Chapter Text
“You love me, don’t you, Rhea?”
How would someone, a daughter, respond to that knowing no matter what she said, no matter how hard she tried to prove it, her mother wouldn’t believe a word?
Rhea doesn’t know.
But she’ll keep saying the same thing every single time.
“Of course, I do, I love you more than anyone else, even dad!”
That was never the right answer, because her mom would always reply with the same words.
“You can’t say that. He’s working very hard with little rest for you my sweet bird. He never rests. Never listens to me when I tell him to take a day off.”
‘Why do you still care for him even though he’s hurting you?’ She wanted to say, but the fear of being scolded for being inconsiderate haunted her.
Should she care for a father who isn’t present in her life, a husband who cares not for his wife who tries to do as much as she can for him?
Rhea failed to realize that she had said that out loud, she was too lost in her thoughts.
Lost so deep wondering if adults were just difficult to understand or if they were any different from kids apart from the fact that they were aged.
But she did take notice of her mom’s eyes brimming with tears and rage.
“What would you know!”
Slap.
Her cheek stung at the hit.
Something inside her mother broke, and she knew that she said something stupid again.
She always said stupid things when she opened her mouth.
That’s why she had no real friends, why adults looked at her in pity and stupid worry and sympathy instead of helping her!
“All you do is slouch around, always making a fuss when I say you have to go tuition! Kids your age, kids younger than you, go tuition because they want to study and you- you never! hic”
‘I-I didn’t mean to make you cry-’
“Of course you didn’t! Just like how you didn’t mean it when you said you loved me!”
“But I did—!”
Pull.
Rhea’s mom grabbed her by her right hand, her nails digging in not enough to draw blood but enough to hurt.
“What are you, British? You were raised in my household where everyone spoke in our language! Speak in your mother tongue at once, will you?”
Her mother didn’t shout this time, but the words rang loud in her ear.
Many people forget their mother tongue when they live in a different country that spoke a different language, and Rhea wasn’t an exception.
She remembered how to speak, just not in . . . the way she could yell with confidence, talking with relatives in her mother tongue wasn’t hard but her anxiety got in the way.
It was pathetic.
Absolutely stupid.
Rhea was an unlikeable kid for many reasons and she understood why her mother treated her like this at times.
She was forgetful, lazy, an idiot, didn’t know how to express herself, how to solve problems, how to be normal, how to not make things about herself to relate to her friends, she couldn’t even talk properly without stuttering these days!
No mother would want a child like that.
Not when their child could get so lost in their thoughts to the point they failed to realize the change in their surroundings.
A wave of nausea hit her, the food she had eaten earlier, it was just rice with chicken, she shouldn’t feel the need to vomit it all out.
Her mom would be angry.
And again, the nausea hit, but something else did so too.
The realization that her mom, her dearest mother, stood in front of her, a large knife in her hands, while she was on the ground.
Defenceless.
Rhea’s body started shaking uncontrollably, her break quickened and she swallowed back her vomit in fear.
Her throat burnt at the sensation of vomit going back down. It was disgusting and filthy.
Her mom’s hands, gripping onto the knife, trembled.
“Don’t you worry, my sweet bird. You say you’re suffering right? Don’t worry, I’ll just end it for you!”
The hand rose up in the air and it went on to hit Rhea right in the eye—
“Amu?”
And after those words were mutter out, a loud scream rang out in the very neighbourhood she lived in.
‘It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts so bad- amu I'm so sorry,’ A repetitive trail of thoughts followed one after another.
‘It hurts amu.’
What had just happened? Did her mom really- really try kill her with a dull knife used to cut big chunks of meat?
Surely not, right?
But her hands trembled and they held her left side of her face, more specifically her eye.
It stung like hell, and red poured down like a light rainfall she used to enjoy walking under.
Maybe she had pressed to tightly, because the dripping increased and her eyes hurt even worse as seconds passed by slowly.
The world around her, the surroundings, were unfamiliar to her and uncomfortable to look at.
Rhea didn’t like being in unfamiliar places by herself, especially when there was not a single sight of people in front, beside or behind her.
Her eyes blurred, watered so much from the pain and the bright sunlight she had to curl up and close her eyes.
‘It’s supposed to be night.’
As far as she knew, it was around 5pm and the sky outside had turned dark as it was still the winter solstice. It should just be a black night sky around her with only street lamps around her if she was outside.
And yet, it was not.
It should be cold enough to make her shiver in her pyjamas, but it wasn’t.
Everything was not what she wanted it to be like.
Especially not her injury.
‘It hurts!’
The stinging burned in the sun, only her long hair gave shade to protect her eyes.
But it was so hot, her whole body was burning from the heat. It was different from the UK weather she had gotten used to in the 5 years, including this year.
There was burning sand underneath her and she felt as though the awful boiling sand was consuming her.
Rhea stayed on her knees, breathing heavily with her hand shaking above her eye. Heck her whole body trembled in fright.
‘I hate this.’
Her mind stayed unfocused, slipping from consciousness to sleep.
Had she been getting any sleep the past week? With all the bullying at school? No, she had not and now it’s back firing.
She should’ve done her homework early instead of staying up every night.
What stupid choices she could make sometimes.
Maybe 20 minutes had already passed by now, but to her it felt like 2 hours, really.
The longer she tried to keep her eyes peeled, the more the desire to fall over to her side and sleep it all out so that when she woke up next, she’d be home, in her bed increased.
All comfortable and snuggled up without a single worry in the world.
One of Rhea’s eyes water at the flying sand, and her other eye closes on instinct, then her legs wobble to get up. But her efforts to walk, to just stand were all in vain.
The bleeding had stopped.
And the pain had numbed as all she could focus on was the ringing noise in her head that would appear when the world went all to quite to make her uncomfortable.
She fell to her side.
Eyes barely open at that point. The exhaustion and heat made her feel too tired to fight back and in the end, she succumbed to her sleep.
She dreamt of a girl.
One with brown hair that barely reached past her shoulders with the same coloured eyes that shone with a red-pink hue.
Strangely enough, it reminded her of someone she couldn’t remember. Yet again, her memory was failing her.
She sat dream-Rhea down and combed her hair gently, almost cautious to not accidentally pull her hair while the latter drew in a dark blue notebook.
She spoke incoherent words that Rhea knew were meant for comfort.
‘A nice . . . girl.’
It was strange to think that someone would run out of breath when speaking in their mind. Or dream.
The image of the two became more clearer as her feet dragged itself towards them in lazy, small steps.
“So— No! But you— oh please, Rhea—”
Rhea?
Who was that?
She doesn’t remember anyone calling her Rhea, apart from the online friends she knew.
A few steps forward, she noticed the change in her hair colour. It wasn’t her dark brown hair anymore, it was black, from top to bottom with streaks of blue that seemed to appear from her back hair.
And another step forward, the dream self had brilliant blue eyes that sparkled with stars in them. The golden hue gave it a joyful feeling.
Rhea’s chest—
Ah.
No.
Rhea noticed that in her mind, she referred to herself as something that was not her name.
It was the online persona name she used.
‘I can’t remember.’
She was used to forgetting a lot of things, but never something this important to her, especially not her name.
‘I can’t remember.’
Damn it.
Damn it all.
Why would she forget her name? Her name wasn’t Rhea! Sure she liked that name, went by that name a lot online and had sometimes wished for her name to be changed to that.
But her name . . .
Her dad gave it to her, her dad whose name started with the same first letter as hers and same birthday as hers.
She missed his hugs and head pats now, even if she had a deep, unresolved grudge in her heart towards him.
Ah, now she couldn’t remember her birthday.
What was going on?
Why was this dream making her realise all this without any warning whatsoever.
Rh— no, the girl took another step forward.
And another.
And another until she could see that the image of her dream-self and the older girl went further away, as if trying to stay out of reach.
‘No.’
She couldn’t allow the image to disappear until she reached them.
Instead of walking slowly, she sped up until she was running.
She didn’t feel hot from the sun’s ray anymore, only the exhaustion and the blood that had dried gave off a cool feeling to her now.
‘I can’t let go—!’
‘My legs are giving me up . . .’
‘Stop moving already!’
Her legs ran forward until the image finally stopped moving away.
Her hands clenched onto the breast pocket of her pyjamas as if it would help catch her breath. It didn’t, but it calmed her rapidly beating heart only slightly.
“Don’t . . . go . . .”
For the first time in a while, her dry mouth let out two words.
As if her words were heard, the brunette stopped brushing her dream-self’s hair and turned to look at her in surprise.
She couldn’t see her face, nor her eye colour, just her nose and lips that formed a smile.
“Rhea, what are you doing there? Come here, don’t look so upset, now, would you? What happened to you now?”
All of a sudden her dream-self was gone.
And she was next to the taller girl being patted gently.
Her heart started beating slightly faster.
No matter who it was from, she still liked head pats no matter what. Such a nice thing they were, but she never got it because people assumed she didn’t like physical contact.
“Oh my god, Rhea! You’re bleeding!”
‘Damn, really? I didn’t know that.’
Maybe sarcasm wasn’t the best thing to be thinking off, but it wasn’t as if anyone would know what she’d be thinking.
The girl shook her to get her off her mind.
“How on earth did you get hurt, Rhea this is a dream so why-”
All of a sudden her mind goes fuzzy. How does this dream person know it was a dream?
And her name wasn’t Rhea. Not now, not ever- that’s not her name.
It never had been . . .
Maybe it was because she let herself not be distracted by the dream, or because she didn’t want to talk with the girl anymore, but she could feel her skull splitting into two.
Her whole mind buzzed and her ears rang loudly.
It was so, so fucking loud.
She couldn’t handle it any longer.
The older girl’s loud yelling and worried words of comfort didn’t help either.
It made things worser than ever before.
‘Just . . . shut up.’
She doesn’t like loud noise if it’s not a song she likes, and she doesn’t like being yelled at either.
But it would be rude to tell her to keep her mouth zipped because she didn’t like the silence either.
Her fists clenched tighter then ever to the point she was hurting herself despite the lack of strength in her, and a warm trail of blood trickled down her hand.
‘Fuck!’
Why did the pain in her eye keep disappearing and then reappearing again and again!?
She woke up, hands clenching her chest again.
“Haah, haaaaah,” Her heart was beating too fast, way faster then it ever had and her already blurry vision blurred to the point that instead of seeing blots of colour, she saw it all mixed with each other.
Her hands were about to reach her eye, but it froze as she took a look at them.
Ignoring the blood, she noticed how pale they were all of a sudden.
‘What is this?’
Why was it that her skin was so . . . white all of a sudden? It looked so unhealthy and sickly.
Sure, she had gotten really pale over the few weeks she hadn’t gotten sunlight and barely eaten, but this? This was a bit too different from her actual warm skin tone.
Fucking hell.
What was this now?
Why was all of this happening so abruptly and quickly?
She couldn’t think of her name, her name—
Her precious name.
She wants it back even if it costed her eye, because her name is what gives her her identity. And without one, who is she?
A random no-name girl?
Useless baggage?
An incompetent bastard?
Or was she just a simple nobody- ah, that must be it.
She was simply a nobody without a name or any recollection of her birthday or mother tongue.
It was quite funny how in about a few hours she suddenly lost her identity despite having her memories, though she supposed not knowing her name and origin played a bigger part in her identity.
But she refuses to not have a name.
Because she isn’t a nobody.
She is someone capable of leaving a mark in the world, whether small or not.
So . . .
Rhea it is then.
Even it means abandoning the idea of trying to find her real name, because she had never cared for searching for something knowing she would probably not get it back.
The name of her online persona she had only dreamt of using as her real name.
Rhea was a cute, maybe even beautiful name.
There was the moon and the mother of the first generation of Olympian Gods in Greek mythology who had the same name.
And someone in the Bible too.
By any means, she- Rhea, was not religious. Christianity was such a cool religion despite having a small but terrible side with racist and . . . rude people.
But humans were like that.
Horrible, cruel people that harmed their own kin.
. . .
They were still the kindest beings in existence though.