Author: Kaatje
Overall Rating: 15
Summary: A NW tale about unrequited love (of course), redemption, betrayal, serial killers, and much more…
Disclaimers: General NW spoilers, nothing specific…
*Yes, this is my first fic, so feedback would be absolutely adored! You don't have to be kind, though. Even if you hate it, drop me a line. Constructive criticism is always, always welcome…
Lost
Introduction
"-Are you spirit or are you flesh?"
"-I am Sorrow…"
Hollenbrooke, New York: July 1979
Paige Sullivan spread her hands over the rail of the apartment balcony, her thoughts wondering aimlessly. The moon hung in the sky, lending its white light to the land below, casting everything in a luminous pearly sheen. Stars twinkled merrily in the sky, suspended in the inky blackness as if by magic. A cool breeze ruffled stray hairs from her blonde, neatly plaited braid.
She looked carefully out into the night, fully appreciating, as much as she was able, the beautiful view of the city sidewalks below her. Most of her lipstick had been chewed off and she had black circles under her eyes that made her look as if she had missed a month's worth of sleep. Her cheeks were hollow, giving her normally young face a gaunt, tired look. Her hands trembled violently, and her skin was cast in a deathly, white pallor that was almost ethereal under the light of the moon. Liquid, silver tears ran down the length of her face, leaving visible trails of sorrow.
I am sorrow; she thought, despair clawing through her heart. I am sorrow. The words resonated in her, nowhere else to go. Incoherent half-truths spun crazily through her barely wakened mind with an unleashed fervor that made her shake with fear and agitation.
Putting a small, fragile hand up to her face in a feeble attempt to shut out the madness, she wondered briefly through the hurricane of thoughts how she'd ever ended up like this. From normal teenager to bereaved lunatic, she thought with a hysterical laugh. From girl to helplessly old woman and back again. And back again. She wasn't quite back again…
Music whirled from inside to out briefly flitting around her ears before continuing its travel to the lonely world beyond. It was something new, she reflected as she tilted her ear up to listen. It was something with a beat to it, rhythmic and heady and full of undertones that shocked senses into responding. Paige closed her eyes for a moment to sink into it, to become part of its never-ending symphony so it would carry her away from here, from her troubles, and from the people who didn't really quite see her. She wanted desperately to be gone, to slide slowly into the abyss of oblivion, to fade away into the depths of the eternal night.
Her eyes still closed, she swayed to the music, her hand lying gently on her mouth. It was a sad song even though it sounded nice; she listened to the words wash over her, feeling every lyric laying the last fatal blow to a horribly damaged soul.
"By the shadows of the night I go
I move away from the crowded room
That sea of shallow faces masked in warm regret
They don't know how to feel
They don't know what is lost…"
The tears came harder now, faster and she stopped swaying and stood absolutely still, a useless defense against the cruelty of the outside world. A coldness spread inside of her, something lonely and dead that stripped of her humanity and vitality. She broke the stillness to rest her thin cheek on the rail, a gesture of subservience to whatever gods might be watching. She was conquered now, her dreams had died a slow, brutal death, and there was no redemption for someone like her.
The glowing orb of the moon was rising in the sky, higher now, so far above her. Paige had never paid much attention at all to the moon before, when everything had been all right. It had been a constant thing to her, something unchanging and immutable, nothing to pay that close attention to. She was half-amazed that she could ignore something so mysterious and beautiful, something that had always been right above her, just a bit out of her reach.
Sighing, she lifted her cheek from the rail and unwound her thick, curly blonde hair from its severe plait. It cascaded to the point just above the small of her back, like a golden waterfall. She ran her hands through it, taming the curls with her deft fingers, and lifted her eyes to the sky above. The stars continued to twinkle, as happily as before, oblivious to the heartbreak and misery that unfolded underneath.
She knew what she had to do. She swung a leg over the side of the balcony, and looked down fifteen stories to the ground below. To fall fifteen stories would be to court a certain kind of death.
Paige closed her eyes briefly and moved her lips without sound to a silent prayer her father had taught her when she had been younger. Then, with no great ceremony or circumstance, she merely slid off the rail. Her lips continued to move even as she was falling until the moment her head impacted with the soft, lush earth below.
A prayer before dying.
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