#tw:abduction | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

andieforrester · 7 years ago

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1, 6, 12. 13, 16, 20 ( sam )

a song i associate with my muse’s personality - life in technicolor ii by coldplay( gravity, release me, and don’t ever hold me down, now my feet won’t touch the ground. she was shocked by the heat of the concrete when she opened that door. the door that had burned into her consciousness for twelve years, a piece of wood with hinges and a knob that stood between her and freedom. the slab in front of it– before the crunchy grass and dry cracked dirt started– baked the bottoms of her feet. they were used to carpet, cool cement, but she didn’t mind the difference, exciting despite the minimal pain. she still noticed that contrast, unfamiliar yet beckoning, a world of sunlight, unrestrained possibilities, choices-- hope. )

a song that makes my muse want to dance - i love it by icona pop ft. charli xcx( i threw your shit into a bag and pushed it down the stairs, i crashed my car into a bridge– i don’t care, i love it! when she first heard the song in the airport convenience store, she nearly dropped her bag of bugles. it somehow encompassed the feeling of liberation, the joyful scream that was constantly pushing at her throat, the urge-- and the capability-- to run for miles, throw in a cartwheel or two, look at the sky-- so she grabbed chris, who paid for the bugles and a box of dramamine 2, and gave him a look and he found a luggage cart. and she jumped on and squealed until a security guard crossed his arms and they abandoned the cart and headed for the gate. i don’t care, i love it, i love it! )

a song my muse might listen to when angry - let the record show by emilie autumn ( but while i breathe, i’ve got no evidence to prove my end, and so you’ll walk away-- nope! wrong again! as rewarding as it was to stand over Him, blood splattered on her arms, cutting board slipping from her hand as her eyes fell on the phone-- the phone!!-- that power somehow didn’t compare to sitting by a judge, speaking to the people who would decide His fate. there were a few moments of terror, throat gripping terror that she couldn’t prove IT, but the journals had saved her, and her voice threatened to betray her as she read the entry i can’t breathe the same anymore but she finished and the date was december 6th and she was sixteen and He was Officially By Law In the State of Texas A Rapist and she floated to her seat. and the sentence, three-hundred twenty-seven years made it all hurt a little less and she cheered, laughed, ignored Him as He walked out-- and she won. sometimes she can ease the fire that climbs up her body if she remembers that, the clear victory, the power. the reminder that it’s over. so, write this on your soul or don’t waste my time. )

a song dedicated to one of my muse’s ships - samantha + andie - issues by julia michaels( ‘cause i’ve got issues, but you’ve got ‘em, too, so give ‘em all to me and i’ll give mine to you. she hadn’t wanted Him in their relationship-- the truth was too much, too burdensome to put on anyone, especially someone who thought she was so pure, so clean. but then sam had seen her face, her second-grade hair clips baby teeth MISSING face and it all came out, all the ugliness and sadness and dirtiness and locked doors and basements and scars and-- sam held her tighter, said she was like marie antoinette and brave and strong and-- she sat back on the bed and dumped her own burden there, too. and they shared. a little of Him to weigh on sam, a few nightmares and demons and half-asleep screams for andie to shoulder. and they watched the sunset there, under the shared weight. and now occasionally, andie had a little more to shed: why she needed marie or joan or harriet, why alexandra had been replaced by andie-- and it was getting easier to let sam see the ugly, because she loved her, and the beauty in that could overpower any stain He’d left. )

a song my muse can’t stand - cowboy bill by garth brooks ( and we cried when we found him lying there with his memories, the old trunk wide open, things scattered about. there was a lot of country music played in that house-- it got to be grating pretty easily, especially combined with His dumb truck and dumb confederate flag and dumb mouth that said the n-word and hovered over her neck. mostly, anything He liked started to pull on her neurons, leave her spine tingling, toes numb, dermis stinging with electricity. most of it was dumb shit like no shoes, no shirt, no problem or it’s 5 o’clock somewhere, but this one was different, sad-- some old man telling kids stories of the texas rangers, discredited by the adults, and then he fucking died-- and her eyes had welled up against her will and He’d looked over at her and snorted and she’d tried to blink it away but then there was a drip on the page of her book and He had a big stupid smirk on His face and asked if she needed Him to change the song and she’d accidentally lifted one of her fingers-- and she wished she’d never heard that stupid song. )

a random song from my muse’s playlist - power of one by tonight alive( i can be strong and brave, but i have been lost and afraid. i’ve learned you can’t choose, there’s pain in the truth sometimes, but i’ve never learned to lie. building a new life on the foundations of an old one-- what sometimes felt like a failed one-- was difficult, shaky, dangerous. it was incredibly conflicting, confusing to live in two. of course, she’d done that for most of her previous life, torn between submission and resistance, but when she’d finally chosen, she wasn’t expecting the new challenges. there was intense joy, indescribable, exhilarating freedom, but also pain that lingered, sadness, anger, regret. it was nearly impossible to find a balance, to accept the past, keep it, remember it-- FEEL it-- but to move forward, smile even though there was tangible pain, trust even though it was a risk. she wanted a new life, a whole separate existence-- but that wasn’t possible. what is possible, what she has to remind herself, is that she is in control of herself, her destiny, and responsible for shaping her one life-- her ONLY LIFE-- into one she can love despite its flaws. )

#screams #i literally forget these are in my inbox BUT I AM DOING THEM #( music. )#( asks. )#( samantha. )#tw:mention of rape #tw:implied abuse #tw:abduction

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razorena · 4 years ago

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@xrcsegcld liked this post for a starter!

“Hola, mi cariño”, Rena gleefully greeted as she hugged Aurora from behind. They had only recently patched up their long standing feud with one another, but Rena considered their friendship golden. Actually, she considered it more than a friendship. Aurora just wasn’t aware of it yet. She would be soon, though. Rena had been working tirelessly for her the past few weeks. After Aurora’s last asshole of a boyfriend decided to cheat on her for the fifth time and she came crying on Rena’s doorstep, she figured it was time to finally do something about it. Of course Aurora didn’t ask her to, but she did it anyway, because she would do anything for a friend. Besides...she loathed cheaters. As Aurora turned around, a saccharine, toothy smile spread across Rena’s face.

“Hi gorgeous.” A bit of flattery, she could tell by the dark circles under Aurora’s eyes that the blonde had barely gotten any sleep lately. Heartbreak will do that to a person. But her news was sure to put a smile back on Aurora’s face. Oh, she was so excited. “Guess what? I have a surprise for you”, she announced, one of her hands gently grabbing Aurora’s and lacing their fingers together. “Remember how you said you caught Dennis in bed with that bitch Farrah last month? And how you were crying and you wish that he’d get what he deserved?” Her voice became more and more giddy as she went on, her fingers now tightening around Aurora’s hand and squeezing her palm in excitement. “Well, since we’re friends now, I wanted to help you. So I got you a present. It’s upstairs. Will you come with me?” She didn’t wait for an answer but turned around instead and pulled Aurora along with her, up the stairs and toward the attic. The attic she knew Aurora almost never used. It was a good thing, too, or else she might have noticed the scratches on the inside of the door. When they reached the door that lead to the attic, Rena pulled out a key. She’d swiped it from Aurora’s nightstand. A little bit of an invasion of privacy, sure, but it was all for the good of the surprise. As she put the key in the lock and twisted it, the sound of a muffled voice could be heard from behind the door. Her hand was still holding Aurora’s as she opened it calmly, revealing a crying Dennis lying on the floorboards with his hands tied behind his back and his ankles tied together. He was unharmed, but he’d been there for quite a while and it looked like he’d pissed himself. Rena pulled Aurora into the room with her, proudly gesturing towards the terrified ex-boyfriend. “Surprise!”, she chimed, while Dennis attempted to yell at her through the tape she’d put on his mouth. Rena looked down at him, swiftly kicking him in the leg. He yelped in pain. “Hey! Don’t be rude! You’ve done enough already!”, she told him sternly, before she turned back to Aurora. “I’m sorry about the pee. But we already knew he was a dirty dog.”

#xrcsegold #closed starter #tw:abduction

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coldwordsburningheart · 5 years ago

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☰

Send ‘☰’ to find my muse after missing for months on end with signs of being tortured.

Opening his eyes as light entered the room, Shoto groaned in pain. How long had he been there? How long Chisaki had been messing with him? Being shot by a bullet had caused for him to not be able to use his Quirk and in result to not be able to fight back. Escape wasn't even an option. The teen had started to believe that he was going to rot there forever. All those questions they asked and the pain he had to suffer if he didn't answer. He wasn't going to answer. He wouldn't give them any information, no matter what happened to him. His every day sessions with Chisaki had made him start to wish to die. It was not only pain, but how the other's sick mind had managed to make him feel for first time after a long time, terrified.

Shaking in fear, when he saw someone approaching, his blurry vision didn't help to figure out who it was. After a while, he recognized those hair and those eyes. Dabi. So the League Of Villains had been part of this. He didn't question why anymore. Quirk erasing bullets along with a Quirk as powerful as to reconstruct anything was a combination to be feared. For a moment he had thought that someone was there to rescue him, but in the end he had to endure even more suffering. He didn't know how long he had before losing his mind. There were a lot that he could manage but this? He didn't even dare to ask the reason to visit. He already knew it. More questions. New tortures to test on him. “If you think I am going to talk, you are mistaken” he said in a low tone. His voice less confident than it had been at the beginning but still trying as hard as he could to make it sound like he could still hond on.

@ghostburns

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christopher--forrester · 8 years ago

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ally - self para

Christopher's parents are moving nonstop for a month after it happens.

They make fliers, they show up on the news, they call every number in the damn phone book. They don't even see him through the blur of activity. They don't know that he wakes up from a nightmare every few hours or that he sometimes waits for the bus to drive past the stop and then sits in those woods for the rest of the day. A week after she was gone, he looked for her, but the other times, he just sits. He tries to feel her, or at least, some strange current leading where she went. He doesn't mind that his mom and dad are blind to him. If they looked too long, they might see the guilt pushing down on his shoulders so hard he can't stand straight. If he'd just stayed with her, went out to explore with her or told her to just wait for the bus, they could explore later-- there wouldn't be people with thermal cameras looking for someone they expected to be dead. He doesn't believe she's really gone, even though his teachers keep extending his assignments and occasionally giving him a sad look and a nod. He just ignores them and all the casseroles that show up at his house. The whole damn town seems to know everything. The people at Dairy Queen give him a free cone every time he goes in with his friends. His friends' parents say things to their kids in whispers, probably warning them not to invite him to spend the night. They think he's too fragile to be away from home. But every time he's there, he ends up in her bedroom, hiding in the curtains of the canopy bed or staring at the plastic stars on her ceiling or repositioning all her stuffed animals on her bed. He never would've admitted it to her, or his parents, but he knows all their names. Brownie, her moose, looks so sad that he feels compelled to move it into his room. His parents don't notice until a few years later, but even then, they can’t quite see everything he's trying to hold in.

When Mrs. Forrester gets a call in the middle of the night, and doesn't say anything but "Really?" "Okay," "We're on the way," Pause. Tearful exhale. "Thank you," Chris leaps into action.

He's still awake, having finished his homework about half an hour ago, unable to go to sleep. He's imagining what she looks like now. She's twelve. And he knows that call was for her. He's already dressed, shoes tied, retainer discarded on the bathroom counter, Brownie the moose under his arm when his mother peeks into the doorway. She blinks hard, taking him in. "I-- guess you heard the phone call." She opens her mouth like she's about to say something, but closes it. Chris has refused to let them redo her bedroom for the past six years. Every time they start talking about it, he gets up, leaves the room, and goes upstairs to sit on her bed. "Are we going now?" She hesitates for a moment, but nods. When they get to the hospital in Alpine, he gives his parents a look because someone is leading them down a dim hallway, in the basement-- what kind of hospital would put their patients in the basement? He almost gags when they open the door. The room smells awful, like bad meat, or old blood or something. He realizes quickly that the thing on the table isn't a living, breathing girl. It's what they call 'remains' on the news. His mother starts crying, and his father puts an arm around her. "So," The person in scrubs starts explaining through a mask. "We don't have a full dentition, many of them are worn down, possibly by someone hoping to conceal the identity, and of course, Alexandra's teeth weren't all present when she disappeared. But these are quite similar to the permanent teeth she had. It's certainly not a guarantee. There isn't enough evidence to say without a doubt that it's her. But it doesn't match closely with any other missing person reports we've seen so far." Chris can't even believe what he's hearing. "So, it's not her." The person hesitates through their mask. "We can't say with certainty that this is or isn't your sister." He's so angry, he can feel himself turning red. His parents are holding each other and crying, like they're having some kind of mourning revelation. "It's not her!" "Christopher, please," His mother says quietly, her voice trembling. "It's not! How can you give up on her? She's your daughter!" "We aren't giving up, we-- we can't just keep living like this, waiting for her." His throat is getting tighter. "Why not? Telling yourself she’s-- Ally is dead might be easier for you, but how selfish can you get? My sister is not dead!" He can't defend that. She could be decomposing in a ditch or at the bottom of a ravine or sunk to the bottom of the ocean with lead weights on her ankles. The mental image almost makes him sick, or maybe that's just the smell. That's not how Ally smelled, she smelled like green apple shampoo and vanilla detangling spray, because she always complained that someone was pulling her hair if they brushed it for her, and her hands smelled like crayons because she could sit and work on one page of her Lisa Frank coloring book for two hours, and bananas because she liked to peel them and eat half of them and expect Chris to eat the rest. This isn't Ally. He storms out of the room, leaving his parents to cry if they want to. Fuck them and their stupid premature grieving. He's not taking "it's certainly not a guarantee" as an answer. Brownie the moose is not going to see those rotting pieces and think she's gone forever. Brownie the moose is going to stay out of that bullshit, and stay on Chris's side, on Ally's side. She loved that fucking moose, and Chris is not going to let him be put on some kind of gravesite memorial bullshit that doesn't even have a body inside. He's going to wait, and so is Chris, because Ally is coming back.

Leaving home isn't difficult.

Some of his friends admit that they cried a little when their moms started to. But he doesn't even think it's that hard for her. She gets a little teary-eyed, but he figures she'll feel better with him out of the house. Lately, they can't stop arguing. Most people would assume that after losing one child, parents would be connected constantly to their second, too clingy, too affectionate. But Chris can hardly stand to be in a room with either of them, and he’s pretty sure the feeling is mutual. They've actually done it, destroyed Ally's room. The canopy bed is in the attic with most of her stuffed animals. They took back Brownie the moose and pretended it was okay to perch him on a shelf in the new "guest room" as a reminder of the little girl who used to sleep there, the little girl who wanted plastic stars on the ceiling even though her canopy kept her from seeing them. Those are in the attic, too. Chris is chronically pissed off at them, because they have a memorial site at a cemetery as well. It cost a thousand dollars, plus six hundred more to engrave her name on a bench. They made him go with them once, but he refuses every other time they try to get him to visit someone who isn't fucking dead. At one point, his father called him selfish, as if his hope is worse than spending sixteen-hundred dollars on an elaborate way of fulfilling their own imagination. Chris told him that, and his father just shook his head. "What the hell do you think is happening to her if she's not dead? I'm sure at this point, if she isn’t, she wants to be. Maybe you’re the selfish one in this equation." Like he hasn't already thought about what her life could be. She could be in fucking Nepal, living in a brothel. Maybe some woman whose kid died took her and is treating her well, but he doubts that. Nepal seems more likely, but he tries to keep his mind on when he'll see her again, not where they are right now. Although, he wishes she could see Austin. The Army Reserves are the best deal he's ever made. He doesn't actually have to fight, and they're paying his tuition at the University of Texas. His parents and their guest room and memorial are 400 miles away. He has no idea what he's going to do with his life, but he ends up in political science and gender studies and sociology. ( No one else in political science seems to know what they're doing, either. ) He tries to go to a few parties, but he usually doesn't even have a drink. The first time he attends, he sees some guy trying to get a girl to go back to his apartment. She's tiny, obviously a freshman, with a low tolerance for alcohol. The party started an hour ago and she's drunk enough for half her cardigan to be hanging off and trailing the ground. She keeps trying to get his hand off of her wrist, and every time he utters a somewhat-annoyed "come on, babe," she shakes her head and Chris can't watch it anymore. Luckily, he doesn't look like a freshman. He's six foot two and 165 pounds, no baby face left. The other guy looks like he weighs about 130 at most, and could be anywhere from 15 to 24. Chris decides that even if he's toward the higher end of the spectrum, he could, hypothetically, take him. "Leave her alone," he calls across the yard, sitting his practically full solo cup on a table to walk over. "Chill," the guy's hand is wandering, from her wrist to her waist to her ass. Chris! Ally! Where are you? Ally? Ally-- "I'm just getting her home." Drop it. Ally is not coming home, Christopher. "Stop touching her." He's towering over the guy. The girl is halfway-stuffed in the back seat of the car. "I said chill, man, I'm jus--" A hot surge of anger shoots down his arm and he's shoving him, the scrawny guy is on the ground. He reaches into the car to offer the girl a hand, shooting a warning look toward the pavement. "Don't, dude. Don't even try it." After a moment of hesitation, the girl's hand finds his, a little shaky, doubtful. The anger drains, replaced by something softer. She doesn't smell like green apple shampoo and vanilla detangler and crayons and bananas, she smells like booze, but Chris wants to hold her. He hopes that when someone finds his sister someday, they hold her. ( Even if she's dying. Or already dead. ) He can't dwell on that now, the girl is on the verge of collapse and the guy is peeling himself off the pavement. Chris knows he'll just find another girl like her, there have to be about thirty inebriated young women wandering around the party. "Go home, bud," His voice makes the words into a threat. "Now. Don't let me catch you bothering anyone else." The guy looks like he wants to challenge him, but he gets in his car and screeches down the street. He picks up the abandoned half of the sweater, brushes it off, and slides it back up her arm. "What's your name?" He has to ask four times, because she just keeps saying "you saved me," and tripping over uneven places in the grass. Finally, she seems to register the question. Her name is Delaney, and she lives in a natural sciences dorm. Her roommate is also at the party, and not ready to go home, so he ends up parking himself on a couch with Delaney and some water. As he watches people grind and grow increasingly intoxicated, he wants to be annoyed, because he could totally be studying right now, but Delaney rests her head on his shoulder and any irritation seeps back out of his pores. Later that night, when she's starting to sober up, or at least transition into a hangover, she hugs him and thanks him and he just wishes he could have been there when Ally was scared and vulnerable, too, but this feels good, like maybe if he can protect others, the hole Ally left in his heart will hurt less. He figures Delaney must be somewhat popular, maybe because her sister is in a huge sorority and she's basically destined to join as well, because he accumulates some kind of reputation. Every time he shows up at a party, a couple of sober girls find him and ask him to help their friend, and at some point, it feels like a responsibility, but a good one. He likes knowing that he can be trusted to defend people, to protect them, rather than letting something terrible happen and hating himself for it every moment.

He doesn't expect that service to be expanded from vulnerable college students to the entire damn country.

When the army recruiters helped him sign the papers, they said he could potentially be enlisted some day. Like, if there was a fucking crisis, like the Holocaust. Not like, you signed up, so here's a uniform and a backpack, go kill some innocent Iraqi civilians. He's graduated, with no loan debt, and the campus has hired him as a security guard, but the army is not done with him, even if he wants to be done with them. He has to cut his hair short and report to Fort Hood immediately for training. It's a little demoralizing. Especially by his senior year, everyone thought he was pretty formidable. He could physically lift another man off of someone, fight them off, and carry whoever was in distress to his car and get them back home. As a guard, he could tackle someone to the ground, or restrain them, fight them, if it came to it. He can still taste blood in his mouth from the time he had to force three football players away from a sophomore who couldn't find her car, but she got home safely and even wrote a letter to the security office. But when he shows up at boot camp, none of that seems to matter. Someone is always yelling at him to go faster, go lower, go harder-- whatever he does is just not enough. The most frustrating part is when they yell right in his ear. He can set his jaw and yell back, but that doesn’t help the fact that flecks of spit hit him in the face, like liquid freckles, and he has to stand at attention, be respectful. His muscles feel like stretched silly putty and the implications of that yelling makes his heart feel like a cup of Jell-O. What the hell are you gonna do when an IED blows someone's arms off? Just stand there? Say you can't carry them? Let them die? Or be taken? Same damn thing. ( If she’s not dead by now, she wants to be. ) But it somehow makes his dead muscles stretch further, his Jell-O heart keep beating, because he won't let someone else be taken. No more dumb memorials or engraved benches. One of his fellow recruits, Chase, tells him he didn't expect to have to come, either. They secretly write "army reserves: you’ll probably never be enlisted! ... why the fuck you lyin, why you always lyin, mmmmohmygod, stop fuckin lyin" and “fuck the reserves” in the bathroom stalls, then spend an hour giggling at their own stupidity and scrubbing them to avoid being charged with sedition or something stupid. When they do a specific course based on mental and physical fitness, Chase is the one whose limbs are "blown off." Chris disobeys an order and goes back for him, insisting he can be saved with a tourniquet. He gets lectured for non-compliance, but they seem to admire his willingness to do anything for his team. He doesn't say that it's not just about that. On a break, they sit behind a building and channel all the built-up nervous energy into a kiss, tentative at first, but both of them get better quickly. Chris has had a couple of girlfriends, one who broke it off as soon as she saw the spare bedroom in his apartment, Ally's glowing plastic stars and rainbow hair clips. ( If his parents won't wait for her, he will. ) He's never been with a man before, but his lips are just as soft as a woman's, and his hand is rough against his cheek but it feels good, like it can erase the weeks of dried spit from the yelling sergeants. When he pulls Chris into his lap, a wave of fear washes over him, because holy shit, this is new and his breath is coming out shallow and shaky, and Chase's hands are on his waist and his muscles don't feel so tired, even if his heart is still weak. Now there's saliva on his jaw and his neck and where his clavicle peeks out of the olive green T-shirt, but it's not from his superiors' anger or attempts to push him harder, it's from a blond man with pretty eyes and soft lips and rough hands, and it definitely isn't a bad thing. They wait until everyone else is asleep a couple of weeks later to lock the bathroom doors and turn on the showers and Chris is scared, but in a good way, and his muscles feel like a feather pillow and his heart is thumping fast in his chest and feels like a shaken can of soda. Chase is gentle, maybe just as nervous as Chris is, but he makes his whole body feel like it's full of warm waves of light and hot water and steam are between them but nothing else is and the freckles he used to think were ugly, the freckles he used to wish would disappear if he stared hard enough at a star, are beautiful because Chase's thumb is tracing them and he feels so good that nothing about this can be less than beautiful. Then boot camp is over and they are separated and Chris tries to pretend that his heart doesn't have a brand new hole stabbed into it.

Iraq is worse than boot camp.

Chase isn't stationed with him and a lot of the men are like the ones he used to have to fight off during parties, brimming with toxic masculinity and internalized misogyny. The weeks become blurred with red and tan, blood and sand, explosions that shake the bunker during the night and constant shells, unloading guns, sweat that feels like mud, hate. Some of men around him see the people outside like bugs. "The only good Iraqi's a dead one," one of them says at night, and all his friends laugh. Chris decides it wouldn't be too hard to obey orders and leave him behind. The blood splashes up from the sand into his eyes when a roadside bomb really does go off. ( Turns out all those hypothetical training situations were simulated for a reason. ) His freckles are hidden under hot red liquid. The flecks of spit from the sergeant turn heavy and thick. His ears are ringing so loudly he can only hear rough static noises where voices should be. He's not even in the truck anymore, either forced out by the blast or pulled by someone he can't see yet. He reaches up to wipe his eyes, and the rest of the world is just as red. There's an arm beside him in the sand and for a moment he's afraid it's his. He can't even move for a moment, just stares at the sky, the only thing not poisoned by the redness. His chest heaves and his heart is pounding hard, blood leaking through the Ally and Chase holes into the rest of his body. When he tries to sit up, his muscles feel like they've all snapped. He rolls onto his side, coughing because his mouth is full of blood and he doesn't know if it's his. A pair of arms pull him up and a face appears in front of his eyes. "Forrester. You good?" Her eyes are sparkling green like a meadow, her nose is slightly upturned, her lips are light pink, her dark hair is wet with blood and out of its tight bun, long. She's young. Ally. He collapses into her and she catches him, but as soon as tears start to prick his eyes because she smells like apple and vanilla and crayons and banana and that means Ally is dead and she's here to take him-- the whole world turns from red to black. He wakes up in the infirmary with a concussion and three bruised ribs. The woman is there, with her hair washed and in a ponytail, bloody uniform replaced with a clean T-shirt and sweatpants. He sees now that her face is the wrong shape, and when she comes closer to tell him who they lost, she smells like mango and ocean. She's not Ally. ( For the first time, her absence is a relief. ) Her real name is Lauren, and she says she's glad he's okay, because he's one of the few people in their division she can stand. Even though they’re both lonely, they don't ever hide behind a building and kiss, or fuck in the showers because every time she looks up, his heart gets stuck in his throat because when her hair falls the right way, she's Ally, one of those predicted sketches. When he tells her about what happened, she doesn't think it's weird that he keeps the hair clips in his spare room. She's the first person to tell him to trust his instincts. "If you think she's alive, don't doubt yourself. Someday, when you find her--" When. That word sounds good there. "She'll love you a lot for believing in her." The next bomb hits when Chris walks into the barracks and a woman is crying, loudly, the kind that makes his bones want to shatter like thin glass, the kind that has the power to grab him and yank him into the room with the short table and six men and a young woman-- she is on the table and the men who no longer see brown people as humans are around it and one is on her. He remembers the girls at the parties on couches, empty cups and bottles, and he's yanking the man off, even though, for once, he's the small one. The other is four inches taller than him and maybe 70 pounds heavier. "C'mon, man, what the hell?" "Don't," Chris's voice is shaking, he's so angry. Black spots threaten his vision and his ears ring again. "Don't fucking-- go there. You assholes are the ones in here raping someone. Back the fuck off." He doesn't move, so Chris gets closer. "Now." He moves to bat him out of the way, but Chris is faster, and he smacks his arm down, hard enough to make him flinch. His wrist was sprained when the IED went off, and it's still not quite right. "I said move." When he retreats, reluctantly, not without a few choice words and empty threats, the rest of them do, too. The woman's hijab is on the floor, crumpled. He bends down to pick it up for her, and she seems to unfurl slightly, like even though she couldn’t understand what he was saying to them, that proves they can be allies. He recruits Lauren to help him, to type up a letter in broken Arabic to give to her family as an apology, but they decide not to say it on behalf of the U.S. military. She is one woman out of thousands. The military is not sorry. But Christopher and Lauren are, and that seems to mean something to the woman they steal borrow a Jeep for to return to her home. The final hit is from gunfire. Bullets are whizzing past them and three of them are down and Chris doesn't even want to fire back because he's seen civilians caught in crossfire and all of it feels bad and wrong, especially after seeing the terror in that family's eyes when he and Lauren took their daughter back. Then there's an explosion, one that Chris stays conscious for. He's thrown back about fifty feet, but from his place in the sand, he can see body parts rain down from the sky, a stray boot, a helmet. He squeezes his eyes shut because it was easier when they were full of blood and he couldn't see what was happening. But Lauren doesn't come to pull him off the ground this time and he knows something is wrong, just like he knows Ally is still not dead. ( Through the months of heat and sand and salutes, he can feel her, she is still fighting, too. ) He pushes himself to his feet, a little dizzy, and it's all red and black and the heat is making the air waver and he has to hit the ground again almost immediately because more bullets whiz through the air and he hears her yelling. "Forrester!" Chris! "Stay back!" They have her, her helmet is off and her hair is hanging in a ponytail and there's blood on her uniform and she's yelling as they drag her. An officer is yelling now, too, because he's back in motion. "Forrester! Retreat!" Bullets are hurtling past him and he doesn't stop. He finally allows himself to return fire, because he's close enough to see their faces now and they have her and he won't lose her again. Whoever is left of his squad backs him, and a few of the men fall, and Lauren is able to break away, even though her wounds are pouring red into the sand and she can't stand up and she sinks into the deep red mud and Chris grabs her waist, slings her over his shoulder, and wishes he was at a party in Austin right now and she was a freshman who he’d gotten to before it was too late. When she's in the helicopter, they start trying to pull him up, too, and he's confused until he realizes his blood is in the sand as well. An officer comes into the infirmary a few days later. Lauren is sent home with a Purple Heart, paralyzed from the waist down. Chris thinks they're going to tell him to go home, too, and they do. A cold fist squeezes his heart when the officer delivers the news without making eye contact. Other than honorable discharge. Disobeying orders, endangerment, homosexual conduct. He's wondering how anyone knew about that last part when he looks up and one of the rapists from his squad, someone he hardly glanced at in Fort Hood, is smirking. He's furious that he's being punished while the scum of the earth will likely receive an honorable release at some point, but otherwise, the only thing he feels, besides the tightness in his abdomen from the surgery, is relief.

The holes in his heart start to ache harder, leak faster when his phone rings and it's his mother.

"Chris," her voice is strained, threatening to break. "Get to Alpine. The hospital." He can't tell if it's because Ally is alive and she's finally back after twelve damn years or because they found her for real this time, she's actually dead. His stomach is twisting too hard for him to find that confidence again. After he says goodbye, and that he's on the way, but before he hangs up, he hears his mom's lungs contract with a sob. He's so fucked up, so frantic that he hardly brushes his hair, takes ten minutes to find a pair of shoes. Handfuls of clothes are shoved into his old backpack, camouflage, FORRESTER embroidered on the patch. He has to stop himself at one point, smoke a cigarette. He hasn't done it since sophomore year, but it makes him slow down enough to collect himself. Still, his heart is bleeding out into his stomach, which is in knots. He finally crushes what's left into an ashtray and shrugs his bag onto his shoulder. As he's about to leave, he stops and grabs Ally's rainbow hair clips from the nightstand in the spare bedroom. He drives 90 the whole way to Alpine. When he pulls into town, he has to slow down, but it makes his foot shake, his thigh tense up against the seat. He hasn’t been back here. It’s a ghost town to him, nothing is left, even though more stores have opened, apparently, artists love it, but Ally is not in the Dairy Queen, complaining about the flies, or asking to go to the museum at the university after school for the hundredth time. It’s harder to keep his speed under sixty when his brain whispers that he could take her to that museum today, because she could be in the hospital now. When he pulls into the hospital parking lot, there are no news crews, fuck, he was hoping for some kind of hint before he walked in. He doesn’t want to expect her to be there, like last time, and end up in the basement again. But his parents aren’t in the lobby, and when he asks the woman at the desk where they might be, when he tells her his last name, she points across the hall to a room with a sliding glass door and his heart almost leaps out of his chest and it’s pumping blood so fast he’s afraid he’ll pass out right there and it feels like it takes a year, or twelve, just to walk to that door and he jerks it open and a face he’s never seen before is right there and her cheekbones are sharp and the gown is loose on her, she’s skinny, with light pink cheeks and eyes that are a little green, a little brown, long dark hair, all her teeth, none of them are missing or worn down and she’s a woman, nineteen, older than some of the freshmen, and she’s in his arms before he’s even aware that he’s by her bed. His heart fills back up, the hole starts to close. She doesn’t smell like apple and vanilla and crayons and banana anymore. She smells like coconut and sweat, the kind that comes from sunlight, and that doesn’t matter because she’s still Ally. Some little childish part of him wants to look at their mom and dad and say, see, I told you! but he just holds her tighter, tries to ignore how small her body feels. “I knew it.” The words are only for her, not their parents. When he pulls back to look at her again, he sees her hair in her face and pulls out the hair clips, not because he thinks she’s actually going to wear them, but because they’re finally back where they belong and Brownie the moose is in her bed, too, from their parents. Tears start rolling down her face, her shoulders shake, shit, he didn’t expect that. She’s just staring at the clips, face twisting like someone she loves just died in front of her, and she has to inhale it, swallow it, and she starts nodding, holding her fist to her chest. When she can talk, she says “it’s Andie now,” and it takes him a moment to understand that she’s not Ally anymore, not totally, the little girl is gone, but Chris just finds her hand, holds it, and she keeps nodding. “With an -ie, not a -y.” She’s been Ally, the same Ally with the rainbow clips and Brownie the moose for nineteen years, and now she’s a woman named Andie with thick, raised scars that completely circle her wrists and a smaller mark on her forehead and eyes that have seen only one house but know so much more than that. But they’ve still only seen one house, and she’s still Ally, partially, even if she’s Andie now. “Wanna go down to the cafeteria?” He’s not expecting her eyes to light up so brightly, her entire face, but she looks like he just handed her two tickets to Paris. “Yeah!” She’s leaping out of the bed immediately, grabbing her pants and T-shirt from the plastic hospital bag, practically dragging him out of the room. She looks out every window on the way to the cafeteria, swinging his arm back and forth, and his heart feels like it’s wrapped in a warm hug and she can’t stop smiling when she sits down with a mini container of mint chocolate chip Blue Bell and starts listing everywhere she wants to go. His own face hurts because her happiness is contagious and he can’t not smile because Ally Andie is back and his heart is remembering how it feels to have a sister, one who is not in the basement, who does not belong on a memorial and a bench, who is here and laughing and free. The guilt finally shifts and his chest and shoulders are free, too.

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andie--forrester · 8 years ago

Text

alexandra - self para/bio

“Ally!”

She can hear him calling her. Chris, her brother. The bus should be coming any minute. She knows she shouldn’t have wandered off. “I’m over here!” She tries to follow the sound of his voice. It’s so cold she can see her breath.

“Ally!” He must be close. But which direction is it coming from? She turns and walks for a moment, and his voice is even more distant when he calls her again. She hears a truck– there must be a road nearby. She wants to follow the sound, but it disappears. It must have driven off too quickly. She’s startled by the sound of crunching leaves, feet on the ground, but she looks up with a smile, expecting Chris. Instead, it’s a man. Tall, white, wearing a heavy coat that looks like her dad’s. She knows she should be scared, but he doesn’t necessarily look bad. “Hey,” His voice is kind of rough, but not enough to be worrisome. “Are you lost?” The words take a moment to come out. “Um– kind of. I just have to find my brother. He’s at the bus stop. He’s looking for me, I lost him.” The man raises his eyebrows. “Dark hair and freckles? I just saw him.” She allows herself to smile. “Can you tell me which way?” He waves his hand. “I’ll take you to him. Come on.” She’s not getting in his car or taking candy from him, he’s just helping her find Chris. She follows him cheerfully, skipping a little ahead when a squirrel jumps out of a tree. Maybe she should have stayed behind him. Her head feels like it’s splitting open and the leaves are in her eyes and the squirrel chatters and all the leaves turn black. The next thing she sees is… black, again. Not the same kind of black. The dark kind, like if she could peel one layer of black off, something would be there. It smells like dampness and cold and cement. Her head is pounding, so badly that she has to concentrate on something else to avoid puking. The back of her neck feels wet and sticky. She reaches up to touch it, see the red that she’s sure is there, but her hand won’t move. A heavy, metal noise is where her hand should be. There’s a cold collar on her wrist. Both of them. She’s locked up. A chain holds her to the wall. She can’t tell if she smells dirty metal or blood or both. She hates that she can’t move, even a little. She tries to make the chains looser, somehow, but the pain from her head sends a wave of shuddering nausea down her body. She leans back on the wall, breathing heavily, a shaky cry finally escaping. She should be in school. Shouldn’t she? She has no idea how much time has passed. She screams for help a couple of times, but she’s too close to throwing up to keep going. After a moment, a door opens and the man from that morning comes down a few flimsy steps. “What are you screaming about?” She doesn’t know how to speak, suddenly. All that will come out is a sob. This must be what her mom meant when she said if anyone ever took her away, she should scream as hard as she can because even if he kills her, it’s better than whatever is going to happen otherwise. She tries to yell again, rattle the chains, but they’re heavier than she is, and he definitely doesn’t like the noise. Her head explodes. Her forehead cuts open on a piece of metal, maybe a bolt or something, embedded in the wall. The blood drips onto her hand. He leaves again. She doesn’t have the energy to do anything but rest the least-damaged parts of her head against the wall and cry. She doesn’t know how long it is until he returns, but he has a TV with him. He leaves it on one channel and disappears again. She doesn’t pay attention to it until her face is on the screen. A message scrolls along the bottom. Her vision is too blurry to read the words. From tears or whatever’s going on with her head? She doesn’t know, but she can hear what it says. “7 year old Alexandra Forrester went missing while waiting for her bus yesterday morning. Her brother said she wandered away from him into a small wooded area. He missed the bus while searching the surrounding area. He said he was unable to find any trace of his sister, and search crews have not identified any human source of heat in the area. A small amount of dried blood was found in a patch of leaves. We are still waiting for the test results. Crews will continue to search for Alexandra or her body. If you have any information, please contact the number on the screen or emergency services. Her family says she also goes by Ally.” She wants to scream at the news anchor. She’s right there. She glares at the TV, trying to get it to swallow her up, until some kind of paid programming comes on and she falls asleep again.

It doesn’t take long to learn how to get by.

By sixteen, she’s an expert. She knows what she can get away with. She knows His face, His tone, what gets on His nerves, what makes Him more pleasant. She has her own room, but the basement is a lingering threat. If she does something wrong, His face shifts and gets harder and she goes back down the stairs to an underground prison. She never gets to leave the house, but a bed and TV and a kitchen and Him are better than a hard cement floor and complete solitude. Being alone is the worst part. Sometimes she stares into the dark and talks to herself, repeating useless shit: the Emancipation Proclamation was signed January 1st, 1863. Democrats in the South assisting white terrorist groups created the environment of racism and Confederate pride still present in some Southern homes. Woodrow Wilson legalized suffrage for women. McCarthyism victimized innocent Americans through scapegoating and fear. The Cuban Missile Crisis almost launched a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States. South American governments faced interference by the United States government to ensure benefits for the American people and economy, leaving Latin Americans in poverty. She needs people, even if they’ve been dead for hundreds of years. She thinks she would be friends with Marie Antoinette. She was what, 12? 13? when she had to go marry someone she didn’t know. Then the King died and she and the guy she married had to start making decisions for the whole country. And people judged her for not having kids and she felt like she had to start popping them out to make other people happy. And she bought some dresses and puppies and tried to enjoy herself despite being depressed and having very few choices other than what accessories to put in her hair that day, and the country went into debt and they all blamed her. And they cut off her head for making mistakes. She was probably a nice person, just had a bad reputation. (And her hair was cool.) She had a brother she missed, too. At least she got to write him letters. Sometimes she writes letters, when she’s not in the basement, even though they’ll never be mailed. Mostly to Chris, sometimes to her parents, sometimes to her best friend. Does Savannah even remember her anymore? It’s been nine years. She just wants to know how they all felt, how they all feel, what’s happening to everyone she loves. Chris is 21 now. Is he at college, does he have a girlfriend? Wait, does he have a boyfriend? Shit, does he have kids? All she knows is how to survive in this place with Him. She knows He likes dark movies with killing and creepy plot twists, but He’ll let her choose what they watch if she makes popcorn and puts her head on His shoulder as they watch. She doesn’t even mind that. He’s the only person she has. He can be nice. He is, unless she messes up. She just can’t look out the window for too long, or start asking to leave, or argue with Him. She hates seeing Him angry– yes, He’s scary, but it’s mostly because it’s hard to disappoint the only person she has. It's not that she loves Him. She doesn't. She's afraid of Him and angry with Him for forcing her into a life without other people or the sky or the grass or mountains or trees or snow or sand or ocean or big, clean lakes with little pebbles at the bottom and water so cold it shocks her teeth. All she has is a few rooms, a TV, sometimes a basement full of cold cement, the same food forever, the same man forever, the same warning 'Ally,' or when he's really getting impatient, 'Alexandra,' forever, everything is forever and nothing ever changes. Until it does. Slightly, and not in the way she wants. She makes popcorn and sits close to Him and she can smell Him through the butter because his shirt is so close to her nose. But He doesn't give her the remote or tell her to pick a DVD, and she just waits for some kind of signal. This is their system, right? It's not like He ever specifically said that every time she did that, she'd get the remote, like a dog and a treat, but it's a routine now, and she expects some kind of reimbursement. She kind of wants to watch that movie about Marie Antoinette-- she saw commercials for it years ago, and it looked inaccurate but entertaining. But He chooses some weird movie about a ton of people locked into a hospital or something-- she hardly pays attention-- on an island and it's fucked up and creepy and now she's confused. Not about the movie, but about Him. He's changing the rules. He does something else, too, something worse than revoking her movie choice without warning. At first she thinks He's tucking her in, like she begged Him to a few years ago when she still needed to pretend He was like a parent. But He places a hand on the covers, right where her thigh is-- how'd He know exactly where it was? Pointless questions are racing. Is this how Marie Antoinette felt? How big are His hands? They suddenly look like they're bigger than her head, no, her whole body. Is she shrinking? Is the basement really so bad? Has His body always been this menacing? And heavy? Has He always had the power to steal air out of her lungs? Is she still in her body or floating away? Did she burn the popcorn? She dreams that when they execute Marie Antoinette, someone looks in the basket and Alexandra's head is there instead.

The next time the rules change, she's the one who changes them.

Her face is swollen, the fabric of her pillow stuck to a bloody part of her lip when she wakes up. She made a mistake, she knows that, but Jesus Christ, she can't even feel frustrated with herself now; maybe she's too old for His rules. She's nineteen. Twelve years have passed in this house she never belonged in. First grade, second grade, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, Chris might not even be in college anymore; she should be. --- She didn't feel her chest flutter when she heard that "Alexandra," or even the "Alexandra!" because there was a person outside, a real fucking person with arms and legs and a head and they were walking a dog and they saw her through the window. She hadn't even thought, just started waving, in awe of them, almost. He didn't live in a neighborhood-- hell, there weren't many of those in Fort Davis, Texas. No gated communities with pools and playgrounds, no Home Owners' Associations. He had a scary No Trespassing sign on a couple of trees, so most people just left the little house in the middle of nowhere alone. She just wanted to run out there, introduce herself. She hadn't said those words in a long time. "Hi, I'm Alexandra," she tried under her breath, but it sounded wrong. Alexandra is dead, isn't she? She died in the basement or in the bed or somewhere in between. Someone else is left. She wanted to pet the dog, too. He pulled on his leash toward the house, like he could see her and wanted her to pet him, too. But He didn’t want her to go introduce herself or pet the dog or anything of the sort. He yelled her name one last time, and she turned her head, but couldn’t to take her eyes off the man and his dog, almost gone now. Something twitched under her skin, like the muscles in her body wanted her to open the door and say something. She didn’t have time, because He pulled her away from the window. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" There was a little bit of something else under the anger, maybe panic. "I just-- wanted to--" The words didn't come out right, and she looked again and the man and dog were out of sight and they didn’t know she needed them, somehow. "What? Wanted to what?" His anger made her angry. "Wanted to-- to see another fucking person for once in my goddamn life!" The words were foreign in her mouth, the bad ones taken from movies. She never talked back, not like that. He didn't like her words, but they kept spilling out. "I'm so fucking tired of being here! I'm under house arrest all the fucking time, and for what? What did I fucking do? I just want to be a real person who knows other people, Jesus Christ! Is that too much--" And her lip split open on her teeth. She didn't cry, even as she walked down the basement stairs. Her mouth was dripping blood the whole way down, but she kept her chin high. Maybe someone new was born when that wispy husk inside of her died for good. She watched TV down in the basement for hours. He doesn't bother locking her up down there any more, so she watched upside down, her feet up against the wall in a hand-stand, she watched as she pushed furniture and boxes around, and as she used an old rope for jumping-rope like she's a little kid again-- but there's no air conditioning in the concrete cube so she stopped that after about half an hour and flopped down on her stomach on the cool floor. At some point, He came to get her. Another 8-hour timeout had ended, but she wasn’t happy, even when she took a shower and washed the blood and dirt from the basement floor and Him off. Whoever replaced Alexandra is definitely tired of this shit. --- She pulls her lip from the pillow and sits up, running a hand through her hair. It feels too greasy, because she put coconut oil in it and before it was all rinsed out, the water went cold. She could rinse it right now. It's not like she has anything better to do. But she isn't really interested in a shower. She feels jumpy, irritable, ready to do something. Her skin feels like it's pulled tight over something itchy. He's not there when she goes to the kitchen, but there are donuts and pig-in-a-blankets on the table. She eats everything He left. She usually can't eat, not like this. She takes a few bites and glances over and sees Him eating, His jaws moving, He makes so many noises when he eats, and He’s weirdly aggressive, like He can’t get it in his mouth fast enough and she puts her fork down and can't put anything else in her stomach. Not today. She eats three of the glazed rings iced with chocolate-- and they're fucking good-- and four kolaches and a braid of glazed dough with cinnamon sprinkled on it and a blueberry cake donut and she chugs the chocolate milk He left in the fridge door and sits by the window until He gets back. She still feels weird and anxious, but she doesn't do anything until that man and his dog walk by again. She just glances out at them a few times, then sneaks another wave, and He sees. And she doesn't care. And when He hits her cheek, she pushes Him away. And He hits harder, and she hits back, and He's really angry now, but so is she. He pushes her hard, into the wall, but she dodges the next time His hand comes close and there's blood on the floor, but it's because she scratched His cheek with her fingernails so hard she left four little rivers. He grabs her throat, but she wrestles out of His grip when she knees Him in the crotch-- seeing Him double over is the best part, she's been wanting to destroy that one organ for a while now. She grabs a knife from the block before she has time to think about it. "Hey," His voice softens a little, the fire in His eyes forced to subside. "Calm down, Ally." Ally is dead, He killed her. "You don't have to do that. I'll let you out more. We can go out sometimes, to a town about an hour away. I’ll make things better for you." Her courage wavers, and she places the knife on the counter shakily. Two sides of her are screaming at each other and ripping apart. He looks relieved. She feels a warm wave run down her body, from the top of her head to her feet. "No, you won't." The almost inaudible words aren't even directed at Him, they're a realization. She picks up the cutting board and smashes it into His skull.

To a degree, He’s forced to keep His promise.

When the ambulance comes, it takes them both to the hospital in that town he said they’d visit. She stares out the window the whole time, wanting to talk to the paramedics, but she feels like her tongue is stapled into her mouth. As soon as He was out and she was done beating the cutting board into his skull-- she got in a few hits, some kind of frightening motivation pushing her into Survival Mode-- and she’d called 911, she opened the front door. It was hot. And dry. But neither of those things mattered. She sat on the porch in awe until they got there, watching the world from the hot concrete, different than the cement in the basement, smiling at the lazy bees that circled around the door a couple times before finding a tree with a few inviting flowers. The paramedics keep asking if she’s sure she can’t remember any phone numbers. That life was so long ago. When they asked her on the phone what her name was, the first thing that came out was “Andie,” though she’s not sure when she decided on that. It still sounds like Alexandra, sort of. A tribute to her. “Or-- Alexandra Forrester. I-- I’ve been here since 2004.” She remembers hearing the clicking of a computer, the phone cord stretching and bouncing, imagining the operator’s face. The paramedics seem no less in awe of her. And she is of them, too. And the doctors, when they greet her at the hospital, and the town just past the building, oddly familiar, and she feels a little jolt when she sees the name of the hospital, Big Bend Regional Medical Center, because she remembers seeing it go past in the bus window. She’s in Alpine, her elementary school within walking distance. For twelve years, she was an hour away from them, an hour and a half from her parents and Chris and no one knew. Her Missing poster is still tacked to a board in the nurse’s station, an old picture: tiny teeth, one missing, stringy hair with plastic clips-- she remembers those clips, vaguely-- and a sketch, a guess of what she should look like now. It’s not completely wrong, but they’re missing the scar on her forehead from that first day in His house and her cheeks are more sunken. She rips it down, but keeps it. She can hardly sit still after the exam. She wants to get out of there, touch more dirt and trees and people and remember what it’s like to be one of them. She studies the flier for what feels like two hours, but the hand on the clock has only moved four tiny spaces. How did she find stuff to do in His house all day? She’s considering jacking her pants from the Belongings bag and making a trip to the cafeteria for ice cream when two people bust through the door. The man is carrying a stuffed moose. It’s the most familiar to her out of the three of them. A dusty memory rolls over. The moose is from a gift shop at Big Bend National Park. The rest of that trip is almost totally gone, along with the people standing in front of her. She remembers the house with the stairs that she and Chris used to try to race down, just scooting their butts down the steps with a soft thud on each, so amusing to her that she’d lose every time because she couldn’t stop laughing. She remembers her bedroom-- Ally’s bedroom, with plastic stars on the ceiling and a canopy bed. She remembers that the man read to her in a chair by a lamp with one bulb always burnt out. The woman was the one who made the canopy, sewed it because she wanted that fabric and long curtains. “Ally,” The woman speaks first, lunging forward to pull her up into her, to smell her-- she seems to be more certain that she got the name right after she takes a deep inhale. There’s a strange disconnect, but she manages to smile. “I missed y’all--” They interrupt that with nervous laughter and still-flowing tears. She pets the little tuft of hair on the moose’s head. “It’s, um, Andie now.” They both seem disappointed, almost, but force a nod. She has no idea what to say to them. She thought it would be easier. Finally, something else comes out. “Where’s Chris?” They both seem to wake up from some weird our-daughter-is-ruined-forever coma. “He’s on his way. As fast as he can get here, from Austin.” She nods, a fingernail lazily peeling the tape from the bandage on her face, until that mom voice shows up through the strained effort to tell her not to mess with it. That feels a little more familiar. Still, they look like self-conscious guests until one last person finally appears. He’s tall, strong-looking. His nose looks like hers, sort of, but flatter. His hair is darker, and his freckles didn’t fade, like he used to wish on the biggest star he could find every night. He’s easier to fall into, like their hearts kept up for twelve years, like their parents had let her go, but he hadn’t. His hug is the best of the three, the tightest, but not harsh. And warm, and he smells like the world. He only says “I knew it,” before he digs down in his pocket and pulls something out. A pair of shiny rainbow hair clips. Finally, she cries for her, for Alexandra, for Ally. She doesn’t know how to say the words without confusing everyone and having to explain, so she just looks at him and has to nod until something comes out. “It’s Andie now,” More nodding. He just pushes her hair out of the way of the tears. “With an -ie, not a -y.”

#finally finished #wow #it's everywhere #v disorganized #v emo #now for the trigger warnings #tw:blood #tw:abduction #tw:rape #tw:violence #tw:sexual assault #tw:kidnapping #tw:abuse #the beginning is bad but eh #i needed to include it #gditask002 #bio #him

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