Fic: Her Better Half 1/2
Title: Her Better Half
By: Ada C. Eliana
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: Ths is my response to the spn_epificficathon. My prompt was for 'No Rest for the Wicked' How much does the little girl remember of her possession?
This fic is still a little rough around the edges, not quite up to snuff, but I hope you all enjoy it!
Summary: Abigail Fremont's life was completely uprooted the night she woke to find a man standing over her bed with a knife.
Her Better Half
By: Ada C. Eliana
Part I
The family moved quickly, never going back to their old house. Abigail Fremont thought it had to do with the strange man she had seen in her room, the strange man holding a knife (“No sweetheart, he didn’t have a knife! It was so dark you probably thought you saw a knife in his hand, but he didn’t have one, I promise!”), no matter what her mother said, she knew what she saw. Abby and her mother stayed in the bedroom after the man left, huddled on the bed as his feet thudded down the hall. That night there had been barking dogs in the house, she thought one of them might have been her beagle, Freckles, but they had sounded big and scary. Freckles was only little, he was cute and when he barked it wasn’t scary. She heard screams, two men and a woman yelling at each other, there were bangs, and thuds, and cracks, so many scary noises. Then it all went quiet. Later, she didn’t know how much later, her daddy had come into her room, and for a few minutes he looked at her like he didn’t recognize her, like she was something horrible and ugly, but then her mommy said “No, it’s her, it’s our baby!” and after that he was just really happy. They had left all together, right away, not even packing their stuff, just taking off, driving four hours to Aunt Jane’s house. Abby just cried and asked them why they had left Freckles behind, where was he, why wasn’t he coming with them?
Abby’s parents bought a house in Gainsville, New York, and Abby cried herself to sleep every night. She wanted to go back home, to see her friends, say goodbye to her babysitter. She wanted grandpa to visit all of the time like he used to (“Grandpa’s busy and it’s so far away, sweetie. He loves you though, he just can’t come visit.”). She wanted her room and her things, she wanted Freckles back too. To assuage her grief, her parents bought her a kitten, all white with a black spot between her ears. She named the kitten Lilly after her favorite flower.
At first the kitten seemed to like Abby, would curl up on her lap to sleep and purr when she petted her. But after a little while the kitten suddenly changed, would scratch her and hiss at her if she got too close. One morning she woke up on the floor of her bedroom in the middle of the day, not even remembering when she fell asleep, to find Lilly lying on the floor, dead. Abby screamed and cried and reached out to touch the kitten, white fur matted and stained with red blood. There was blood on Abby’s clothes too, and her hands. Next to Lilly she found one of her mommy’s good kitchen knives, all coated in blood. There was movement at the doorway and Abby turned to see her father standing there, frozen, mouth open wide in horror. “Daddy…” Abby cried, but her father backed away, staring. “Daddy, I don’t know what happened… I don’t remember… I was asleep…” They buried Lilly in the backyard and though no one ever mentioned it again, Abby noticed that her father took to watching her carefully, as if trying to figure something out about her.
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Abby’s first crush was a boy named Daniel. They were in the same seventh grade class, Abby sat towards the front and he was in the back. He had dark brown hair and blue eyes, and everyone knew he was the cutest boy in school. At thirteen, Abby was still gawky looking, all long legs and arms, she hadn’t quite grown into her features, her blonde hair was perpetually a mess, and she just lacked that natural grace that some of her classmates seemed to have. Even so, Abby tried in vain to catch his attention, to catch his eye. All through lunch she would stare over at him and wish he would look over at her, just once.
Abby confided in Stephanie, her best friend, that she liked him. Steph suggested she just tell him, but Abby had shaken her head and said, “No… I… I can’t do that. What would I do if he laughed at me, or said he didn’t like me back?”
“If you never take a chance then you’re never going to be with anybody,” Steph responded. Abby just shook her head, how would Stephanie understand? Stephanie was beautiful, prettier now than Abby could ever hope to be. Stephanie just shrugged, pushing a perfectly straight lock of dark hair over her shoulder. “Well if you don’t act soon then somebody else might snatch him up,” she pointed out.
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Two weeks later Stephanie and Daniel were boyfriend and girlfriend. Abby felt anger and jealousy the likes of which she had never experienced before. How dare Stephanie do that to her? How dare she start dating the boy Abby liked without even telling her about it? How dare she let Abby find out from Emma Jacobson, that snobby girl who thought she was better than everyone else? Stephanie was supposed to be her friend, but she had betrayed her.
“How could you do this to me?” Abby yelled. She had met up with Stephanie after school, cornered her in the hallway as everyone else headed out to the buses.
“Do what?” Stephanie responded angrily.
Abby pushed her against the wall. “You know what! You know how I feel about Daniel!”
“Yeah and I also know that you would never do anything about it,” Stephanie said, voice low. She pushed Abby off of her as the girl’s eyes filled with tears.
“I thought you were my friend,” Abby cried.
“Oh come on Abby, this isn’t a big deal.”
“Not a big deal? Not a big deal!” Abby protested, suddenly angry, so angry. She felt something rise inside of her, filled with malice. Red filled her vision and then everything went dark.
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When Abby woke up she was lying in her bed at home. She tried to remember what happened, how she had gotten there, but she was coming up blank. She couldn’t remember anything past shouting at Stephanie. She couldn’t even remember how that argument ended or what happened between them. She just didn’t remember. There were bruises on her arms that she didn’t remember getting, bruises in the shape of fingers, as if someone had grabbed her. She rubbed furiously at the bruises, wishing she knew what had happened.
Abby had been having blackouts since childhood, finding herself waking up after time passed, with no way of knowing what had occurred in between. It scared her, but she was determined not to tell her parents, not to give her father one more reason to look at her as if he was waiting, waiting for her to admit to doing something wrong.
“Abby?” her mother’s voice called from the floor below her. “Dinner!”
Abby pulled a sweatshirt on and went downstairs, trying to put the bruises and the blackout out of her mind.
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The next morning Abby’s classmates crowded in the doorway of their homeroom, craning their necks to see inside. Abby pushed through the crowd, determined to see what it was they found so interesting. She gasped as her eyes lit on Stephanie, naked and tied to a pole towards the back of the room, the word ‘whore’ carved vertically from her collarbone to her navel. She was crying, her mouth duct taped shut, and her body writhing as she tried to break the bonds that held her there, a spectacle for all to see.
Abby turned and ran down the hall, messenger bag thumping against her legs as she tore to the principal’s office, out of breath and screaming for help. The teachers called an ambulance and forced the students away. Abby sat on the steps to the school and watched as Stephanie was led away, wrapped in the vice principal’s suit jacket. Stephanie paused briefly, turned to stare at Abby. Abby wasn’t sure what Stephanie was trying to convey to her in that cold expression she tossed her way.
Stephanie claimed to not remember anything about her attack, but she refused to see Abby, and one week later had moved away.
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Three years passed, filled with the mysterious disappearances of friends, her grandfather’s continued absence from her life, and missing pets, and recurring blackouts. Her parents kept their distance, never coming too close to her, always watching her, watching her as if waiting for her to slip up and do something wrong.
Abby stood in her bedroom, staring into the corner at an empty bench that had previously housed her stuffed animal collection. They had disappeared, she woke to find them gone, nothing but a bit of white fluff left behind to let her know that they ever existed. The photo of her at nine, sitting beside her grandfather, was in a broken picture frame, the glass cracked and shattered. She didn’t remember that happening either.
The room was white and pink, with a vanity set, and a tall white dresser. Abby’s walls were decorated with floral wallpaper and the odd positive-thinking poster. It was the perfect little-girl’s room, but tonight she was sixteen.
Abby wasn’t a little girl anymore.
Abby wanted to know the truth, she wanted to know what her parents had been hiding from her all of these years, what had happened that week she lost - the first week she ever lost - the one just before the night of howling dogs and their flight from Indiana. It was time she knew why her grandfather was shunning her family, why her parents looked so stricken whenever she brought him up. She needed answers to her questions about what went on that week, why they had watched her so carefully since, why they had to leave their home so quickly. She wanted to know if that week held the answers to everything that had happened since, her blackouts, the way her friends had a habit of turning on her without reason, why she was missing so many pieces of her life. She just needed the truth.
Maybe it was childish and immature but Abby felt that just knowing why this was happening would immediately make it all better. Of course she had never told her parents about the blackouts, never given them that reason to worry and pry and cling to her like glue, hadn’t wanted them to look at her as if something were wrong with her.
Well, anymore than they did now anyway.
But Abby felt like she was losing control, felt her grip on her life slipping. More and more she woke up somewhere, without remembering how she got there, what happened. Two weeks ago she had woken up in a strange car, wearing different clothes, bottles of liquor on the mats, blood streaks on the dashboard, and bloodstains on her hands.
Last week she woke up standing on the front lawn of her old house in Indiana. For a moment she thought she saw a little girl stare out at her from the second story window, her eyes glowing white. She smiled and waved just before Abby blacked out. When she woke again she was back in New York two days later and scrambling for a cover story her parents might believe to explain away her absence. But someone had left them a note, invented the story ahead of time, called them and checked in with them every night. They thought it had been her, but Abby knew better, she never wrote the note even if it was in her handwriting, and she never made the phone calls even if she did find them in her the phone’s history.
“They’ll never tell you the truth,” a light alto voice sighed.
“Who’s there?” Abby demanded, spinning and staring about the room.
“Just your better half,” the woman responded. “You should just keep your mouth shut. It won’t do you any good anyway.”
“What do you mean?” Abby asked. The woman, whoever she was, did not respond. There was no on in the room with her, there never had been. Abby raked her hands through her long blonde hair, then buried her face in them and collapsed to the floor, wondering how far gone she was now. “I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy,” she repeated.
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Abby went out to dinner with her parents for her birthday, tried to ignore the odd glances they shot her way throughout the meal. They know, they know! she thought with growing horror. Once at home again she ate her slice of birthday pie (when did we stop having cake on birthdays anyway? It was after Indiana, it had to be…), and kept her mouth shut, didn’t ask any questions.
Abby trudged back to her bedroom long after her parents had gone to sleep. She sat on the round pink rug beneath her bed, drawing her legs up to her chest. Her mind spun with questions and fears and she wondered if she were going insane, if she would even realize what happened once she was really certifiable. She pulled at the rug with agitation when her hand hit something, a board not quite in place. Ripping the rug back she saw one of the oak boards had been misaligned, was lying partially on the others. She picked it up carefully, revealing a small space beneath it where a black notebook had been inserted. Perplexed, she opened it to the front page where the name “Samm” had been scrawled in angry letters. Flipping it, she found a page fully of text, all written in her handwriting, and read quickly.
In the notebook someone had confessed to awful things, terrible things, the murder of Abby’s kitten Lilly, the terrorizing of her best friend Stephanie, the murder of her lab partner Whitney. The writer had been furious, writing over and over that the people and animals she hurt had deserved what they got, had needed to be punished for hurting Abby. Abby read one entry over and over again, not believing her eyes.
Grandpa, Mrs. Grant, Freckles, all gone, all DEAD. Because of HER. Because of that THING. She made me do those things, she made me KILL them. Lilith, Lilith must PAY. More than anyone, she’s responsible! She made my parents hate me, she killed my grandpa, she caused all of this! She made me into this! I’m so angry, all of the time. It’s all I can ever feel. Abby gets everything else, love, devotion, happiness, serenity. All I have is anger, it’s all I am, it’s the only reason I exist. Abby should never have to feel this way, I’ll keep her from ever feeling this way. I’ll protect her from everything and everyone; I’m the only one who can.
Abby stood, the notebook falling from her shaking hands. She stumbled to the mirror and stared into it, searching, searching for something she couldn’t even put into words. She watched her reflection in the mirror, watched as it suddenly changed. Her own face looked back at her, but it was stronger, harder. “Abby,” the reflection said. Abby raised her hand to her lips, made sure that they had not moved in tandem. The reflection had taken on a life of its own. “You shouldn’t mess around with someone else’s stuff,” she growled. Before Abby could respond, she blacked out.
Part Two
By: Ada C. Eliana
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: Ths is my response to the spn_epificficathon. My prompt was for 'No Rest for the Wicked' How much does the little girl remember of her possession?
This fic is still a little rough around the edges, not quite up to snuff, but I hope you all enjoy it!
Summary: Abigail Fremont's life was completely uprooted the night she woke to find a man standing over her bed with a knife.
Her Better Half
By: Ada C. Eliana
Part I
The family moved quickly, never going back to their old house. Abigail Fremont thought it had to do with the strange man she had seen in her room, the strange man holding a knife (“No sweetheart, he didn’t have a knife! It was so dark you probably thought you saw a knife in his hand, but he didn’t have one, I promise!”), no matter what her mother said, she knew what she saw. Abby and her mother stayed in the bedroom after the man left, huddled on the bed as his feet thudded down the hall. That night there had been barking dogs in the house, she thought one of them might have been her beagle, Freckles, but they had sounded big and scary. Freckles was only little, he was cute and when he barked it wasn’t scary. She heard screams, two men and a woman yelling at each other, there were bangs, and thuds, and cracks, so many scary noises. Then it all went quiet. Later, she didn’t know how much later, her daddy had come into her room, and for a few minutes he looked at her like he didn’t recognize her, like she was something horrible and ugly, but then her mommy said “No, it’s her, it’s our baby!” and after that he was just really happy. They had left all together, right away, not even packing their stuff, just taking off, driving four hours to Aunt Jane’s house. Abby just cried and asked them why they had left Freckles behind, where was he, why wasn’t he coming with them?
Abby’s parents bought a house in Gainsville, New York, and Abby cried herself to sleep every night. She wanted to go back home, to see her friends, say goodbye to her babysitter. She wanted grandpa to visit all of the time like he used to (“Grandpa’s busy and it’s so far away, sweetie. He loves you though, he just can’t come visit.”). She wanted her room and her things, she wanted Freckles back too. To assuage her grief, her parents bought her a kitten, all white with a black spot between her ears. She named the kitten Lilly after her favorite flower.
At first the kitten seemed to like Abby, would curl up on her lap to sleep and purr when she petted her. But after a little while the kitten suddenly changed, would scratch her and hiss at her if she got too close. One morning she woke up on the floor of her bedroom in the middle of the day, not even remembering when she fell asleep, to find Lilly lying on the floor, dead. Abby screamed and cried and reached out to touch the kitten, white fur matted and stained with red blood. There was blood on Abby’s clothes too, and her hands. Next to Lilly she found one of her mommy’s good kitchen knives, all coated in blood. There was movement at the doorway and Abby turned to see her father standing there, frozen, mouth open wide in horror. “Daddy…” Abby cried, but her father backed away, staring. “Daddy, I don’t know what happened… I don’t remember… I was asleep…” They buried Lilly in the backyard and though no one ever mentioned it again, Abby noticed that her father took to watching her carefully, as if trying to figure something out about her.
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Abby’s first crush was a boy named Daniel. They were in the same seventh grade class, Abby sat towards the front and he was in the back. He had dark brown hair and blue eyes, and everyone knew he was the cutest boy in school. At thirteen, Abby was still gawky looking, all long legs and arms, she hadn’t quite grown into her features, her blonde hair was perpetually a mess, and she just lacked that natural grace that some of her classmates seemed to have. Even so, Abby tried in vain to catch his attention, to catch his eye. All through lunch she would stare over at him and wish he would look over at her, just once.
Abby confided in Stephanie, her best friend, that she liked him. Steph suggested she just tell him, but Abby had shaken her head and said, “No… I… I can’t do that. What would I do if he laughed at me, or said he didn’t like me back?”
“If you never take a chance then you’re never going to be with anybody,” Steph responded. Abby just shook her head, how would Stephanie understand? Stephanie was beautiful, prettier now than Abby could ever hope to be. Stephanie just shrugged, pushing a perfectly straight lock of dark hair over her shoulder. “Well if you don’t act soon then somebody else might snatch him up,” she pointed out.
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Two weeks later Stephanie and Daniel were boyfriend and girlfriend. Abby felt anger and jealousy the likes of which she had never experienced before. How dare Stephanie do that to her? How dare she start dating the boy Abby liked without even telling her about it? How dare she let Abby find out from Emma Jacobson, that snobby girl who thought she was better than everyone else? Stephanie was supposed to be her friend, but she had betrayed her.
“How could you do this to me?” Abby yelled. She had met up with Stephanie after school, cornered her in the hallway as everyone else headed out to the buses.
“Do what?” Stephanie responded angrily.
Abby pushed her against the wall. “You know what! You know how I feel about Daniel!”
“Yeah and I also know that you would never do anything about it,” Stephanie said, voice low. She pushed Abby off of her as the girl’s eyes filled with tears.
“I thought you were my friend,” Abby cried.
“Oh come on Abby, this isn’t a big deal.”
“Not a big deal? Not a big deal!” Abby protested, suddenly angry, so angry. She felt something rise inside of her, filled with malice. Red filled her vision and then everything went dark.
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When Abby woke up she was lying in her bed at home. She tried to remember what happened, how she had gotten there, but she was coming up blank. She couldn’t remember anything past shouting at Stephanie. She couldn’t even remember how that argument ended or what happened between them. She just didn’t remember. There were bruises on her arms that she didn’t remember getting, bruises in the shape of fingers, as if someone had grabbed her. She rubbed furiously at the bruises, wishing she knew what had happened.
Abby had been having blackouts since childhood, finding herself waking up after time passed, with no way of knowing what had occurred in between. It scared her, but she was determined not to tell her parents, not to give her father one more reason to look at her as if he was waiting, waiting for her to admit to doing something wrong.
“Abby?” her mother’s voice called from the floor below her. “Dinner!”
Abby pulled a sweatshirt on and went downstairs, trying to put the bruises and the blackout out of her mind.
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The next morning Abby’s classmates crowded in the doorway of their homeroom, craning their necks to see inside. Abby pushed through the crowd, determined to see what it was they found so interesting. She gasped as her eyes lit on Stephanie, naked and tied to a pole towards the back of the room, the word ‘whore’ carved vertically from her collarbone to her navel. She was crying, her mouth duct taped shut, and her body writhing as she tried to break the bonds that held her there, a spectacle for all to see.
Abby turned and ran down the hall, messenger bag thumping against her legs as she tore to the principal’s office, out of breath and screaming for help. The teachers called an ambulance and forced the students away. Abby sat on the steps to the school and watched as Stephanie was led away, wrapped in the vice principal’s suit jacket. Stephanie paused briefly, turned to stare at Abby. Abby wasn’t sure what Stephanie was trying to convey to her in that cold expression she tossed her way.
Stephanie claimed to not remember anything about her attack, but she refused to see Abby, and one week later had moved away.
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Three years passed, filled with the mysterious disappearances of friends, her grandfather’s continued absence from her life, and missing pets, and recurring blackouts. Her parents kept their distance, never coming too close to her, always watching her, watching her as if waiting for her to slip up and do something wrong.
Abby stood in her bedroom, staring into the corner at an empty bench that had previously housed her stuffed animal collection. They had disappeared, she woke to find them gone, nothing but a bit of white fluff left behind to let her know that they ever existed. The photo of her at nine, sitting beside her grandfather, was in a broken picture frame, the glass cracked and shattered. She didn’t remember that happening either.
The room was white and pink, with a vanity set, and a tall white dresser. Abby’s walls were decorated with floral wallpaper and the odd positive-thinking poster. It was the perfect little-girl’s room, but tonight she was sixteen.
Abby wasn’t a little girl anymore.
Abby wanted to know the truth, she wanted to know what her parents had been hiding from her all of these years, what had happened that week she lost - the first week she ever lost - the one just before the night of howling dogs and their flight from Indiana. It was time she knew why her grandfather was shunning her family, why her parents looked so stricken whenever she brought him up. She needed answers to her questions about what went on that week, why they had watched her so carefully since, why they had to leave their home so quickly. She wanted to know if that week held the answers to everything that had happened since, her blackouts, the way her friends had a habit of turning on her without reason, why she was missing so many pieces of her life. She just needed the truth.
Maybe it was childish and immature but Abby felt that just knowing why this was happening would immediately make it all better. Of course she had never told her parents about the blackouts, never given them that reason to worry and pry and cling to her like glue, hadn’t wanted them to look at her as if something were wrong with her.
Well, anymore than they did now anyway.
But Abby felt like she was losing control, felt her grip on her life slipping. More and more she woke up somewhere, without remembering how she got there, what happened. Two weeks ago she had woken up in a strange car, wearing different clothes, bottles of liquor on the mats, blood streaks on the dashboard, and bloodstains on her hands.
Last week she woke up standing on the front lawn of her old house in Indiana. For a moment she thought she saw a little girl stare out at her from the second story window, her eyes glowing white. She smiled and waved just before Abby blacked out. When she woke again she was back in New York two days later and scrambling for a cover story her parents might believe to explain away her absence. But someone had left them a note, invented the story ahead of time, called them and checked in with them every night. They thought it had been her, but Abby knew better, she never wrote the note even if it was in her handwriting, and she never made the phone calls even if she did find them in her the phone’s history.
“They’ll never tell you the truth,” a light alto voice sighed.
“Who’s there?” Abby demanded, spinning and staring about the room.
“Just your better half,” the woman responded. “You should just keep your mouth shut. It won’t do you any good anyway.”
“What do you mean?” Abby asked. The woman, whoever she was, did not respond. There was no on in the room with her, there never had been. Abby raked her hands through her long blonde hair, then buried her face in them and collapsed to the floor, wondering how far gone she was now. “I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy,” she repeated.
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Abby went out to dinner with her parents for her birthday, tried to ignore the odd glances they shot her way throughout the meal. They know, they know! she thought with growing horror. Once at home again she ate her slice of birthday pie (when did we stop having cake on birthdays anyway? It was after Indiana, it had to be…), and kept her mouth shut, didn’t ask any questions.
Abby trudged back to her bedroom long after her parents had gone to sleep. She sat on the round pink rug beneath her bed, drawing her legs up to her chest. Her mind spun with questions and fears and she wondered if she were going insane, if she would even realize what happened once she was really certifiable. She pulled at the rug with agitation when her hand hit something, a board not quite in place. Ripping the rug back she saw one of the oak boards had been misaligned, was lying partially on the others. She picked it up carefully, revealing a small space beneath it where a black notebook had been inserted. Perplexed, she opened it to the front page where the name “Samm” had been scrawled in angry letters. Flipping it, she found a page fully of text, all written in her handwriting, and read quickly.
In the notebook someone had confessed to awful things, terrible things, the murder of Abby’s kitten Lilly, the terrorizing of her best friend Stephanie, the murder of her lab partner Whitney. The writer had been furious, writing over and over that the people and animals she hurt had deserved what they got, had needed to be punished for hurting Abby. Abby read one entry over and over again, not believing her eyes.
Grandpa, Mrs. Grant, Freckles, all gone, all DEAD. Because of HER. Because of that THING. She made me do those things, she made me KILL them. Lilith, Lilith must PAY. More than anyone, she’s responsible! She made my parents hate me, she killed my grandpa, she caused all of this! She made me into this! I’m so angry, all of the time. It’s all I can ever feel. Abby gets everything else, love, devotion, happiness, serenity. All I have is anger, it’s all I am, it’s the only reason I exist. Abby should never have to feel this way, I’ll keep her from ever feeling this way. I’ll protect her from everything and everyone; I’m the only one who can.
Abby stood, the notebook falling from her shaking hands. She stumbled to the mirror and stared into it, searching, searching for something she couldn’t even put into words. She watched her reflection in the mirror, watched as it suddenly changed. Her own face looked back at her, but it was stronger, harder. “Abby,” the reflection said. Abby raised her hand to her lips, made sure that they had not moved in tandem. The reflection had taken on a life of its own. “You shouldn’t mess around with someone else’s stuff,” she growled. Before Abby could respond, she blacked out.
Part Two