[Fic] Cut a Straight Line Down Through the Heart
Gladys shifted in her seat. She’d been totally unable to keep still for nearly a week. It was cutting into her sleep, making her get up at all hours of the night, the itch driving her mad.
“Something’s going on,” she couldn’t stop telling people. “Something big is going on.”
“Something’s always going on, Gladys,” they told her. She knew that in theory, in the small part of her head labeled ‘Logical Thinking’, but that didn’t stop the itch, the drive pushing her farther and farther east, across mountains and territories, across oceans.
Like a moth to a flame, she couldn’t stay away.
. . .
First to the ghettoes, where children were motherless, fatherless, penniless, underfoot and searching for food, for shelter, for love. She helped as much as she could, brining children in, feeding them, caring for them and loving them as much as she was able, but more and more of them slipped through her fingers, and the itch would not, could not be relieved.
. . .
It was July when they came for her, when the last of the ghetto was cleared out, mothers and children crying and Gladys, looking strangely serene, standing among them in the crowded boxcar, both her hands gripped tightly by the sticky orphans she knew and loved, humming a soft tune as they drew closer and closer, the itch a drumbeat in her ears, a song of pain she had to heal.
. . .
They stripped her of everything, except her exterior calm and that awful drumbeat, hit her when they saw the scars but they did not kill her. Mien Fuhrer had a plan for those with wings. They were the great experiment, and Gladys was just another test subject in a long ling of test subjects.
In a way, she was lucky, and in a way, it couldn’t have been worse.
. . .
She made friends, because unlikely places and horrifying situations pull and push you together. There was Eva, the poor little Glays girl who had no control over her powers and some days-the days the new shipments of people came-could barely move, unable to stop the flow of thoughts and emotions. And then there was Elijah, the Angel of Death they posted when people arrive, to see just how many deaths one angel could take. Gladys took them in, took care of them. They were her new family.
“Someone will come,” she told them every day. “Someone will come.”
. . .
No one came, and the days grew longer and then shorter and everything blurred together. Gladys never knew what day it was, and the itch, the beat, it never went away. They were slowly driving her mad, driving all the angels and demons mad, just sot see what would happen.
Gladys knew what would happen in the end.
They were going to die.
. . .
It began with a riot. So much confusion, gunshots, fire. Gladys tried to run out to see what was going on, her heart hammering in her chest, ba bum ba bum ba bum, but Eva screamed from her bunk, screamed and wouldn’t stop screaming, one long line of pain, changing in pitch as she clamped her hands over her ears and rocked back and forth. She screamed nonsensical words and inhuman sounds and Gladys knew she was broken, she had snapped and now she was going to die.
The grin of the guards as they came for the girl infuriated Gladys. She tried to stop them, got in their way and refused to go. Her hands actually balled up into fists, but it didn’t matter because they had guns and power and all it took was one blow to the head to knock her out.
By the time she woke up, Eva was gone.
. . .
Three deaths in one day is completely unnatural for an Angel of Death, but it was the goal of the experiment as ordered by top brass, and so day in and day out, they would line up. Sometimes there were days when they got one, on bad days maybe two, but Elijah was the first to hit three. Of course, Gladys heard about this only after he Fell.
She ran outside when she heard the cries, and there he was, mangled on the ground, broken and now human but still alive.
“You idiot!” she hissed, pushing through the crowd because the only reaction that would keep her from falling apart at this point was anger. “You stupid idiot.” She bent down on her knees, not even thinking as she touched his skin.
He looked up at her, grinning dopily even though Gladys knew, could feel just how much pain he was in. “Gladys.” There was blood in his mouth.
“Shut up,” she growled at him, trying to focus on his injuries.
“I’m free, Gladys,” he said, laughing a laugh that was disturbingly broken. She tried to ignore it. “I’m free.”
And then she was shoved aside by more guards who grabbed Elijah by the arms and began to drag him away. “I’m free,” he kept telling her, his dead eyes locked on hers.
He was.
. . .
And she was alone, all alone in the most hellish place imaginable, no, it was beyond imagination, beyond comprehension.
Days bled into weeks, months, years, could she even survive that long? She was slowly cracking, had already cracked, couldn’t see an end to all the pain because it would never end. She could end it, though, she could be in control and she could escape, she too could be free. She set a day, kept careful track of time. She could barely walk any more, too weak from all the healings, but she would do it. She was going to Fall.
The day never came. One moment there were gunshots, explosions, and the next some huge archangel had her in his arms and she was feebly beating his chest with her palms because she never was able to make a fist properly, and she was crying and screaming because she was going to be free, and they took that away from her, they took everything away from her.
. . .
It took a Wanderer to fix her, a psychic to compartmentalize all the emotions and memories for her, to make sure she would be able to function.
When she woke up, her hair was white, her skin wrinkled. Overnight, she had turned into an old lady. She was outraged at first, but then it appeared she didn’t mind. Perhaps it was better that way. It gave her a new identity, strength.
She picked up what she had left and charged forward.