// How To Fall
Title: How To Fall
Rating:: PG-13
Warning: Attempted suicide.
Summary: It's a faint curiosity at first, the smallest of thoughts in the corner of her head; What would it feel like, to melt? Set directly after No Good Deed.
The spell has failed, and if she has ever known anything, she knows this -- if only by the throbbing in her bones, the way her hands have grown cold in the dark air. Her desperate words are gone, having fallen away to a place where no one will ever hear them, and it is painful, to think of the body that crumpled against a house, the shoes on a stranger’s feet, the warmth of his hands in hers, but still, she does, and it is the most unforgiving moment to ever befall her.
She has held the Grimmerie in her trembling arms; thrown it against the wall time and time again, if only to hear it cry out as it connects with stone, if only to find herself numb to its nonexistent pain for the quickest of moments. She has run through the halls of this lonely castle, screaming until her voice withers away, cursing the day she was born, the day she chose to believe in good. She has sat in the middle of an empty room and imagined it filled with people; reaching, grasping for something that was never quite there at all; her mind slipping away as easily as a whisper.
And suddenly, she is here; the pond gently rippling beneath her.
her soul is so unclean, pure water will melt her!
She had heard it said; when she was still clinging to something long forgotten now (what, she wonders. Hope, someone answers in return, and she hates herself all the more). It had been but a silly rumor then; useless words that she remembered for a few blurred moments before lost to the wind. The idea was absurd. The danger, imagined.
And yet -- now she thinks of it again, allows it to roam beneath her skin, endless, exposed, and it is suddenly, above all else, real. She can’t remember if she has ever been bathed as a child, or has stood uncovered in the pouring rain, or has ever even washed her hands. All she knows is that she has no notion of what water feels like, and it is frightening.
And then it’s not.
It’s a faint curiosity at first, the smallest of thoughts in the corner of her head - what would it feel like, to melt? - but then it’s something more, something urgent, something absolute, and suddenly, she’s standing there, bare toes curling around the stone, the shadow of her reflection staring up at her, and it’s happening.
She never once considers it’s because she wants to die. The thought is too wild, too far from comfort, and so she shoves it away. It’s there, though, breathing, gasping -- somewhere far from her. She wants to die. She wants to not be alive any longer.
There is nothing left in this world for her.
The dress slides off her body, silently pooling at her ankles; effortlessly fading into the night. Her form is nothing but a off-color glimmer in the gentle light, and she imagines she’s become invisible; that she has fled through all their grasping hands, and is free, is free...
Her body slams against the water, and it’s like someone has finally lifted the cage.
It’s cold; rushing against her legs, sliding through long tendrils of hair, covering every inch of her. She wonders if this is what it feels like, death, but no, this isn’t death, not yet, because she’s still here, hands and hair and eyes and feet, and it’s all wrong.
She waits.
Please.
She remembers the dark bedroom, filled with a child’s playthings; the chair, drenched in comforting shadow. Her sister’s whisper of a voice, tracing a crack through all the silence. Her hand, so small and warm. I’m afraid, she would mutter, sheets pulled up to her nose, knuckles powdered white. I’m with you, she would say, and stay until the early hours of the dawn snuck through the glass.
She wonders what her final moments were like; the raging wind of the twister, the growing shadow - the sudden, horrible end, where everything went black and pain swallowed her whole and oh, Nessa, forgive me, please forgive me, I never knew...
She clutches her sides, weightless, endless. It will come soon, the moment where she will disappear, like a child’s magic trick, only it will be real, so real, and she realizes that she can hardly wait; that perhaps she has been waiting for this moment a long time. She can almost feel the tips of her fingers dissolving away; her nails, mingling with the waves.
It won’t be long now.
She remembers the beating of the cub’s heart; how it slipped into step with the chaotic pattern of her own. His hand, fitting against hers, and it was so sudden, so exposed, this warmth that filled her up inside; as if a careless hand had pulled away the curtain. In that fleeting moment, he was all she had ever wanted -- and it had frightened her like a voice in the night frightens; quiet, dreamlike - but perhaps all too real.
His hands fit so well in hers; her name, on his lips. The quiet way he touched her, fingertips like whispers of a forgotten song on her neck. That feeling, that sudden vibrance the world took on whenever he smiled, whenever she reached for him, whenever they kissed in the careful shadows of the forest -- that everything would be all right in the end.
She remembers he’s dead - the faded words of a spell dancing along her lips - and the thought tears through her as though she was a scrap of paper.
Water is pouring in, cold and quiet; soothing in a way she‘s never known before. She can’t feel her hair against her back any longer. She’s disappearing, as easily as the wax of a candle - as quickly as the sun’s dip below the horizon.
Even her. She has lost her as well, she realizes, and any scrap of warmth left inside her is numbed by this thought. Those days spent in school seem so far away now; where she had spent her time disliking her, loathing her - envying her. And then suddenly, they were friends; her and this girl with blonde curls, with an enormous smile, with a crowd at her expensive heels, and it had felt so surreal.
She had never known what it was like. To have someone fuss over your hair as if it’s their own; suggest clothes for you to wear. To share quiet secrets along the softness of your sheets, knowing that the giggling girl across the room won’t tell a soul. To actually have someone who wishes to spend time with you and not run in the opposite direction. She was the only friend she had ever had.
A hand, unforgiving against her face, had convinced her of the end. She tries to tell herself that it never mattered, that such a empty-headed, superficial puppet wasn’t worth another moment’s thought -- but the thought of dying without her sadness, with only her hate, is painful, and she can’t bring herself to understand why.
She is consumed, so consumed that she can’t believe there was ever land to begin with. Her arms thrash without her consent and her legs kick into the black endlessness and her lungs are burning, burning and in the smallest gasp of clarity, she imagines reaching out to something, trying to touch something that she knows isn’t there. It’s ending, isn’t it? It’s over, and she will never again hear their cries of wicked or care about the lives of strangers; and she will never feel again, and it is wonderful. She is dissolving amidst all the blue, and they will never know what became of her; she is melting, out of this, out if it all, away ----
Her head pierces the surface.
Gasping, choking, breathing - she doesn’t understand. She is dead, she must be; perhaps this is how death begins, like waking after the longest of sleeps, and it’s something to adjust to. But then her hands sink in black mud, and her trembling body - hands and feet and hair and eyes, all still solid; all still so real - emerges from the dream.
It doesn’t register. Not until a thread of wind awakens a chill along her spine - her hands rest cold fingertips along the dip of her neck - she realizes air is what is filling up her lungs, harsh, sour air.
She is alive.
She wraps dripping arms around her chest; turns her empty gaze to the sky, dotted with the smallest of glimmers.
She hasn’t melted.
For a moment, it feels as though time hesitates to pass. She places careful hands along her face, through her matted hair, against the sharp curve of her back. She laughs, so loudly that all of Oz must hear it in the fringes of their dreams.
What a foolish rumor, she thinks, brokenly. The laughter gently slips into tears, hands rising to catch each drop in the lines of her palms -- and then, her sobs are drowning the empty night and she is crying, crying for all the times she could never bring herself to before. Sadness had always been a part of her, a raw, unwelcome part that seeped into every distant memory, every glance of fear and loss of hope. She had learned to accept it, though; however heavy it grew. It pours out of her now, though, as easily as liquid from a bucket, and it is draining, to rid herself of so much weight, but she needs this, she needs this, and it is the only truth she knows now. She cries for the lonely child who could only read books by threads of moonlight; who watched from the doorway as the girl with the beautiful skin basked in warmth. She cries for the frightened girl who doesn’t mean to break vases or rip paintings from the wall; who crumbles more and more with every seething word on her father’s lips. She cries for the eager woman whose classmates cower from her, run the opposite way to escape her; who dreams of love but never finds it, hidden along the smiles of those who are too foolish to realize it. She cries for the Witch who has lost everything and everyone; who will die alone.
With every drop, a scrap of her soul splatters against the ground; lost forever.
- - -
She doesn’t know how much time has passed. Maybe days. Maybe hours. Maybe even moments, endless moments that crawl along the edges of her body, unwilling to pass. She stares out in the world and sees nothing but the cold dirt that clings to her skin, the fading night sky. Perhaps that’s all there ever was.
At first, she thinks she imagines the blanket that falls across her chest; the sound of rustling wings.
Tired hands come to rest against the wool, if only to prove that it will fade away like everything else. When it doesn’t, she doesn’t panic or question its appearance, but merely pulls it closer. The rustling grows louder, and her only thought is of faint annoyance as she rises to meet it. Emotion can no longer find its way to her.
A crouched form sways in her gaze, and before any true thought or question, she is reaching for it, like a curious infant that grasps for the closest glimmering object.
Her hand meets soft fur, and this time, it’s real.
“Chistery,” she says without thinking; her own voice startles her, coarse and raw.
He nods, wings fluttering in the wind.
“El - Elpha -- ba.”
The simplest of sounds fumble along his tongue, and it stings her, reminds her of the sound a goat makes, nestled somewhere along the distant road of her past; buried forever, she tells herself.
He turns, gestures a hand to behind him, and it is only then that the sound of a thousand flapping wings fills her to the brim; the sight of fur and paws and tails creates haphazard patterns along a dark sky. They have found her, she realizes, thinks of the Grimmerie, battered, crumpled against a stone wall. They have come, and she is here.
She digs long nails into the dirt beneath her; pulls herself upright. She clings to the blanket, wrapped around her, but it is no good. The water has left her cold to the touch.
“You want to please me,” she calls out, her voice unlike anything she has ever heard before.
Somewhere in her tangled webs of thought and memory, one image has rushed to the top, so vibrant she imagines it could be crushed in the palm of her hand. She would not have traveled the length of the yellow road, searching, seeking the remnants of a twister; he would not have followed, determined to save her. Her sister would never have known how it felt to die; how it felt to have the glittering shoes stolen from her crumpled feet.
So much pain would never have to come to thrive if it hadn’t been for that horrible house.
“You can please me,” she screams, a frenzied howl caught in the gathering storm, the gusts of wind, “by bringing me the girl!”
At once, the night is alive with the shrieks of animals; the frantic beating of wings. They are gone as quickly as they came, elegant dips of wings and tails fading away into the clouds. She is left alone, the blanket carelessly abandoned at her side.
She moves without hesitation, without regret - face unbearably dry. Her dress, a pool of fabric on the rock, is returned to her body, slipping over her with ease. She places the hat on her head; her broom into the grip of her hand; the Grimmerie in its spot on the pedestal, and as she falls into it, into the frightening image Oz has concocted of her, she realizes that she no longer cares; that she will never care again.
She is the Wicked Witch of the West, and she has a wretched girl to prove it to.
~
Rating:: PG-13
Warning: Attempted suicide.
Summary: It's a faint curiosity at first, the smallest of thoughts in the corner of her head; What would it feel like, to melt? Set directly after No Good Deed.
The spell has failed, and if she has ever known anything, she knows this -- if only by the throbbing in her bones, the way her hands have grown cold in the dark air. Her desperate words are gone, having fallen away to a place where no one will ever hear them, and it is painful, to think of the body that crumpled against a house, the shoes on a stranger’s feet, the warmth of his hands in hers, but still, she does, and it is the most unforgiving moment to ever befall her.
She has held the Grimmerie in her trembling arms; thrown it against the wall time and time again, if only to hear it cry out as it connects with stone, if only to find herself numb to its nonexistent pain for the quickest of moments. She has run through the halls of this lonely castle, screaming until her voice withers away, cursing the day she was born, the day she chose to believe in good. She has sat in the middle of an empty room and imagined it filled with people; reaching, grasping for something that was never quite there at all; her mind slipping away as easily as a whisper.
And suddenly, she is here; the pond gently rippling beneath her.
her soul is so unclean, pure water will melt her!
She had heard it said; when she was still clinging to something long forgotten now (what, she wonders. Hope, someone answers in return, and she hates herself all the more). It had been but a silly rumor then; useless words that she remembered for a few blurred moments before lost to the wind. The idea was absurd. The danger, imagined.
And yet -- now she thinks of it again, allows it to roam beneath her skin, endless, exposed, and it is suddenly, above all else, real. She can’t remember if she has ever been bathed as a child, or has stood uncovered in the pouring rain, or has ever even washed her hands. All she knows is that she has no notion of what water feels like, and it is frightening.
And then it’s not.
It’s a faint curiosity at first, the smallest of thoughts in the corner of her head - what would it feel like, to melt? - but then it’s something more, something urgent, something absolute, and suddenly, she’s standing there, bare toes curling around the stone, the shadow of her reflection staring up at her, and it’s happening.
She never once considers it’s because she wants to die. The thought is too wild, too far from comfort, and so she shoves it away. It’s there, though, breathing, gasping -- somewhere far from her. She wants to die. She wants to not be alive any longer.
There is nothing left in this world for her.
The dress slides off her body, silently pooling at her ankles; effortlessly fading into the night. Her form is nothing but a off-color glimmer in the gentle light, and she imagines she’s become invisible; that she has fled through all their grasping hands, and is free, is free...
Her body slams against the water, and it’s like someone has finally lifted the cage.
It’s cold; rushing against her legs, sliding through long tendrils of hair, covering every inch of her. She wonders if this is what it feels like, death, but no, this isn’t death, not yet, because she’s still here, hands and hair and eyes and feet, and it’s all wrong.
She waits.
Please.
She remembers the dark bedroom, filled with a child’s playthings; the chair, drenched in comforting shadow. Her sister’s whisper of a voice, tracing a crack through all the silence. Her hand, so small and warm. I’m afraid, she would mutter, sheets pulled up to her nose, knuckles powdered white. I’m with you, she would say, and stay until the early hours of the dawn snuck through the glass.
She wonders what her final moments were like; the raging wind of the twister, the growing shadow - the sudden, horrible end, where everything went black and pain swallowed her whole and oh, Nessa, forgive me, please forgive me, I never knew...
She clutches her sides, weightless, endless. It will come soon, the moment where she will disappear, like a child’s magic trick, only it will be real, so real, and she realizes that she can hardly wait; that perhaps she has been waiting for this moment a long time. She can almost feel the tips of her fingers dissolving away; her nails, mingling with the waves.
It won’t be long now.
She remembers the beating of the cub’s heart; how it slipped into step with the chaotic pattern of her own. His hand, fitting against hers, and it was so sudden, so exposed, this warmth that filled her up inside; as if a careless hand had pulled away the curtain. In that fleeting moment, he was all she had ever wanted -- and it had frightened her like a voice in the night frightens; quiet, dreamlike - but perhaps all too real.
His hands fit so well in hers; her name, on his lips. The quiet way he touched her, fingertips like whispers of a forgotten song on her neck. That feeling, that sudden vibrance the world took on whenever he smiled, whenever she reached for him, whenever they kissed in the careful shadows of the forest -- that everything would be all right in the end.
She remembers he’s dead - the faded words of a spell dancing along her lips - and the thought tears through her as though she was a scrap of paper.
Water is pouring in, cold and quiet; soothing in a way she‘s never known before. She can’t feel her hair against her back any longer. She’s disappearing, as easily as the wax of a candle - as quickly as the sun’s dip below the horizon.
Even her. She has lost her as well, she realizes, and any scrap of warmth left inside her is numbed by this thought. Those days spent in school seem so far away now; where she had spent her time disliking her, loathing her - envying her. And then suddenly, they were friends; her and this girl with blonde curls, with an enormous smile, with a crowd at her expensive heels, and it had felt so surreal.
She had never known what it was like. To have someone fuss over your hair as if it’s their own; suggest clothes for you to wear. To share quiet secrets along the softness of your sheets, knowing that the giggling girl across the room won’t tell a soul. To actually have someone who wishes to spend time with you and not run in the opposite direction. She was the only friend she had ever had.
A hand, unforgiving against her face, had convinced her of the end. She tries to tell herself that it never mattered, that such a empty-headed, superficial puppet wasn’t worth another moment’s thought -- but the thought of dying without her sadness, with only her hate, is painful, and she can’t bring herself to understand why.
She is consumed, so consumed that she can’t believe there was ever land to begin with. Her arms thrash without her consent and her legs kick into the black endlessness and her lungs are burning, burning and in the smallest gasp of clarity, she imagines reaching out to something, trying to touch something that she knows isn’t there. It’s ending, isn’t it? It’s over, and she will never again hear their cries of wicked or care about the lives of strangers; and she will never feel again, and it is wonderful. She is dissolving amidst all the blue, and they will never know what became of her; she is melting, out of this, out if it all, away ----
Her head pierces the surface.
Gasping, choking, breathing - she doesn’t understand. She is dead, she must be; perhaps this is how death begins, like waking after the longest of sleeps, and it’s something to adjust to. But then her hands sink in black mud, and her trembling body - hands and feet and hair and eyes, all still solid; all still so real - emerges from the dream.
It doesn’t register. Not until a thread of wind awakens a chill along her spine - her hands rest cold fingertips along the dip of her neck - she realizes air is what is filling up her lungs, harsh, sour air.
She is alive.
She wraps dripping arms around her chest; turns her empty gaze to the sky, dotted with the smallest of glimmers.
She hasn’t melted.
For a moment, it feels as though time hesitates to pass. She places careful hands along her face, through her matted hair, against the sharp curve of her back. She laughs, so loudly that all of Oz must hear it in the fringes of their dreams.
What a foolish rumor, she thinks, brokenly. The laughter gently slips into tears, hands rising to catch each drop in the lines of her palms -- and then, her sobs are drowning the empty night and she is crying, crying for all the times she could never bring herself to before. Sadness had always been a part of her, a raw, unwelcome part that seeped into every distant memory, every glance of fear and loss of hope. She had learned to accept it, though; however heavy it grew. It pours out of her now, though, as easily as liquid from a bucket, and it is draining, to rid herself of so much weight, but she needs this, she needs this, and it is the only truth she knows now. She cries for the lonely child who could only read books by threads of moonlight; who watched from the doorway as the girl with the beautiful skin basked in warmth. She cries for the frightened girl who doesn’t mean to break vases or rip paintings from the wall; who crumbles more and more with every seething word on her father’s lips. She cries for the eager woman whose classmates cower from her, run the opposite way to escape her; who dreams of love but never finds it, hidden along the smiles of those who are too foolish to realize it. She cries for the Witch who has lost everything and everyone; who will die alone.
With every drop, a scrap of her soul splatters against the ground; lost forever.
- - -
She doesn’t know how much time has passed. Maybe days. Maybe hours. Maybe even moments, endless moments that crawl along the edges of her body, unwilling to pass. She stares out in the world and sees nothing but the cold dirt that clings to her skin, the fading night sky. Perhaps that’s all there ever was.
At first, she thinks she imagines the blanket that falls across her chest; the sound of rustling wings.
Tired hands come to rest against the wool, if only to prove that it will fade away like everything else. When it doesn’t, she doesn’t panic or question its appearance, but merely pulls it closer. The rustling grows louder, and her only thought is of faint annoyance as she rises to meet it. Emotion can no longer find its way to her.
A crouched form sways in her gaze, and before any true thought or question, she is reaching for it, like a curious infant that grasps for the closest glimmering object.
Her hand meets soft fur, and this time, it’s real.
“Chistery,” she says without thinking; her own voice startles her, coarse and raw.
He nods, wings fluttering in the wind.
“El - Elpha -- ba.”
The simplest of sounds fumble along his tongue, and it stings her, reminds her of the sound a goat makes, nestled somewhere along the distant road of her past; buried forever, she tells herself.
He turns, gestures a hand to behind him, and it is only then that the sound of a thousand flapping wings fills her to the brim; the sight of fur and paws and tails creates haphazard patterns along a dark sky. They have found her, she realizes, thinks of the Grimmerie, battered, crumpled against a stone wall. They have come, and she is here.
She digs long nails into the dirt beneath her; pulls herself upright. She clings to the blanket, wrapped around her, but it is no good. The water has left her cold to the touch.
“You want to please me,” she calls out, her voice unlike anything she has ever heard before.
Somewhere in her tangled webs of thought and memory, one image has rushed to the top, so vibrant she imagines it could be crushed in the palm of her hand. She would not have traveled the length of the yellow road, searching, seeking the remnants of a twister; he would not have followed, determined to save her. Her sister would never have known how it felt to die; how it felt to have the glittering shoes stolen from her crumpled feet.
So much pain would never have to come to thrive if it hadn’t been for that horrible house.
“You can please me,” she screams, a frenzied howl caught in the gathering storm, the gusts of wind, “by bringing me the girl!”
At once, the night is alive with the shrieks of animals; the frantic beating of wings. They are gone as quickly as they came, elegant dips of wings and tails fading away into the clouds. She is left alone, the blanket carelessly abandoned at her side.
She moves without hesitation, without regret - face unbearably dry. Her dress, a pool of fabric on the rock, is returned to her body, slipping over her with ease. She places the hat on her head; her broom into the grip of her hand; the Grimmerie in its spot on the pedestal, and as she falls into it, into the frightening image Oz has concocted of her, she realizes that she no longer cares; that she will never care again.
She is the Wicked Witch of the West, and she has a wretched girl to prove it to.
~