"Would you do it all over again? Knowing what you know now? Knowing that you end up here, at gunpoint?"

Words in the darkness.

"Just about everyone comes to this crossroad. Some get seventy years, some only get fifteen. Enough time to grow, to take stock of who you are. Enough time to do things you'll regret when you run out of time."

There was emotion attached to those words. Regret. Sorrow.

"Don't- don't regret it. Was- had to. Saved lives. But I would do different, given a chance."

They had meaning.

They were important.

They burned in the darkness like stars in the night sky.

I remembered the cold crisp light of the stars. The woman in white.

That look on her face. Checkmate. It was important that. That my choices were taken from me, that we might speak.

In the darkness beneath the brilliant and cruel moon that taunted me, beneath the heartless stars that laughed at me, it was an ending. A denouement.

Here I stood. Taylor Hebert. Weaver. Skitter. And it seemed Khepri, a new name chosen for me, after the style of the Winged One and her kin. Just another girl with a tarnished crown. A queen fallen so very far from her throne.

I looked up.

Yes, I had looked up.

There had been a shot from behind. An execution as befits a queen.

The sound had been loud, and as I fell... toppled towards the ground, the light of the stars spinning away. It was followed by another.

And there was darkness.

I could feel another presence.

Warm. Angry. It raged. It did not desire to fade into the night quietly.

And yet, I had stilled its hands, its countless hands.

For I wanted rest. Some quiet would be nice.

Was it so much to ask for that?

I had died... been killed. I knew this with certainty.

I had died. And yet. I saw. I watched. With familiar eyes.

The woman in white build a pyre, before cremating my corpse.

As my body burned, my eyes faded one by one... and all I was left with was darkness. Words that sparkled in the darkness. I couldn't read them, I couldn't say them in english. But they were all I had.

And I drifted.

I rested my head against cold metal and listened to the insects that surrounded me. Listened to their simple thoughts as they lived.

My eyes were closed, but I could hear the beating of hearts of rodents. Felt my muscles straining as they flapped the wings of the birds that flew by the school.

Heard the fluttering thoughts of those around me. I shied away from those.

I sighed before I spoke to my passenger, that imperious queen who refused to quietly fade into the darkness. Who roared against the on-coming darkness. "I died."

[Not dead. Choose?]

"Can't I rest? Is it too much to ask for that?" I rested my head against the cold metal of the locker I was trapped in.

[Not dead. Live. Command.]

I could hear the voices of those outside. I... knew them. Right? But their faces couldn't come to me. Even if I did understand their mocking words.

I could only weep. Warm wetness trickling down my face.

A second chance.

And yet.

Not something I would have willingly chosen. To be forced to do everything over again? Could I even do that? Did I have the strength to keep going on?

Would I be able to stay as I was? To not be a monster?

.

Second Chances
Worm Fic