/ Here's a new fanfiction revolving around American Horror Story: Asylum, the story behind the strange relationship between Sister Jude and the Angel of Death. Please enjoy, and feel free to leave (constructive rather than destructive) feedback. /
Chapter I: A Heavenly Encounter
Child-like crying echoed from the slightly opened window centred in the top half of the shabby building, where lights shone outside and only briefly lit up the darkened world outside. The tree in front of the house only displayed its massive silhouette, and standing below its crown was a dark figure unfitting for the place. Even when civilians walked past the tree, past the window shining lights down on the tree, they never once saw the figure standing there still, seemingly not daring to move a muscle.
The early twentieth century presented itself in its brightest light at this time of day. Late in the evening, when no one would enjoy to be outside anymore. One had to fear the criminals these days.
No one would have enjoyed to be outside at this time of day, or be alive in this part of the city in the first place. It was one of the poorer places, where crime rates were high, murders and rape happened day in and day out. No one, no child would enjoy to grow up in surroundings like those, and no woman would enjoy to be all alone outside at this time of day.
Yet, there she was. The dark figure, a woman with a raven hairdo and an elegant fishnet veil lingering above the upper half of her pale face, stood there as though there was no danger anywhere to be seen within this part of the town. The woman was as pale as a corpse, but her aura was far from fright. The woman's entire frame appeared to be one of grief, in black and white as if she attempted to adapt her entity to the darkness of her surroundings, while the only pop of colour in her face was the colour of her lips. A red so pure that it could be mistaken for a perfectly adjusted stain of fresh blood.
Whereas the woman was ignoring anyone striding past the building with dimmed light from merely one window, her attention was instantaneously drawn towards the upper story of the house, to the child-like crying exuding from the gap between the lit up window and its frame.
Split seconds later, the crying went silent.
If one had only paid attention to the silhouette of the massive tree in front of the house, they would have seen that all of a sudden, the dark figure, the woman with the raven hair and the blood red lips had disappeared. No footsteps had been there, no movement visible. It was like the woman had never stood by the roots of the tree, watching the only lit window of the house cautiously. It was as though everything was as it always was, except for the lack of child-like crying from behind the opened window that was centred in the upper half of the building.
However, things weren't as they always were.
Inside the room behind the lit up window, inside the room where only one person was awake, where there had been only one person inside to begin with, there was no crying anymore. Instead, there suddenly was a second entity inside the room. The woman with the raven hair and the blood red lips took a gracious, quiet step into the light of the candles, her almost unearthly eyes watching quietly.
A girl was laid in a small bed, a girl almost paler than the skin of the woman with the raven hair, and she was shaking underneath her overly large blanket. Her eyes were puffy and red and she was silently staring up at the woman that was now stood in the centre of the room. There, inside this room, this girl could see the woman that had only been a dark, invisible figure outside by the tree. If it was due to the lack of light outside or if it was only this child's eyes capable of seeing her would remain an unanswered question for decades to come.
The most wondrous, the most questionable thing about the apparant situation up in the second story room of the shabby house that not one other soul knew about was most likely the girl's lack of fear.
One would usually be afraid if a dark, eery figure was stood in their room late at night, having come out of nowhere without even opening the door. Not so this little girl. If that was because she was a little girl with an imagination so large that not even this woman with her raven hair and the blood red lips could surprise her, or whether it was for a different reason would remain an unanswered question for decades to come.
The girl, with her blonde curls and the usually so bright blue eyes, found herself shaking less and less the longer she stared at the woman in the centre of the room. Her complexion remained as pale as that of a dead body's, her eyes remained as puffy and red from crying and suffering, but something within the girl appeared to calm down. It was not the girl's body, not her physical being that was drained of its agony, but her spirits.
Despite the sinister scenery and the oddity of a strange, dark figure standing in her sparsely furnished bedroom, the girl felt as though she was looking at a being so unearthly, so angelic and benevolent that there could never be any danger nearing her. Not as long as this woman was there. The girl knew that much, although she did not know where that knowledge had come from. It wasn't proper knowledge. It was a feeling, yet it was so definite that it had to be true.
Eventually, the girl dared to speak up. Her voice was low and broken, dry and almost pleading.
"Are you an angel?"
The words echoed through the small bedroom just like her child-like crying had only minutes prior to this strange encounter. There had been a suffocating silence inside the room for the most of their consilience of thoughts and spirits, so those four small words from the girl resembled an avalanche of sound. A torrent to break apart the frozen glances between the girl and the woman, and to initiate a dance that the two would dance for many decades to come.
Gradually, the woman with the raven hair and the blood red lips took a couple of steps towards the girl, an audible action once more filling the walls with lively noise, and, despite unfitting for an elegant, angelic creature like she was one, lowered her body to the girl's level and effortlessly knelt in front of the child's bed.
"You have sung a very beautiful song for me, my dear," the woman gave as a response to the girl's question. The voice belonging to that woman was so surprisingly gentle, warm-hearted and soothing, so caring and loving that the girl knew the truth. This woman with the raven hair and blood red lips must have been an angel.
"Do you mean the song that was in my head? Because all else I did was cry."
"Your song is still playing, little girl. You are still singing to me. There is no sound more precious than the song you are singing for me."
"I didn't know I was singing for you. Have you come to help me?"
The woman with the raven hair, usually a woman to fulfil her duties and move on without the slightest stir of emotion disrupting her sense of responsibility, felt the corners of her blood red lips twitch upward briefly. It was a simple sign of benevolence, a simple sign of the good heart that the woman was carrying within her chest. Furthermore, a gloved hand of hers trailed up and rested ever so lightly against the girl's locks before she carefully nodded her head as a response.
Feeling the woman's hand touching her and her blonde hair, the girl, instead of feeling her heartbeat speed up and initiate a state of fear inside the girl, had a strangely powerful feeling of comfort. There even was a feeling of homeliness, of safety and reassurance flowing from the woman's gloved fingertips and palm right into the girl's chest, into her small, pleading heart.
"My sole purpose is to help you find your way," said the woman with the raven hair and the blood red lips, "To help you find salvation, to lift you from your pain. You are in a lot of pain, aren't you?"
"My temperature's been really high and the doctor couldn't help. Neither could my mummy. It's hurting everywhere and I've been crying a lot."
"So now you are seeking me to release you."
"I don't want to be in pain anymore, angel," said the girl as her blue eyes teared up once again. Those blue eyes would usually exude nothing but livelihood and joy, but now their light had been replaced with salty tears and desperation. A child as small as this one should not know this well what desperation felt like.
Being called an angel by the little girl almost acted as a trigger, causing for a pair of large black wings to spring from the woman's back and spread wide. For a brief moment, the woman with the raven hair and the blood red lips made the impression that she was a crow that was about to flutter its wings and fly high into the night sky, never to be seen again in the darkness where the only light came from a slightly opened window in the centre of the upper half of a shabby building. Right then, she was an angelic entity again, an image of indescribable elegance and beauty, with angel wings spread wide from her back.
The woman leaned forward, closer to the little girl with her blonde hair and the blue eyes, wrapped into the heavy blanket. Then, however, the woman halted her gradual movements and the bedroom went completely silent once more. Not even the sound of either of the two breathing seemed to fill the room now.
That silent moment was stretched, dragged along while the woman in black gazed almost expectantly down at the ill girl now lying flat in her bed again, arms spread from her little body and her chest heaving up and down lowly, slowly. Too slowly. She was breathing too calmly, and the woman wih the angel wings could see the girl's body long for release, for redemption. However, it was in the girl's eyes, that sudden fear jumping forward that had caused for the Angel of Death to back away, to halt, to wait.
Out of nowhere, something uncalled for interrupted the encounter between death and the sick little girl. It was the woman's voice.
"You are not yet ready," she whispered soothingly and all at once, her large, black wings had vanished. The girl, within the blink of an eye, was on her own again in that small, dimly lit bedroom which was surrounded by the darkness of the night. To the girl's surprise, the pain she had been feeling seemed to have decreased within the past couple of minutes. Not long after, the door to the lonely bedroom was opened from the outside, a blonde adult woman stepping inside followed by a man with a briefcase in one his hands. Neither of them had seen the woman in black inside the room, nor had they noticed her entering or leaving the shabby building that they lived in.
The man with his briefcase approached the quiet girl carefully. He had been called by the blonde woman, the woman who had given birth to the sick girl, after noticing that her daughter had stopped crying so abruptly. The man was a doctor and he was there to check up on the girl, and as he did so, he soon raised his voice to speak to the girl's worried mother.
"Her fever has gone down."
"So quickly?"
There was a warm smile spreading across the doctor's face after he got up and turned to face the mother. He nodded in response. For some inexplicable reason, it seemed that some of the darkness pervading through the bedroom, through the entire house, was fading away. The candles, the light inside the bedroom appeared to spread further, to become stronger and light up both the mother and the girl's hope.
All after the Angel of Death had paid a visit to release the little girl from her agony.
"It is surprising how quickly her temperature has lowered in merely one hour, indeed, but she's over the worst. She's not in danger anymore now."
The doctor soon said his goodbyes to the little girl as well as her mother, reassuring her once more that the worst was now left behind. However, he requested to be called in if anything was to strangely change about the girl's condition in the upcoming twelve hours, whether it be for the better or for the worst. In the early twentieth century, abrupt and rapid alterations in a person's health condition were nothing uncommon, especially not in the poorer regions of the town, where darkness would usually surround the family homes, even though there were lights shining from some of the houses' windows.
Child-like crying had subsided and been replaced with hope.
After the mother had walked the doctor downstairs to the door, she came back into her daughter's bedroom. She walked back into the room where Death had been so close to taking her daughter under her wing, back into the room where her daughter was recovering from a fatally high fever. It all seemed as though God had answered the mother's prayers, after all.
"Mummy, I saw an angel," the girl said to her mother lowly and reached her arms up to be embraced by her grateful mother. To be held close, to be comforted.
"That was your guardian angel, my precious darling," the mother answered, "I have been praying for God to save you and He did."
"But the angel saved me."
Now, the mother retracted briefly from the embrace, only to rest her palm gently on the little girl's cheek. She looked into her daughter's blue eyes and after a moment of hesitation, placed her thumb on the girl's small lips.
"That was God. He sent your angel. Always remember, my darling, God always answers our prayers; it's just rarely the answer we're looking for. But this time, this time it was."
A smile lingered on the mother's nude lips as she planted one small kiss upon her daughter's forehead. The girl's skin was still paler than it would usually be, but her complexion was soon to return to normal. Everything would return to normal and the scenery of the little girl in the only lit up room of this shabby building with a massive tree in front of it would appear as though nothing had ever been different.
Everything would appear unchanged once more. Everything excpet for one small thing. That was the little girl's knowledge of a pale-skinned woman dressed in all black, with a raven hairdo and lips as red as a fresh stain of blood, and one sentence lingering spoken by the soothing voice belonging to that woman:
"We will meet again, my sweet child."