I am so intensely excited right now. I made a banner. There's a link on my homepage. Check it out.
Normally, I promise, there will be the tiniest bit more, but this was one of those chapters where I had reached the end of how far I felt I could go without leaving it awkwardly in the middle of the next plot twist. Sorry.
More than anything, I wanted to forget the fact that I'd left everything I wanted for so long for this life. It wasn't even a life. I knew it wouldn't be, but it's worse than I imagined. It's sucking the life from me; this life is negative life. I feel so empty and damned and alone. They even took Allan.
That miniature description of my internal being as of the last three months is nothing at all. But it's really hard to look back and say everything I want to. Need to, I guess; it's like a venom building up inside of me, and I've only let it all out once, and that ended so badly it's more painful than the venom building up was.
When Allan and I got to the train station in Philly, the school was waiting and ready for us. I figured they'd provide transportation to my newest Watcher's house, and that's what I told Allan would be happening; I promised to always take care of him. I really need to watch my mouth.
Then they forced me and him into separate cars and for a split second I thought that that was for our protection too; it wasn't. Their car drove one way, ours went another, and they never met up again. The transporters explained it all in detail to me on the car ride into a very sketchy looking neighborhood where I was supposed to be living with my watcher: Allan and I couldn't stay together because it was a risk they weren't willing to take. Allan would be staying with two slayers and I was to listen to everything Susan Pendle, my Watcher, said.
I fingered my necklace the entire car ride, feeling lost and crying and screaming at them. I knew that I wouldn't have had any contact with Allan if I'd come back under normal circumstances, but do they understand that Allan is all I have left? It's not like it would look weird for us all to be living together. And I can protect him better than any other Slayer can; they don't care about him. They have no passion, no personal stake except for their precious mission-review sheets.
And then they told me they weren't sure it was Azazel. I nearly throttled them, but they pointed out that other demons had burned down houses before. I reached for my cell phone to call Dean and beg him to come save me, because I was obviously surrounded by idiots who are almost as bad as Azazel, but they dared to throw my cell phone out the window. That's when it occurred to me that I should copy down a few numbers for my own personal safety.
When I got to the house I tore up the stairs into the first bedroom I found, sobbing outwardly. Once I found that first bedroom, which was self-proclaimed to be mine, I jotted down a few select numbers on an old receipt and shoved it into my back pocket.
That night the council burned and confiscated everything to do with my past life. My cell phone was crushed before my eyes, my driver's silence was sent to be filed off somewhere, and they came at me with three different wigs to wear whenever I left the house and enough make-up to change my racial status.
At around four am, I searched through every motel in the tri-state area. I figured since we'd gotten in fairly late then they couldn't have gotten him too far, unless they doubled back and took him on the train, but that would just be dumb of them. For reference, there are around three hundred and fifty motels, and I had to find two hundred before one would admit to having seen someone of my brother's description.
They connected me to his room, and miraculously enough it was my brother who answered. We had a mini freak-out and mourning fest before I gave him my cell phone number and told him to call me in a week on my cell phone at one in the morning so I could find out where he was and what his new phone number was.
It took three days for me to do anything but scream at anyone who tried to come in my room or talk to me through my door. I threw an absolute fit, easily defined as hysterical. There was the occasional throwing of things, but then Susan started to take them and it occurred to me that she was burning the too, so instead I just physically threw myself at her if she got too close.
After three days, it was like I collapsed. I gave in; the fight had been sucked out of e. It was the first thing gone in this life-that-literally-sucks. I didn't want to listen to them, but my spirit kind of just… left. I wore the three different wigs – one for going to school, one for going to work, and one that I have to change to in a bathroom at the train station that I use to get from school/work to home. Each wig has a different name, but no personality. I lack a personality.
It was around three weeks into the charade that I broke down just the tiniest bit. It was luckily in front of the most understanding girl in the world, who I was working on a project with in the library. Her name was Elu, a product of two very hippie parents, and when we read something in which the main character was named Dean for one of my many English classes I fell to my knees balling.
Mindful of my brother, and that saying about my life before was generally bad, I let out that I'd been in love with a man named Dean, but I'd been forced to leave him and even though I wanted to call him and talk to him I knew that he hated me. All of this was completely true. I was quite certain that Dean hated me, or at least he didn't care, and that calling him would result in me hurting more than him.
Elu nodded in slight understanding at my moaning and quietly suggested that I call him anyway. And even if the idea was slightly obnoxious and completely what I had just said didn't want to do, I called Sam that night. Sam had been put into my cell phone programmed under the fake name Linus. Dean was in there too, under Helen. Susan asked once, but I told her they were kids from school that I needed to be in contact with.
Anyway, I called Sam that night because I had a bad feeling about calling Dean and, too excited about feeling anything at all to question it, I called Sam. I can still remember the way he stuttered when he heard me say hello. He lacked any obvious idea as to what was happening, and I quickly explained that I wanted to talk to Dean.
There was another few moments of stuttering followed by a long whine from Phantom. I remember the way my heart stopped and I'm sure Sam felt my panic, "Why is Tommy still awake? It's late, he's usually asleep by now. Has he not been exercised?"
"Uh, Carrie, I'm… I'm in the car right now."
I hung up; I didn't even say bye to Sam or anything, I just hung up. I had lived with Dean and Sam long enough to know what Sam being in the car for the night meant, especially if Phantom was with him. I turned off my phone, just to be safe and make sure Sam didn't call me back. I kept their numbers, though, for sentimental purposes.
And now it's mid-November, I haven't talked to Allan since we traded numbers, and I am a brunette, redhead, and have dyed-black hair on a daily basis. I leave the house for work and school, and other than that only in extreme emergencies. Like when Susan, who is the monster bitch I figured she would be, had a stomach flu and it was either get out of the house and get her some medicine and jello or watch her puke her guts out. I would've just gone into another room and not watched, but I'm kind of indebted to the school for taking care of my brother.
As far as Allan told me, he's got two slayers in the house and essentially a body guard of magicians along with one lowly secretary who does all the cooking and shopping. Allan doesn't leave the house, or at least not without an escort. They'd probably do that with me too, only I may or may not have broken my escort's nose on the first day. And my new escort's leg on the second. I guess they figure that if I can take down their escorts, I can defend myself from muggers and the occasional over-zealous demon.
I don't know who I want more: Allan, Phantom, or Dean and Sam. I'm so lonely in Philadelphia, and occasionally I hear a news report from the nearby Bucks County and all I can think about for those next few days is Sam and Dean and the beach. It was all a dream when I remembered it, or at least it seemed like it. Had I really been in love, and then left him for this? Somewhere inside, I must have known what this life would be like. Empty.