Title: Memento Mori
Author: Kurukami
Feedback: Definitely wanted.
Category: Drama/angst.
Distribution: Please do not distribute or archive without permission.
Disclaimer: Barbara Hall is the creator of "Joan of Arcadia" and CBS owns it. I own nothing of importance in this matter save the stringing together of words my brain meshes together. Don't sue me; I'm broke enough as it is.

A/N: Spoilers up through "Friday Night" (2.08). This prologue starts off dark, but I'm going to try to pull this together as a coherent look at how Joan and Judith met and became friends, and at everything that went on before the episode this story was inspired by. So hopefully it'll be bittersweet, then sad, but I want to try to end it on a hopeful note. Something better than a juggling metaphor, anyways.

She blinks, and realizes she's awake.

Cold. Wet.

Dampness is soaking through the sleeves of the sweater. It'll probably stain. The blue one was her favorite, she said so. She'll be mad at me.

Gritty asphalt is under her fingers and all along her side, with the stink of garbage somewhere nearby. Her legs are tangled off to one side, her weight is resting on an elbow that feels skinned, and her fingers splay open at the edge of the puddle. I'm ... on the ground? What happened?

She feels sticky, like spilled Cherry Coke, upended, left to dry on the pavement. Her fingers cling to each other moistly, warm where the water hasn't sucked the heat away. But there's no fruit scent, just this coppery tang overlaying the stench of something rotting in a dumpster nearby.

She coughs, trying to clear the thickness from her throat, and feels the sharp stitches of pain in her like the cramps when she bleeds each month, but these aren't just down in her gut, they're in her belly and her shoulders and her breasts and her ribs. She feels wet trickling down her cheek, licks the tear away – don't ever let them see you cry – and feels the thick salty texture of it sliding across her tongue. Not a tear. Tastes like... blood?

There's a blur of images in her mind. Nighttime. On the phone to Joan, off on her swanky date with Adam. Lucky girl. Standing with Ryan and the others in the access tunnel beside the cement bulk of the freeway, waiting where the alley dips into shadow under the street. Impact against the heels of her hands as she shoves the one in the dark coat away. Silver glittering in his hand, reflecting from the actinic glare of the distant streetlight, flickering forward and...

Knife. I got in the way of his knife.

I have to get out of here. Can't stay here.

The manmade canyon of the alley slants upwards away from her, a long, endless slope, but she starts to crawl anyways. Her legs don't want to take her weight. Her arms don't either, but somehow she scrabbles forward, inching towards the distant streetlight. Everything wants to tip over, like the ground wants to slide out from under her, and dizziness grips her temples like a padded vise. Her limbs are trembling with weakness; it feels like gravity has doubled, pulling her down, blurring her vision with increased mass, and she looks up and there's still so much alley ahead.

So what? You gonna give up now?

No.

She keeps moving, somehow. Her vision is tunneling down, focused on the glow of the light at the end of the alley. But there's something more there now, man-figure silhouetted against a bright star and pointing another bit of starlight around, flashes of red and blue, distant footsteps. The darkness swallows the edges of her sight, and she's tired, so tired, it hurts and she just wants to rest, wants the pain to stop. Instead she tries to heave her free arm up, clumsy arm, feels like it's encased in lead, and oblivion licks at her, shadows scuttling in her peripheral vision, edging towards her... no. Won't let this beat m—

But the world is slipping sideways, and the black tide of unconsciousness comes in to envelop her, and a bloodstained Judith Montgomery slumps down in the dimly-lit alley as the patrolman runs towards her.

(to be continued)

memento mori n. pl.
1. A reminder of death or mortality.
2. A reminder of human failures or errors.