Author's Notes
I need to apologize for the future and probably now. I procrastinated and then forgot and I'm sorry. I can't promise a "schedule" but I can promise you that I'll try to be consistent.
Frost looked backed on that day for two years unable to shake that feeling of regret. Maybe if she didn't let him go, told him that STAR was fine on its own, that there plenty of capable people and he could rest for once. Maybe she wouldn't be in this cell. Maybe Ronnie wouldn't be dead. Maybe she'd be more innocent. Only if she had been willing to be selfish.
She didn't remember much after Ronnie was rushed inside. She remembered waiting outside. She remembered it getting cooler out. She remembered feeling nauseous and feeling as though she was going to throw up when they told he had died venting the accelerator.
Vaporized they said. There wasn't even a body to bury. No proof he had existed except the disconnected heart wrenching feeling in her gut. The one who screamed in her ears a mantra. He wasn't gone. He's not gone. He's here. This can't be. This isn't happening. This isn't how it should go. She felt herself hyperventilating, her skin prickling.
She signed wavers and agreements. She wanted yell, throw a tantrum. They told her that she couldn't say anything about what little she knew. To these people Ronnie was a name. Not a life. Not something of worth. A name. A name could be said without remorse. Without pain. It made her mad. It made her want to clench her unfeeling hands.
They were so cold.
From there on her life was a blur. Her mascara, a smear. Her thoughts a smudge and completely incoherent. There she lied unfeeling and void. Her core frozen, her body unable to feel warmth. She yearned to feel numb but every other feeling was already dull and grey, and imperceptible to her laggard mind this was the only thing letting her know she was alive. And she hated it.
Miserable and silent, that's how Caitlin lied on her bed for weeks. She wanted nothing more to stay right where she was. To stay and wallow in grief but weeks had past and she knew she had to get off the bed eventually. There was nothing stopping her though and a little voice in her mind agreed. There was nothing to get up for. No reason to make an effort. It wasn't like her mother cared for what was going on. She ignored her. Caitlin didn't need to get up. She could let this weight crush her there was no reason to stop it. She could forget warmth. The strange hunger could stay unsatisfied. She could be consumed by this numbness. This slow and churning storm of apathy and despair. Because. It. Didn't. Matter.
Oh how Caitlin wanted it to matter but it was an afterthought. It was only an afterthought. The back of her mind screamed at her this wasn't healthy and she needed to try but the front of mind didn't want to change anything. She wanted to curl up in a ball and hear the click click click of fan overhead while she lay on the verge of pointless tears. Lying in sweet misery. Shivering with no cease.
The icy feeling stayed with her. In fact it worsened. It didn't prickle her skin while her center remained void anymore. Instead it gnawed on bones of ice rest. It came from her core icy and insatiable. It was like she hungered for heat but no matter what she did she'd always be cold. She remembered feeling like this when she had a fever. That's what it probably was, right? She probably was sick. But then why did it feel like something else?
Caitlin finally got herself off the couch. It had been what? A week? Two? She had to get off it eventually, yet she didn't feel like there was point. There was no reason to get off the couch. She had no life that needed her. nothing to do. No classes to drag herself to. nothing to keep mind busy and no one to wipe the tears.
She got up and she tried to finish unpacking. It was a small task. She could do it. She could breakdown sobbing on that floor when she saw that photo of them. she could start that cycle again. she could go to a mirror talk to herself so would break, to talk herself out from 'being dramatic' as her mother had put it. She could do that and she could fail.
Frost remembered those few moments so vividly, so clearly that it might have happened seconds ago. That moment her mind shut off. The weight from the grief of Ronnie dissipated like a cloud of dust and it revealed the end of Caitlin Snow. The beginning of Frost and later her downfall. The downfall of a Queen.