A/N: Special thanks to the amazing Reviewer, silverbluerose, who left a wonderful first review that really made my day.
Last chapter's Word was the Title, Bleak! Each chapter will have a new word connected (usually synonymous) to the previous word!
Enjoy!
Bleak
Forlorn - pitifully sad and abandoned or lonely. Bleak.
.1.
Idelia stared blankly at the hospital ceiling, listening to the steady beep...beep...beep of the machine next to her bed as her dark eyes traced over the tiles.
The doctors said she was in "Shock", and that was why she was so cold and empty feeling, but Idelia knew it was because her parents were never coming back and that she knew now that the Monsters were real.
She knew and there was nothing she could do about it and, to make things worse? Her parents knew, they'd killed Monsters.
Monsters who hid behind human faces.
The police and the doctors tried to hide it from her, but she had heard the mutterings and gossiping nurses talk about her Papi's trophy shelf, had heard talk about human DNA and Cold Cases and that hated, hated word.
Murderer.
Her Papi wasn't like that, though! He was big hands and half-smiles and grand stories. He was hot-chocolate in winter and snowball fights and crayon drawings on the fridge. He was bedtime stories and hugs and dancing in the kitchen with Mama while music played on the radio!
He wasn't... Wasn't that, though!
He wasn't a Monster.
He wasn't...
The ceiling was fuzzy all of a sudden...
She was so tired...
She was...
Asleep.
-"Papi!" Idelia laughed as she was spun around, hern hands cluinging tight to her Papi's as he spun her, the two of them laughing.
"You're lifting off, Schätzchen! Look out!" he laughed, and pulled her close before letting go of her hands, making the five-year-old screech as she was, breifly, airbourne, before she landed with a "Oomph!" in a pile of leaves. Her Mama was laughing where she sat off to the side, drinking coffee in her wheelchair, a checkered blanket over her legs. Giggling dizzily, Idelia sat up, blinking as she swayed in place while her Papi laughed at her.
"Papi!" She whined, giggling as he threw himself into the leaves with her. "You're too big!"
"You're never too big to play, Schätzchen!" he told her, and promptly scooped leaves up onto his head and lifted his chin proudly.
The autumn air filled with laughter as her Papi grinned down at her.-
The Social Services lady, Ms. Durban, was okay enough, Idelia supposed. She had caramel-colored skin and black hair and dark eyes, but, best of all, her face didn't change when Idelia stared. Not like that man with the broken arm who'd passed her room, his pale, chubby face turning into a beavers when she stared at it from her window, before she'd hidden in one of the cabinets and cried because she thought he might come and get her.
The doctors had to give her a shot that made the room spin and go fuzzy before everything had gone black and, when she woke up next, Ms. Durban had been sitting next to her in her dark purple dress-suit and her kind, distant smile.
Still, no matter how alright Ms. Durban was, she would never be Mama.
Idelia rolled over and gave the woman her back, uncaring that she was still talking, drowning out her words with the beep...beep... of the machine, watching the little green lines move until she drifted off to sleep.
-The first time she'd seen her Mama's scars, she had touched them without thinking, making her Mama still and lower her pretty blouse slowly. They were soft, and strangely smooth despite looking bumpy. Thick as her thumb at their thinnest, and wide as her wrist at their thickest, the four claw marks started under her Mama's right armpit and curved across and down her back. Deep, pinkish-purple-silver lines in her skin where the bumps dipped in, carving out hunks of her beautiful Mama that would never grow back.
"Did it hurt really bad?" She asked softly; her Mama loked over her shoulder, dark eyes gleaming, mouth unsmiling and thin.
"Very much," she replied, voice soft and quiet and Idelia stilled, her skin itching in that strange way it sometimes did in her Papi's study. Idelia stared at her Mama carefully, her muclses still and tight, like that time Mr. Bray's big, mean-looking dog had gotten out of his yard and had come stalking towards her, growling. She'd been still like this then, ready to run or kick him in the nose, eyes locked on the big, tan-and-black dog warily, heart beginning to pound.
Her Papi had come and gotten her away then, but he wasn't there now, so it was up to her to make the feeling go away.
Discision made, Idelia leaned forward and pressed a soft, careful kiss to the top-most claw, leaning away again.
"There," she declared firmly, nodding and meeting her Mama's eyes again. "All better now, yes?" She watched that glitter in her Mama' eyes soften, her thin lips relax and curl fondly, and grinned back, bright as she could.
"Yes, süße," her Mama agreed softly. "All better..."-
"Welcome to our home, Idelia," The man told her warmly; the dark-haired girl stared up at him, and at his warmly smiling family warily. These were the Lloyds, her foster family for the foreseeable future. The man who greeted her was tall and lean with brown hair and gray eyes and a strange dip in his left cheek when he smiled, and his name was Ron. His wife, Julie, was short with blond hair and pretty blue eyes and kinda round but her smile was sweet. Their daughter, Mandy, was ten, and sorta half-smiled at Idelia while shoving her brown hair behind her ear, blue eyes curious.
"...Hallo," the soon-to-be eight-year-old told them quietly.
"Come on," Mandy blurted, before the staring could get awkward. "I'll show you your room, since it's right next to mine." The older girl offered her hand, and, tentative, Idelia took it.
As she was dragged down the hall of the nice-seeming family, Mandy chatting about how her new room used to be the play room, Idelia decided she would give these people a chance.
They would never be her family, but at least they weren't Monsters.
There was a Monster at her new school, and Idelia was torn. On one hand, it was one of them, hidding it's true face behind the freckled visage of a little blond girl two years younger than her, who had big green eyes and a gap-toothed smile.
On the other hand...
It was a bunny-monster, with golden-brown fur and huge, floppy ears and a wiggly nose.
So, Idelia was torn between fear and hate, and the urge to pet its ears.
It was just so confusing, and the Monster just kept following her around the playground, nibbling carrots and staring at her in fascination, because, apparently, you weren't supposed to see the bunny-part of the Monster.
-"Not a Monster, silly! I'm Samantha!" The bunny-thing declared indignantly the first time Idelia hissed at it to go away.
"Yes you are!" Idelia spat unhappily, climbing higher on the monkey bars as the other tried to follow while holding onto its little bag of baby carrots. "Real People don't look like Bunnies!" The Monster's ears shot up in surprise, wet, round eyes widening.
"You can see my fur?!" It squeaked; Idelia huffed.
"Of course I can," she snapped scathingly, carefully climbing to her feet on the topmost bar, balancing with a strange amount of ease. "It's there!"
"No one else can see it," the Monster insisted; Idelia scoffed and leaped away, landing hard and falling to her knees. She scrambled to her feet, ignoring the sting of her fresh scrapes as she started running away. The Monster followed, but stayed out of reach.
It was the beginning of their game of Tag, but Idelia never really knew who was actually it.
The Monster ("My Name is Samantha!") didn't seem to know either.
After a month of constantly being chased around the playground, Idelia was tempted to just hit the bunny-Monster, because she... it... Samantha wouldn't just leave her alone.
Luckily, however, she never had to make that choice.
"What do you mean, I'm leaving?" She asked Ms. Dunbar in uncertain confusion. Mandy had stormed out crying, the two of them having gotten relatively close in the last three months Idelia had lived with the Lloyds. Julie looked ready to cry as well, and Ron look depressed but solemn, one long, lanky arm wrapped soothingly around his wife's shoulders.
"We had some issues getting your paperwork all filed properly, sweetheart," the Social Services Worker informed the girl gently, smiling that same kind, distant smile she used to have in the hospital. "Now that its all taken care of, we can move you to another foster family. The Ortega's are wonderful people, and they even have a little boy your age!" Idelia stared at her, and slowly, the realization that she was being passed around like...
Like...
Like a pudding pack at lunch! Only, only she wasn't pudding at all!
She was an apple and she just...!
"I hate you," She told Ms. Dunbar, and she was bitterly happy to see that nice fake smile disappear for the first ime under a startled look, before she turned and ran out the front door, ignoring the shouts behind her, her skin itching and her eyes bruning with tears as she darted down the street and aroudn houses. The little yappy-dog that always barked at everybody that came near tried to bark at her, but she glared at it, itching and it whined and hid in its little house.
She continued to run, no real destination in mind, just a desperate need to get away from the horrible woman who had seemed so nice.
An hour later, when the police picked her up from the park, she'd learned a valuable lesson, and the happy-go-lucky girl from long ago grew farther and farther away.
Not all the Monsters had other faces hidden away.
-"Why are your apples blue?" a boy's voice asked; Idelia looked up from her coloring, frowning at the sight of Bryan Yancy peering over from where he was coloring in the trucks on their homework. They had all been given pictures and told to write a story about the scene. Idelia had gotten an apple tree with a cat sleeping under it, and he had gotten a truck driving down a windy road towards a mountain.
"Because I can," she old him, turning back to her drawing; Bryan scoffed loudly.
"That's stupid!" He declared loudly, getting the teacher to glance over from where he was helping Monica Fields spell 'beautiful'. "Apples are red, dummy!" Idelia's hands clenched at the word, hard enough to break the crayon in her hand.
"Shut up!" She snapped at him, glaring furiously, dark eyes flashing in the lights. She didn't notice him take a step back. "That's a stupid, ugly color! I hate it!" Panting a bit, Idelia turned abruptly away and scowled down at her apple tree, the blue circles taht were her apples gleaming against the yellow-greed tree top. "My apples are better! They'll never have to turn red," she whispered, and carefully lifted the broken half of her crayon to finish coloring, as Mr. Collins moved Bryan to another table and came to sit next to her.
"Are you okay, Idelia?" he asked, his voice soft and low; Idelia sniffled, eyes burning as she blinked, tryign to finish her coloring.
"I hate that color," she whispered to him, swallowing when her throat grew tight enough to hurt. "I hate it."
Later on, she was asked to stay after as Mr. Collins talked to the principle, and then to the Lloyds when they came to pick her up. She didn't know what they talked about, only that her foster parents came out looking tired and sad, even when they smiled at her blue apples and hung them on the fridge.
All she knew is that, from then on, when they colored in class, her box of crayons didn't have any reds in it and, for some reason, that made her feel safer than she had in weeks.
Idelia didn't get to go to the supposedly-nice Ortega family after that. They were afraid she'd run away again, and the Ortega family didn't want to risk losing her in the big city they lived in, so, instead, she had to stay with this weird old lady that collected old newspapers and had six chiuahuas.
They were cute, she supposed, but all Idelia wanted was to go back to the Lloyds.
To go back to her nice, blue room and play Go Fish with Mandy when they're homework was all done.
Back to helping Julie make pancakes when it was so early it was still dark out, because Idelia had had a nightmare and couldn't sleep anymore, and Julie had gotten up because her Restless Leg Syndrome had kicked in a half-hour before.
Back to being pushed on the swings by Ron when the mechanic had gotten off work early and taken the girls to the park as a treat.
Back to Mr. Collins, and her special box of crayons with no reds.
Even back to Monster-Samantha and her staring and twitching ears and soft, pitter-patter steps following her all over.
Back to when she hadn't known Monsters could be Real People too.
She missed her Mama and Papi.
She missed her old house.
She missed home.
-"Don't... Don't become a Monster... to the Monsters... It only leads... to death..." Her Mama was struggling to continue, gasps and chocking sounds breaking up her words.
...
"Mama? Mama, stop!"
...
"Grow up... And be.. a better... person... I lo..love you... So much, s-süße..."
..
"MAMA!"-
She was tired of being scared all the time.
She was just so tired of it.
A/N: Shorter than the last and pretty abrupt there at the ending, but I think I did an okay-job at her starting to adjust a bit right?
Children are resilient little shits, and Grimms have that extra dash of Instinct that helps in such cases.
DISCLAIMER!
I do not hate Social Services or their Workers!
I do not!
If you work with Social Services, or have been in Foster Care, and nothing bad happened to you, Yay! Good job!
If you have worked with them, or something bad happened, I am sorry and I hope you're life is filled with good fortune from now on!
Please do not snipe at me for painting what I'd think is a semi-realistic view of Social Services! Any advice you can off is welcomed!
Danke!
(The Only German really used in this chapter was all explained last chapter, except for Hallo which is pretty self-explanatory anyways)
Notes:
Beaver-man at the hospital - An Eisbiber (Like Bud! Love Bud...) First seen in Episode Danse Macabre.
Samantha the Bunny Monster - I didn't know there actually was a Bunny Wesen, I haven't gotten that far in the series and am using the Wikia for my Wesen Info for the most part, but apparently it's called a Willahara (First seen in Episode Bad Luck) so, you know, yay! ^-^ I just wanted to make a non-threatening Wesen interaction, you know?
PLEASE REVIEW!