Chapter Text
If 13-year-old River Jason Jones had known his name would have become anything more than a target for teenage boys', pointless, bullying, he would have chosen it more carefully. Now, as he stood in the middle of his local bookshop and silently looked at the bright blue signs pointed towards the newspaper rack, he regretted picking letters out of a magazine at random until they made up a believable human name.
He hadn't meant for his disappearance to become the breaking news of the week or, as it seemed, month. Not that he wouldn't care if he found someone's dead body. He just never expected Robyn would have reported his nor that, consequently, the body would have to vanish.
He stared at his school I.D. printed on the front page of the closest paper. His copper coloured skin seemed flawless on the blurry photo, acne covered by the low resolution, and the dark brown hair framing his young, smilling face was curlier than he remembered. His face was rid of scars and instead full of shine. The image resembled the precious catholic boy his mother had wanted more than what he really turned out to be.
He reached for the rack and pushed it until it fell on it's side. The wheels rattled like muffled, plastic bells and spun around the air while the printings spread across the floor. No one in that damned crowded store reacted and the metal grids, aswell as the newspapers, sprung up like nothing had ever happened, albeit not as perfectly set as they had been before. There was no use for these rags when everyone already knew who River was.
He sighed and made his way down the halls, loops and stairs of the store, flipping through the books he had wanted to read before his death. Any Mary Shelley or Virginia Woolf he tried to steal was gone before he could blink but literature had been one of the things he enjoyed as River Jason James and he hoped to at least keep fond memories of those 6 nerdy years, one way or another.
He had enjoyed living this life the six years he had been allowed, he really hadn't meant to change again.
His super powers were not as cool as the movies made having powers seem. First of all, he didn't get to choose so, he ended up with reincarnation as his curse. Secondly, it did not make dying any less painful. Every death hurt as much as he imagined it did to any normal human being on planet Earth.
Moreover, he was always reborn as the age he had died with. No opportunity to enjoy his advanced knowlegde and become the world's smartest new born baby.
Lastly, he couldn't repeat his persona. He had two days to rebirth as a brand new person, with new aspirations, new family, new house, and once even a new nationality and skin colour. Although that wasn't very common. However, the people around him didn't change— aside from the fact he always appeared as part of a new family, knowing he didn't have them as relatives before— and neither did the places he frequented.
When the overhead sign to the romance section could be seen, he nearly tripped over his own feet with how fast he turned to leave. Despite indulging in the occasional romantic classic, he wasn't looking to think about love at that moment, or, really, ever. He was an affectionate person, all things considered, but with a knack for getting himself in trouble. Certain feelings are simply not worth paying attention to when you know you will die eventually. That was the worst of the powers, if he was being honest, being aware of your own mortality. Six years was to all intents and purposes a record time for him; his luck in possessing a supernatural ability was always followed by stronger misfortune which made him susceptible to life threatening situations.
The timer in the corner of his vision showed he had a couple hours left until he was forcibly changed out of this ghostly recreation of River Jones. He closed his eyes, fading away the yellowed lights, the red seconds, minutes, hours counting down, the smell of slightly wet books, the feel of their pages, and visualised his new appearance. Then, once he was certain he liked it, he let that boy take over him.
Once and for all, he left River Jason Jones in the dust.