Title: Trees
Fandom/Disclaimer: Supernatural, which (obviously) isn't mine.
Summary: The summer Maggie turns eleven.
A/N: Hey don't say how old Maggie is so I'm going with eleven. And, obviously, I don't know how much younger Rose is so I just said two years. It seems like a nice gap. Um, no real spoilers I don't think but if you'd rather be safe than sorry don't read. No beta. I'll probably change it around some after I wake up later.
Trees
The summer Maggie turns eleven is the summer she dies. Rose is eight and stands in the shade of trees while their mother yells and yells and yells. Maggie stands behind Rose and watches her body as it's rolled out of the house. Every time she tries to comfort her sister her hand just goes right through and Rose shivers from the cold.
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Their nanny, the woman that was more of a mother than anyone really, keeps Maggie from coming home. She stands right outside of the property and watches. She waits. She reaches out and wishes she could have Rose with her. It's cold and it's lonely, all this waiting. She gets more and more angry as time goes by.
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Being stuck on the edge like she is all she can do is watch. Rose spends all her time on the swings now. She goes higher and higher and higher into the air. She tries to fly. Maggie flirts with the edge of banishment, she reaches out and tries to touch her sister. She runs around the property of the only home she's ever loved and cries. She misses her mother, her nanny, but most of all she misses Rose.
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Rose grows up so quickly and Maggie stays the same. Then one day when Rose is all height and curves she goes away and doesn't come back. Maggie runs the edge like she always does and screams. Eventually she stays by the entrance because when Rose comes back, and she will Maggie knows this even if she's not sure she knows anything else, that's where she'll come from. She'll come from the outside and Maggie will be there to see her. To reach out for her. To welcome her home the only way she knows how.
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Rose is gone for forever. Their mother dies. The hotel, her home; the only place she's ever known, starts to fall into disrepair. Maggie waits and waits and waits for Rose to come back. She watches the roads get repaved. She watches her Nanny walk the yard with hair that gets full of grey.
All she does is wait and wish and hope.
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When forever ends and Rose comes back she's not alone. There's a man that Maggie doesn't know and a little bundle of squirming, screaming, something that she can't make out. She strains against her banishment harder than she ever did. Rose had left and come back but she's still left Maggie all alone. Rose doesn't even look her way.
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The squirming, screaming something turns out to be a baby. A girl that Maggie watches from the edge. She peeks out from behind trees and watches Rose push her on the same swing she tried to fly from. Watches them move from window to window in the house she can't get to. Watches Rose go from black to gray. Watches the baby go from little to big.
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When their Nanny finally dies Maggie thinks that Rose will bring her back. That Rose had missed her just as much, if not more, and that the end of her banishment is close. It falters for just a minute. Long enough for Maggie to make it to the door, just inside and she can hear them upstairs in the private quarters before it kicks back in stronger than before. Maggie is pulled even further away from the house. She screams and cries so loud that she's surprised no one hears.
There's no pain like knowing your own flesh doesn't want you. That your own flesh had betrayed you. That your little sister doesn't want you anymore. That maybe she never did.
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There's no more watching from the edge for Maggie. She's been pushed so far away that all she can watch are the trees grow taller. She wanders for forever, not knowing what is happening to Rose. Not knowing anything at all.
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When the banishment fails again Maggie is determined that nothing will ever make her leave again. There's no power on earth, she's decided, that can stop her. Not even Rose.
(end)