[Fic] Bodily Experience (SPN) Anna
Title: Bodily Experience
Author: arccie
Characters/Pairing(s): Anna
Rating: G
Warnings: Spoilers for season 4
Summary: She has to fight the urge to claw her way out. Pull off this flesh that is dragging her down.
Word Count: 795
Disclaimer: Not mine, never mine. *sobs*
A/N: Written for spn_teamfic. Sort of a rough fit, maybe, for the prompt.
Another fortnight with no time, ends up with this (despite lots of longer plottier ideas). Oh well. *shrugs*
Enjoy.
Bodily Experience
There were times when Anna was growing up when she felt entirely out of place. Between one step and the next she’d feel a stranger in her own body.
Blood pounding in her ears, the raspy pull of air through her lungs louder than the crunch of gravel beneath her feet.
Her skin pulled strangely against itself as she flexes her arm. The skin too tight to contain her.
Body functioning in every single way that was normal, expected, and yet it was entirely wrong.
She has to fight the urge to claw her way out. Pull off this flesh that is dragging her down.
Worse were the times when she felt she barely recognised her friends, her family. Blinked and watched a woman laugh, head thrown back, teeth showing, her entire body shouting her joy. Blinked and watched her mother laugh.
Knows it’s her mother. Can tell you everything she knows about her mother, but can’t associate any feelings with the knowledge.
It creeps her out. Makes her skin crawl with unease.
She tries to talk about it with her parents, even some of her friends, but they brush it aside as being tired. A momentary mental glitch.
She always ends up agreeing with them. Hopes it’s true. Then it’s something everyone experiences, nothing strange about her. Not something she needs to worry about.
Later, when she starts hearing voices that everyone else swears they can’t hear they label her earlier feelings as self-disassociation, and label it a precursor to her further development of mental problems. It’s mild. Probable that the underlying problems are triggered by the death of her family
She gets help. Professionals to ground her in reality.
Friends she hasn’t seen in a long time. Parents she won’t ever see again. Strangers with kind faces’ who are there for her.
She hears them. They talk about her.
She probably doesn’t require much supervision, but the voices could develop. Better to keep her around a little longer for her own and everyone else’s sake.
Nice girl. Shame about her being a loony.
At least she’s not an out right whack job. Did you hear what the girl in ward 5 did to Terry?
For the most part you wouldn’t even know. Then she goes and stares off at nothing. Complete blank. Couldn’t care less what she was doing at the time.
She hears them She sees them. She talks to them.
Yet all she is waiting for is the voices. Anticipating the caress of those words in her ears, the thrum of them in her blood.
At night, she clings to what she sees. Horrors of blood, of death, of despair.
All day, every day surrounded by white walls, following routines by rote. Participating in her own recovery.
But over it all, under it all, she hears Dean Winchester is saved.
Over everything, behind it, she sees not wood and concrete and paint, but the struggles that may mean the end of humanity.
She knows reality, but she’s not sure she’s living it.
She draws it in the hopes it will become separate from her life if it is somewhere but behind her eyes.
Then he is there.
Dean Winchester is saved.
It should turn her understanding of the world, of herself, on its head. Instead it fills a hole that she wasn’t aware of, slots in to make reality fit.
Follows where he goes. Knows that he is more real than her reality.
If only that was her only revelation.
Instead she learns that Heaven wants her dead. Wants Anna dead.
At that moment there is something else sweeping over her, something more, and she is painting the wall in her blood.
It is quick after that.
Events rushing by to lead her here.
Her Grace or death.
It wouldn’t seem a hard choice to make.
There is nothing for it. Nothing to do but take back her Grace.
Hesitates, because although she can’t quite remember, she knows what is on the other side of her decision. She does it anyway.
She steps back into older memories. Memories that span millennia. Heaven and angels, humanity and duty.
It should feel like returning to herself. Burning away the skin that so often didn’t seem to fit.
She remembers Anna, she is Anna.
Years of Anna (mother, father, laughter, fear, confusion, love) are still there.
But now she is also an Angel of the Lord, though a disowned one.
She should feel like she’s reached her true self. Should feel like she’s finally stepping into her actual place in reality. Should finally be at home in her being.
Instead it is like being ripped in two.
She is Anna. She is an angel.
Her Grace fills her.
It should feel like she is more whole than ever before.
Instead it is like somthing is gone.
Like she has lost something in the transformation.
…Possibly her heart.
X----------X-----------X----------X----------X
Comments appreciated. Criticisms considered.
Author: arccie
Characters/Pairing(s): Anna
Rating: G
Warnings: Spoilers for season 4
Summary: She has to fight the urge to claw her way out. Pull off this flesh that is dragging her down.
Word Count: 795
Disclaimer: Not mine, never mine. *sobs*
A/N: Written for spn_teamfic. Sort of a rough fit, maybe, for the prompt.
Another fortnight with no time, ends up with this (despite lots of longer plottier ideas). Oh well. *shrugs*
Enjoy.
Bodily Experience
There were times when Anna was growing up when she felt entirely out of place. Between one step and the next she’d feel a stranger in her own body.
Blood pounding in her ears, the raspy pull of air through her lungs louder than the crunch of gravel beneath her feet.
Her skin pulled strangely against itself as she flexes her arm. The skin too tight to contain her.
Body functioning in every single way that was normal, expected, and yet it was entirely wrong.
She has to fight the urge to claw her way out. Pull off this flesh that is dragging her down.
Worse were the times when she felt she barely recognised her friends, her family. Blinked and watched a woman laugh, head thrown back, teeth showing, her entire body shouting her joy. Blinked and watched her mother laugh.
Knows it’s her mother. Can tell you everything she knows about her mother, but can’t associate any feelings with the knowledge.
It creeps her out. Makes her skin crawl with unease.
She tries to talk about it with her parents, even some of her friends, but they brush it aside as being tired. A momentary mental glitch.
She always ends up agreeing with them. Hopes it’s true. Then it’s something everyone experiences, nothing strange about her. Not something she needs to worry about.
Later, when she starts hearing voices that everyone else swears they can’t hear they label her earlier feelings as self-disassociation, and label it a precursor to her further development of mental problems. It’s mild. Probable that the underlying problems are triggered by the death of her family
She gets help. Professionals to ground her in reality.
Friends she hasn’t seen in a long time. Parents she won’t ever see again. Strangers with kind faces’ who are there for her.
She hears them. They talk about her.
She probably doesn’t require much supervision, but the voices could develop. Better to keep her around a little longer for her own and everyone else’s sake.
Nice girl. Shame about her being a loony.
At least she’s not an out right whack job. Did you hear what the girl in ward 5 did to Terry?
For the most part you wouldn’t even know. Then she goes and stares off at nothing. Complete blank. Couldn’t care less what she was doing at the time.
She hears them She sees them. She talks to them.
Yet all she is waiting for is the voices. Anticipating the caress of those words in her ears, the thrum of them in her blood.
At night, she clings to what she sees. Horrors of blood, of death, of despair.
All day, every day surrounded by white walls, following routines by rote. Participating in her own recovery.
But over it all, under it all, she hears Dean Winchester is saved.
Over everything, behind it, she sees not wood and concrete and paint, but the struggles that may mean the end of humanity.
She knows reality, but she’s not sure she’s living it.
She draws it in the hopes it will become separate from her life if it is somewhere but behind her eyes.
Then he is there.
Dean Winchester is saved.
It should turn her understanding of the world, of herself, on its head. Instead it fills a hole that she wasn’t aware of, slots in to make reality fit.
Follows where he goes. Knows that he is more real than her reality.
If only that was her only revelation.
Instead she learns that Heaven wants her dead. Wants Anna dead.
At that moment there is something else sweeping over her, something more, and she is painting the wall in her blood.
It is quick after that.
Events rushing by to lead her here.
Her Grace or death.
It wouldn’t seem a hard choice to make.
There is nothing for it. Nothing to do but take back her Grace.
Hesitates, because although she can’t quite remember, she knows what is on the other side of her decision. She does it anyway.
She steps back into older memories. Memories that span millennia. Heaven and angels, humanity and duty.
It should feel like returning to herself. Burning away the skin that so often didn’t seem to fit.
She remembers Anna, she is Anna.
Years of Anna (mother, father, laughter, fear, confusion, love) are still there.
But now she is also an Angel of the Lord, though a disowned one.
She should feel like she’s reached her true self. Should feel like she’s finally stepping into her actual place in reality. Should finally be at home in her being.
Instead it is like being ripped in two.
She is Anna. She is an angel.
Her Grace fills her.
It should feel like she is more whole than ever before.
Instead it is like somthing is gone.
Like she has lost something in the transformation.
…Possibly her heart.
X----------X-----------X----------X----------X
Comments appreciated. Criticisms considered.