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Across a rainy street, footsteps, quick and light. Droplets scattered over the cobbles and Six's scarred feet, her lovely yellow raincoat just able to keep her knotted hair dry. It wouldn't stop storming for another hour yet, it always rained around evening, Six knew, though her last memories of this place were all but shot. How long had it been, since she was taken to a living hell? Only the clocks and the calendars knew, and their endless ticking gave no meaningful answer, nor did their numbers Six couldn't fit together.
A sudden jolt of thunder cracked the sky. Though Six didn't jump, she still felt it reverberate within her, and she ducked into an alley between towers of brick and steel pipes. The rain kept falling. Droplets, cold as ice, blowing so fast they felt like knives on the skin; a whirlwind of wetness and cold that, if it weren't for her raincoat, would have chilled through her mind and body as quick and as devastating as the winter's harshest blizzards. Six leaned back against a wall slick with rain, trying to breathe some warmth into her scabbed-over hands; she wouldn't dare flick her lighter in weather like this. Such a downpour made her half-expect to turn a corner and end up in the pale city.
She froze. It took a few seconds for her breath to return to normal, rhythm all thrown off. Half of her wanted to laugh, but she didn't; it took just a few seconds of careless laughter to draw an adult's attention. The city. So long spent aboard leaky boats, too-tall grass, running from anything and everything until she could hide in the dark again, back through the gateway to nowhere that had trapped her in a living hell - and after it all, she was back running through city streets hiding from the rain. She was more free in that moment than she had been in far, far too long, and yet it was all exactly the same.
She gulped down a sob. Only dead children cried.
Six ruffled her own hair while she waited out the rain, shifting awkwardly against cluttered pipes and valves, broken cobbles threatening to cut her feet. It would be so much easier if she were still small. She was still thin enough to slip through tight alleys and half-closed doors, but some part of her felt out of place in a world built for those not too much bigger than her. The spots she’d trained herself to always watch out for, little vents, overturned crates, they were all useless now. She picked up a stone and shoved it in her pocket.
The storm finally began to let up, sparse rays of sunset shining through the smoke and clouds above, the sky painted deep shades of orange and red. Six eyed the setting sun with caution, not just reverence. The sky in the Nowhere never looked like that. But a setting sun, no matter how pretty, was the mark of a day's end - and as much as she loved the shadows, Six was always wary of the night, no matter how much safety the dark could bring. Her hiding spots were the dark below benches and right outside a lightbulb's reach, not the night, where everyone else was in the same darkness as her.
Footsteps. The sound of boots on cobbled stones. Six flicked her vision around her and dashed away from the sudden noise, out into twilit streets as she flipped down her raincoat's hood. While she loved her raincoat dearly, it was painfully bright, so the less she had to wear her hood the better. Her messy hair blew in the breeze, cut just a little too short to get in her eyes. The street stretched out in front of her, alleyways between every few buildings, looking far too messily thrown together to be stable, but they held.
As Six stared around the rain-swept street, she noticed people coming down the path. A few behind her, a few in front, they thankfully paid her no mind. She ducked into another alleyway, peeking out when she was covered by shadows. Nobody followed. The sky got darker, and with it, streetlamps began to light. Perfect. Adults liked light, so Six could keep her eyes on them much easier. If she could keep track of everything, she might even be able to sneak into someone's house for shelter while they're outside, and maybe even stay the night. She turned her back to the busy street, her little steps taking her further through the dark alleys.
The light burned. Six squinted her eyes at every lamppost, sometimes covering her face, other times pulling her hood far over her head. It had been a long time since she'd seen the sun, even, through the Nowhere's thick clouds and moonlit nights, and electric lights hurt her head. She followed the bricks and stones below her feet around so many corners it would make most children spin, not taking one look back, never looking back. She slowed to a halt behind a wall, peering through the cracks. A light shut off. She heard a door opening, then closing, footsteps not far behind. An empty house. Shelter. Six counted on her fingers, one, two, up to twenty, before she began her climb.
Searching for cracks to pull herself up, her fingers and broken nails gave her leverage off of the smallest gaps in the bricks and mortar. Pebbles crumbled away as she just barely found a foothold, the upper rim of a ground-level window, her pathway must have been a few feet up. While she eyed the window warily, even from her height, the blinds were fully closed, no light shining from inside, a dead house. She nearly slipped - but not quite, hitting a loose brick with the side of her fist and using that as her next stepping stone. Soon enough, she was at the second floor's window. Scratching and scraping, she forced a pebble between the window hinges, shaking it violently until the lock was weak enough to pop open with a harsh pull. Like a small door, part of the window opened. Six gratefully threw her arms inside, finally letting out a breath, pulling the rest of her body into the empty house with her. Before anyone below had a chance to notice a flash of yellow in that old home, Six shut the window.
Warmth. Finally out of the rain, the wind, the streets of a living city, Six flicked her lighter, and held it close. Her shaky breaths caused the flame to waver. Cautiously, she took light steps across the hallway, straining her vision to see the barest outline of a bed or a table. A bedroom at one side, a bigger living space at the other. She so badly wanted to sleep, to take a rest for once, but the house's owner would be back. But for now, she could at least slow down. The oppressive shadows around every corner were comforting to Six. While the Nowhere's darkness could hold all sorts of deadly things, here, where she wasn't so small, bugs and rats were only a nuisance. Wiping her feet on a spot of carpet, she walked through the gloom and began her descent to the lower floors. Every step creaked ever-so-slightly. She shut her lighter for a second, then opened it again, just in case someone was down there. Nobody was in the house but her, but the little intruder kept quiet all the same, as she stepped softly onto the building's ground floor.
Six spotted a glint, her tiny flame reflected in the handle of a little refrigerator door. It opened in an instant, her hand covering the bulb, now that she was big enough to. She couldn't read what was on the labels, she didn't care to know. She'd figure out when she opened the cans and bags. Her raincoat pockets filled up fast, too small for the oversized keys she used to carry and even still too small for all the food she had now. She turned to call for someone, but she was alone. She had been for months.
Bashing a can against a brick wasn't her preferred way to open a soup can, but Six drank the broth from metal wounds all the same. Her stomach rumbled. Now that she'd gotten a taste, it took a lot to not tear into everything else she had. Eating too much could hurt her, she knew, and the seven or so soup cans she had would last her at least two weeks if she was lucky. But her stomach growled again, and she knew that wouldn't happen. She needed to eat something else. Something living. She didn't like eating rats and the nome she'd bitten had left a sour taste in her mouth, but an unlucky adult, well, who's to say? The world has too many monsters in it already, Six thought to herself as she spat a cold, boiled carrot onto the floor. The world should be thanking her for her cursed hunger.
Walking up the stairs again, Six's world began spinning. She needed to eat, and fast. That man who'd left earlier, this was his house, he'd be back, but when? She didn't know if she could last that long. Like a cruel mockery of her own broken voice, the hunger inside her growled and made her feel sick. She curled in on herself tighter and tighter. Slamming a lamp's base into another can, its contents tasted bitter. A day's worth of food, likely more if she didn't get her hands on live meat soon, choked down in an instant.
Bile rose up in the back of her throat, but despite doubling over she kept everything in. It always happened after eating too much. Despite that, her stomach rumbled painfully enough to send her crumpling to the floor, breath shaky, too weak to cover her groans of agony. It'd probably be best if someone came to her to finish her off, then she'd have a chance to survive.
And then, for a moment, it dulled.
Even though she still ached all over, and her starved limbs shook as she pushed herself up, she refused to lie down and wait. She knew it wouldn't be long until she got more hunger pains, and was determined to make the most of it. But what was there to do?
Her eyes drifted over to the house's fireplace. If someone was home, her best way out. She wouldn't dare try leaving through a door or a window when the housekeeper came back. She couldn't remember much about her life before the nowhere, but she remembered small flashes; how to beg for work, how to find shelter for the night, how to climb the chimneys. She didn't need that first part anymore. She could just steal, and it's not like she could be caught now that she wasn't so small.
She settled, then. Up the chimney when the housekeeper returned, her survival in the hands of old bricks and black soot; handholds which she was very familiar with.
It had been a long time since Six spent a night indoors.
A creak. Nearly silent in the darkness of that old, twisted home; yet not a splinter lined the wood, not for a long time, not until that night. Six wrapped her raincoat around herself, flitting her eyes over the room, cold sleep threatening to take her. She could barely stand from how much she shook, her lighter so close it nearly set her hair alight. Any light from the outside passed her trembling form by, crouching on tiptoes like a wound-up spring, ready to sprint when her life depended on it. The slightest noise made her heart stutter.
She heard the sound of a door squeaking.
Throwing her hood back up, she quickly closed her lighter and ran, conscious to keep her footsteps quiet, the homeowner had only just returned, after all, and maybe it was just a door swinging in stale air.
The roar of a newly-restarted storm filled the empty house. Six practically glued herself to the walls, her horribly malnourished frame keeping her flat to the planks; she knew someone had come home. She hid from footsteps she couldn't hear. Silently crossing the corners of the room she was in, she saw the fireplace. Her way out. Six gulped down an instinctive scream, then mentally berated herself. What did she have to worry about? She'd climbed up chimneys before, chimneys in this town, even, or at least a town identical to this one, so why did she feel so scared? She couldn't afford to be scared. Being scared would get her killed. So she wiped some anxious tears on her sleeve, and made a dash for the fireplace.
She was hot for a moment. Blazing hot, choking on thick clouds of smoke, trying to fit herself between the bricks. Then she wasn't. She clapped a hand over her mouth before any noise could escape, and made her way through the cold, dead ashes, nudging aside one of the logs with a foot. The blackened little cavern surrounding her felt small, far too small, but still just wide enough for her too-thin body to reach her hands up and grab some faint handholds before wedging her knees in the flue. She didn't need to scrape off bits of mortar now, she could push herself the rest of the way up.
Knees already threatening to bleed, Six climbed the chimney, pushing out her legs and arms to gain height little by little. Her raincoat shifted uncomfortably beneath the pebbles shaken loose by her climb. The yellow hood wasn't enough to bounce all of them off her, though, and she could tell the dirt and chipped brick was getting in her face and hair. While she didn't care for vanity, she knew the kinds of sickness loose soot could bring. Hopefully the rain would be enough to wash it off. Each time she coughed, black smoke billowed from the walls, enveloping her until it settled on her coat or fell down below. The stale air did nothing but make the black clouds linger a little too long.
A slip. Six gasped, before coughing horribly, sliding down until her eyes met the spot where her knees were finally scraped raw. Gritting her teeth, she climbed back up. Her legs burned, the rocks and soot feeling like salt in a wound, but she just kept going. She had to. Even her hands were beginning to bleed, fingernails chipped, sharp broken shards of brick sliding down her raincoat sleeves. She risked a glance up. The chimney abruptly stopped, her pathway turned dark and foreboding. Six felt a small twinge of relief. Chimneys didn’t just end, after all. So where it seemed like one would… There!
She gripped the top of a small ledge, unsticking her legs and letting them dangle free as she pulled herself up like she’d done a hundred times before. A bend in the chimney. She expected it. The chimneys climbed up high and tall, twisted and broken like gnarled hands reaching up to brush the rooftops. Some chimneys even mixed with others, depending on the house, turning into a labyrinth of brick veins that were both so easy and so difficult to escape. Six's arms shook as she bit back another scream.
She knew, in some part of her, that these walls were safe, built only for smoke; smoke, ashes, and her - an intruder. Far from the reaching arms of adults or horrid weather outside, she huddled herself against the bend she'd climbed on to. She felt cold. She always did, but it felt so wrong up there, up in the claustrophobic world she'd climbed into. There was no doubt she'd be even colder out in the rain. She could even hear it. Hands trembling for a reason she couldn't place, she scraped at the mortar above her, and began to climb again.
It was the same. It was all the same, as bricks passed by Six's eyes while the noises of the storm gradually grew louder. Her knees bled little, wounds caked in dust; she knew how dangerous it was but the feeling was numb. At the very least, she felt a little warmer.
Six let out a sharp gasp.
Coughing madly, she abandoned all safety and climbed as fast as she could, soot covering her all over. Rubble fell and cut her face. She hissed. Hands starting to bleed, she rolled up her raincoat's sleeves and pulled herself up with her forearms. The chill of the chimney was gone. In it's place now was a pleasant, temperate warmth.
If she weren't so exhausted from climbing, Six would have let out a shriek. Nothing left her lungs but a shrill wheeze, and a gasp for air, soon expelled in a cloud of black soot.
Her foot slipped. Her knees slid up to her chest, vertical in the chimney, the deafening sound of rain on metal drowned out by Six's own racing heartbeat.
Stuck.
She heard screaming in her ears. Not her own, not from anyone above or below. She knew that voice so well.
Of course she hadn't climbed up the whole chimney, she was only six years old, why didn't that man realize that? The black stuff on the walls kept getting in her eyes.
Her skin burned. The fire below her was meant to force her to climb, but her weak limbs could barely even keep her in place. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't scream without being suffocated.
Smoke rose around Six's face as she desperately tried to unstick herself, eyes blurry with tears and things she couldn't fully remember, pulled to the front of her mind.
A sickening thought made itself known.
What if she died here?
The idea never crossed her mind much before, trapped in a world where hesitation got you killed and doubt made you useless, and her mind was always racing too fast for her emotions to catch up. But stuck in a chimney filling with smoke, she couldn't help herself. She might die here. More fuel for the fire that had been lit below.
She'd always had trouble seeing adults as anything short of monsters. Towering, demanding, child snatchers who'd drag you kicking and screaming into an untimely death or worse, and now lighting a fire beneath her until she could very well suffocate. She could feel sharp bristles ripping through the skin of her back even now, with her back against a heating wall. Her heart rate climbed and every scar on her mind and skin burst in an instant. But with it, a small shiver through her body. She couldn't die. Not here, so close to the way out, not so young.
With a small snap, ripped skin, and a scream of everything she could muster but fear, her leg was free. And she scrambled up the bricks, up up up, like the smoke and the ash, like the shakes up her spine, like everything else.
Rain poured down from the sky, dark and empty of anything but thick layers of clouds. Drops on shingles were met by another, the sound of a storm on a metal chimney cap, and then by rain on a yellow raincoat stained black. Six threw her arms up the chimney's opening, feet scratching the inner walls as she pulled herself up in a matter of seconds, loudly banging and scratching her head on the tiny metal roof, not protecting her, but the fire below. Scraping her face on the brick, she slowly pushed herself out of the space between cap and chimney, starting with her head, soon drenched by the rain; yellow hood caught on something and yanked off in an instant. Her legs managed to curl through the exit gap with no issue, letting her turn and tug her hood back over her soaked hair as she stood, stretching. The running roof water washed all the soot off her feet, and as she sat, legs outstretched, the smudged soot all over her body and raincoat began to fade.
While the sky was covered, the moon was bright, so bright that the clouds shone with a dim, cool glow. Six let herself look up and just stare, the rain and her idle hands washing her face until no sign of the chimney remained, or even wounds from before. Bloodstains were a little less dark beneath a storm and calming moonlight.
She didn't know when she began to cry. She'd thought that she'd forgotten how. She didn't understand why the chimney was what made her break, but she wept into the night all the same.
She remembered climbing chimneys now. A younger her, the same age as her name, a brush in one hand and her legs braced against the bricks. Scraping the walls until she thought she'd choke on soot. She had someone taking care of her, she was sure of that, though…
Her thoughts faltered. She couldn't quite remember much about that someone. Was she like a daughter? A servant? Did she have parents?
Did she?
Maybe she did. Or she didn't. It didn't matter here, anyhow...
Oh. Right.
She was out.
My god, she'd escaped.
The Nowhere couldn't reach her, not anymore, not here, even if the rain was cold and the wind bit at any exposed parts of burnt, scarred skin she had. The sky wasn’t a dark shroud, the moon didn’t stare at her with sickening curiosity. The rain didn't hiss like static. The adults all around were only twice her size, not four times as tall. The world was still big, of course, Six knew better than most how vast the world could be. But it wasn't wrong. The world wasn't wrong in the same ways as the Nowhere.
Letting her eyelids droop, she held out a hand to the rain, letting it run down her wrist and splash off the cuff of her raincoat. A bit of the spray stuck to her hair. The rest splashed into the tiles of the rooftop, slanted and rough, no place a puddle could be. Not much of anything up on the roof, aside from her. Did anyone come up here? They must have; repairmen and chimney sweeps, thieves in the night, runaway children much like her. Maybe she'd run into one.
A noise blared out from the streets below. Hectic, like an alarm, just the kind of noise that made Six jump to her feet and crouch low like a rabid animal, eyes darting around for the fastest way over the surrounding rooftops, all huddled so close together that Six thought they might all be parts of the same building. Beneath her matted hair, her red eyes shone in the faint moonlight, a glint of caution and panic present in her gaze.
It calmed. Once a formless mass of noise howling across the air, threatening to tear Six's hearing from her with its sheer chaos, now she could pick the sound apart. A rhythmic pounding, the shrill sound of wind, a horribly tuned music box - a piano, words she only half-knew. Music. A song. Not one she knew, as she hadn't listened to much music in her life, but she slowed her heart and let herself listen. Now that she was calm, the music felt nice; a little ballad full of melancholy, or maybe that was just the sound of rain tinting her view of the feelings it brought. Every word called to her, and she found herself humming along without a second thought. She liked humming. While singing could draw attention and instruments were heavy and big, humming to herself had only ever helped, keeping her grounded in her worst moments. She liked the way it sounded, little bits of music that she could make, whenever she wanted! Even if she only ever hummed the same old song, the song that was nothing like what was playing now. So she hummed, and they played, and she listened, tapping her foot on the roof, catching water in cupped hands for a little drink - and to soften her ripped-up hands, before she tapped and clapped in time with her little hums.
The band kept playing, and Six kept listening.
A light noise bubbled out of her, shocking her into taking an animal's stance once more, hands on the ground and knees bent low, arching her spine that would surely be visible through any clothing but her raincoat. Soon after, she relaxed. She didn't know that her laughter sounded like that. Just the thought made her laugh again. Scratchy, like every noise she ended up making, but full of a certain feeling that she didn't recognize. A good feeling. Something that fluttered inside her. She flapped her hands on impulse, before cradling them to her heart.
She looked down at the streets below. Dark and stained, but full of lights and sounds as well, lights and sounds that didn't want to hurt her; and for once she didn't think they would, were she spotted. The joy she felt from it made her start to laugh again - how long had it been since she'd even smiled, and now?
Standing up, stretching her legs, Six began pacing in tune to the music. Every raindrop that splashed over her raincoat only served to delight her. She'd always liked the rain, even if it meant that she needed to scramble for shelter before freezing or drowning or getting bowled over by harsh winds, fighting against the current falling from the sky. Even so, the rain off her fingertips, in her hair, on her coat, running down her arms and legs, it was something she always looked forward to; albeit mostly because it let her clean herself. She spun around, flicking water off her skin, and for a few brief moments she felt like a normal kid. Dancing and laughing like anyone her age should, only perched on a rooftop in dirty clothes.
Just a kid.
…That's funny. Most of the time, she forgot she was nine.
She never liked giving much thought to her age. It didn't matter in the Nowhere anyhow, kids were kids and adults were adults, no matter how specific you wanted to be - but in specifics, Six always tended to be a little on the younger end of the Nowhere's surviving children. And how few she'd met that did survive… Though the Maw was stocked full, the children there weren't truly alive, they just hadn't died yet. How many of them were ten, eleven, maybe twelve, maybe younger than her? How many would never grow up? How close had she come to never growing up?
All of a sudden, she felt dizzy. Her head ached with the sudden feeling, and soon enough, she couldn't stop the tears down her face. For once, she felt as young as she really was. A pathetic wail ripped through her body. She wanted to go home. (She knew she'd never had one.) She wanted to fall asleep on a bed, throw food into a broken oven, draw on the rotting drywall - she wanted to stop running, just for a little while. It was as if, now, she was finally able to slow down, and was only now looking back over her shoulder. She sobbed into her raincoat, missing when its color adorned another girl, when a messy braid fell over both their shoulders, when she felt safe and cared about. Hugging herself so tight it hurt to breathe, Six's vision swam, and her legs gave out. Falling against the ridge of the roof was painful, but it couldn't compare to the heartbreak flooding over her all at once. Shaky breaths barely broke through the sound of rain. She wanted to be happy, she wanted more than anything to be happy, to…
She missed Mono.
She missed him so, so much.
("Hypocrite," she hissed internally, "You remember what he did to you." She remembered all too well. But still, she missed him more than anything.)
Rain poured down the moonlit streets, drenched and stained, but full of life, nonetheless. And on a lonely rooftop above it all, a little girl sobbed her heart out, long into the night.