1: Crash

It's an accident, really it is.

Pain, burning, wait, what's wrong, can't feel anything, Kaden, oh my god where's Kaden, no, oh no, nononononono, NO! KADEN!

Dying doesn't hurt. Watching him die, watching the light fade from those teary hazel eyes, that sheer agony is terrible in strength.

"Sadie…"

Her name sounds foreign in that broken tone, in words passing through his lips. Scared, he sounds so scared. But fear, that she's used to. He's seven, for god's sake. He still crawls into either her or their parents' bed when he has nightmares.

Most of the time it's hers.

It's how hard the two short syllables of her name are when he says them. The blood passing from his lips and onto his blue shirt with Captain America emblazoned on the front when he calls out for her.

Kaden looks at her, moves his mouth to say more words, but she can't hear them. Quiet, so quiet. His eyes look into hers, plead with her like they do when he's asking for her to sneak him an extra oreo. Hazel, bright combinations of brown and gold and green coming to meet with her boring brown eyes.

His eyes don't close.

-:-

She's pretty sure hers did.

-:-

When she's dead, she knows it. It's not exactly something she can deny and she sure as hell doesn't want to deny it. The only thing Sadie wants is to find Kaden and if she denies she's dead, she denies the possibility of ever seeing her baby brother.

The only problem with that is that she can't seem to get past that damn white gate.

-:-

An error, the angel who meets her there says. A mistake in some paperwork (though she's 102% sure that's a load of crap because why would God need paperwork?) is keeping Kaden in and her out. It's what will always keep her out.

The angel apologizes to her, but she can't seem to find any emotion in that flawless face.

For some reason, she knows that all this is on purpose. She's being punished. Or she managed to piss off the wrong person. Or maybe she really belongs in Hell but they happen to be at full capacity. All Sadie knows is that the only thing keeping her out of Heaven is the people who run the place.

Well, fuck them.

-:-

Sadie tries her luck in Hell, with a varying degree of success.

On the plus side, she can actually manage to get into the place and out of the black void that eats up the space between the two halves of the afterlife. The demons are nice enough; gruff and foul-mouthed in a way that reminds her of her grandfather and the biker gang that he often associated with, but friendly enough to help her get into the Main Office to visit the prince of darkness himself.

On the downside, she was right about someone not wanting her to be in Heaven. Not even Satan has enough power to override whatever curse was placed on her. She's never going to see Kaden again.

She falls to her knees then and there, laughing hysterically as her shoulders shake and her chest contracts with hiccuping sobs.

-:-

Satan offers her a deal. Sadie's hesitant (she's not an idiot, she knows its common sense to not make a literal deal with the devil) but she listens anyway.

His suggestion is another dimension, one where the afterlife is neutral. One where she can be reborn.

She asks what the catch is as soon as she hears the admittedly sweet deal. When the devil tells her it's free of charge, the first words out of her mouth are, "Yeah, and I'm a twelve-foot tall hippopotamus with fairy wings. As you can see, I too can spew ridiculous bullshit. Now seriously, what's the catch?"

Satan laughs in a surprisingly un-ominous way.

"I like you, kid. Damn, now I'll feel guilty if I don't help you out."

-:-

She's back into the void before she knows what happens and enveloped in sickly warmth even faster than that. Hot, so so so hot that she wants to puke, but the heat is strangely comforting.

She wants to cry about this, about everything. Dying, Kaden, Heaven, Hell, and this new dimension she's being thrust into. She finds that she can't.

It's undecided whether or not Sadie is grateful for this.

-:-

After months of sickening, comforting heat and reddish blackness comes furious jostling and movement. Sadie is more than a little indignant about this.

She's beyond pissed when she is unceremoniously shoved into freezing cold and loud exclamations. She screams, anger and bitterness and despair collecting together in a piercing wail.

-:-

"Azula."

-:-

She catches that one word. Oh, fuck no.