remembered climbing as high as she could, following the sun's rays up and up and up, and she remembered sitting out on a branch, bowed under her weight, though she wasn't heavy. Her mother always did say she didn't eat enough. Her father always did say the bad men would take her if she didn't eat enough.
She finally sat up, scrunching her nose as she gazed about. She was alone, in the shade of her favorite tree.
And the branch was a few feet away, lying there, broken at its end. Dead.
It took her a while to go home, full as her brain was with thoughts as she ambled through the forest. By the time she spied her house, off white and with the roof falling apart, the sun had died and the fireflies were running circles around her.
And she knew she would get a licking.
Her mother grabbed her by the hair as soon as she walked in, even though she'd tried sneaking past.
"Where ya been girl?"
"Out by the tree. Mama, I think somethin'-"
"This is your Sunday dress, look at ya, ya ruined it. Grass stains and you've been eatin' red berries again ain't ya? Now I'll have to wash this and I'll waste time on ya." The woman snapped. "Jesus Christ, ya can't even keep your damned food in your mouth, ya gotta go and smother it all over yourself."
"I'm dead."
Her father looked up momentarily from his seat in his armchair to glare. "What ya say?"
"I said, I'm dead." She repeated quietly. "Or maybe I ain't. I think I'm not dead anymore. But I was daddy." She took a few steps and came to stand besides him, looking into his gray eyes. "I was." She paused thoughtfully. "Maybe I'm a ghost. Like Travis was last Halloween. Ya can see me though."
She received a sharp blow to the side of the head, and she held back a sob as her father's hand rustled in the drawer by his side. He held out a thick book, the bible, and thrust it into her chest as he stood.
Suddenly her mother was yelling at him, her hands on her daughter's face, examining her swelling eye, roaring about the bad men that'd take her away if they came by again and saw her. He yowled back, hand around her arm, the girl stuck in the middle.
She managed to pull away and hugged the bible to her chest as she ran to her room. She chose to sit in the corner, hidden behind the door, and she flitted through the various pages. She couldn't read yet, but she could recognize a few words here and there. Words she'd heard at church and words her mother had repeated countless times.
Jesus Christ.
The cross.
Resurrected.
As they continued yelling, arguing, barbs thrown her way, she let her mind wander. And she made a decision.
She, Misty Day, had died. And she had, somehow and by the graces of God, brought herself back.
OOOoooOOO
The stars were bright overhead as she breathed in and out, the cicadas drowned out by the water in her ears as she floated in the few inches underneath her, the top of her head against the river's sandy banks.
She couldn't swim. She knew that now.
She sighed softly, her fingers skimming the surface of the swamps, her knobbly knees poking out of the water, her toes deep in the mud.
She sat up, her curls plaqued against her back, no doubt staining her shirt in various shades of brown. But her gaze was still tilted to the night sky.
"Why me?" She asked quietly. "Why choose me to do your biddin'? I ain't special. Hell, I can't even keep myself from trouble." She added, glancing down in shame. "How many times has it been now? How many times are ya gonna save me?"
"What do ya want from me?" She stood on tall legs, lanky and still growing. "I can't do nothin' from here. I ain't special." She repeated. "So why give me this? Why give me somethin' that won't help nobody? Why me, why me? Why not the president? Or his wife? I heard she's a good woman. She'd know what to do." She kicked her foot out, sending water flying. "She wouldn't get herself electrocuted, or get stuck in a car on a hot day." She paused and looked back up, following the north star.
"I'm just a girl. I ain't even gotten my first bleedin' yet. What do ya expect me to do? I need answers, I ain't all seein' like ya."
She wasn't answered.
She sat back down in the water, defeated, and laid back down.
She let the water overtake her.
OOOoooOOO
The asphalt burned her skin, and she let out an annoyed sigh, reaching over with her fingers to move a mass of curls from her face.
She'd been left. She'd come with her friends and they'd left her there, scattering like ants, no doubt. She muttered a curse out into the putrid wind, tear gas long gone.
This time she did hurt, the bullets had gone in from the front and had left out the back, nowhere in her body, but damn did it hurt. It'd leave scars. Maybe a hole. Maybe she could show it off. Who would she show it off to? Not her friends. Were they her friends?
"I hate ya." She snapped up to the skies. "This one should have gotten me. This one should have broken me. You don't get shot like this and live. I'm holed like fuckin' cheese and-" She paused. "I shouldn't curse, should I?"
"You're sensitive. Maybe I shouldn't have. But ya make me mad." She rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hands, blocking out the sun. "Oh Lord. What am I gonna do." She hit the pavement with a closed fist. "I get it, alright? I get it. Ya want me to do somethin' with my life. I get that. If you'd give me a fuckin' idea it'd all go so much easier. Sorry."
"One word. I'd need one word from ya. A whisper. I'm sorry about the rope last winter. And I'm sorry about daddy's knife. But I just need an answer. Why do ya keep bringin' me back?" She felt hot tears dot her vision. "Why me?"
She'd asked so often, she didn't know why she asked anymore.
OOOoooOOO
It'd been a while since she'd done this, but she was no stranger to the other side. And so she gazed back evenly into the snake's face, drowning out the fanatics surrounding her, her fingers tight around the serpent.
It watched her like she watched it, though with a tint of wariness in its yellow eyes. But it snapped its jaws at her anyway, unhappy at being manhandled.
Wasn't this it?
Wasn't she bringing the good word of the lord to the needy like this?
She was brought back every time, a snake bite wouldn't be any different. She prayed silently, like she always did, and shook the thing roughly.
It hurt.
Like it did every time.
And it was dark outside when she snapped her eyes open, gazing up into the faces of her congregation, but she'd come back.
And they cheered for her, in their own way, praising the lord that'd brought her miserable wretch of a soul back to the side of the living, praising the man that hadn't cared enough to mutter into her ear, to shake the wind into her hair.
And as she stared up, she got to thinking.
Perhaps,
Maybe,
It was all her. The serpent ran up her arms and she soothed it down as her gaze floated aimlessly from face to face, from body to body, and from mouth to mouth that called out Jesus Christ's name.
When they should have been calling out hers.
OOOoooOOO
She'd gotten too cocky. Too wordy, too sure of herself. She'd said the wrong words, turned them against her, and there she was, lying on a stake, staring up into the night sky, tears dried against her aching skin.
But now she knew.
Now she knew.
She could bring herself back, of course, she'd always known that.
But that bird that'd taken flight, that little sparrow that'd flown from her fingers and took to the sun,
That was new.
It hadn't occurred to her to try it. She'd been so selfish. She'd always been selfish. She'd tried so many times to kill herself, and that having failed, she'd tried to see how many times she could do good by using her gift. She'd tried being destructive.
She'd turned to preservation.
And the one time she hadn't, the one time she'd tried to help another of God's creatures, she'd been given up by her own family.
The good deed of the lord, the good deed of resurrection on Misty Day, had become a sin. She'd become a devil in disguise. She'd become the viper herself.
As Jesus Christ had suffered with his own people, so did she.
But she was her own Judas.
OOOoooOOO
She stared the animal between her fingers down.
She'd had enough.
She'd believed in self preservation once, and now she would again. She would be selfish. She wouldn't be an apostle, or Him himself. She was done with saving others when she could have saved herself so long ago. She'd be the Roman general, and she'd get out. She'd break through the ranks because damn it,
She'd been chosen.
OOOoooOOO
Her steps were measured, calculated, even.
As her gaze was.
As her mind.
The silver gates were open and she couldn't help but feel like a goddess who'd come home at last. Yes, the girls stared as she walked up the steps, yes they stared as she glanced back momentarily, giving them a testy look. They stared as she walked in, bold as brass. And they followed her. She almost wanted to turn and count them, to name them.
To bless them.
Cordelia Goode dropped the stack of papers she was holding with a dull thud on the white floors, and her hand flew to her mouth.
"Misty? Is that you?" She let out a sob, her body racked with the intensity of the sight in front of her. She wanted to run to her, but she held back as words tumbled out from between her lips. "How did you-? I tried so hard to get you back for so long and it didn't work and-" She rambled on, it being her habit when she got flustered. The wild blonde knew.
"I'm back, Delia." She assured her, even though the woman hadn't asked.
"Are you?"
And Misty, backlit by the rising sun, held out her arms to her.