And that girl was alive.
Her name was Lixue, and she was badly hurt. She rolled over, screaming aloud at the pain in her gut. The scream mocked her, echoing through her bones until she felt she would shake to pieces. Small, white hands searched for the cause of her agony, and fastened on the lump of melted steel lodged in her lower abdomen. Gritting her teeth, she yanked, and cried out again as the bloody steel parted from her stomach. Rolling to her hands and knees, she lurched forward, only to fall down on her face in the street. More blood flowed from her split lip, and she wailed in pain. She felt as though she were dying, lying in her blood on a blown-up street, and nobody cared! Lixue was fourteen. She felt she would not become older, never see the sun poke it's gleaming eye out to look at the carnage. Now she hated the sun for rolling it's bloody eye away as though in distaste. How dare it look away? "Look upon us!" she shrieked in anger. "Look at me!"
She had dark brown hair and skin moon-pale, though it was now the drawn white of a corpse from the pain. Her eyes were closed, refusing to look for the sun if it dared not look upon her. Lixue raised her head, and one side of her face was not the white of cream, but a scarlet half-mask. One of her small, fair hands raised to her bloody cheek, and she saw the blood, saw her blood puddle on the pavement. Painfully she raised herself to a sitting position, wrapping her sweater around her waist in a rough barrier against the blood. Even though she saw behind that sweater what was meant to be unseen, she didn't cry.
She wouldn't give those who had blown up the town the satisfaction of seeing her cry.
Instead, she screamed. Screamed and shouted and wailed her fury and pain to the surrounding wreckage, shouting swear words and grievances and the people who had died. "I saw them die and you didn't even stay to watch!" Lixue told them bitterly, trying to shut the image of her wound out of her head. That day she had learned what color she was inside. Brown and red. Brown for the bitterness that was rotting her from the inside out, like termites destroying a mansion. Red for the blood they had spilled. "My blood." And the blood trickled from her, a soft but deadly promise of her upcoming fate. Slowly she lost the strength to stay upright and slumped down. She felt befuddled and drunken, like the time she'd had a bit too much wine at New Years. Gently it began to rain, almost a mist. It felt cold. Suddenly she was drowning in cold and black, both whom crept up so unexpectedly she had no defense. Her slender, blood-soaked frame slowly went limp, and a cold not brought about by the rain froze Lixue, bastard child of Severus Snape, in a pose of endless nightmares.
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The letter fluttered to the ground like a pigeon shot from the sky. An expression close to shock and disbelief mingled on the sallow face, which had gone white tinged with the palest of green.
"They blew it up—" he whispered, the words hanging in the
air like bubbles weighted with lead. Crash as one hit the floor. Crash crash crash.
Lixue was his daughter, but not by marriage. It was a one-time only fling. Nobody though she'd get pregnant. Oh well, she'd just live out in the country-side, where nobody would threaten his baby and her mother. He never really had though of Marianna as the mother of his baby, just as her guardian. Lixue was his baby, his little girl who called him "P'pa" and "Daddy!" and who was always watching him with her large dark eyes. His baby and her mother were dead. The letter said Lixue had been killed by the flying debris. What kind of shit was that? Had she been smashed through the head, or had she died a slow, painful death?
According to the letter, the dead had been buried already. How unfair. He would never see his baby again! He only had one really good picture of her, a photograph of her at her first school dance. She was standing alone, with her dark hair in shining waves around her pale, heart-shaped face. A smile lighted up her features, making her large dark eyes glimmer with an inner light. Her dress had been dark green with a wrap of white lace, and she had found a pair of shoes that perfectly matched the wrap. Lixue had been so happy that day, dancing and chatting, with her daddy watching to make sure the boys didn't get too close to his baby. And she laughed and ran to him, giving him a hug and telling him that he was hers, and she was going to dance with him until her feet fell off.
Come to think of it, that's how he wanted to remember Lixue. As alive and vibrant as she had been that day. Not dead.
Despite himself, he felt a steady itching behind his eyes, the dark, bottomless eyes that he and Lixue had shared for fourteen years. Turning towards the back of the room, he let one tear fall, leaving a wet trail down that sallow cheek. And as with all things, once the first is let go, the others will follow. Soon he was leaning heavily on his desk, covering his face with one hand lest someone walk in unexpected. His narrow shoulders shook with the sadness of knowing that his baby had just departed this world on a one way ticket, never coming back to hug him and dance with him 'until her feet fell off'.
As he heard footsteps approaching and the echoes of his class as the came closer, he wiped his face off hurriedly. "Whatever happens," he prayed, "Please don't let them see me cry."
He straightened his back and faced the wall, appearing to be study a paper coldly. A stone man in his stone dungeons holding his flood of emotions back with a wall one stone thick.
A stone called Pride.
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His time had come. He waited so long for it, his last breath, his last thought.
She knew it. She was there. She was beside him.
He hurt, his body hurt so badly he felt as though he could shrivel up with agony.
She felt his agony, and it made her weep. She wept until she knew he was beyond his pain.
He was floating, floating a few inches above his body. He could still feel himself—bony and wasted, horribly hurt—but it was slipping away.
She, like a midwife, gently parted the spirit of her father and his now decrepit body.
He wasn't aware of her until he was at the very door of Death. His face broke into a smile, and with that, he died.
She cried out in joy at having her father with her again.
He sat up and reached for her. "Lixue!"
"P'pa!" she shouted, hugging him so closely it was as though once again they lived.
But it didn't really matter, since they both amounted to less that a wisp of smoke. He could see her, and she was as beautiful as what he had remembered for so long, as beautiful as the picture. And she saw her daddy, the big, strong man who swept her up and gave her Eskimo kisses and laughed with her over silly things. "Come on, daddy!" she whispered. "Let's dance until our feet fall off!"
So they did.