Chapter Text
She wondered sometimes if she was dead. This world was so bright. So warm. Like Heaven.
But it wasn’t Heaven, because it was loud, chaotic, not to mention the nightmares and worries that still trailed after her. Anything but the peaceful bliss of death.
Although, she supposed if she were dead, she wouldn’t qualify for Heaven anyways.
She had been walking for days now in the sunlight, sleeping when the moon took over, although it was more on autopilot than anything. She was running. Sometimes she was hazy on who, or what exactly she was running from. But there was always that feeling. And the nightmares spurred her forward. Maybe the nightmares were all she was running from.
She had avoided stores and most civilization for as long as possible. It was safer and she was good at hiding. But, though she knew how to hunt (even if she didn’t know where she had learned it) she quickly found she wasn’t very good at it. And after foraging berries that made her vomit for days after, she didn’t want to try that again. And her food supplies had run out two days ago.
So, she needed to find food. And thus she turned to the store. A small convenience store in the middle of nowhere, like the one she now stood in front of, would have minimal security and a decent selection of food. Not that she was picky, at this point.
She looked at the building from across the street. A small white structure with a blue roof. An old sign on the front read ‘Zippy Mart’ which must’ve been the name of the store.
She sighed and hugged her pack close to her chest. The pack held her gun, though it was out of bullets, her knife and a few other scraps she’d deemed useful. If things went south, at least she could defend herself. With that grim thought she stumbled towards the store.
The stumble was a more annoying thing about her current condition. Not only was her mind frustratingly blank from memories and any other identification (bar the nightmares and flashes that plagued her), but her body was injured. A bandaged gunshot wound on her leg being the most hindering problem.
She walked past the cashier sitting behind the counter, flicking distractedly through a magazine. Glancing at him, her mind quickly analyzed her chances in a fight with him, essentially sizing him up.
She quickly moves past him, or as quickly as she can, aiming for the coolers in the back of the store filled with drinks. Her thirst is more consuming than her hunger at the moment, though both are pressing. She throws open the door to the cooler and examines the array of cans and bottles. She tilts her head, examining them. There are so many. The amount of options and bright colors of the labels are overwhelming.
Eventually, she picks out a brown bottle. She struggles with the plastic cap, her body does not cooperate with trying to grip it. She finally managed to tear it off with her teeth. She spits out the cap and takes a gulp which she spits out almost as fast as the cap. It’s not cool clean water, the liquid is fizzy and makes her mouth feel like static. It’s sickly sweet and somewhat… fruity? Looking in the bottle she finds that the liquid inside is brown as well as the bottle. Some kind of poison? Maybe the food in this store wouldn’t be safer than foraging after all.
“Hey, you’re gonna buy that root beer, right?” The teenage cashier calls to her. She must’ve caught his attention somehow. She stores the information that this poison liquid is called ‘root beer’ in her head. But she doesn’t have an answer for him so she settles on just staring at him. He doesn’t see to have any weapons and seems quite scrawny. She could easily take him.
“Um, you do know you have to pay for that, right? You open it, you buy it.” He picks idly at a spot on his chin.
She blinks. He squints at her. Instantly her heart rate quickens and she’s suddenly aware of the dried blood under her fingernails.
He reaches for a phone lying face down on the counter, “Okay, well I’m gonna…”
She doesn’t let him finish. Before his fingers even touch the phone, she’s vaulted herself over the counter. She tackles him to the ground and covers his mouth quickly when he starts screaming.
He struggles and truth be told it’s hard for her to hold on. Though a faint part of her mind reminds her this should be easy for her to do. She reaches for her pack and her loosened grip gives the boy his opportunity. He knocks her off of him and starts to scramble away. But, despite her injury (and most likely due to adrenaline), she’s managed to pull out her gun from her pack.
He barely has time to react before she whacks him over the head with the butt of the weapon.
She breathes heavily and observes the unconscious body in front of her. Her hands shake as she puts the gun back in her pack. It’s then when she notices the camera in the corner above the register. Her head rings as she stares at it.
She shakes herself from the odd feeling creeping up inside her. She stumbles upright.
With a new sense of urgency, she walks around the store, shoving various foods and drinks into her pack. On her way out, she breaks open the register, sighs at the pitiful amount of money inside but pockets it nonetheless. It should ensure that, should necessity force her into another store, this incident will be an isolated case.
She glances at the cashier boy, unconscious on the floor. She bites her lip and a sick feeling gurgles in her stomach. But she eventually turns away, telling herself she’d call someone to help him if she could.
As it happens, on her way out, a man is putting gas in his car outside. She walks up to him.
“Call 911. He’s inside.” She blurts before running off so the man can’t ask any questions or have more time to identify her appearance. She can hear him call after her but ignores him. She’s a fast runner, even if every stride sends a bolt of pain through her injured leg. Once she’s a safe distance away and under the cover of a patch of trees, she sits down and massages her throbbing leg. She closes her eyes and all she can see is the unconscious cashier behind the counter. She could have killed him.
A part of her wanted to.
She forces her eyes open, forces herself to stand up. Forces herself to walk. Left. Right. Left. Right.
A clumsy march to nowhere. Just anywhere but here.
She’s aware of time passing vaguely.
When the sun’s moved from the middle of the sky to edging on sunset, she breaches another thicket of trees and finds herself in a row of houses.
She hefts her pack further up her shoulders and debates her options. Camp in the woods, find a hotel (perhaps she had enough money for a night?) or look for shelter elsewhere in this town.
She feels a strange pull. A thought telling her to walk down this street. Well, she could always turn back and sleep in the dirt again, right?
With that thought, she stumbled through the neighborhood, looking around warily. But there wasn’t anyone around, thankfully. She had enough of people staring today.
She had woken up a week ago in an alleyway in a similar neighborhood. Injured with no memory of how she’d ended up there. It made her wary of this place. More than that, a part of her brain was itching, burning to tell her something.
That feeling exploded into fireworks when she rounded a corner and saw a house.
Standing alone on the edge of the block. Rundown, more so than the shabby homes surrounding it. No flowers growing in the window boxes, weeds overrunning the yard, the large tree in front of it looking droopy and half dead. The door, paint peeling, is a soft robin egg blue. Pretty. As she walks up to the door (why is she walking up to the door?) she notices one of the windows in the front of the house is broken.
She stops short of the front steps.
She remembers tulips budding in the flower boxes. Remembers the smell of fresh paint. Remembers… this house. Her home.