Sometimes the night allows her sleep, its darkness and quiet easing her into a dreamless abyss, but most nights she's awake and finds things to fill the time. Her living room is small but she's filled it with things that help, baskets of colorful yarn and a case of cheap pencils on top of black-bound sketchbooks. A brown and white tabby lounges on the edge of the second hand couch, flicking its chewed up tail back and forth letting her know he's awake and sees her.

The fall brings with it a cold wind, nothing like she'd been used to, and in that first year she had found the stray hiding under her porch nearly frozen but mostly wild. It had taken days and an endless amount of tuna and soft words to coax him out but once she did, he hadn't wanted to leave.

It was simple and after everything, Darcy needed simplicity. The wind rattled the hundred year old window pane and she finds that it's easier now to not jump and panic. Her heart beats harder still, but it's a slow dance compared to those first months. She shuffles to her kitchen and reaches for familiar things as the light stays off; this is one habit she keeps hold of even as the winter approaches.

Darkness is common here, far up into the mountains, and she might have feared the night at first but has since come to accept it. Darkness is not all so bad, if it means being free.

The tea kettle is old, as is everything she owns, and it sits a little lopsided because of a dent she put in it having thrown it at the wall some months ago. It still does its job, dented and off balance and she takes comfort in that, as it slowly heats up water.

The house she lives in is hers by all legal rights; as far as anyone knows. Purchased in cash and without trouble, it's old and was made for just one. One bedroom, one kitchen with a table and one chair, one bathroom, and one living room just big enough for one couch. It's more than she needs.

The town was a place she'd picked in private, a long time ago when she was someone else. It was perfect in the sense that it wasn't quite a town, but rather a collection of shops and a restaurant or two for the people who pass through. There was a logging town not too many miles east of here and people came and went, faces weary and unseeing, so it worked well enough. She needed to be in a place that wasn't quite a place.

Darcy had gotten a job quickly, which had scared her at first because she was new and people tended to notice new folk, especially pretty young women, but her quiet ways and cold demeanor turned them off and they soon moved on. It's ok to be forgotten, she tells herself, and she knows that it's the best thing for her. Everyone she loved was safer this way and if not, at least she was away from the life and the game and those people who had done such great and terrible things.

The screech of the tea kettle makes her blink and her hand stills mid-stitch. Darcy tries, oh god does she try to keep the memories from working their way in, but they often do and she fades into them only to come back out with the shriek of hot water and tears burning trails down her face.

Her sigh annoys the cat so he jumps from the comfortable nest he'd made by her feet to stretch lazily on the floor. His eyes drift to hers as if asking, you going to shut that thing up? Her lips tug but a smile never quite reaches it so she flips off the blanket and heads to the kitchen. It's lighter already, meaning that morning was on its way, the sun taking longer to breach the high mountains.

Darcy sighs again and makes the dark tea, careful not to use the burned hand. Coffee is something she gave up after coming here, the caffeine becoming dangerously like a crutch. Jittery and paranoid and not able to sleep, she'd nearly killed herself by running into the woods near her house, the snow of winter falling heavy and fast. Cat had found her gasping for air that never quite made it to her lungs. The cold didn't faze her, not with the panic and bitter taste of ash and acid, and that's what had scared her most. Death was less terrifying than being found.

Darcy had followed Cat home, letting the numbness fill her soul. It's ok to be forgotten, she'd repeated over and over.

Work was simple, nothing like what she had done before but at least it involved things she liked. The bookstore was a building that sat out of place with the others, but only with its contents, surrounded by a hunting shop, a small market store, and a few hardware fronts as well. You'd think with technology and whatnot that people wouldn't be into reading like they used to but she had found that winter was long and the folks here needed the stories to fill their own voids.

She arrives early, as she does every day she works, because the man and woman who own the store are nearly eighty and Darcy tries to get things in order before they come in. They had given her a set of keys her second week, trust and warmth in their eyes. It was an awful thing to feel shame so she allowed detachment to take its place.

It's halfway through the day, her re-shelving the books that had been left on the counter, when the bell dings above the front door. Darcy hates that her heart stutters every time, no matter how many days, weeks, years…

She flicks her eyes up and the numbness becomes dark with ire but she doesn't show it, not ever. Her face is stone and her hands do not stop as she ignores the man who moves close to her. Too close and she can feel his leer and the stink of animal's no longer living.

His voice is rough from years of smoking, the scent assaulting her nostrils with that of furred corpses and metal.

"Got something for me?" He mutters and she thinks he's trying to be sexy but it makes her stomach twist painfully. He comes in twice a month in between poaching trips or lumber runs, and she hates every time he does. Darcy think too, that he comes in only when the owners are gone to lunch, leaving her alone.

"Would you like to buy a book?" She offers politely but her words drip with ice. He doesn't flinch back, though she can see the heat of anger flicker in his muddy eyes. Her heart stammers again but this time it's not in panic, but in anticipation.

She'd like to hurt him. Inflict pain in a way that she had never wanted to do before and Darcy understands that it's not just him that makes her itch to hurt, but she shoves the thoughts aside.

He moves away to the window and she knows he's looking for the owners. Her gloved hand grips the heavy book she was going to put back and wonders if it would damage him, bruise him, maybe even cut him.

Something twists his face in disappointment and her grip relaxes. The store, this life she built, is more important than this asshole so she bites the inside of her cheek. His body comes to stand next to her but now she knows he's not getting away with shit so she allows her face to show the smallest amount of the ice inside of her.

"No?" She waits as his jaw ticks under the wiry unkempt thing he called a beard before continuing. "Then have a good day."

Darcy turns and takes two steps before his hand shoots out and twists her arm, the book falling to the floor with a heavy thud. The pain blinds her for only a second before her free hand crashes into his nose, closed fist and tight. Blood gushes and gushes and he curses but she see the red and then there's a ding of the door but now it's not the bookstore but the lobby and there's screams. Fire and acid and blood because there's a body in front of her, dead eyes staring but she has to cover her hand so she cries as she tears their shirt to use as a bandage. Her blood and their blood and she can't breathe because of the acid and finally shadows creep into the edges of her dream until it fills it up and she is swallowed by the darkness.

Home, she thinks she hears, someone says home .