Allana Solo (sanguinesolo) wrote in wariscoming, @ 2013-01-20 20:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | allana solo |
tl;dr/note to force users: congrats! You get to feel the upset Force feelings of someone getting a concussion/sprained ankle/being upset and angry and emotional! It's a beautiful Sunday for it I hear. Carry on.
WHO: Allana, NPC ghost
WHAT: Hey, repressing any feelings about your violent death for like a month doesn't always work out, go figure
WHERE: Shitty motel in El Dorado, Kansas
WHEN: Earlier in the afternoon of the 20th
WARNINGS: Violence and the ghost she's salting and burning died in a pretty disturbing way
PROGRESS: Complete/Narrative
If Allana had been so inclined she could have spent the drive down to El Dorado, Kansas (one hour and fifty-seven minutes from Lawrence along I-335 to I-35 south according to her google maps print out, but she’d been confident she could shave a half hour at least off that estimate) making a list of all the people who would probably want to have words with her when she got home. Sam Winchester to begin with, most likely, who had always been hand-wringingly condescending about giving her a hunt, as if the fact that she was young meant that she was stupid as well, an idiot who couldn’t hold high school student and hunter in her head at the same time, who would sidle up to a werewolf and ask it to sign her yearbook in a moment of confusion. He had given in easily this time, handing out the salt and burn without fuss, but she suspected he’d been under the impression that her aunt would be along with her. That same aunt, usually fairly lenient especially for a Jedi master, would probably also have some choice words for her when she got back. She often let Allana borrow her car to visit a friend from school in the suburbs or go to the grocery store and was used to handing over the keys to her niece without too many questions. Still, Allana had the strong suspicion that if she had asked, ”Aunt Jaina, can I borrow your car to go on a hunt by myself without letting anyone know where I’ll be?” the answer would have been lots and lots of laps and then meditating about why what she’d just said had caused her to be assigned to run lots and lots of laps. Then there were her parents, Uncle Luke, maybe even Mara would get in on the lecturing act this time. She liked to think Kon would understand but that was a toss up, while he usually supported her, even when they both knew she wasn’t entirely right, he probably wouldn’t be enthused about her going in without backup.
So really, she’d decided, as she’d turned her phone off around the exit from Lawrence to the interstate, why bother making the list at all since I’m doing this anyway? Instead, she’d spent the hour and twenty minute drive to El Dorado with the radio up loud and the windows cracked, the winter air stinging her cheeks as she scanned the flat expanse of highway for cops inclined to be difficult about her speeding and went over the details of the case file in her mind. The file Sam had handed her was fairly svelte and standard, a motel in town had been experiencing strange phenomenon, thrown objects, shattered glass, guests checking out hurriedly the next day without much explanation. Best guess was a remnant from the tornado that had torn through town a year ago. It was a little troubling that no ID on a specific victim could be found, but the thing itself should be easy enough. A ghost who had died in a natural disaster was usually more confused than violent. She’d search the floor where the incidents had occurred, find any human remnants, burn them, and be home in time for dinner having proven… Allana had let her thoughts trail off there, at what this hunt was to prove. If she went much further her mind found the wind blowing salt back into her face, Kon’s cry of surprised alarm, hot, sulfuric breath on her face and then… she’d shaken her head and guided the car into the left lane, the passing lane, and put her foot down on the gas pedal.
--
It had all felt right this morning, or, if not right, then necessary. She knew Kon was unnerved by how she’d dealt with her death and resurrection, throwing herself headlong back into school, cheerful and efficient, sitting on his couch and playing with the dogs and teasing him about his cartoon-watching like it had never happened. She knew that her parents had watched her warily, but they’d all slowly begun to relax, or they’d seemed to, as a month had passed and she hadn’t snapped or broken. Even she had been fooled. See? she’d thought to herself, hurrying from school towards cheerleading practice, wolfing down half a sandwich on the go since she wouldn’t have time for dinner between practice and the extra-credit work she’d taken on for history to nudge her grade up from the B to the A range, See? I handled it. I knew I could. The others have. I knew I’d be fine. Except in December there had been cheerleading competitions now that the regular football season was over and the extra credit work had lasted well into January and it had been hard enough not to make Kon feel neglected much less get on the boards or think about death. For the past month with the seal quiet, with her so busy, it had been like the apocalypse didn’t exist. Then they’d finished out their last cheerleading competition for a while and Mr. Winters had laughingly told her he was cutting her off from extra-credit work and then, with much less levity, asked her why she cared so much about her GPA anyway at this point. Wasn’t she already in at her college of choice? Didn’t she want to relax? Was something wrong at home? So she’d laughed it off, type A personality, not used to down time. She’d tried catching up on TV and making a to-read pile of books and trying to learn to make omelets again. She’d tried to keep busy, but she still found all her muscles tense when she awoke, her teeth clenched down hard, and sometimes when she patrolled alone she’d hear the quick click of claws on pavement when she knew there weren’t any animals around and she’d shiver and not go out the next couple nights. So she’d signed up for this hunt. She’d needed it, and she’d needed to do it alone. Sink or swim on her own, throw herself out of the nest to learn to fly. She’d needed that. Or at least she thought she had.
It was funny how coming back to consciousness in a pool of your own blood could make you reconsider things.
Allana pulled herself to a sitting position carefully, wincing at the way the light stabbed at her eyes, and then barely biting back a gasp at the stab of pain in her ankle. Must have gotten twisted when I fell, she thought, but that didn’t seem quite right, the falling bit, and she frowned slightly, raising a hand towards her forehead and taking it away tacky with blood. Blood? That was- The room swam into focus at last and her eyes settled on the flickering figure in front of her, a girl about her own age, coltish in her shorts and camisole, blood, or the memory of blood, staining her torso, and Allana’s memory came crashing back.
“Oh,” she said, dumbly, right, the very non-confused, very violent ghost I wasn’t prepared for, and then ducked as the lamp next to her head shattered, glass falling onto the floor, into her hair, refracting and reflecting the light streaming in through the window, shining through the girl whose once-pretty face was screwed up in rage.
“You came here to kill me,” the girl half hissed half snapped and she flickered, in and out, closer and further, as if caught between attacking again and trying to escape. It didn’t seem like a good idea to point out that the girl had already been dead for a long time. Though I’m thinking it was not a tornado, Allana thought warily. The ghost flickered closer and the nightstand next to Allana rattled ominously, the bible inside thumping up and down against the drawer, “I would have left you alone I wouldn’t have hurt you, I don’t hurt girls, I only-“ she flickered away again and Allana winced, the gender specification, the blood, the fury, telling her everything she needed to know about what she’d misjudged. I should have looked further back in the news archive. I shouldn’t have stopped when I got to the tornado. She’d discover later that she was right, that four years back there had been a murder, Adriana Langley, seventeen and gone missing on her drive home. She’d find out that she’d been very lucky and that the Langley’s had cremated their daughter so that what was left in the seedy motel room where she’d died was all Allana had to deal with.
The ghost was back again now and Allana hissed out a pained breath, feeling for her weapons, coming up with the salt and her lighter, but having no idea where the remnants were in the shabby hotel room. I don’t have much time before she graduates to actually trying to off me Allana thought grimly. “I wouldn’t have done this to you,” the ghost, the girl, wailed, almost in Allana’s face, and she sounded like a petulant teenager, like one of the girls on the squad, ”You didn’t invite me to your party” or ”I thought we were best friends,” and when she hurled the lamp from the other nightstand it was with an air of desperation. “I won’t let you!” she screamed, “I don’t want to be dead!” and Allana gasped again, fingers freezing around the salt, jerked back to the moment she’d felt the claws raking down her torso, to the fear and the anger, and she gritted her teeth against the pain and dropped, rolling sideways into the bathroom, pouring a salt line across the doorway and sinking her head into her hands, taking quick, shallow breaths that were almost like sobs.
She remembered how, when the claws raked down her side, when she’d realized she was dying, she’d been angry, she’d wanted to lash out at Kon and Jaina and everyone living, to demand to know why her and not them. She’d fought silently, but she’d fought, just in the way Jedi were supposed to avoid when they rejoined the Force. In her own way, she’d been fighting, she’d been angry, ever since, denying it and hiding it until she couldn’t run from it any more, reflected back to her in the face of a ghost.
The girl was at the door now, pacing the barrier of the salt. “Why?,” she hissed, and Allana scooted herself back on the floor, away from the raw fury and pain in the girl’s face. She wondered, suddenly, what the ghost had been like when she was alive. If her family and friends would recognize her, pacing like this, crazed and rambling nonsensically, lashing out at anyone unlucky enough to cross her path. She looked down to the girl’s hands and saw the gaping wounds of missing fingernails, she’d fought too, and in her own way she’d been fighting, she’d been angry, ever since.
Allana was reaching for a towel to staunch the blood trickling lazily from her scalp, stalling for time, when she saw the cracked floor tile. Her hand slid along it, back towards the wall where she could see minute scratches in the cheap paper, missed during a re-papering, and then, behind the toilet, almost invisible wedged between wall and tile…
The ghost screamed when Allana pulled the fingernail, painted green and brittle as an eyelash, free of the floor and cradled it almost gently in her palm. She kept screaming as Allana sprinkled the salt over it, as she hauled herself up to drop it onto a nest of paper towels in the sink, drowning out her whisper of “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” as she flicked the lighter and the flames crept around it.
When it was done and the room was silent Allana swayed on her feet for a moment and gripped the sink with white-knuckled hands, raising her head slowly to look into the mirror at her face, pale and streaked with blood, dark circles under her eyes.
Once she started shaking she couldn’t seem to stop. Her hands convulsed around the imitation porcelain of the sink, leaving little trails of red and she whispered, “Kark, kark it,” and then, for the first time since she’d woken up in bloodstained clothes in a silent room attached to the medbay, she began to cry.