Chapter Text
the girl that remains of penny lamb stands in the middle of his room. it feels hollow, the heavy air of something that used to be there but is missing now. there is so much that she'd lost.
she has avoided reading the news or answering questions, hating every single person who tried to talk to her about what happened that night. the reports had made her into a miracle, a poster child of god's great blessings. no one spoke of the others except for in unit. no one ever spoke of him.
she looks around at his bedroom and all of his things. her eyes fall over posters, and pictures, and so much more, all of the things he had cared about so much. he was the smartest boy she had ever known. that was one of the things she was most in awe of about him- his mind was always so much greater than his seventeen years, constantly running, so full of thoughts and ideas and life.
he wanted to be a writer. he had so many dreams.
the girl that remains of penny lamb is hesitant to touch anything in this room, afraid that her hands will stain his memory, that she'll erase anything that's left. her fingers hover over the wood of his desk, stacked with soda cans and sticky notes. there is so much left unfinished. an incomplete page of scribbled writings still waits in an open notebook, his desk chair halfway pulled out, pencils and papers strewn over the floor. he was not ready to die.
so she holds herself in silence, waiting for something that'll never come. it's cold. the air is still. the only sound is her shaky breaths as she wanders slowly around his room, searching for something she didn't know, desperate to feel him again. her fingers tremble as she reaches his bed. it's been made since he'd passed, that much was clear- it's unnaturally perfect next to the mess around the rest of the room.
she runs a hand over the sheets, blankets neatly folded at the foot of the bed, set there with so much care from a mother. her only son, her baby taken from her just days before. what had she done when she'd learned what had happened? had she cried over his body? had she screamed at the paramedics? had she broken her vow of silence, no reason to fufill it any longer, begging for another chance? he was still just a child, his shelves were full of action figures. he was the youngest one to die.
the girl that remains of penny lamb had woken on september 14, at exactly 6:21 pm. she had been pulled away from the cart by the calculated hands of paramedics who had rehearsed this so many times before. a blanket had been thrown over her shoulders in an attempt to seem caring, but no one cared about her- they were all focused on the ones who hadn't made it out of the accident.
she sat shivering, fingers digging into the itchy fabric, doing anything she could not to look at the mangled bodies being taken out onto stretchers. you could barely tell who was who. they had all been twisted beyond recognition, arms and limbs hanging lifelessly like marionettes forgotten by time. it made her sick. but the thought of the alternative, averting her gaze down into her lap, only drove her eyes straight ahead once more.
'shell-shocked', that's what they called her. a girl with the wide eyes of a war victim, sitting silently, covered in blood. the sole survivor. 'poor, poor penny. what a brave young girl, how strong she must be to stay alive. '
but what onlookers didn't know, and the girl that remains of penny lamb did, is that the only one left had not been injured that night. she had come out of the disaster unharmed, left without even bruises on her knees to prove what she had been through. the only thing that brutally reminded her every time she looked down at herself was the blood- blood that was not hers.
since the moment of the accident, the only thing that she could see was red. stinging her eyes, staining her clothes, sticky and sickening and wrong; it clung to every last inch of her skin like he was still holding onto her, begging her not to leave him there. to take him with her beyond the crash. she squeezed her eyes shut as they carried him off, too afraid at what she might've seen if she'd opened them. she couldn't even imagine him like that. if she didn't think about it, it couldn't be true- because in some horrible, awful way, he was still with her; he was all around her, he was everything.
that night she had stood frozen in the shower, hands trembling as she gripped a bloodstained cloth. it was nothing like in the movies where you could stand under the water until it ran red and it would all be over. this was worse, so much worse, since the time spent at the scene had gave it long enough to dry. she couldn't just look away and let it wash down the drain. she had to fight against the tears pricking at her eyes, scrubbing until her skin was raw, every moment forced to watch what was left of him be washed away. there was a sick part of her that didn't want to. a part that wanted to stay there, lingering in memories forever, never letting go of him and of what they could've had. but when she looked down at herself once more her skin was clean and he was gone.
standing in his room for what is probably the final time makes her feel the same.
the girl that remains of penny lamb lets herself cry- she has put it off until this moment, as if pretending could keep him with her. the emptiness hangs in the air, it suffocates her, resting heavy on her chest until her shoulders are racking with sobs. she sinks onto the floor and stays there, crumpled over as if she had been one of the bodies they'd found that night. her face presses into the side of his bed like the shoulder she wishes she could cry on. her hands curl into his sheets until her knuckles go white. she will never understand what it is that let her be the one to live, and maybe that is for the better.