Author's Note: Finished in the span of my own day. I feel so proud. Not really a mushy kind of thing, the darkest thing I've done since 'Monster'. I don't like the ending much, but that's all I could come up with. Read and review, please!

Background Info: Jude, 6. Tommy, 6. Sadie, 12. Total AU.
Rated: M for child abuse, mention of manslaughter, death, suicide.
Couple: Undertones of Jommy.

"I see a light; hope. I feel a breeze; strength. I hear a song; relief. Let them through for they are the welcome ones."
-Ivan Rogers

Jude's pace was sluggish as she walked to her first grade class that morning. She tried her best to keep her tears at bay as she seen the other kids walking happily with their mom's. Her only wish in the world, and it wasn't for a pony or big sister like most little girls were but it was to have her mom walk to school with her. Or at least pick her up for school. She'd love to tell someone besides Kurt, her stuffed bear, about her day in school. Then again, her mom never wanted to hear what she had to say...ever.

She clutched the brown paper bag that contained her poorly packed lunch, done all by herself, as she raced across the street. Her heart raced as she heard a car coming, but her skinny legs carried her to the corner before it hit her. She stopped for a moment, to catch her breath, but when she did someone spotted her.

She walks to school with the lunch that she packed

"Jude!" Tommy, her next door neighbor, called from across the street with his very-pregnant mother in tow. With his khaki's and polo on, he looked like a miniature man instead of a six year old boy. Her head whipped up to see him crossing the same crosswalk that she'd just crossed, while holding his mother's hand. A dull ache could be felt in her heart, but she just straightened up pushing it away. Sometmes, with her emotions and thoughts, she felt like an adult stuck in a seven year olds body.

"Hey, Mrs. Quincy." Jude said politely, a warm smile that she'd been practicing spread across her face. It hurt for her skin to stretch across her bruised cheekbone, inately disguised by her older sister's concealer, but she had to keep up the act. No need to worry anyone.

"Hello, Jude." Eliana Quincy said, her soprano voice laced with worry as she raked her eyes over Jude's dress. "Didn't you wear that yesterday, dear?" She gestured to the dress and a panicked expression passed over Jude's face as she quickly thought of a lie.

Nobody knows what she's holdin' back

"My mother...she's, uh, doing laundry today." She said, her voice soft as she tugged on the end of one of her red, braided pigtails in nervousness.

"Is that why she's not walking with you?" Eliana asked placing her hand lightly on Jude's back, but it was enough to draw a wince from her. Jude tried to cover it with a cough, but she was sure Eliana had noticed.

"No," Jude kept tugging on the end of her braid until Eliana grabbed her hand as they began to walk towards the school. "She just doesn't want to walk with me...I don't know why. I know how to get to school though, so it's no worry for her."

Eliana looked to her left, at Tommy - her heart and her world wrapped into one. Deep down she knew something was happening to the younger Harrison girl, but she didn't want to pry. Not if meant to break up a family.

Wearin' the same dress she wore yesterday

Stuart Harrison was a middle aged man, working unhappily as an accountant downtown. He was never seen unless going to, or coming home, from work. He was very omnious in his prescense, but there were times she was sure she heard him leaving late at night and not returning until before dawn sometimes. Victoria Harrison, on the other hand, was a young, bitter thing. She was maybe just thirty-two, but could easily pass as twenty. She thought when she married Stuart, that she'd be marrying into money, but since Stuart's father's bankrupcy surprise - it was just the opposite.

It wasn't so much that she had to get a job working as a waitress, but it was that she had to get a second job as a store clerk that bothered her. She was raised to never raise a finger, so why should she start now. Then the children came, two within two years. It was too much for her and in the spare time she did have, she began drinking. And the anger she had towards Stuart, turned into anger against her daughters. Jude experienced most of the anger, the evidence of that found under her dress. Purple, black, and green patches covered her back, abdomen, and the tops of her thighs. Her mother bought all the right dresses to cover them, to make sure no one could see enough to ask questions...

Her mother always knew.

She hides the bruises with the linen and lace oh

"Bye, Mom." Tommy said to his mother as he stood up on his tip toes to kiss his already bent over mother, her belly mostly getting in the way.

"Good-bye, Thomas." She murmured, kissing his lips lightly and smooth his hair. Jude stood awkwardly at the double doors, not wanting to be around to experience the love the two shared. It only made her more jealous. Normally she wouldn't have waited; she would've been in class already, beginning her work, but Tommy had asked and she felt it only right to wait.

As she looked at the green grass swaying lightly in the wind, the previous night replayed in her head.

Victoria swayed slightly as she stood in the kitchen, watching as Jude pulled the gallon of milk from the kitchen, not saying a word. It was just before nine p.m. and she'd wanted a snack. The smell of vodka that rolled off of Victoria could be smelled from across the room and as soon as it hit Jude's senses, she froze in mid-air. "What do you think you're doing?" Victoria asked, approaching Jude and snatching the jug of milk from her tiny palms.

"I - I just wanted - " She never got to finish her sentence because her mother had slapped her violently across the face.

"Do not talk back to me, young lady!" She yelled and from down the hall of their one floor house, her younger sister, Sadie, could hear the commotion. She peeked from out the door and tip toed across the rose carpeting. She hated seeing her baby sister treated like that. "You do not just grab the milk from the refrigerator! Did you even ask someone?! I don't see your father here and I didn't hear you ask me!"

Jude backed into the sea foam green cabinets, her face crumpling as her mother towered over her shaking the jug in her face. "I - I'm sorry, Mommy." She said, trying to hold in the tears, but she could feel them, hot and wet, already rolling down her cheeks.

With the sight of Jude's tears, Victoria burst. She picked up Jude by her ponytail and starting for her room. Sadie scurried to her room, knowing what was coming. She knew all-too-well the price of tears. The tiny click was barely heard against Jude and Victoria's screams.

"Jude..." Tommy said, waving his hand in front of her face. "Are you okay?"

Jude shook her head, hoping to clear it and focused her sight on Tommy. She could feel the tears starting, but she swallowed them back. "Yeah, I am." She nodded and Tommy took her hand, pulling her towards their class.

Mrs. Cullen watched as the last two, always the last two, students in her class raced up the hallway. Her arms crossed in front of her chest in mock annoyance, but a smile played across her lips. "You two..." She shook her head as they waved simultaneously before walking into the classroom.

The teacher wonders but she doesn't ask

All too easily, she recognized the dress Jude wore as the one she wore the previous day and she swore she seen cover-up on the young girls face. She wanted to ask, but who was she to invade? Maybe she was just playing with her mother's make up and it was laundry day. Plenty of kid's repeated clothes during the week, why should this be any different?

Despite reassuring herself over and over again, she couldn't help but feel it was.

It's hard to see the pain behind the mask

Jude could see the question in her teacher's eyes. For a young girl, she was pretty observant. Sometimes she just wished they'd ask...hint towards it, something. She'd been living with it for so long, that she was sure she would tell someone by now. It hurt to bad to keep it inside. Before she'd heard her sister talking about suicide. She didn't know what it was at the time, but that night after her mother had passed out in a drunken stupor, Jude googled it. She found out that it was something she already knew about, something she'd been wishing for for so long, but she didn't know they had a name for it.

Bearing the burden of a secret storm
Sometimes she wishes she was never born

After school that day, Jude sat in her room doing her homework when she heard her mother crash through the door. She jumped at the sound of glass meeting their linoleum floor and she sat motionless on her bed as Victoria stumbled through the hallway towards Jude's room. She could hear her mother approaching, she could practically smell her mother's anger, but yet she made no move to get out. She could've easily hopped out of the window, it wasn't the far of a fall for her fairly long body.

"Jude Elizabeth - !" She threw the young girl's pressed wood door open, her face red. With no words she snatched up Jude by her small arms, a tank top revealing the bruises that decorated the tops of her arms. It took all of Jude's might to shut her mother out, the sound of pure bliss - which was Beethoven to her - flooded her ears and she closed her eyes as her mother went on yelling at her. She closed her eyes, wishing herself away, but as her mother shook her violently before throwing her into her pink dresser she knew she couldn't escape.

The tears that Jude wanted so badly to cry pushed at her eyes, but she dared not to let them fall. She didn't even let her eyes gloss over. The fact that she did not cry made Victoria even more bitter. Jude wasn't sure how long her mother continued to beat her, but be time she left the sun that had lit Jude's light yellow room had set behind the hills.

Through the wind and the rain
She stands hard as a stone
In a world that she can't rise above

The last thing she heard before her mother slammed the door shut was, "...no dinner!"

And as soon as the door closed, she buried her face in a nearby stuffed animal and wailed her heart out. She cried loudly and sloppily, snot running from her nose and onto it's faux fur. Her tears burned her eyes as she squinched them shut and opened them as she sobbed. She cried and cried and cried until, with shaky breaths, she fell asleep. In her dreams she was with a large, loving family and it wasn't until she noticed herself holding the youngest, an infant boy, did she notice it was her own family - in the future. A smile spread across her dreamy face and she brought her rosy lips to the brown hair of her son that oddly resembled Tommy Quincy.

But her dreams give her wings
And she flies to a place where she's loved
Concrete angel

And as her eyes watched the painted scenes behind her lids, trouble began brewing. A smile graced her face as she slept and in her subconcious, she wished to never wake up. Out in the conjoined living room and kitchen, the phone rang. Still drinking though the late evening hour, Victoria picked up the phone. In her room Sadie could hear the murmurs and angry retorts from her mother. She jerked at her mother screeching at the innocent Mrs. Cullen on the other line. She'd talked to Sadie before, never on teh subject for which she was calling now, but she seemed sweet and innocent enough.

Quietly, Sadie slipped out of her room and tip toed, with speed, to Jude's room. She shut the door with a click, made it to a sleeping Jude on the floor in three long paces. "Jude!" she whispered, shaking her sleeping sister. "Wake up! Mother's coming!"

Groggily, Jude whimpered and wiped her eyes before opening them. Her eyes immediately landed on Sadie's panicked face and she couldn't help but feel a bit panicky herself. "What? What happened? I didn't do anything!" Jude whispered helplessly, her eyes switching from Sadie's face to the door that led to the hallway.

Sadie felt the tears building, knowing something bad may happen tonight. Something that would change the rest of them forever. "I know, sweetie." She murmured, stroking Jude's face. "Mrs. Cullen called...Mother's talking to her right now." Jude's face dropped in horror and she could hear the phone meeting the cradle violently. Her eyes flashed to Sadie's. "I love you, Jude. I do, even if you don't believe anyone else does."

She threw her arms around Jude protectively, hearing her mother's footsteps "I love you too, Sades." She replied, wrapping her arms around her sister and despite her holding back, the tears began falling as soon as the door was thrown open. Victoria ripped Jude from Sadie's hold and Jude cried as she was thrown onto the floor.

"What did you tell your teacher?!" She yelled, towering over the young girl. "Did you tell her to call here?!"

Jude tried to push herself up, but the bruises already battering her body were making it difficult. Silently, tears fell from her bent head and before she could push herself up on her knees. Victoria kicked Jude back down. "Well?" She yelled, pushing the young girl over on her back. "Did you?!"

Somebody cries in the middle of the night

Jude shook her head, sniffling. "No..." She said, her voice hoarse. "I didn't say anything..."

Victoria grabbed Jude by her red hair, pulling her up to her knees. "Don't. Lie. To. Me." She said slowly, the rum she'd been drinking dilluted her breath and made Jude queasy as it invaded her nostrils. Behind her, Sadie quivered in the corner near Jude's toybox. She wished to help her sister, but doing so would only put more danger on Jude and danger on herself. She felt so guilty to just sit by and watch or listen and not help, but she'd endured it as well. It would only be a matter of time before her mother stopped. Everything would stop and go back to normal. Or so she told herself.

Next door at the Quincy house, Eliana sat on the edge of her bed listening with wide eyes to the commotion at the Harrison's house. Protectively she stroked her belly, her hand in straight reach of the phone. She wanted so badly to call; it disturbed her that those innocent girls endured such horror. It wasn't fair, and it wasn't right. Her husband, Branden, grabbed the phone before she could reach for it. "Eli," He said softly, knowing how terrified she was for those girls. "It's not our place to intrude...if their disciplining...then let them. We can't judge everyone's parenting..."

"I know, but it just hurts to hear those girls scream like that..." She trailed off her brown curls bouncing as she shook her head, not bothering to mention how Jude had looked to her this morning. She could rememer a time when the Harrison girl's had bright eyes and rosy cheeks; that was a time of cook outs and car pools. Now Victoria and Stuart stayed to themselves, barely showing their faces or speaking a word to any of the surrounding neighbors. Jude had dim eyes now, as if scared hollow, and her cheekbones were beginning to show. If only Eliana could do something, but, instead, she leaned over and turned off the bedside lamp and laid down beside her husband. She tried to close her eyes to sleep, but as the screams and yelling went on only two hundred feet away from them, the tears fell from her crystal blue eyes.

The neighbors hear, but they turn out the lights

"Mom!" Sadie cried next door, finally throwing her senses aside as her mother kicked her younger sister. "Stop it! She didn't do anything!"

Her mother turned to look over her shoulder, her hazel eyes set on Sadie. "You know it! Stop hurting her! She doesn't deserve it!" Sadie reinforced, standing up straight but staying against the wall. Victoria forgot about Jude, and approached Sadie, drawing her hand back and slapping her.

"You do not raise your voice at me, young lady!" She seethed as Sadie held a hand over the reddening cheek. "And Jude deserves it all! She needs to learn a lesson! She needs to stop defying and lying to me! Maybe if she stopped, then we'd get somewhere."

From the floor, Jude shook and whimpered. Tonight would be the turning point of something else. Her mother had went over the edge and there was no stopping her. "And if you don't want some of what she's having...I suggest you listen to me." Victoria said nastily, jerking Sadie up by the collar of her nightgown. Though she didn't want to, she nodded her head. Sadie's wind was knocked from her as Victoria slammed her into the wall and turned to Jude again.

This time, she picked Jude up by her shoulders. Because of her scanty eating, Victoria as able to lift her to eye level. "Why do you constantly lie to me?! Why do you insist on disrespecting and going against me?!" She shook the girl, looking in her eyes. "Huh?!"

Through the wind and the rain
She stands hard as a stone
In a world that she can't rise above

Jude had cried herself out and could do nothing but stare at her mother because she knew as soon as she opened her mouth, it'd be shut by a reinforced slap. Victoria was even more angered when she wouldn't listen. "Sadie!" She screeched, turning towards the cowering blonde. "Get the bleach from the bathroom!"

When Jude had registered what her mother said, her eyes widened and her mouth dropped. "No! No! No!" She cried as her mother set her on the floor and drug her out to the living room, knocking her into the walls along the way. Stuart was oblivious to what was happening as he sat with his eyes glued on the television. Snatching her half filled rum bottle from the dining room table, she drug Jude back to the bathroom. There Sadie was waiting with shaking hands and tears, holding onto the bleach bottle as if her life depended on it. This was supposed to be their mother - the one person who loved and adored them - so why was she doing this?

As Jude was pushed down on the tiled floor, she pushed herself into her dreamscape again. Her own happy family filled with love and adornment. As soon as she could, she would escape. Get away from all of this...maybe even tomorrow. Forget going to school, she take some money...take a bus somewhere far. She'd been studying geography. She knew the area around her.

But her dreams give her wings
And she flies to a place where she's loved

With all that was going on in her mind, she didn't notice as her mother began pouring the bleach in her mouth. She was gagging, but Victoria kept pouring. "Stop!" Jude cried through gurgles of the chemical. Tears were pouring from her eyes and the sound of her gags filled the room. "It burns!"

"Oh, stop lying!" Victoria yelled, holding Jude down by her throat as she took a swig of her rum sitting beside her. "God doesn't like liars!"

Sadie stood paralyzed in horror by the scene playing in front of her. How could she let this go on? She nearly lost her consciousness when she seen Jude's eyes rolling back. Soon her twists of escape turned to twitches of unconciousness. It wasn't long until Jude was motionless under her mother. Her face and lips were of pale coloring and her breathing was shallow. With a flick of her wrist, Jude's head snapped to the side and Victoria got up, taking her bottle along with her. Not until she heard Victoria's bedroom door slam shut did she rush to Jude's side, her hands and eyes in a frenzy. Her heartbeat was shallow and although she knew it was no use, she alternated between CPR and mouth-to-mouth.

The bleach singed her tongue and with every useless push and breath, sobs escaped her lips. When she finally accepted that Jude wasn't coming back she curled up beside her, her arm draped across her protectively. Somewhere along the line she fell asleep...

Concrete angel

Three weeks later...

Sadie Nicole Harrison, who was soon to become Sadie Quincy, stood with her head bowed beside Eliana, Branden, and a crying Tommy Quincy. It was the day of Jude Elizabeth Harrison's funeral. Her father and mother were behind bars, being held on the charges of manslaughter, physical child abuse, neglect/failure to provide, and emotional maltreatment. She still relived the morning they took Jude's dead body away every single day. She still couldn't get rid of the pale, chapped lips of Jude or the ludicrous look on her mother's face as they pushed her into the back of the patrol car.

A statue stands in a shaded place
An angel girl with an upturned face

Across from her, Mrs. Cullen stood crying into her handkerchief silently. Guilt was invading everyone's concious as soon as the reason for Jude's death was revealed, but no one could feel as bad as Sadie felt or would ever feel. Her eyes raised to the only thing she did get to do, pick her baby sister's headstone. It was an angel, standing with a sheet draped around, what Sadie considered, her waist. A smile graced her perfect features, and her stone ringlets framed her pudgy face. It sort of reminded her of what Jude looked like before the beatings reached out to touch her.


A name is written on a polished rock
A broken heart that the world forgot

They let her choose the inscribing and it pained her to see how close together the birth and death dates were. She dabbed at her eyes and fought back the sob climbing her throat as she read the inscription for what felt like the millionth time. 'Absent in body, but present in spirit - Rest in Peace - Jude Elizabeth Harrison - Born: Nov. 31. 2002 Died: April 16, 2008'

As they began to lower her casket into the seemingly endless hole, Sadie fell to her knees sobbing. "Oh God, Jude...I'm so sorry..." She sobbed into the grass, her fists beating the moist earth. "I'm so sorry..."

Vaguely, she felt a pair of arms wrap around her and she recognized the hold as her adoptive father, Branden. He stroked her straight blonde hair, not caring that her tears were probably ruining his expensive suit because as he held her he could feel the pain she was feeling. "She's in a better place Sadie..." He whispered, presing his cheek against the side of her face as he spoke. "Where she can't feel any pain."

Through the wind and the rain
She stands hard as a stone
In a world that she can't rise above

The months that followed found Sadie in and out therapy, court, and GED classes. The morning still haunted her and she found it difficult to sleep. When that happened, she'd pretend Jude was beside her and she'd tell her about her day. How much she missed her. Within a month Victoria had been put behind bars, with two consecutive sentences of ten years, and Stuart as well, with a sentence of five years for turning a blind eye towards her doings. She hadn't seen her parents since the trial and was living happily with the Quincy's. Sadie felt quite at home with them and the daughter Eliana had just given birth to, who they'd affectionately named Jude, was beginning to grow on her.

Many days Sadie would sit by Jude's graveside, remembering the scanty childhood memories she had of her sister. In her dreams she still saw her as a young toddler, giggling and running across the park field like she used to. Though Sadie didn't like the fact Jude had died such a despating death, she knew Jude was in a happier place...heaven.

But her dreams give her wings
And she flies to a place where she's loved

'Sadie...' Jude breathed in shallowly as she tried to open her eyes, only to realize she couldn't. It'd been at least a half an hour since Victoria disappeared inside of room, though neither of the Harrison girls knew how long it actually been. She could feel the end near to her, the bright light at the end of the tunnel. 'I...love...you...okay. Never...forget that.'

Sadie, who'd been resting against the cabinet door underneath the sink, lifted her eyes from the tiles to rest on Jude's pale face. 'Don't worry about me, I'm going to a good place...somewhere where the pain won't reach me.' She continued on, squeezing Sadie's fingers ever so lightly. 'I...want. You...to survive...though - make a family, fall in love.' Jude sucked in one of her final breaths. 'I'll be watching over you...always.'


Concrete angel