Fall
Summary: She fell. Into a new life, into a new world, and into a new, yet eerily familiar, conflict. She can't fall any lower, or risk loosing herself completely. But...someone has to take the fall. FOC.
Disclaimer: I don't own Ajin: Demi-Human.
She is eight years old when she remembers. Her head makes a sharp crack on the cement entryway as she trips, her neck twisting with a faint snap as her body awkwardly makes impact with the ground.
Moments later, she gasps, cloudy eyes blinking into sharpness. She pulls her legs from where they have sprawled across the stairs, shuffling on her hands and knees.
Then she looks down and realizes that her fingers are too small, her hair too long, and the maple tree planted to her left in the overgrown garden that is her empty front yard is too big to make sense.
She doesn't see the black shape whirling in the air above the patio, too busy accounting for the twenty-six years of life experience suddenly popping into existence in her head.
Liquid is leaking from her eyes and nose, red drops staining the fabric covering her bent knees, but the only functional thought running through her mind is that she's never realized just how faded and worn her yellow play dress is. Never mind the something reminding her that she hasn't worn a dress in years.
There is a pop between her ears as her brain aneurysms and she slumps forward towards her legs.
Seconds later she rises back to her seated position on the dirty pavement, and it begins all over again.
She is nine and crying behind the school garden shed, just beyond the gym. She remembers school being a mixture of boredom and excitement, swinging from one end of the pendulum to the other without warning, but she had forgotten where its true horror lies.
The words hurt, cutting like sharp, broken glass. Children were cruel.
She starts when she looks to the left as something moves in the shadows created in the corner of the two buildings, fickle and warping.
Her crying renews with fervor as she freezes in terrified dread, not for the creatures appearance, but for the word that pushes with sudden clarity to the forefront of her mind.
IBM.
She ignores the Black Ghost as her world falls apart around her for the second time in less than a year.
She is ten when her mother kicks her out of the house so she can "entertain" some clients. Shame wars with contempt, but she understands that the woman's actions keep food on the table, if only for a few days, and so pushes the feelings down and away.
Her gaze narrows as she takes off down the road, running through cramped streets and past graffitied, crumbling buildings until she finds the abandoned warehouse sporting long, hanging chains. They dangle despondently from its exposed and rusted steel scaffolding, and she smiles as she makes her way carefully up to the grated balcony.
She can't reach the beams from where she stands, balancing on the creaking safety rail, but she can see the iron links rustling slightly with the breeze that whines its way through the body of the condemned building, the cold metal left from some unknown purpose far too long ago.
Well, she thinks with a sardonic twist of her lips, you only live once.
Then she jumps.
She is eleven when she decides that she wants to meet her IBM. So there, in the cramped room of the hovel her mother calls an apartment, she calls it.
And it comes.
She is surprised, and pleased, to find it sporting something almost entirely unique. Almost.
Only one known Ghost with wings, huh?
She can't help but feel a bit smug.
She is thirteen and entering middle school. Hard work and the memories of prior schooling have paid off, and it's enough to get her into a decent program, far away from the backstreets she calls home. She takes an interest in the body, specifically bones and pressure points that cause pain. Cliché, she knows, but at her tallest height she had only been 163cm (5'4", damn, the metric system was so much easier), so what can she do? She's never been a fighter, now or then, but if anyone finds out her most noticeable secret, she has to be able to run and know where to hit fast in order to give her enough time to get away.
But she has a plan.
Safe spots and supply cashes have been established the year prior, mobile and easily within reach. There are three within sprinting distance from where she stands, propped against a windowsill in her school hallway; more, the farther out she gets. Nondescript bags placed in odd, out-of-the-way places, but damn, she doesn't really know what she is doing. She's not military, she doesn't know how to handle a gun, and even though there is a hunting knife strapped to her thigh, she knows it isn't enough; everything is set for short term.
The meager supplies she stole from home won't last more than a few days on the run.
She doesn't know what she is doing, but she's got a plan, and that's more than that one kid ever had.
But if there is one thing she does know, its people.
People, and her IBM.
She is fourteen and she loves the way they work together.
Always aim for the head, she tells it, repeating it over and over, just in case it gets willful and forgets.
She can reach the scaffolding now, and run along it, jumping from ledge to chain and swinging with a helpful push from her companion. She can't hold on long, she knows, her strength is all in her core and legs, but using momentum and redirecting forces helps her move from one surface to another quickly. It's taken a long time to trust her body not to fall, to stand strong and not hesitate with each movement. The awkwardness is still there, the fear of moving her body in a way that she hadn't moved in the Before, but she tries. God, she tries. The movement itself is not quite silent, but it is something she's working on.
Quick and quiet, that is her goal. Unnoticeable, unimportant.
Blend in with the crowd and if, when, you seen another ghost, Don't Bloody Look At It!
See, but don't be seen.
She doesn't know when things will start happening, but if the news is anything to go by, it's soon.
She is fifteen and she is flying.
An uncontrollable laugh leaves her as the black matter protruding from her back propels her upwards towards the warehouses' vaulted ceiling, sunlight streaming through the cracks onto her face.
Her IBM crouches like a gargoyle nearby, arms hanging limply between its thighs. Its wings are missing, and in all honesty, the talon-like fingers that have replaced them make for an odd sight. Its head is tilting back and forth like a confused, grotesque pigeon, and she pauses in her flight to glance down at it, hands on hips, eyebrow raised, and sneakered feet dangling over a ten meter drop of open air.
"Always aim for the head." It trills, nodding, and the girl laughs at the absurdity of it all.
She is sixteen when she first has sex. It is nothing fantastic, just a panting mess in some janitor's closet at the high school she'd slaved so hard to get into. It was completely unnecessary, let alone pleasurable, and may ruin her carefully crafted reputation. But something in her memories reminded her of a power she had forgotten, though power isn't quite the word she would use.
Her body is beautiful.
And she knows people.
Her smile is a weapon, her curves an allure. It's double edged if she is not careful, and something she'd only discovered later in her last life, but…
…it won't hurt to get a bit of practice.
Because she knows people.
And she can't rely on her shadow for everything.
She is seventeen when it starts. The videos were her first clue and the reality of what will happen hits home with the same finality as the bullet that slams through 002's body. She watches it, over and over, imaging that it is her tied up, bandaged and without a face, helpless, hurting, and so agonized by their apathy.
Her Ghost shifts into being behind her, restless, and she has to stop before she goes mad.
She remembers colored pictures, a man with a hat, crazed laughter against pressing palms and a boy who become a smear on the asphalt.
She remembers the greed, the sharp smiles, betrayal and indifference and insanity.
And she remembers to be afraid.
She is seventeen, four months, and eight days old when the boy gets hit by a truck, dies, and then stands back up, only to have his face plastered on the internet for all the wolves to see.
Three days later, her mother kicks her out, drunk and high enough out of her mind to accuse her daughter of fucking the lowlife junky the woman calls her boyfriend.
It was assault, the girl insists, twisting a duffle over her shoulder without a backwards glance.
There are claw marks furrowed into the walls, rather than into her rapist.
She is seventeen, four months, and twenty-two days old when Sato plays with the press, inviting Ajin's to a meeting from the screen of her motel television.
She wonders why 002 just sits in wheel chair, even when she knows it was his part to play.
She thumbs though her wallet, flicking through the dwindling bills. Her homework goes unmarked on the bed behind her.
Her jaw clenches, remembering the plan she'd put into action years ago.
She will be there.
One day passes and she marvels at the strangeness of this encounter. Wisps of black everywhere, in broad daylight; all shapes and forms and sizes. Her IBM's wings are carefully absent, and she stands and stares through the link, trying to pick out who would come to the broken factory to meet their doom. Then…
…a flutter of wings.
He is beautiful, she thinks, and thinks and thinks until a clawed hand is reaching out to lightly brush over the inky feathers. He whirls around and she pauses, hand outstretched.
If it were possible to convey puzzlement over the link, he would have, for he stands awkwardly now, limbs cautiously pulled out of reach.
She goes to speak, but her Ghost beats her to it.
"Always aim for the head." It parrots gratingly, obediently, and if the thing wasn't some sort of nightmarish creature, she would have face palmed and slapped it over the head.
Perhaps it took her lesson a bit too seriously.
The winged IBM twitches, but before anything else can happen, another voice hisses out.
She shivers and nods along with the rest.
2 p.m.
Stick to the plan.
The place is large and hard to miss, but she supposes that is the point.
Lookie here! Nothing to see!
She wants to snort as she travels the rest of the way on foot, because it is obvious and completely clever. She pulls her hood farther over her head, and her hair, short and spiked into not-quite curls, peeks out from the depths in a flash of brown. Her baggy hoodie is cliché too, but it is red and comfortable and hides her curves for the time being.
The others look at her with fleeting, nervous glances, and her lips twist. Adrenaline roars when Sato's voice rings out again from his IBM, its presence a foreboding welcome.
They troop inside.
They argue.
And her lips twist again, this time into a hard line. Sato doesn't call her out like the others, and her hands curl over the handle of the hand-length knife she has stashed in the pocket of her hoodie.
She looks at the only other minor in the room, sees his fear, and looks away.
She makes sure she is angled with her back to a wall and close to the plump blond when the shots ring out.
She admires the man who declares the moral high ground and fights for the boy to escape.
She struggles to hold back a flinch each time a bullet is fired, grip white knuckled on her weapon.
She does not look at the man whimpering on the floor.
The boy throws himself out of the building and Sato asks (demands) what she is useful for.
The blade cuts her hand as it's is pulled slowly from its sheath. The pain gives her clarity.
Stick to the plan.
She walks, slowly, carefully, to the door, mindful of the guns at her back. Stepping over the tranquilized man is easier than she thought it would be, but then suddenly she is at the edge, looking over the landscape and assorted factory debris, watching the boy in orange rise from his bloody grave and begin to run towards the forest.
She takes a deep breath.
And then invisible black matter sprouts from her back, her wings stretched. Her hood flies back with the displacement of air, and her knife flickers in her scarlet hand. She grips it tighter and the pain gives her courage.
Then she jumps.
Sato's pleased chuckles claw at her ears and make her skin crawl as she dives after the boy, but god damn it!
Stick to the plan!
She plows into him as he meets the tree line and she snarls, jabbing at non vital areas even as she pulls his struggling form close.
"Kill me." She hisses fiercely.
He yelps as she brings the blade down, crying and terrified and so, so confused.
"Hurt me, and make it look good!" She bits out, kicking him closer to the forest. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts to do this, but she has to, in order to survive.
"Wha-" He starts, but she slams her fist down.
"Someone needs to stay and watch things. Now, hit me so you can run away!" She growls as she falls on top of him, punching and kicking. The knife conveniently falls from her grasp, wings disappearing in their scuffle.
He stiffens, then moves, throwing her off with all the ease of a teenage boy in his youth. He's somehow rolled on top of her and she bucks, panicking, because last time a man got on top of her-
He holds the retrieved knife to her throat, panting.
"What's your name?"
She stills and feels a wet trickle slide down her cheeks. She'd have to clean that up later.
She meets his eyes, mahogany to green.
"Hana." She breathes.
A flash, pain, and then…nothing.
AN: So... there you go...