By the time morning came, she had given up on running. She had left the underground lake behind, and she had returned to the foyer, where the crowd of chattering guests had dwindled. She found a chair, one partially obstructed by a pillar, and she curled her legs beneath her. For the most part, she looked like a harmless girl with inky hair and a angel’s dress. She kept her attention on her lap, where her fingers tugged nervously at her hem in a gesture that would be familiar to the people who had known her before she died and ended up here.
Because, and there was no doubt about this, she was dead. Or, rather, she had been until recently.
She had become accustomed to being dead in the past years. She was numb, and she was at peace. Nothing strong stirred beneath the surface - not compassion, not hopes, and certainly not those childish dreams from years past. That’s how it had been, how it had become. Until now. Now, everything had changed.
Hope, love, guilt, desire, all of these things had come rushing back on the wings of someone long gone, and they had brought something else along with them.
Fear.
It was impossible to feel all the other things without feeling the one thing she had pushed away, aside, down. Fear, and here it was in all its horrible splendor. It made whoever passed her by feel the things she feared, made her fears theirs. Losing the person they loved. Losing a child. Being taken. Being hurt. Being misunderstood. Being hated. Hurting people. Breaking people. It was all there, and it touched every person who wandered past. It made them gasp, and it made them flee, and it made them scream. And still, she sat quietly with her hands in her lap, and she let her own fears surrounding her.
Gunshots, those were nightmares muffled through a bag, and she never knew when they would come. A child, taken away before she could hold him, but that was a waking fear, always there in the back of her mind. Truth, and the repercussions it would inevitably bring, but that was a horror she could only imagine as she waited for it to come for her. Death, but never her own. His. Theirs. Never hers. Men, and how much they could - had - could hurt her, and how she couldn’t share it with anyone, that truth. And, lastly, the faraway memory of a dead woman at the end of a table, and a shard of glass ending her life.
Fear.
When morning came, there was no balm, because the things were all still there, as they had always been. Outwardly, yes, she was herself again - pale, blonde, composed, an ice queen in Alexander McQueen. She gracefully lowered her feet to the ground, and she gave no outward sign of being troubled by anything that had just happened. She walked with that same calm grace, and she called for a car with a steady voice.
She wasn’t meant to see Luke until that evening, but she gave the driver directions to his apartment anyway. It was early, and if he hadn’t been drawn to this place he would be asleep and likely cranky to be woken, but Wren didn’t care. She just couldn’t go back to her suite at Caesar’s - not yet, not just then.