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Ered was, from the very beginning, loved. Though she did not know it at the time she had both of her fathers wrapped around her pudgy fingers from the very day that they brought her home. But, due to varying circumstances they both were frequently sent away on official government business. Ered, however, did not see it that way.
From the very beginning she knew that she was adopted. Two men could have biological children without some sort of help after all. She had grown up knowing that her mother -the one who had given birth to her- had not wanted her. She also grew up thinking that her daddies didn’t want her. They went away frequently, to places that Ered could not follow because it was too dangerous. To distract herself from this pain of what she perceived as being unloved she managed to find a way to shut off and suppress her emotions. This, to other children, seemed to be the epitome of ‘cool.’ She didn’t care about bad grades, or hard tests. She was never stressed or worried or afraid.
Honestly, the downward spiral that started at the age of ten was no surprise. She began doing things- dangerous, terrifying things. It all starts with a dare for her to jump off Daredevil’s drop. A thirty foot high cliff that overlooked an enormous lake. Ered took the dare. It was the moment when he feet left the ground and she began hurtling down towards the water and a horrible sense of terror gripped her that shaped the next few years of her life. Ered began seeking out more and more dangerous drops. The cliffs began getting taller and taller. Until she ran out of cliffs she could leap off of. Then she learned to skate. Learned to do flips and midair somersaults, landing safely on her board.
Then one day while doing a flip she landed wrong. The board landed on her head, caving in her skull.
So Ered woke up, two hours later with a killer headache from an injury that, by all means should have killed her. She was twelve years old and that was the first time she died.
The second time she died she had thrown herself off of a twelve story building when she was thirteen in an attempt to kill herself. She wasn’t even sure why she had tried- It had all just been too much and she had wanted it to end. She woke up six hours later with two broken arms and a headache. It took another two hours for her arms to heal. She had laid on the pavement and watched as bones and tissue knitted themselves together before her very eyes.
The third time she was an accident, really- she was fourteen. It was the middle of the night. Her parents were gone (Again. They had been leaving her for years, going on missions to far off places where she could not follow) She had raided the alcohol cabinet, (whiskey that burned her throat, beer that tasted like shit and wine that was far too sweet, but it got the job done) she had stumbled through the house (it was huge, modern with dozens of windows that let sunlight seep in) then she had seen the keys to her car (the one that they had bought her the moment she earned her permit) on the counter. She wasn’t sure why she had wanted to drive, or where she was going- some vague, half baked idea of going to the beach (even though it was nearly midnight) swirled in her head. Predictably, the car crashed, wrapped around a tree. Ered was, miraculously, unharmed. The car, on the other hand- that was hopeless. Her parents were disappointed, sure, but they were just happy that Ered was alive. That was the summer before Camp Camp. The next summer they sent her to some strange summer camp with the promise of extreme sports training. She had agreed. That was when her life really started.