Potential warnings for major character death and suicide. Uses the Sacrifice Chloe ending as well
It starts when she picks up a poster with a dead girl's face on the left hand side.
Rachel sits on a bench in the courtyard, staring at the blown up photo of a dull eyed girl in a low cut top. She used to think it was some kind of high art. Now, it just turns her stomach.
Rachel swallows hard. She hasn't felt her stomach in a while now. She hasn't felt anything. She can't anymore.
A girl steps in front of her, blocking her view. Rachel doesn't mind. She's pretty grateful for it actually.
The girl's a student but not one Rachel recognizes. Then again, it's been five months. New term, new students, new crop of doe eyed girls for Jeffer-shit to get his grubby paws on. The girl in front of her seems like the type he'd go for – small, blonde, and with a look of admiration for the photo in front of her.
The girl tears her pretty hazel eyes away from the photo and bends down to pick up a missing person's poster – Rachel's poster.
That's how it starts. The girl sits beside Rachel, not that she would know she has a seatmate anyway, and traces her fingertips over the picture.
Rachel cracks half a smile, looking over the girl's shoulder. Good ole' Chloe picked one of the better pictures she had. Damn shame it doesn't matter now.
The girl frowns, sorrow creeping into her hazel eyes. "She looks so pretty," she mutters.
Rachel kicks her feet back, leaning away from the girl and the poster. "Thanks," she says. The girl can't hear her, of course. No one can anymore.
"You know," she says slowly. "Being a ghost isn't as fun as movies make it seem."
The girl rubs a hand against her shoulder, apparently cold despite the early September air. Rachel's used to that reaction by now. No one can see her or hear her or touch her but at least they can feel her. Kind of, anyway.
The girl silently folds up the poster and puts it in her pocket. What she's going to do with it, Rachel's not sure. They've never met as far as she can remember and she doesn't exactly look like the… type to hang out with people like Rachel anyway. Even if she weren't wearing a petite gold cross, the white blouse/blue sweater combo is a dead giveaway.
Rachel glances back at the blown up photo. A girl like this…
"Make sure you stay away from him, okay?" she says.
The girl, of course, can't hear her.
Rachel's been dead for five months now and yet, she's never thought the world could be this cruel until now.
The girl, Kate, is Rachel's opposite in a lot of ways. She's sweet and kind and maybe a little too giving. She has a pet bunny and volunteers for Meals on Wheels. She goes to church; she practices abstinence. They're really nothing alike.
Now, she lies on the ground outside of her dorm, thrown away like trash.
Rachel's always thought, in the back of her mind, that she'd brought her own death on herself. She'd been a little wild, a free spirit as they say. Hung out with the wrong people, played with too many hearts, always tried to do things her own way. When she died, it hadn't been that surprising.
Kate hadn't done any of that. She's a good girl in every sense of the phrase. This wasn't her fault.
Rachel doubts she'll see it that way when she wakes up. She'd heard them laughing, pointing cameras and calling Kate a slut. They'd called Rachel the same thing.
They're different, though. Rachel's always had thick skin. But, Kate…
Rachel sinks to the floor beside her, knees drawn. She hadn't followed Kate into the Dark Room. She couldn't. But she knows what happened. She knows enough to know what the marks around her wrists and ankles mean. They'll be gone by morning. But the feeling won't.
Kind of shitty, having to deal with her trauma or whatever even though she's already dead.
"Birds of a feather, you and I," she muses aloud. She tries to brush a strand of out-of-place hair. She wants to touch, to feel. But she can't anymore. Her hand fades when she gets too close, a transparent outline against the warm body beside her.
Rachel sighs and leans back against the door. Kate will wake up alone tomorrow, as far as she knows, no memory of what's happened with only vile words on other's lips, spitting at her in critical voices.
The world really is too cruel sometimes.
There's a video of what happened.
Rachel hasn't seen it. Even if she could look it up, she wouldn't want to.
The morning after had been the hardest. Kate woke up and almost immediately threw up in the bathroom. Before she'd even seen the video, before anyone had even said anything to her, she'd cried on the floor for hours.
Rachel bit her lip and watched from a distance. What more could she do?
Then the taunting came – 'slut' 'whore' 'guess she's not as innocent as she likes to pretend.' Then the video went viral.
Kate typed in the link with shaking hands. When the music started playing, Rachel had to look away.
Victoria hasn't changed at all. Her words are vicious and nasty. She spews them without thought while her friends laugh behind her.
Others join in. They wolf whistle and shout at Kate to suck their dicks. Someone throws condoms at her. Rachel tries to punch him but nothing happens. He doesn't even feel a chill in the air or the anger radiating off her like heat.
Kate tries to handle it alone. Or maybe she just feels like she has to. She doesn't say anything. She quietly accepts their taunts, all the while filling her notebook with hasty black and white doodles.
At least her friends are still decent to her, when they're not busy. They don't seem too eager to ask her what happened. Maybe it's better that they don't.
Then her mom all but disowns her. She stops going to church and stops volunteering. Slowly, the light leaves her hazel eyes. She closes herself off; her friends stop coming by.
Rachel stays. She stays and she watches. It's all she can do.
Time passes. A week and then two. Kate wilts more and more with each passing day. Every cruel word, every disgusted look, it all chips away at her until there's nothing left – nothing but an irrevocably miserable shadow of a girl.
Jefferson acts normal, as if he had nothing to do with this. More than once, Rachel gets in his face while he's in class and screams her heart out. She calls him every name she can think of and a few she's sure aren't actually insults. She screams and shouts and demands that he at least stop fucking lying to Kate, acting like he's trying to help her when he's the whole reason for this.
He can't hear her. No one can.
So she screams until she can't anymore. She screams and cries and lets her sobs shake her to her core.
It doesn't matter. He can't hear her. No one can.
It's frustrating.
Kate isn't sad all the time. Sometimes Rachel will catch a glimpse of the girl she used to be. When she's reading or taking care of her bunny and she'll smile at something. It's small and always a bit too melancholic, but it's there.
Then someone – a relative, a student, a stranger – says something cruel again and it disappears.
The moments of light are fleeting at best. It hurts watching them pass in the blink of an eye, as if they never really happened to begin with.
Rachel decides very quickly that she wants to always see that smile.
Her tongue is sharper than it used to be. Rachel hears it when she calls David a paranoid ass and tells Max to leave her alone. Her tone is short and bitter. Rachel doesn't think she used to be this way.
Her eyes are so tired, red rimmed and bruised from lack of sleep. She spends all her time alone. She seems afraid – afraid that the only voices calling out to her are the ones who want nothing more than to hurt her. She never fights them. She walks away, tears in her eyes and a sob caught in her throat like she's choking.
She draws sometimes, takes a pen to paper and scratches out her feelings in black and white skulls and crossed out faces. If the paper rips or her hands shake too much, she'll crumple it up and throw it away – forgotten.
One day, Rachel watches her pray. She flips through her bible frantically, biting her lip so hard it starts to bleed. When she stops about halfway through, somewhere in Book of Proverbs, she takes her pen and scribbles a passage on a sticky note. 'When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to the evildoers.'
A moment later, she crosses it out.
Rachel sits behind her, close enough to touch but never enough to feel. She wraps her arms around Kate's shoulders, hoping she might somehow reach her.
Kate flips to a new page, somewhere in Book of Matthew. She takes a new note and writes another passage, 'Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.'
Rachel lays her head on the back of Kate's neck. "Can you feel me?" she asks aloud but of course, there's no response.
"If I could write a note for you," Rachel finds herself whispering. "If I could tell you that you're not alone, if I could hold you in my arms and protect you from this world..."
She tightens her grip. For just a moment, she thinks she might feel Kate stop breathing. "If I could be a shoulder to lean on, an ear to listen, a hand to hold..."
Kate looks up from her bible, blinking back tears.
Rachel bites her lip. "If I could be something," she says. "A shared experience, a painful memory, a reminder that you survived..."
Kate sighs, head falling as she starts flipping through her bible once more.
Rachel feels tears sting her eyes. She hasn't felt like this in a very long time. "If I could tell you I love you..."
But she can't.
Kate cries herself to sleep more nights than not. She's quiet. Rachel wonders if she's always been a quiet crier or if she's just had to learn recently. She has sisters, though, so maybe...
Kate's crying tonight, too. Lying on her side, facing away from the door, you'd never know she wasn't sleeping until you turned her around. Rachel knows, though. Even if she can't hear her sobs, she feels them like a keen sting in her heart.
Rachel sits on the floor between the door and the bed. Her eyes slowly rake over the rest of the room – window closed, curtains drawn, and a cloth covering the mirror. On the nightstand, the clock reads 12:37am. Rachel curls her legs to her chest and sighs. It's better, on nights like this, when Kate wears herself out around one in the morning and falls into a dreamless sleep. Better than when she doesn't sleep at all, at least.
Softly, Kate lets out a deep, shuddering sigh. Rachel doesn't think she has any tears left.
White hot rage passes through her for a moment. Rachel tries to grab the alarm clock and throw it against the window but she can't. When she goes to touch it, her hand fades until she can read the numbers through it. She can't touch anything.
Anger fades, replaced by a deep, painful sorrow. Kate's not like Rachel. She never deserved this. Kate's good and pure and extremely empathetic. She's kind and sweet and she wants to make the world a better place.
Rachel hasn't ever been religious but if she did believe in the Christian God, she'd curse Him for letting something like this happen.
'Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.'
Kate's back jerks violently with unshed tears as a silent sob rakes through her body. There's no rest from this.
Rachel leans her head against the bed, eyes closing. She can't hear Kate crying and she doesn't want to see it.
Maybe there's a God; maybe there isn't. If there is, He's abandoned Rachel long ago. Even though she's not religious, she prays that He won't abandon Kate, as well.
The clock strikes one. Kate's breathing steadies, slowing into a gentle, sleepy rhythm. If God won't watch over her, then Rachel will.
It happens on a rainy Thursday just before last period.
The day's been shit, Rachel could see that much. Victoria corners Kate in the bathroom and any progress she might have been making thanks to Max all goes down the drain. She walks out crying.
Rachel watches her get dressed, pleading with her not to go to class today. "You can miss a day," she says. "Stay here and play with your bunny, you don't have to force yourself."
For just a second, Kate pauses in putting on her cardigan. Rachel sits at attention. Maybe…
Then Kate walks over to the rabbit cage and smiles sadly. "Have a good day, Alice," she says softly. "I… Don't worry, someone will… someone will definitely look after you."
Rachel feels her blood run cold at the words.
Now Kate stands on the ledge of the school roof, poised and ready while rain beats down around her.
Rachel tries to grab her and pull her back, to hug her and tell her it'll be okay, scream at her, anything, but she can't. All she can to is cry.
"You can't just do this!" she shouts but Kate can't hear her. She knows Kate can't hear her. "You survived! You're alive! Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
She barely hears Max walk through the door. The rain is too loud and Kate's too close to the edge. "Listen to me!" she screams but they can't. They just can't.
Rachel's throat closes, eyes wet and the world cold around her. She throws her arms around Kate and begs to whatever deity may be listening that Kate will feel something. "You can't," she whispers.
Kate's frame shakes in her arms. Rachel feels her tremble as she talks to Max but the words fall away, lost to the rain. Her body's fading, more than the other times before. She doesn't think she has much time left.
"If I could be something," she murmurs against Kate's ear. She feels her shiver and convinces herself that Kate can feel something. "If I could talk to you, if I could touch you, if I could kiss you..."
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest!" Max's voice calls from somewhere.
"If I could tell you I love you," Rachel says. Her voice is too soft; she's fading too quickly. "Then this life and this death... It would all have been worth it."
Kate sobs as she collapses into Max's arms. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she mutters over and over again.
With the last of her time, Rachel kneels down and kisses Kate's cheek. "I love you, I love you," she says over and over again.
And then, she's gone.
Rachel Amber's grave is a small out of the way tombstone laid in the ground. It seems so unfitting. The way her posters littered Blackwell, hung on every bulletin board and scattered across the walkways, always made her feel like an ever present entity. Now, she's been buried the same way she died – alone and unnoticed.
There's a flower already here – a single white rose in a vase with a feather earring tied around the neck. Kate places a bundle of pink carnations beside it.
Maybe it was the posters. Maybe it's the way she permeated the air, whispered on the tongues of students and lost to the wind, gone but never forgotten. Maybe it's just knowing what she'd gone through before she died – a painful memory but one they shared, at least to some degree.
Whatever the reason, Kate feels... something. Something like nostalgia or familiarity. It feels like the keystrokes of a soft piano, a sorrowful melody that hurts to listen to but you can't quite seem to turn it off.
"Hey," Max's gentle voice pulls Kate from her musings. "Are you okay?"
For a moment, Kate feels guilty. She should be the one asking that. So, she nods. "I'm fine. You're the one who-" Her throat closes suddenly, cutting off her words.
"You're crying," Max says simply.
Kate blinks, feeling tears tickle her cheek. She's crying...
"Did you know her?" Max asks, motioning to the grave in front of her.
"I..." She didn't. She never met Rachel Amber in her life. So why...?
"It feels like I did," she says. It feels like she knew her. It feels like she misses her. It feels... it feels like...
'It feels like I loved her.'
They leave shortly thereafter to get tea, to vent, to grieve, to just exist together for a little while. Kate spares a glance back at the tombstone, the small, out-of-the-way grave marker with a single white rose and a handful of pink carnations as the only reminder that Rachel wasn't forgotten – that finally, she's been found.
A blue jay lands on the stone and stares at Kate for a moment before taking flight – like words lost to the wind.