Chapter Text
[. . .]
"Love is a beautiful kind of fear."
[. . .]
Prologue
Through Reflection
[. . .]
She recalls a time before the present, a time before she had let go.
She remembers a girl with a scarred face that belonged to her, a body too thin—layered with lined slices.
She remembers marred skin, haunting touches, and remnants of what was a rough exposure. Of what she let happen—of what she couldn't stop for a period of time in her youth.
She remembers a lot of things.
A smile. A laugh. A touch.
A pain.
She recalls memories not her own and yet claimed all as one for her. They linger, and they twist, forming a deep-rooted knot that squeezes her neck in a loving, numbing, pain.
And then silence. Darkness.
Nothing to touch, nothing to hear.
Nothing to light, nothing to fear.
Nothing at all.
She stood, waiting. Twisting her soul, sensing softness and then burning, and then the in-between.
She remembers it all now, whisked away and shoved into something beating, something unfathomable.
Something warm.
Life.
Light, pain, more pain, and then life again.
Coldness, touches, voices.
She hears it all, feels it all, but can't comprehend why it's there.
She can't understand how she can tell. She doesn't understand why there is an insistent nag in the back of her head; a recognition that she is not where she is meant to be.
But it's there.
And only when she finally opens her eyes and takes witness to the human heads, does she forget, forget that she is supposed to wonder, supposed to question, supposed to curse why she relives.
She forgets she is not dead.
She forgets she killed herself.
She forgets she escaped emotion and betrayal with the stubborn stubble of rope against her heart, only to be brought back to it again.
She forgets, until she is one again, and sees her new, loving, twin brother coo at her with all the world and life in his eyes.
She remembers then, as that single ray of sunshine hits her brother's dark eyes and swarms them full of innocence and love, of what she isn't supposed to be and yet is.
A revelation...
That she's undead.
That she is not alone yet again.