For all the little monsters.
I:
She didn't bother to pretend to know about her family's well-being, not when she was darting through streets and alleyways alike, feeling as much like prey as she did huntress.
Angels still swarmed what she knew to be the ruins of the aerie, like before, when she was dragged, screaming for any of them to help only to be torn apart and put back together again. Most of the winged humanoids standing among the rubble didn't spare her a glance. Just another monkey, too stupid to leave the chaos.
They had made her this way. No matter how alleviating it was to know she would never be so dependent of her mother and sister as she was for the years before, it was in all aspects a double edged sword. Obliviation of her crippledness in turn for the craving of uncooked flesh—it raised the hairs on the back of her neck and sent bile rising in her throat at the thought of it.
She had been a vegetarian.
She would never have had to eat another living creature again. She would have been fine and whole. She would have survived her doting, off-the rails family. She did not deserve any of what she received.
But she was Paige Young, and she didn't hold grudges.
Beliel was her first betrayal.
II:
Her older sister had always reminded Paige to watch her back. It had always seemed incidental that in those conversations her sister either never mentioned or never minded her crippledness. Besides, how much trouble could a handicapped girl get into anyways?
More than she would have bargained for, apparently, Paige reflected wryly as she ran a dry hand over her grotesquely scarred cheek.
An empty fire pit had been dug into the earth by her feet and save for the black ashes darkening the surrounding dirt, one would have never known that a family had camped here the night previous.
With her right hand, that extremity being the less painful of her two, she balanced a stick in her palm and drew a thin line with it into the drying mud.
She had spent her own evening watching from above, a heavily forested hillside just northeast of the inconspicuous clearing (she couldn't guess how she knew what direction it was, but something in her had just known). One of the younger members of the party carried an instrument, something smaller than a guitar and larger that a ukulele, but he strummed the out of tune strings in a short-lasting innuendo that reminded her of past days, better days.
The humanity of it was enough for her to keep distance from those people.
Because if she came near to them, all of them nameless, faceless strangers, she may have been more tempted to do the inevitable than before.
But she was Paige Young, and she didn't eat the flesh of men.
Her sister was her second.
III:
The wind had picked up more scents than it had in the past weeks.
More than half of the stench came from humankind, where buildings had inhabitants either unable or unwilling to leave the safety of their shelters to relieve themselves—but the other smells, whatever they had done to her in that lab made her overtly acute to its presence in the air.
It was near midnight, days after she began tracking them in earnest, that she saw the source.
Locusts.
The word came to mind before she even fully registered it and when she so stupidly revealed herself from the shadows in the parkway (an empty stretch of road she had followed them to), the thunderous hum of their wings stopped in unsettling unison.
One of the larger ones gave a curious uptilt of its nose in her direction.
The seconds it studied her for felt like hours until she began to tremble slightly in fear of something she couldn't name.
It bent its head low, the protruding kaleidoscopes of its eyes changing in color minutely, and with an expression of pain opened its arms uncoordinatedly to her, like an overgrown child.
She paused and its grimace deepened in response to her hesitation, but she stepped forward anyways. Didn't turn and scream, didn't turn and run, like her own mother would have wished for her, but rather stepped closer to the demonic creature.
Human.
The hiss that emitted from its mouth was almost caressing and its embrace was startlingly gentle with the muscles bulging from its blackened skin. Those facts alone were enough to make her tense up even as she imitated her own assumption of a nurturing embrace before her doubts could stop her.
The scorpion tail lowered unthreateningly to the pavement as it clutched her and the steady hum of dragonfly wings began again like a primitive call to arms.
But she was Paige Young, and she didn't abandoned those that wanted her.
Her mother was her third.
IV:
She was alone again.
Over the weeks of her partially self-induced expulsion, one would have thought she was used to it, maybe even purposely seeking it.
She strolled as easily in the streets as she used to cart herself before the apocalypse, hands in her empty sweatshirt pocket and shoelaces untied to pointedly tap on the black top with each of her sluggish steps.
With her unusually heightened senses she could hear the murmurings of people, her people, as they hissed back and forth whether she was suicidal or plain idiotic.
She personally felt more of the latter, but who was to know how far death was from taking her as well?
In one town, a fraction of those that dotted along the highways with abandoned restaurants and moving van renters, she was coaxed into the open by an all too-familiar sound.
Somewhere, a person was weeping. While the broken sobs remained muffled, likely by a hand or shirt collar, it remained more open than what she was used to— more heart aching than she was familiar with.
It was a man, a father—wasn't it always?—crying over the crushed corpse of a child underneath an overturned car, his form folded over on the pavement.
Through his whimpers was the cliché mantra of "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, SORRY!" and in his trembling hands was a gun. She didn't recognize what type, other than it was small, compact and fit into the palm of his hand with disturbing ease, even as he pressed the barrel—was it still called that if it looked like a rectangle?—to the skin beneath his jaw.
His eyes cracked open, knowing exactly where to look to see the most gruesome parts of the corpse. He must have expected that to be the last sight he ever saw—she recognized it reflecting in his eyes and tears as he turned towards her. He must've noticed her presence sooner, or maybe it was divine intervention that made him take notice of her scarred figure at this moment.
He seemed to think so, looking that much more crushed at her horrid appearance than he already did—a feat within itself—a sadistic joke from god, the thing he lost prematurely atop of everything else the man no longer possessed.
But his thumb wasn't on the trigger, like it had been, so ready to take action for his mind. The longer he stared at her, the farther gun lowered from his head.
She dared a step forward, just as she had with the locusts.
The two hands whipped back up, fumbling for a more secure grip as he reoriented the weapon back towards himself, "Stay away! You hear me?"
She felt so empty at that moment. It had been so long since she had last spoken. "Yes," her lips felt dry as she wetted them with her tongue, wincing as the flesh caught on her razor teeth, "I can hear you." Her voice sounded like gravel.
"Then you better back up!" He threatened.
She tilted her head, half because she felt too tired to hold it up anymore and half because of the black spots dancing in her vision, "But then you'd be alone."
He release a half delirious laugh, it burned her ears to listen it was so frozen with resentment, "Aren't we all already?"
Her legs gave out suddenly and she stumbled to her knees, a mere few feet away from him, "I'd hope not, then nothing would get better."
His remaining shudders quieted then and he gagged on them as he turned his gun towards her, "Let me have my peace!"
She surveyed the other wreckage around them, "I wouldn't call this peace. Besides," she continued even as his finger flexed outside of the trigger's loop, "who wants to go to heaven anymore? I mean the only things there are angels and pretty flowers, right?"
She was spouting nonsense. If it made no sense to her then it didn't make sense to him, right? Why was she so dizzy?
She outstretched a bare hand, her skin looking pale compared to the dirt and grime that covered it, covered her. "Put the gun down."
He didn't move.
"Please, for your safety over my own. Put the gun down."
Something in her phrasing must've struck a nerve, because no matter how slowly he did, no matter how incrementally, he lowered the firearm. His fingers were stiff with more than cold as they released the grip.
"Good," she breathed before doubling over onto both of her hands. She wretched, dry heaving the emptiness inside her stomach.
He mercifully stayed silent until the fit passed, "When was the last time you ate?"
"A while," She responded, feeling slightly more aware with the burning in her throat. She paused before elaborating, "I can't eat things like normal people anymore."
The man seemed to understand what she meant as he observed the glimmering of her metal teeth behind her peeling lips.
With hands more silent and sure of themselves than she would have initially believed, he rolled his nearly empty backpack off his shoulders and reached inside a previously unzipped pocket. Leaning forward, he tossed a package of wax paper and cheesecloth towards her. It landed with a thud not five inches from her closest hand.
"It was from a meal nearly two days ago, I hunted the bird myself."
It was now her hands that trembled as she reached for the wrapped meat, "Thank you."
He didn't deign to respond and watched her struggle to stand from her kneeling position in exhausted silence.
Holding the package to her chest, she turned on her heel to address the man one last time, "My name is Paige, by the way." She shrugged as carelessly as she was able.
The only indication he even heard her quiet admission was a twitch in his left eyelid and even then he seemed thoroughly unfazed by the razor-toothed smile she sent him before but turning away and disappearing into the shadows.
She nearly gave up on him. When she had finally choked down all of the cooked meat she looped back to the site of the accident in search of him. But the man wasn't there and no apparent indication of where he went was left behind.
When no gunshots rang out that evening, she realized that some things could change. She had believed before that it was for the better without her assistance.
But she was Paige Young, and she didn't ignore those that needed help.
Society was her last.
V:
It was a new trend for her, moving forwards.
She never once before considered herself a risk-taker, but perhaps the angels had wanted such impulsive urges in their experiments … or maybe she had simply grown in the time since the beginning of the apocalypse.
The humans were freed and, if the rumors were true, it had been Penryn leading the charge for humanity. Her sister had always been better at deciphering people.
Paige admired her for that.
She didn't feel remorseful with the lack of familial companionship and the break from constantly striving to become a normal family was pleasantly welcomed.
She would persevere, no matter how many times she looked back, it would only be onwards for her.
Because she was Paige Young, and she would take the first step forward and every one afterwards.
She was the deciding factor.
Author's note: Too angsty? Yeah, I had my doubts.
Criticism welcomed.