Chapter Text
The afternoon wind whispers on by between abandoned white buildings. A chill is left in its wake. There’s no one around, no one left of what was once a great city on a marvelous island.
Except, Trafalgar D. Water Lammy walks outside of the burnt down hospital, hunkered down and hugging herself tightly in a form of self-comfort. Her arms, which curl around her little chest, give her some semblance of warmth.
She woke up alone in the closet that she had hid in, except it was… different. She had woken up in some sort of fuzzy, icky, all-encompassing bed, and she had come out changed.
She’s different now. There’s some additions to her that’s made the little girl so off-balanced and confused — Lammy had woke up from her weird fuzzy “bed” with something heavy clinging off of her back, slick and stuck together, as well as some furry horns or something coming out of her head. She hasn’t had a chance to really figure out what they were, outside of touch, since the hospital no longer had windows or mirrors.
From what she had seen after walking out of the closet, everything had been utterly destroyed. There was a huge hole in the wall and ceiling where wooden pillars had lost their stability and crashed through. The windows were gone, glass shards littering the floor. What used to be the hospital beds were now just charred remains. Lammy had been lucky that her little closet didn’t suffer through the same amount of structural damage.
And after making her way through burnt rubble and debris, Lammy had made it outside, where she was met with….
…Nothing.
The streets were empty. There was no light anywhere to indicate life. Whatever buildings remained were dark, seemingly empty, or just as worn down as the hospital.
Lammy clutches her arms around her tighter. The soggy-light weight to her back flicks around, as if trying to move, but it remains stuck in position. The unfamiliar feeling causes Lammy to shiver and her fear only ratchets up with the more that she sees.
“Law?” She calls out, her voice ricocheting between the abandoned walls of the city. It echoes back to her, almost as if in mockery.
She isn’t in pain anymore. Lammy was in bed for a whole year while Amber Lead worked its way through her system, and she was constantly hurting. Now, though, she could walk around and breathe easily for the first time in several months. It’s how she’s able to continue onward, stepping through the dust and ash and dark remains of what was once her home.
She’s still barefoot. Lammy couldn’t find any shoes to wear back in the hospital, and she felt even luckier to have found a ragged, slightly burnt gown back in her closet. She had stepped out of her fuzzy bed without anything that she previously had, accessories included. Her long hair now cascades over her tiny shoulders, and Lammy kept having to brush her bangs back to the side in order to see.
“Laaaw?” She calls out again.
She hobbles onward, hissing in pain when she steps on a particularly sharp rock or bit of glass. She’s already crying, tears a waterfall down her pudgy cheeks, so it truly didn’t matter if it hurt or not anyway.
Where was everybody? Why is everyone gone? What— who was shooting guns near the hospital before the fire started? Were they still around?
Where was her big brother? He had promised to come back to her. He promised that he wouldn’t leave her behind.
He promised.
Yet, Lammy is alone.
The moonlight was her only source of light as the little six-year-old girl stumbled her way around the devastated city.
There wasn’t anybody left. Lammy kept calling out for people once it was certain that Law wasn’t coming back. She was desperate to hear somebody — mom, dad, their neighbor Lenny, the shop owner Kaiya — anybody, respond back, please!
She’s so hungry and thirsty and afraid. She doesn’t know what to do. The buildings that were once a comfort are now so destroyed that it is hard to tell where she was. She doesn’t know where she is or what to do.
She continues to cry, tears and snot dribbling down her face, and she brings her hands up to wipe them away. Lammy doesn’t know what’s going on, and it scares her so, so much.
It takes a long while, but eventually, Lammy finds her way back home. It wasn’t as devastated as most of the other buildings, but it did seem like the fire had found its way to it too. There were evident scorch marks marring its outer appearance, its shingles gone, and the door was halfway off of its hinges. It looked decrepit.
Lammy is home.
On trembling dirty feet, she makes her way up the small steps and through the familiar door. She was already sniffling on her way up here, but the dust makes her sneeze. With nothing else around, Lammy uses her dress to wipe her nose dry.
Everything was… still in place, relatively speaking. However long the fire had lasted, it had scorched down some of the walls and all of the furniture that it had touched. Nothing remains of the couch, chairs, wooden stands, or kitchen area.
Lammy makes her way down through familiar halls. Her parents' room was almost practically cinders, a hole descending from the ceiling to the wall. Beams and supports have fallen, making the bedroom untouchable. Lammy makes a small noise, distraught at the sight before continuing forward.
Her and Law’s bedrooms were in practically the same condition. While Law’s was at least livable, with only broken windows to account for, his bed was burnt into a husk and there was nothing left to be seen of his living there. When Lammy checked out her own old room she became even more distressed, seeing that none of her own items had survived and the ceiling had collapsed in on itself. It was awful.
Her home was barely a shelter anymore.
A cold wind passes through the many open holes and shattered window frames. It makes Lammy shiver, her arms wrapping around themselves tighter. At least the weight on her back has alleviated, a weird flutter stemming from her back every now and then. Lammy has a guess as to what they are, but it just leaves her more confused than ever.
She isn’t tired. She just woke up and still had energy left, despite her sobbing and awful walk. Lammy is many things right now, but she’s a thinker first and foremost.
She knows that she needs at least a pillow and blanket to make it through the night. It’s incredibly cold for early autumn, but Lammy only thinks twice about where to begin looking. She lives in the north — this cold meant nothing to her, at least on normal days.
Normal days…
Lammy’s only six. She can’t find her mom, dad, brother, or anybody else in the city. She has to find food, water, and bed stuff all by herself. She has no help, and she has no idea where anybody could have gone.
A dreadful idea begins to brew in her head. It makes Lammy choke. She doesn’t want to think about it, but it begins to fester inside of her head as she makes her way out of her ruined old home and back out into the open.
There won’t be any normal days anymore, will there be? Lammy may be the younger sister, but she isn’t stupid. She knows what death is. Her parents are doctors, for crying out loud! And she knows that Amber Lead was killing everyone around her, despite Law telling her that their parents were looking for a cure. His best efforts were wasted when he left the room and Lammy would see bodies being pulled out by doctors and volunteers down the hallways.
She knew that she was dying, and it had terrified her like nothing else. That’s why she had held onto hope and clung onto Law’s every word. Mom and Dad had become too busy to visit anymore, so it was only the two of them for most of the time.
Then, the people in white clothes, white hats, and guns came to town. Lammy remembers the sounds of the first gunshots and rapid fire and the screams. She had clung onto Law as they began to figure out what was happening, and then Law had told her to go into the closet.
She used to cling to his every word, every promise that he had made. When he said he was going to go look for their parents, Lammy made him promise to be okay and come back.
It was the last thing she remembers, before… before the…
The fire.
Lammy refuses to think about smoke and bright reds and oranges. She refuses to think about Law leaving her behind and possibly dying to the people with guns. Her tears have ebbed a while back, but a sob catches in her chest again.
Her parents are probably dead. Her older brother was most likely killed. Where does that leave her?
Lammy continues to wander on, looking for a place promising enough to have stuff left inside of it. Eventually, she finds a huge towering building that looked like it evaded the inferno well enough.
Walking through the place, she comes to find out it used to be an apartment complex. There were many opened doors, either left wide open or busted through. It didn’t take Lammy long enough to find what she wanted as she went through the first apartment and the second, finding beds that were still intact and blankets that were soft to the touch. A little swell of relief passes through her.
Next thing is food. Lammy decides to settle in the apartment that had the door that could close all the way. She hums to herself, a soft melancholic tune as she opens up cupboards and fridges.
“Oh, eeewww…” She says to herself as she opens the refrigerator door. A harsh stink wafts through, rotten food gazing back at her with white mold growing all over them. There was nothing left to eat here, and Lammy looks sadly at it all.
Cupboards again it is then. Lammy closes the door and drags a chair over to the counters, grunting with the effort. She climbs on top and stands on her tiptoes, opening up cabinets to see what she can find.
There are glasses and bowls, plates and more glasses. There’s plastic tupperware and cooking stuff. Finally though, in the last cupboard, there was loads of canned food, ranging from potatoes to peas to carrots and more.
Score! Lammy gleefully grabs one and begins her search for a can opener. Law used to have to do this for her, but… well, Lammy’s a strong big girl now anyway. She could do this on her own.
When she finds one, she sits on the floor and pushes the can of potatoes into it. It takes several minutes for her to even make a dent. Lammy groans in anger, but perseveres, until she finally leaves enough of an opening for her to stick her finger into to pull the rest of it up.
Lammy doesn’t consider heating up the food. The lights to the place already didn’t work, and… no. No more reds and oranges. No more fires. She merely gets out eating utensils and goes to town, devouring the potatoes within minutes.
She throws the can into the trash whenever she’s done, a force of habit that she doesn’t reconsider just yet. Her eyes are puffy and sore, and her steps were getting slower. It’s sleepiness, but it’s also weirdly heavier, and it begins to drag her down. Lammy yawns, a hand stifling the sound as she begins to walk to the bathroom.
There’s no running water, but Lammy can find some tomorrow. There’s all kinds of streams that run through and past Flevance, leading out into the ocean that’s super far away. That should be good, right? It’ll have to be, despite her parents warnings playing in her head.
Lammy tries to flick on the light before she remembers. She hums sadly to herself, the heavy weight in her chest settling firmly before she makes her way to the toilet. After relieving herself, that’s when she sees it.
Her reflection. Her changes. There, in the mirror, they’re apparent.
Lammy stares at herself, as much as she can see. Invigorated enough to climb up onto the sink, Lammy settles down to examine it all, hands wandering up to her head.
Fluffy. Red. What are they called again? Antennae? They curl outward from Lammy’s forehead, flicking at every distant sound that Lammy suddenly realizes that she can hear clearly. She pokes them, prods them, gently runs a finger through them and grimaces at the sensation. They’re prickly, not soft like she thought they would be.
And… the biggest difference of all… huge white, black, and speckled red wings flicker free from her back. They’re mainly black with white spots, but red hues dot over the expanse of their silken looks in random, sparse patterns.
They’re beautiful, Lammy thinks. She tries to caress one, but it was super hard to reach back and keep her balance on top of the sink.
The last thing that Lammy notices is the scar on her eyebrow. It was old news, but it makes something unknown pang in her chest as she traces a finger down it. The wound that she got when she fell on the rocks back at the beach had stuck around, and Lammy is already used to seeing it when she looks in the mirror.
Now, though, it has a different ring to it, something the six-year-old doesn't know how to process yet. It reminds her of Law and his worry… her mother and her gentle care… her father and his loving reprimands…
Lammy stares at herself in the mirror and the all of the changes that she has woken up to. The heaviness in her heart solidifies. Something resolute settles itself inside of Lammy’s mind, and she stares at herself in grim determination.
She’s alone. She survived. She made it through getting sick with amber lead, men with guns, and a fire. If her family is somehow alive, Lammy wants to find them again someday, even if the darkest recesses of her mind makes her hope dwindle.
Lammy won’t let this take her down so easily. With a deep breath in and a long breath out, she climbs down carefully from her perch and makes her way to the bedroom that she chose.
Climbing into the bed, Lammy settles in the for the night, huddling in to evade the cold that reaches in through shattered glass. It feels like winter despite her last memory being different. Maybe she was asleep for longer than she thought…
But that’s tomorrow Lammy’s problem. Her heavy eyes slowly slide shut, and sleep overcomes the little survivor.
And she’ll continue to survive, no matter what the world throws at her next. Fourth time’s the charm.