(Author Note: Whee! I dun wrote me a fan fic. I promised myself that I wouldn't do this, having wandered into other types of fan fiction and becoming very dissatisfied with myself for it. I told myself I wasn't going to do it, but then this idea wandered along. It's kind of confusing, and I've tried to make it fit with the comic series, but just please bear with me as the story goes along. Everything will make sense in the end. Which hopefully I don't get bored with the story and quit before then. Ha ha! Wouldn't that suck! Anyway, legal stuffs, Johnny belongs to creator of all things squishy, Jhonen Vasquez. Piper, and any other characters that you do not recognize from the comic books or what not, belong to creator of all things not-so-squishy , me! So read! And review!)
Do you know what it's like? Standing at the edge of a cliff, staring at the bottomless abyss below and just knowing that the next step you take will be your last?
That was sort of what it was like for Piper Mackenzie, as she sat on a bench just a few houses away from his. She watched as he slammed the front door behind him … a large pillowcase thrown over his shoulder and that little fat man under his arm. It was that image in front of her that spelled out so clearly what she had been trying to convince herself wasn't true.
She had failed.
She'd failed him, failed herself, failed The Guardianship, but worse of all .. she failed Mischa. The one who'd saved her very life, while avenging her mother's death, and took her in and raised her like her own child. Despite walking through the front door of their quite home covered head to tow in someone else's blood, Mischa was the closest thing Piper had to a normal mother. She did everything for Piper, trying her best to provide a normal life for the girl, and Piper had always looked up to her and respected her as a mother and as a savior. Hell, she was the very reason Piper wanted so eagerly to join the Guardianship. Piper wanted to look after someone, the way Sasha looked after Mischa. A waste-lock guardian.
But Piper was in no way like Sasha. Sasha looked after Mischa, kept her from getting caught, made sure Mischa was always aware of the mission at hand. Sasha had completed her task, all the way until Mischa's unfortunate illness and eventual death. Not Piper. Something had gone wrong. From the very beginning, she'd lost control of him. He killed those who didn't even deserve it, straying from the path that was cleared for him by the waste-locks years before his time. Something within the house had gotten control first, and they were the ones who were in control. All Piper could do was stand back, and watch pitifully as he defiled the waste-lock name. All she could do was a half-assed version of the job that was written for her in those before her. She kept him out of trouble, all right. Made sure he was never caught. While he ranted and raved, killing senselessly … she stayed behind and cleaned up his little messes, messes that weren't supposed to be made. All because she had lost control from the very start.
The Guardianship was quick to take the blame for what was happening. After all, Piper was only fifteen when Mischa died. They hadn't planned on Mischa dying on them so quickly, and by the time she did Piper had already been assigned to him, and he had already been chosen as the replacement. It was too late for a new waste-lock, and too late to train a new guardian for him … so despite being three years underage, they sent her in anyway. That, they said, was their mistake.
"We should have been more aware of Mischa's condition, and that she could've passed on sooner than she was supposed to." They had said, as Piper stood with her head hung low in front of the Elders. "We shouldn't have assigned you so quickly, and we are not ones to deny when we have done something wrong."
Ha. A cruel sort of smile came to her face, when she thought about that. Their fault. It was their fault that she had come to The Elders, on her knees practically, begging to become a guardian. She wanted so badly to protect the kind that had saved her and raised her. She refused to take "No" for an answer the day she signed up for a guardianship, which was the same day she turned fourteen. Sasha had told her she started training at that age, and of course, the Elders allowed Piper to start.
They enrolled her in a "class", where the closest person to her age was just turning eighteen. That one person was the only friend she'd make in the class. The rest ridiculed her, for both her young age and her roguish "fuck the rules" attitude. They taunted her, telling her she'd be a failure. She was particularly a favorite target of a young man named Rodie, who was eighteen when his training started. He thought the fact that he was already at legal age to start a guardianship that made him more superior to her.
"They wouldn't even let him in until he turned 18." Her only friend in the group, Terra, had whispered to her on the first day of training. "At least they saw enough talent in you to let you start early."
Yeah, why would they allow her in at a young age if they didn't believe she could do it? She could do it!
She laughed bitterly, as the thought crossed with the image in front of her. Now he was slamming the trunk of that safety hazard he called a car. She had done so well in her training that they assigned her early, when Mischa started to get sick. They thought Mischa would stay alive long enough for Piper to turn eighteen and complete her training. They were wrong. And like they had said so many times before … it was just too late.
He took one last inhale of the air, and climbed into the driver's side. After a few minutes hesitation, the small car roared to life and he backed out of the driveway. Narrowly missing a small Chihuahua that chose the exact moment to wander onto road, he sped out of sight. Not once did he look back, so he didn't notice her watching him as his gray vehicle whizzed past her.
"Good-bye, Nny." She whispered, to the vacant air in front of her. "I'm sorry."
Soon after the teardrops started rolling, Piper Mackenzie started toward home. Somehow, some way … she'd make things right. Or die trying. She'd make things right again.
Piper was so busy, wallowing in her own self-pity, that she failed to recognize the beat up black car that replaced the gray one. Nor did she notice, the young woman that crawled out, stretching her arms skyward … with and evil sort of smile on her face.
"Home sweet home." Her thick, British accented voice whispered to the property in front of her.