Fair warning: This chapter delves deep into the personal grief of one of our beloved characters.

That being said, this story is co-authored by AlwaysCastle and kimmiesjoy

Chapter One

"If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...

Would you slow down? Or speed up?"

Through the wrought metal of aged gates the trail wound, neatly edged and trimmed in grass, a lone figure walked. The pebbled stones beneath her feet spoke of her arrival, loud and harsh as she followed the solemn path.

Swirling thick clouds of mist nipped at her heels as she tightened the red belt of her coat, warding off the chill. It was the way she moved, and the crimson of her coat, that made her stick out in the forest of trees surrounding the graves.

It made no difference, she would stand out there no matter what. The lone body, alive and breathing, whose blood still pumped in her barely beating heart, head tilted down as she walked amongst those who had gone...

Curling her fingers tight into her pockets she resisted the urge to reach out in greeting to each one she meandered past, her eyes dropping to every headstone, it's the only acknowledgement she gives them even if they each deserved something more...but she isn't here to mourn them, one grave stands out more than the rest and she would save her devotion for three rows ahead.

When she stepped off the path, the ground was cold and wet and she sunk into the damp grass, her step faltered slightly. She didn't have to count the headstones anymore, she knew the footsteps, the patterns in her own gait, the way her body moved until she arrived.

She fell to her knees, the mud cold and wet, seeped unnoticed to touch at her skin and her coat flowed out around her in a puddle of blood, severe against the gloom of the day, the dullness of her surroundings. With an aching in her chest, she dropped one hand to the stone she'd been seeking. Her light touch, betrayed by the knuckle white grip when she met the outer curve, was a silent greeting before she rested deeper into the damp, cold earth.

The woman dug her fingers into the dirt, clutching at the grass as if it were the fingers she longed to claim, the hand she wished still clasped her own. And all the while her eyes filled, she forced it back, swallowed it down and clung on still to the roots.

She did not dare let her eyes rest on the grave beneath her quivering hand. She couldn't bring herself to just yet.

Seeing was believing.

Looking upon it would only make this that much harder. Make it that much more real and tangible under her flesh. Digging her fingers into the mud gave the moment meaning, more so than words carved into stone, more so than anything she could utter from her lips. It would only fall on deaf ears, and the realization that her pleas would never be answered, would only break her further.

Instead, with empty eyes, she looked around at the dank cemetery.

Those eyes, sullen, and numb, lacking spark in the green and the brown, were drawn across the wind ruffled grass to the trees at the edge of the path. Eerily bent and twisted, dark as she was, and crowded with crows that screech out their despair in a way she had never been able to.

The aching melancholic call seemed deliberate, like they were seeking her attention, and they were watching; her presence disturbing their half hearted existence. She looked up as one called to her, as if guiding her to them and the mournful places they called home. The black bird stared down at her with dark almost menacing regard, looking upon her with a sort of doomed acceptance. She belonged there with them, forever the guardian of the dead.

They focused on her, perhaps reading the sorrow that flowed off her in agonizing waves. Feeding off her pain like the maggots of long buried memories that crawl from skin whenever she was drawn here. But she must. This was her path, however unpleasant it might be. Lined with graves and the long forgotten.

Her breath hitched, painful and unbearable in her throat when her eyes finally rested on the granite. It was cold beneath her fingers, stark, and it pulled whatever heat she had amassed from her body, sucked it from her very being like this place seemed to wash her free of emotion, it drained her and left her hollow.

As she sat there now, the way she had before, that day, when she watched them lower the casket into the ground. She waited there until the sun went down. She knows she will do it again, the urge will be there all the days after; because she sought out the ache in her chest. Opened the wound fresh on purpose every time, just so that she had something to revel in, to make her feel. She tortured herself to feel alive, because without these few stolen moments at her mothers graveside, she was an empty shell, devoid of life. She wanted the stabbing, jarring, jagged grief that laid waste in her soul. She grew to accept it now, as she let her forehead fall onto the stone before her.

This was her fate.

To forever grieve alone. To walk this lonely road of fear and dissolution as a young women who had yet to find herself. She was too young to be left to her own devises. At a crucial time in her life where she needed that guidance of her mother. But her mother was not there now. She lay. at rest, under the young woman's crumbling frame, but lost in the ground with her daughter wishing to trade places or just have her back .

Her life had taken a turn she had not expected, and now the weight of it was tearing her to pieces. She did not know what else to do.

She was lost. Never to be found, and, as the dark shadow crept over closer the longer she sat by her mothers fresh grave, she found her purpose.

There of all places, it came to her.

She will seek anyway she can to make sure no one else will suffer as she does now. No one should ever have to feel this much pain.

She will not forget her dead, the passing of life will forever be significant to her and her buried mother will not lay here, amongst the forgotten, a spectre of loss. There will be justice, there will be resolution and maybe together they will be the balm to her pain...one day.

With a new sense of where she felt like she ought to be, she lifted her head from the stone, frozen, and lifeless like the creeping chill in her soul. The shadow approached nearer. Nearly upon her now as she stood from the damp ground and brushed the soil from her knees and coat. Standing up straight, the woman took in a deep, ragged breath.

This was her fate.

And as she turned away, pulling her red hood over her dark hair, she walked headlong into the shadow, and let everything familiar disappear. The darkness for which she now stood for, slowed down everything around her.

But with a morbid sense of fascination and a desperate need she still didn't understand, she sped up and let the shadows swallow her whole.