When she dreamed, she remembered the past that she had tried to block out. The world she knew when awake, eleven years old and already jaded, faded away into nothing more than a sweet breeze, her pigtails sloppily done by her father's hand and the air tasting clean and crisp.
Really, her memories are never so much in clarity as when she has her face buried in her pillows, when she has locked herself away from the incoming day, groaning her displeasure at the idea of being woken up. In sleep, she was immersed in the memory of being thrown in the air, the feeling of being weightless.
With Papa, when she was just a girl, small and hollow-boned, she felt like a bird. Papa could fly faster than anyone she had ever seen before, even the people on the TV. And she recalled begging and begging and begging until he decided to take her outside with a broom too big for her, his, to let her hover barely a foot off the ground as he gave her a quick ride in circles around the house, much to her delight.
It was a beautiful memory, rendered in the colors of her childhood: bright red hair and a clean white smile, the entire color spectrum of her father's plain, solid T-shirts and her old green helmet that she still had somewhere in the back of her closet.
In those memories are others, more vivid. Like when Papa's hands were on her sides and he was grinning, his lips split with how wide his smile was, and he laughed at her giggles as he held her up and let her pretend she was a helicopter. She was a natural in the air, meant to be built with wings instead of arms, and he held her, his grip firm but gentle.
"Higher, Papa!" she squealed, her arms thrown out to her sides, her legs kicking in the air, and he looked so proud of her. The breeze blew one of her pigtails into her face, and she could practically chew on her own hair as she laughed. Papa lifted her higher, barely, but she was small and her father was her world and he was raising her up into the heavens that she was so desperate to sail into.
For a long time, that's all there was. He didn't let her touch his broom, though he certainly showed it to her, explained it to her. Now, she knew it was because he was too scared by the idea of letting her, metaphorically, leave the nest. He was horrified at the idea of his precious girl (and the thought burns) getting hurt on a broom.
So, she read book after book about flying, memorized them down to the science of theory, learned them cover to cover and yearned so deep in her eight-year-old bones that she didn't think she could ever want anything more. And Papa was happy that she was happy, that she was interested, invested and excited excited excited.
But it was only a year later, when she turned nine, when Mama went off to a convention for months on end, that he took Maka to the store, hand in hand, and she skipped forward in her shiny little shoes into the mall. It was only when she turned nine and Papa and Mama didn't look at each other the same way that he bought her her first broom.
It's a good broom. It was a good broom, then, and it is a good broom, now. Heavy at the back to balance her and perfectly light in the front, with grips for her little hands and a golden trim holding the bristles in place through several years and tumbles. She had loved it as a child and loves it still. And hates it just as much. It reminds her of being nine, again, when Mama was gone for long stretches of time and she would always ask when she'd be coming back. Papa would tell her it would be soon, always soon, before he would take her outside to fly. To distract her. To keep her in the dark.
She was a natural. She is a natural. She is built to be in the air.
In her closet, save for the skeletons, there were the extras that Papa had gotten her back when she was first learning. The things she had decided to leave behind. The training straps that had kept her attached to the broom are worn at the fastenings, and her green helmet, several sizes too small for her, now, has a total of three cracks and a sticker from when she fell a tad too hard and Papa took her to the doctor and they said she was fine, just like she'd told him. There were armpads and kneepads for a nine year old girl's elbows and legs, scratched and scraped up with limp elastic, and there were tiny, mud-caked shoes with the rubber soles coming off because she had loved them to actual pieces.
There was her broom. The broom Papa bought her, the broom he taught her on. The broom she fell off of, time and time and time again, falling to the dirt where Papa was near, always there to catch her. Or, if not, there was always candy her Mama would disapprove of her eating and a bandaid with her favorite Quidditch player plastered on the front. And that would make it all better without fail. To think it was once so simple. A kiss to her knee, to her skinned palms, and she was ready to get back on the broom again.
They were beautiful dreams. They were beautiful memories.
And she hated them hated them hated them .
The alarm clock went off like a banshee wail in her ear, angry and shrill, and she nearly fell off of the side of the bed in her haste to turn the damned thing off.
Whoever decided that waking up at 6 in the morning was any sort of proper schedule was, frankly, delusional, and, for a brief moment, she forgot why she was waking so early. Especially when the rain was pouring against her windows with all the fury of a hurricane, and she likely looked like she had stepped out of the gale instead of from slumber with how her hair felt like a rat's nest when she ran her hand through it.
Groaning, she squinted out into the gloom, trying to let her mind catch up with her. Instead, her eyes caught sight of her calendar, hanging off to the side and color coded with little notes, and she instantly remembered.
That was right. Her last day before she went off to Hogwarts. Instantly, she was awake as she remembered packing and her Papa's proud, teary face.
Something inside of her sank.
Papa.
Perhaps the rain was apt for such a day, after all. A good excuse not to fly with her, again, as usual.
Really, she was looking forward to Hogwarts, all things considered. Hogwarts was a wonderful place with tall spires on the highest points of the castles and a bright, rich interior. Orientation would forever be a favorite day for her, and she remembered her most recent visit last week with Aunt Marie, who had filled in for Spirit when he flaked on her, but it didn't matter, much. Maka still had a good time, skipping to the library and the Quidditch field and everything in between. Hogwarts was lovely.
It was something else that was sinking inside of her. It was that, when she finally mustered up the courage to peer out into the gray, she knew what she would see. She was supposed to spend the day with Papa, her last day before she would leave home. Everything else was packed save for two changes of clothes and her toothbrush, some various goods that she could just throw into a bag when she was ready to leave for the train tomorrow. And her broom, the new one that Papa insisted she get when they went to the various stores.
All her books had been bought, the parchment, the enchanted pens that never ran out of ink. Papa spared no expense though she knew he should have. It wasn't as though that stuff as cheap.
At least, she thought scathingly, he remembered to get her school supplies. Made up for it all with something, at least. Because it seemed that he had forgotten about spending the day with her. Money was no matter to him, but time was bitterly short.
He could call her his darling baby girl all he wanted, and buy her a pretty broom, and tell her he was proud of her, but it didn't change the fact that he was wandering out into the rain with his arm around yet another woman, his umbrella raised high over his head. Likely escorting her out after a late night, she thought, his hair mused.
Something inside of her swelled, an angry, swollen piece of her heart.
It was supposed to be a daddy-daughter day, a day where she could feel like a child again before she had to go out and find herself in an unfamiliar world where the only faces she knew were Uncle Stein's, unconventional even on a good day, and Aunt Marie's, who was kind, but who wasn't Mama, no matter how hard she tried to make Maka feel at ease.
But she didn't feel at ease. Instead, she felt like something inside of her ribcage was throbbing, climbing up to the center of her throat.
Well, forget Papa, then. Forget his daddy-daughter day, forget his new girlfriend (if she could even be called that), forget racing.
She was a big girl. She didn't need the training wheels or the safety straps. She didn't need armpads or a bandaid and her Papa holding her broom up for her. She could do it by herself like she'd been doing it for herself for over half a year.
Maka threw the covers off with a sharp ferocity and got up from the bed. Her bare feet landed down on her carpet and she stood up almost immediately though her body protested for a stretch. Her clothes were rumpled, her pajamas bunching around her legs and the sleeves of her shirt rolled up to her armpits in sleep, but she didn't care. She barely even noticed. The only thing that she wanted to do was get out of the house where everything reminded her of Papa and Mama and what she was leaving behind.
She knew Papa was out of sight. Didn't even have to turn to the window and check. She had watched him leave too many times in the past not to have memorized the way he walked with his arm around a woman that wasn't Mama. She had seen his back depart, farther and farther away from her and their house until he got to the end of their driveway and ushered whatever random lady he had with him into the car he used to drive her and Mama to ice cream parlors in.
She doubted he was taking that lady to the ice cream parlor. Likely just driving her home so she wouldn't have to make her way alone when the sun wasn't even out. Maka chewed on her lip, something sick and sad growing her heart harder. Probably, he'd stay at her place. He always did.
Her mouth tasted sour and she reached for her broom, her fingers itching, her bones humming with the desperate urge to get up and leave the ground. She wanted to be weightless. She wanted to disappear and forget, if even for just a few precious moments.
Yet, as she reached for the handle of her broom, engraved with only her first name as she had requested, she spotted the picture of her and Papa that Mama took so many years ago.
The frame was simple, a clean, spotless glass keeping the photograph safe from the two years of age it had collected. Mama never liked being in photos, but she loved taking them. She was a fan of holding the camera up over her eyes and telling Maka to say cheese and Maka would, stretching her lips out wide as she one, though, wasn't like that. There was no posing, no unnatural contortion of her face.
It was just her and Papa and the green little helmet she was leaving behind in the room she didn't want to be cooped up in. Mama had taken it on a rare instance that she was out on a flying lesson with the two of them, watching them from the sidelines and cheering Maka on from the ground.
When Mama first presented it to her, printing it out from their Muggle printer that they kept down in the basement, she'd been overjoyed.
Now, she didn't want to see her Papa's face. Not when he was all too happy at turning his back on her. Maka scoffed, feeling her eyes burning, and she slammed her palm down against the frame, setting the picture down so she didn't have to be assaulted by the aching, gaping memory of when her family was still happy. When Mama was still around and all too willing to take beautiful pictures to catalogue them.
There was no time for that, now. There would never be time for that again.
Maka grabbed her broom with a grip that was more deadly and desperate than anything else. She didn't care about her sleep shorts sliding down her hips or her shirt twisted around her torso. She couldn't care about the fact that she didn't even have socks on as she raced out into the downpour.
For a moment, as she ran, her broom swung by her side, her most constant companion, and she remembered being eight again. She remembered the exhilaration of running outside, she remembered the way her very blood felt fizzy with how giddy she was, and how her feet came over the clean ground of the hardwood floors Papa had put down.
And then, the feeling was gone, replaced with something else, something that made her hair stand on end, something that goosefleshed her skin and made her throw the front door open and not care if she left it that way, letting the world rain on the welcome mat.
This time, she was practically skidding down the walkway. Her bare feet and her thin clothes and her hair was drenched immediately, but her magic welled up in her as naturally as breathing. To fly was to live. To fly eas to inhale and feel her heart pumping through her entire body.
So she brought the broom before her, still running as she took a sharp left and took off over her lawn, toward the large expanse of heaving green trees that she used to dash between, her Papa in swift pursuit but always just a breath away from catching her. Maka was lightning on a broom. Maka was a storm.
She felt like a storm. She felt like a hurricane when she finally managed to find cover from any prying eyes, though it was unlikely if not absolutely ridiculous for anyone to be sightseeing in such weather. Still, it was what she was practiced at doing, a routine she had perfected over the two years since she first turned nine and got that too-small broom.
Now, she stretched her mouth open just as the thunder boomed and threw her broom beneath her in a swift, fluid movement. The momentum from her run took her forward faster and faster and she faltered just for an instant before her magic hummed around her and she stabilized.
Both her hands came to the handle of her broom until she was balancing with seeming ease, lifting higher and higher into the sky. She had no goggles and no boots; she had no helmet. The training wheels had long since been taken off and the safety had left her head and the rain fell around her in a slick sheet of protection.
She wanted Mama. She wanted to go back to her bed to bury her face in the pillows and wanted the crack of lightning splitting the sky to consume her in a flash of brilliant light that could distract her from the reality of her situation.
Maka no longer asked when Mama was coming home. There was no more "soon." There were only divorce papers and Papa's empty bottles, only mornings when she went on flights alone even though Papa promised her that he was going to go with her. There was only Maka, now. Maka in the air, Maka with her vision blurring.
From the rain, she told herself. Just from the rain.
And as the wind ruffled her hair and her clothes, as the dampness of the downpour overtook her, drowned out her small sniffles and her soft gasps of air as she desperately tried to get a hold of herself, she took a hand off of her broom to wipe the water from her face, from her cheeks.
Darn rain. It was a bad idea to fly in that kind of weather and she knew it and she didn't care.
As she brought her forearm across her eyes, hovering high in the sky where there was nothing, not even a single cloud to weigh down upon her, she let loose a hard, heavy sob, hiding herself away from the rest of the world.
Stupid Papa. Stupid Hogwarts. Stupid dreams.
In the thinned out air, Maka yelled like a banshee, a mournful cry like a keening wail that carried into the windows of Muggle homes and made them lift their heads from their pillows for an instant, wondering what the yelling was about before they let themselves rest once more.
And she envied them.
