![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
After saying goodnight to Danny, Rachel did end up on the roof again.
She felt so flat. Depressed, she supposed. But the world had given her reasons to be. Some voice in her head told her to go to the roof, she’d feel better on the roof, and she listened, and hauled herself off the couch, and crept back up.
It was cold and had been raining earlier, but she’d been curled up in one of her dad’s big woollen jerseys, so she was only cold from the thighs down. Her favourite leggings, while a little looser these days and easier to pull on with one hand, weren’t very warm. They soaked up the damp from the concrete where she sat in the corner where she’d broken her arm.
Somehow the height and the act of looking down on the city (and across at the city, for there were other buildings as tall as hers, and still others taller) soothed her. It stretched on for as far as she could see, lights and dark shapes and the curve of the river that looked like a void – a river of nothing cutting through the city. The wind didn’t smell good, but it felt great, and powerful, like it was peeling the worst bits off her. She wanted to stand on the edge of the roof again, stretching up, but she didn’t.
Zoe and Danny had told her to take her pain pills so she had, and she didn’t want to risk the world shifting and her body failing and accidentally falling. She didn’t want to die. She only wanted… some form of relief. Or peace? Something that she could almost taste when she was up here.
She hadn’t wanted to die last time she was here either. Rachel remembered. She did. She didn’t want to die, she only wanted to throw everything away. All the horror, all the fear. Cast it to the winds.
She didn’t want to die – and a spark of anger zapped in her belly. She hadn’t wanted to die. She was up before she could think about it, letting the anger make the decisions, she stomped off the roof and took the angriest lift ride she could remember and shoved the door of her flat open, tears streaking her face by this stage because she was in no state to control her feelings. They had free reign over her body, she just followed them.
Harley was not at home yet. She thought he had finished his shift already, but he’d been gone all night sometimes because they gave him extra work. Or maybe he wasn’t working, maybe he was just not here. This made her feel worse because she wanted to yell at him and he wasn’t here, so she took a page ouf oc Cai’s book and left him a voice mail, except she was crying harder through hers than Cai had. “I didn’t want to die!” Rachel yelled at him, at the future him whenever he picked up his damn phone. “I didn’t want to die, on the roof, you know. I wanted – I just wanted to be up there. I like roofs! I like trees! I like climbing things you know that dad! Things were shit shit shit and I just needed to be somewhere I liked and you know, dad, if you’d asked me to get down I would have gotten down! You didn’t need to break my fucking arm!”
That was all she could manage before the sobs took over completely and she hung up and threw her phone across the room for effect. The sobs felt good though, like she was wringing the poison out of her body with each heave of her chest.
But a minute later her phone started ringing from the floor and the screen said Dad and it felt like he’d grabbed her and injected all the poison right back in.
She didn’t answer it. She turned it off, and at least she had the sense to throw her phone into her bag before storming out the door.
Rachel didn’t know where she was going. She was following the feeling that she wanted to be like Zoe and run for miles and miles and miles and end up somewhere safe. The problem was that Rachel couldn’t run, it jolted her arm too painfully.
So she walked.
Rachel had lost her shoe that night on the roof but she had others. Tonight she was wearing the running shoes that Zoe had bought her, a long time ago when Zoe was (unbeknownst to Rachel) trying to prepare them for a funeral. The running shoes were black. Rachel did always think that Zoe had strange taste in clothes.
Black shoes, pink socks, tie-dye pattered blue and pink leggings that stopped at the shin, her dad’s warmest jersey, and her bag. That was all she took with her when she left, except a belly full of pain pills and two minute noodles.
It was Friday night, and a little before ten. London was partying, but not as hard as it would be in another couple of hours. Men yelled at her though, from other buildings, from cars. Even her dad’s jersey, the left arm of it flapping loose because she hadn’t bothered pushing her broken arm through, didn’t put people off. Maybe it egged them on. Rachel didn’t know, and pretended she didn’t care.
She kept walking, crying a bit because she didn’t know how to stop, and feeling like her phone was ringing even though it was off. Feeling like her dad was reacting badly to the message, freaking out. Well, she’d accused him of breaking her arm. But he had. He had. It was his fault. Rachel started crying a bit harder, and made a beeline for a park and threw herself down on the bench and cried even harder till she was all out of sobs, or anger, or blame.
Eventually the flatness crept back in again. She wiped her face with her sleeve and looked down at her bag clutched in her lap. It was just brown, with green stitches, lots of buckles, two straps like a backpack. It was her bag of secret weapons, and she’d begun collecting things the day Danny had been rescued.
It was a bag of secret weapons to use if she needed to save Danny, if he did decide to run away with her, if she needed to look after them both. She’d squirriled things away, little by little. She’d taken a pair of Danny’s socks from his bag at the hospital and a rolled up shirt and she’d shoplifted two toothbrushes in her sling one day last week. Danny had been giving her money for the tube and she’d put that away, too, and relied on rides from her father to get to the hospital and back and when that fell through, she walked. It was only an hour and half away, and she didn't have anything else but time.
This afternoon at the hospital Cai had left his keys on the table by Danny’s bed and without thinking she’d slid them into her bag. Something had compelled her, and Rachel these days was running on compulsions, not decisive actions her brain actually clicked into gear and thought about.
She pulled out the keys now, her latest weapon, near the top of her bag. Cai’s keyring was fascinating. He had so many keys, Rachel couldn’t even begin to guess what they were all for. There were at least nine (it was hard to count keys) and he had different keyrings as well, all of them linked in to the same jangly mess. There was a little plastic Korra, and a blue LED torch, but her favourite was one he’d made himself, a smooth wooden disk of wood with his name carved into it on one side, WWJD on the other. Rachel stroked it, dragging her thumb across the edges. She touched each key and tried to imagine what each one might open, what it would be like to be able to open so many locked doors.
When she picked herself off the bench she knew where she was heading. She didn’t want to turn her phone on and ring him in case her dad yelled at her, even though Danny had made her promise to call Cai or Zoe if she was in trouble… but she wasn’t in trouble though, was she? She was just going for a walk. That wasn’t trouble. No one was following her or anything so it didn’t count.
Rachel did know that Danny wouldn’t consider this not being in trouble, but she tried not to know it. She’d be fine, she’d be fine. London was creeping closer and closer to midnight and the nightlife was out in force but she’d be fine once she was across the river and in Cai’s neighbourhood. She would be fine.
And she was – well, no one stopped their cars, they just yelled at her on the way past. There’d been one car who tried to make her get in when she was crossing the bridge but she pretended like she was on meth and acted so crazy they left her alone.
But Cai’s house was dark when she got there. It was after midnight and they were a normal family so… what did she except? Rachel let herself in the little, well oiled gate and stood in the middle of the path and looked up at the pink house (which glowed a bit orange in the street lights), looked at Cai’s bedroom window perched right at the top. It was starting to rain again.
She looked down at the keys in her hand and knew she could open the door and let herself in and Cai wouldn’t even be that mad but his family might freak out and hate her. They had kids to protect and they were protective people and she was kind of a crazy freak sneaking into their house after midnight and the thought of their anger frightened her.
Rachel looked at the keys in her hand, and then crept around the side of the house, and slowly, quietly, opened the back door of the car and climbed in. It was harder to shut the door quietly, but she just had to hope it would blend in with all the other night noises around her and no one would notice.
There was a blanket folded across the back seats like they knew she was coming and a girls hoodie on the floor. With the hoodie to bulk out her bag of secret weapons it almost turned into a comfortable pillow, and after Rachel had taken another dose of her pain medication she could convince herself she was warm enough.
She fell asleep to the sound of the rain, stroking her forehead and pretending her hand was Danny’s.
She felt so flat. Depressed, she supposed. But the world had given her reasons to be. Some voice in her head told her to go to the roof, she’d feel better on the roof, and she listened, and hauled herself off the couch, and crept back up.
It was cold and had been raining earlier, but she’d been curled up in one of her dad’s big woollen jerseys, so she was only cold from the thighs down. Her favourite leggings, while a little looser these days and easier to pull on with one hand, weren’t very warm. They soaked up the damp from the concrete where she sat in the corner where she’d broken her arm.
Somehow the height and the act of looking down on the city (and across at the city, for there were other buildings as tall as hers, and still others taller) soothed her. It stretched on for as far as she could see, lights and dark shapes and the curve of the river that looked like a void – a river of nothing cutting through the city. The wind didn’t smell good, but it felt great, and powerful, like it was peeling the worst bits off her. She wanted to stand on the edge of the roof again, stretching up, but she didn’t.
Zoe and Danny had told her to take her pain pills so she had, and she didn’t want to risk the world shifting and her body failing and accidentally falling. She didn’t want to die. She only wanted… some form of relief. Or peace? Something that she could almost taste when she was up here.
She hadn’t wanted to die last time she was here either. Rachel remembered. She did. She didn’t want to die, she only wanted to throw everything away. All the horror, all the fear. Cast it to the winds.
She didn’t want to die – and a spark of anger zapped in her belly. She hadn’t wanted to die. She was up before she could think about it, letting the anger make the decisions, she stomped off the roof and took the angriest lift ride she could remember and shoved the door of her flat open, tears streaking her face by this stage because she was in no state to control her feelings. They had free reign over her body, she just followed them.
Harley was not at home yet. She thought he had finished his shift already, but he’d been gone all night sometimes because they gave him extra work. Or maybe he wasn’t working, maybe he was just not here. This made her feel worse because she wanted to yell at him and he wasn’t here, so she took a page ouf oc Cai’s book and left him a voice mail, except she was crying harder through hers than Cai had. “I didn’t want to die!” Rachel yelled at him, at the future him whenever he picked up his damn phone. “I didn’t want to die, on the roof, you know. I wanted – I just wanted to be up there. I like roofs! I like trees! I like climbing things you know that dad! Things were shit shit shit and I just needed to be somewhere I liked and you know, dad, if you’d asked me to get down I would have gotten down! You didn’t need to break my fucking arm!”
That was all she could manage before the sobs took over completely and she hung up and threw her phone across the room for effect. The sobs felt good though, like she was wringing the poison out of her body with each heave of her chest.
But a minute later her phone started ringing from the floor and the screen said Dad and it felt like he’d grabbed her and injected all the poison right back in.
She didn’t answer it. She turned it off, and at least she had the sense to throw her phone into her bag before storming out the door.
Rachel didn’t know where she was going. She was following the feeling that she wanted to be like Zoe and run for miles and miles and miles and end up somewhere safe. The problem was that Rachel couldn’t run, it jolted her arm too painfully.
So she walked.
Rachel had lost her shoe that night on the roof but she had others. Tonight she was wearing the running shoes that Zoe had bought her, a long time ago when Zoe was (unbeknownst to Rachel) trying to prepare them for a funeral. The running shoes were black. Rachel did always think that Zoe had strange taste in clothes.
Black shoes, pink socks, tie-dye pattered blue and pink leggings that stopped at the shin, her dad’s warmest jersey, and her bag. That was all she took with her when she left, except a belly full of pain pills and two minute noodles.
It was Friday night, and a little before ten. London was partying, but not as hard as it would be in another couple of hours. Men yelled at her though, from other buildings, from cars. Even her dad’s jersey, the left arm of it flapping loose because she hadn’t bothered pushing her broken arm through, didn’t put people off. Maybe it egged them on. Rachel didn’t know, and pretended she didn’t care.
She kept walking, crying a bit because she didn’t know how to stop, and feeling like her phone was ringing even though it was off. Feeling like her dad was reacting badly to the message, freaking out. Well, she’d accused him of breaking her arm. But he had. He had. It was his fault. Rachel started crying a bit harder, and made a beeline for a park and threw herself down on the bench and cried even harder till she was all out of sobs, or anger, or blame.
Eventually the flatness crept back in again. She wiped her face with her sleeve and looked down at her bag clutched in her lap. It was just brown, with green stitches, lots of buckles, two straps like a backpack. It was her bag of secret weapons, and she’d begun collecting things the day Danny had been rescued.
It was a bag of secret weapons to use if she needed to save Danny, if he did decide to run away with her, if she needed to look after them both. She’d squirriled things away, little by little. She’d taken a pair of Danny’s socks from his bag at the hospital and a rolled up shirt and she’d shoplifted two toothbrushes in her sling one day last week. Danny had been giving her money for the tube and she’d put that away, too, and relied on rides from her father to get to the hospital and back and when that fell through, she walked. It was only an hour and half away, and she didn't have anything else but time.
This afternoon at the hospital Cai had left his keys on the table by Danny’s bed and without thinking she’d slid them into her bag. Something had compelled her, and Rachel these days was running on compulsions, not decisive actions her brain actually clicked into gear and thought about.
She pulled out the keys now, her latest weapon, near the top of her bag. Cai’s keyring was fascinating. He had so many keys, Rachel couldn’t even begin to guess what they were all for. There were at least nine (it was hard to count keys) and he had different keyrings as well, all of them linked in to the same jangly mess. There was a little plastic Korra, and a blue LED torch, but her favourite was one he’d made himself, a smooth wooden disk of wood with his name carved into it on one side, WWJD on the other. Rachel stroked it, dragging her thumb across the edges. She touched each key and tried to imagine what each one might open, what it would be like to be able to open so many locked doors.
When she picked herself off the bench she knew where she was heading. She didn’t want to turn her phone on and ring him in case her dad yelled at her, even though Danny had made her promise to call Cai or Zoe if she was in trouble… but she wasn’t in trouble though, was she? She was just going for a walk. That wasn’t trouble. No one was following her or anything so it didn’t count.
Rachel did know that Danny wouldn’t consider this not being in trouble, but she tried not to know it. She’d be fine, she’d be fine. London was creeping closer and closer to midnight and the nightlife was out in force but she’d be fine once she was across the river and in Cai’s neighbourhood. She would be fine.
And she was – well, no one stopped their cars, they just yelled at her on the way past. There’d been one car who tried to make her get in when she was crossing the bridge but she pretended like she was on meth and acted so crazy they left her alone.
But Cai’s house was dark when she got there. It was after midnight and they were a normal family so… what did she except? Rachel let herself in the little, well oiled gate and stood in the middle of the path and looked up at the pink house (which glowed a bit orange in the street lights), looked at Cai’s bedroom window perched right at the top. It was starting to rain again.
She looked down at the keys in her hand and knew she could open the door and let herself in and Cai wouldn’t even be that mad but his family might freak out and hate her. They had kids to protect and they were protective people and she was kind of a crazy freak sneaking into their house after midnight and the thought of their anger frightened her.
Rachel looked at the keys in her hand, and then crept around the side of the house, and slowly, quietly, opened the back door of the car and climbed in. It was harder to shut the door quietly, but she just had to hope it would blend in with all the other night noises around her and no one would notice.
There was a blanket folded across the back seats like they knew she was coming and a girls hoodie on the floor. With the hoodie to bulk out her bag of secret weapons it almost turned into a comfortable pillow, and after Rachel had taken another dose of her pain medication she could convince herself she was warm enough.
She fell asleep to the sound of the rain, stroking her forehead and pretending her hand was Danny’s.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}