(no subject)
It was night when it happened. In a couple of years, Cassie would learn that it was always night when terrible things occured, that the darkness concealed the people who liked to do their worst to others. She was eleven when her life changed, when her family was taken away. The night had started with her mother reading Where the Wild Things Are, despite her protests that she was too old to have to listen to a stupid kid's book. She had been tucked in, kissed goodnight, and it felt that she had barely slipped into the lucid state between alertness and drowsiness that she was torn out of her bed and thrown onto the floor. It wasn't until she had been shoved under her bed by a pair of strong hands and she saw the ends of her comforter pulled down to block out what little light there had been that she realized her parents were in her room and the had made her bed without her in it. She was confused, jolted into a panicked state of alertness that left her wondering if maybe it was all a dream.
But then there was the sound of glass shattering, and the scream her mother gave out caused her to be too worried to open her mouth and let out one of her own. All she could hear after that were loud foosteps, and she pressed her ear to the carpet, trying to hear what was going on down below. She wanted to figure out who was in her house, so she could reassure her parents that everything was going to be okay. But everything wasn't going to be okay, and she realized that when her door was ripped off the hinges, and there were gunshots. She covered her ears, eyes squeezed closed tight, and she didn't dare open them until everything was silent. She shifted just enough to peek her head out from under the comforter, and was greeted with the pale and bloody face of her father, eyes opened wide in shock and mouth hung open in a scream he never got to release.
She couldn't breathe, couldn't think, could only hear the sound of her own heartbeat in her head. Frozen in place, the look on her father's face was burned into her memory, and the sting of it was so strong that she didn't hear her mother's screams until they were coming from downstairs. It was only then that she scurried out from under the bed, and she pushed herself up to stand. She took off running, sliding over the book that her mother had tried to read to her earlier. Somehow it had ended up on the floor, and Cassie briefly wondered why, and she glanced back at it, even as she ran as fast as she could out of her room and over to the stairs.
"Mom!" She cried out, taking the steps two or three at a time. "Mom!"
She heard her mother shouting her name, and Cassie forced her legs to move even faster. She reached the foyer of the house just as the Division agents were heading through the front door, and in a desperate attempt to cling hold of her remaining parent, she leapt forward with her hands outstretched. She only grasped hold of the end of her mother's robe before she was pulled off by someone, and she babbled off pleas mixed in with sobs. She didn't want to be left behind, not with her father's body, she'd never been alone before. Just let her go with her mother, and he'd behave. But her only response was the end of a shotgun hit to her forehead, and she slumped to the ground, left alone with the body in the house.
That was two years ago, two years filled with nightmares and terrible things that were actually worse than the loss of her parents. Nothing would ever hurt as badly as that night, but there were things that had actually been far more terrible to see and experience. She had seen the worst in people during those two years, but she had also met someone who had helped her see the best. But now even Nick was gone, off to save someone new, and Cassie was left alone to her own devices. With no new leads on how to get to her mother, and no ability to do it on her own, she was utterly stuck. She despised that, as it led to nights like the one she was currently experiencing, one where she was leaning up against the brick wall of some abandoned building in an alley, a glass bottle positioned up against her lips. The taste of vodka was something she was familiar with now, something she knew to drink slowly. Drink enough and her visions would become lucid, but drink too much and she would be able to slip into a state of blissful ignorance of the world around her.
Tonight was one of the nights where ignorance was preferred to the prostitutes and drug dealers around her, and she opened her mouth to allow more of the burning liquid inside. It stung as it went down, caused her to shiver as it always did, but the more that she drank, the less she remembered. And on nights like this, she honestly preferred to not remember anything at all.