Welcome to Gaia! ::

She was dreaming. At least, she thought she was. The world was monochrome, only one thing in color. Her. And the weirdest part was that she wasn't seeing things from her point of view. Jada was watching herself, registering everything like it was a story, and she was the protagonist and antagonist, all at once. She was watching a movie from many places at once. Jada was the observer. Jada was Norman Bates (she knew he was. Stalking the her that wasn't her, with his steely eyes.) At the same time, Jada was Mary Crane.

It was cold. Scylla pulled the shawl she'd taken from home closer around her shoulders, wishing not for the first time that she had something warm enough to cover her legs. Well, she supposed that she could have gotten some leg-warmers. But they just wouldn't look right with the outfit. Ah, vanity! Her blue heels clicked along the cracked sidewalk, brushing against weeds that cracked as she touched them. Late at night everything was gray and dark. Even the street lights were darker than normal, dim with the rains. The air was something pure. Fresh rains had washed away the impurity, and the breeze that rustled her skirt was crisp. She took in a deep breath, slowly, feeling how invigorating it was. How damp the air was. The night smelled like jasmine; It was peaceful. Silent. Not even a hoot from an owl on the air, or a squeal from a mouse. There was only the rustling of the leaves in the wind. The breeze blew, and a strand of hair caressed her cheek like loving fingers, wrapping around her slender neck.

In the darkness, light eyes watched her. Nostrils flared, inhaling her scent; sandalwood from her perfume, the light taste of vanilla from the shampoo she'd washed her hair with earlier that morning. There was a hint of cinnamon of the incense she burned in her room to help herself relax. Nostrils flared with something unreadable, blood heated. She kept moving, and he kept following.

Her hair was piled up atop her head; exposing the back of her pale neck, dark with little streaks of ebony. It was like watching a moving piece of art. And he loved making art. Each base that he'd chosen, everywhere he had been, had been as beautiful as she was when it started, as marble-skinned and impeccable. He had made sure to see every emotion cross that face, the twist of her lips, the way her eyes would move at a certain type of stimuli. He'd examined others, but none of them had the same desperation hidden in their depths. None of them had the spark he was looking for in the canvas which would become his art. She didn't know she had it. If his prey ever knew, if they ever guessed, it ruined the final part of his masterpiece. The final expression. The one that he sculpted with tender, caring hands as they screamed and pleaded. It was the ultimate expression as an artist, the ultimate way he could display his love for his model and his clay. She passed within inches of his hands. He reached out, stole away her shawl, releasing it into the wind. She turned, gasping; did she honestly think it was her own weakness that had relaxed her grasp? Couldn't she feel the warmth of his need, hear the beating of his heart as it pounded for her?

His final Galatea. The one he would go into eternity with.

He'd said it before, of course. Each was beautiful in her own way, each had her own charm in the expression she gave to him. Each piece of canvas had its own beauty. Each piece of canvas had its own flaws. But he'd always found another expression to twist out of someone else, another canvas to moan his name in the dark and weep their diamond tears while he carved and sculpted them into the shapes he wanted. Scylla's heels clacked against the concrete, the black waves of hair flying behind her as she chased the piece of white material that had covered her shoulders. He followed, silent as the wind, slipping through the trees as a ghost, watching. Annoyance rather than panic gleamed in her eyes when she realized she wouldn't, she couldn't, catch the silken scrap. She stopped, curls bouncing into her back and he paused, still as a predator, watching her chest heave, cheeks glowing with blood. Cheeks glowing with the most precious paint he dreamed of.

Scene shift.

She turned, sighing, her shoulders falling. He rustled in the trees. He watched her stiffen, look into the darkness as though she could see him. She shook her head, those brilliant stone-colored eyes (they would glaze over as she cooled, and become frozen at a slightly dimmer color, which is why the color needed to be so brilliant for his canvases) closing briefly before she turned back in the direction she had come from. Moved back along the tree line, his eyes on her.

He whispered her name into the wind, and she never heard it.

How did he know that this woman was going to be his masterpiece? He'd been stalking the young woman for a long time, examining her for suitability. He'd never dreamed he would find her to be so. It hadn't been until that day in the bookstore that he'd known her canvas was ripe. He would have taken her that day, if it weren't for the intervention of two male annoyances and the mall police.

When would be the right moment? Would it be tonight? Would it be another night?

It wasn't until she was leaving the tree line, passing the park, and gave a soft, breathy sigh of ennui that he knew tonight was the night he would create her masterpiece. He let her pass the corner of a building. No one was looking at the glory that had passed them on the streets. See, that was what happened. Bare canvas went unappreciated, and then he created his art, and everyone realized. The red, shimmering streaks of dye that flowed in her veins would paint her, and him, and the concrete base of her statue. From his coat he pulled out a white rag and a clear bottle.

She disappeared form his sight and he moved. He was fast, quick, coming up behind the unsuspecting canvas, His hand fisted in her hair, pulled her head backward, the other hand which was full of his handkerchief covering her mouth and nose. She struggled, writhing in his arms, head pulling free. Her lips opened, as though she were going to scream, and he pressed the rag between her lips, into her warm mouth. He punched her roughly in the belly, where it would not mar his canvas, and watched her world go dark.

Scene shift.

The world smelled like pine needles. The ground was wet and cold against her back. She shuddered, shook; She couldn't breathe through her mouth. Her body arched up unbound from the ground and Scylla realized she was alone. At least visibly so. Her mouth tasted like cotton and poison (was this the taste of chloroform?), and she pulled out the handkerchief, scowling at it. It was dirty. Her shawl was draped across a stump, laid out over a blanket like some kind of a trophy. She pushed herself to her feet, stumbling towards the shawl. There was a white blanket. A sheet pure and crisp. She stepped around it. “It is your shroud.” the voice sent shivers down her spine. She started to spin, to try and find the person who had said it. “White is your best color. I had to put it there so it wouldn't get dirty while I worked.” Warm hands wrapped around her waist, warm lips pressed to the back of her neck, tenderly settling on her hips, holding her still so that she could not turn. “You are a perfect canvas. Flawless. Unfissured. Nothing hard about you anywhere, nothing toned. Nothing athletic to ruin the softness.” She shuddered. Norman's voice continued. “Like unrisen dough.”

“That isn't flattering.” she snapped.

From an observer's standpoint, Jada wondered how she was keeping her composure. Bile rose in her throat; something told her what was to come. “We are beyond flattery, my Galatea.” his teeth nipped into her ear. Lips moved down her neck, scraping the sensitized flesh. And then he started. His hand dug itself into the warm cavity of her chest, grasping at something Jada did not want to think about, gripping it in his hand.

Jada started to scream but she couldn't. Her hand clutched her chest, as though she could keep the other her complete and whole.

On the forest floor, Scylla started to scream, but she couldn't. She who was Scylla faded away, leaving Jada with unbound hair. Leaving his canvas draped in the white gauze she slept in. She was gasping for breath, and he withdrew his empty hand, turning her to face him. Tenderly, he laid her down on the white blanket. “Paint for me.” Norman whispered into her ear.

She was going into shock. He wasn't surprised. They always did, far too quickly; it was while they were still warm he could perform his form sculpting. He draped her, he brutalized her. Listened to her ragged symphony of breath, judging the amount of time he had left by the way she exhaled. She was a work of art, and he worshiped her. He whispered to her as she turned pale and cold as stone, telling her of the immortality he was giving her. Sharing with her every step of his art, while the light faded from violet eyes. When she was at last perfect, he reached into her chest, and pulled out her heart. It glowed; logically, Jada recognized it as a starseed.

It would be his forever. No one else would be able to have it, when it was inside him. The stalker pressed his lips to her, smearing his lips along the red paint. The white scarf was draped over her face. He spread out her hair, and spread a second blanket over her, covering every inch of her so that the wind could not blow even a single strand out of place. Next to her covered canvas, he took her into himself, and joined her in eternity.

Scene shift.

Jada woke up screaming, shrieking, as nurses worked around her. One of them was blonde and another had hair like blood, hair that dripped out of her cap and made Jada arch off the gurney, trying to get away. “Sedate her!” a doctor snarled. He was old, with grey in his hair and eyes that said the sight of her did not put him off. Jada had a needle in her hand, taped down, and she instinctively went to rip it out, to tear it out. The young woman tried to rip it out of her veins, blindly fighting an enemy she couldn't see. She was...

Breathing.

Her chest hurt. Her back was on fire, and she writhed, shrieking. It didn't qualify as a scream anymore. The sound was like a banshee, wailing. Jada thought she saw a nurse inject something into her iv while two other nurses forced her to be still. And then everything started to dull, almost immediately. She wanted to fight. It hurt. Her body was betraying her. They rolled her onto her side, babbling something that started to blur into itself. Her eyelids felt heavy.

She slipped back into dreamland.

Scene shift.

The first time that Jada was in love, she happened to have been in love with a man almost twice her age. She was just sixteen. He was thirty. She realized it for the first time when he was reading to Zora and Kayley. Everything about Geoffrey was dramatic. “'Who?' he repeated angrily. 'Why, he, the man who hides behind that hideous mask of death!...The evil genius of the churchyard at Perros!...Red Death!...In a word, madam, your friend... your Angel of Music!...But I shall snatch off his mask, as I shall snatch off my own; and, this time, we shall look each other in the face, he and I, with no veil and no lies between us; and I shall know whom you love and who loves you!'” the older man was stalking across the library floor, hands waving.

The three girls were by this point sitting on the window sill, listening to him speak. Le Fantôme de l'Opéra. Kayley, only 11 years old, was sniffling. Zora was letting her feet kick, pondering. Geoffrey was single and married to his work, he was also desperately poor and in love with his books. He'd been her tutor since she was twelve, and she'd adored him even then. If her family found out the way she felt, or if she ever acted on her childlike infatuation her mother would have a cow. Her father would fire him and probably ruin him. It had been everything that made him special to her. His lips when they curved into a smile, his hands gesturing as he spoke of the books, his smile when she gave him an answer he approved of. The way he would wake her gently in the mornings if she fell asleep in the library, pushing her off to her bedroom.

He never treated her like a child, she was a young woman. She was his lady.

It had been Geoffrey that taught her to adore books, to worship the pages. Books, he'd explained, were entire worlds contained in a small volume of words. If you loved books, they would love you back. They would never let you down, and they were the most faithful lovers a person could have. Men and women will betray you, Jada. he'd murmured in her ear at thirteen. You'll fight with a living creature, like the way your parents fight. But if you don't let a person close enough to take your heart away, and you remember that all you need is a book, then you'll never bleed.

You'll never hurt.

It had been a lie. Geoffrey had been one of the coma victims when things first started going wrong. His parents had removed him from life support, and he had slipped into the dark night.

“We are the hollow men. We are the stuffed men.” she'd read at his funeral. “Shape without form, shade without color, paralyzed force, gesture without motion...” T. S. Eliot. This was his favorite poem. “Between the idea and the reality, Between the motion and the act... Between the conception and the creation, Between the emotion and the response... Between the desire and the spasm, between the potency and the existence, Between the essence and the descent… ” she swallowed. “This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.”

He'd been placed under the ground without a whimper from anyone but herself. All dry eyes but hers. No one else had loved him. No one else had known him. His own parents had elected to not even attend his funeral, leaving him to go into the darkness alone. But not Jada. She'd slipped a bit of hyacinth and a bit of lilac in the coffin with him as she pressed her lips to his cold forehead. Constancy, and First Love.

It had been a beautiful day when he was laid in the coffin.

To this day, sometimes she hated beautiful days.

She was in the hospital anyway. It was what she'd insisted to the nurse. She was in the hospital, and she wanted to see her. Jada glared at the pretty blonde nurse who was 'in charge' of her care. She wanted to see Vivian. “Bring me my wheelchair.” such an imperious tone!

“I have to get permission fro-”

“Bring. Me. My. Wheelchair.”

Jada decided it was guilt that was taking her to see Vivian this particular day. Almost two months since the other girl had come here, slipped in under the belief that she'd been hit by a car. Two months, and every time Jada had come to this hospital, it was for someone else. Only once had she seen her friend, lying so still. Only once before she'd run away, inwardly screaming, hating the fact that she had escaped that night. That she was still here. This wasn't the first time that Jada had wanted to go back to see Vivian, but this was the first time that she had no excuses.

“I will not.” the nurse insisted. “Not without a doctor to auth-”

“Let her go.” An old woman's voice from the door, tired. Jada glanced over to see her mother and Doctor A stepping in the door, her mother's arms filled with more papers. What was eerie to Jada was that it was her mother who had said the words. Szelem looked drawn, tired. “I need some time to set some things out, anyways.” The nurse opened her mouth, to protest one more time. “I said to get my daughter her damn wheelchair and let her go.” Szelem sat down on the couch, and Dr. A pressed a hand to her forehead.

The nurse scurried.

Jada pushed out of her bed, carefully unhooking all the lines and tubes, moving over to sit next to her mother. “Not too close, sweetie.” the doctor smiled at her. “Your mother has been neglecting her vitamin C to get everything finalized for the debut.”

“Oh, Mother.” a sigh of exasperation and Szelem laughed. “It is only a dance, Mother.”

“Not only a dance.” the older woman corrected. “This is your opportunity. In all the social circles-”

“I know. I have heard all the stories of what the debut meant in your day.”

“In mine too.” Doctor Anberlin laughed. “I met my husband at my debut. Forty years we were married.” she smiled, reaching into her medical bag and pulling out a small bottle of pills. “Forty wonderful years. He supported me in everything. My career, my children. My money was my own, set aside for when something happened. I was eighteen when we met. Twenty when we finally married. He was thirty years old. Ten years my senior.” the older woman clucked.

“Well, I'll not be finding my husband at my debut.” Jada said, looking amused. “Don't you know? I'm defiant, insisting on selecting my own husband.”

“A mother's matchmaking is never done.” Szelem blew her daughter off. “I have several gentlemen who have RSVP'd who are quite interested in your talents, Jada.”

“My talents, or my face?”

“Certainly not your back.” The air went still as none of the women in the room dared to breathe, the Chamberlyn women just staring at each other for a moment. Jada's face was pale enough to make the doctor actually stand for a moment, to reach out for her, before the door to the room opened back up and the nurse was there, wheelchair in hand. Ah, timing. Jada seated herself in the chair. “Enjoy your little visit.” Szelem said, and lifted back up her papers. “Make no plans for tomorrow, we have more decisions to make. Less than two weeks to the ball.”

“Yes ma'am.” Jada's face was still pale, but when the nurse wheeled her out of the room, her face twisted briefly, shoulders giving a shudder. Women didn't cry in public. Ladies, at least.

“If you have to cry, you never make a display of it. Crying is a cheap tactic.” Her father's voice, his hand stroking over her back. “You are my beautiful big girl. Big girls don't cry.”

“The Four Tops.” Jada had told him, giving her father a weepy smile. The older man had beamed at her, tugging on one black curl. “Right?”

“Right.” Michael had murmured, pulling her close. “Now, go say hi to your public, sweetheart.” He brushed link off the hem of her black dress. “For all that it is a funeral, you're the star of this show.” Sole inheritor to every penny that Lucian Montgomery had made in his life. One last strike at the daughter who had so disappointed him.

Jada glanced up as the nurse asked her another question. “I'm sorry, would you please repeat the question?”

“What is your little friends name?”

Jada turned her head, voice like ice. “My 'little friend' is Vivian Rothson.” she said finally. “And I'd appreciate you to not take such a snide tone with me, Nurse...” she peered at the nametag, “Nurse Nichols.” The older woman made a little noise, pushing Jada into the coma ward.

So much stillness. The only sound was the sound of beeping, with the occasional hushed whisper as people spoke to their loved ones. Jada ached to know: How many of these people were never going to wake up? How many had lost their starseeds to the Negaverse, and were being prayed over by loved ones who could never know what had been lost? At last Jada was pushed to a bedside, and 'parked.' “Is this your girl?” the nurse asked, glancing at a chart on the end of the bed. It was a room, with six people in there. A larger room, yes, separated by curtains, but six people? “Vivian Rothson, admitted after being hit by a car?”

After being hit by a giant ******** teddy bear? “This is her.” Jada said, and pushed out of her wheelchair to look down at her friend. One of the few she knew to still have her starseed. “Hi, Viv.” she murmured, and brushed a lock of red-rooted platinum hair back from the pale face. Vivian's chest rose and fell. “Man, do I have a lot to catch you up on.” And Jada started talking as the nurse closed the door, closing Jada in a room with six corpse-still people. She spoke of the people she had met. Spoke of the plans being made for her debut, and how Vivian would have loved it. Spoke of how sorry she was that she hadn't been able to help her, emptying her chest of her regrets. Told Vivi of Audrey, Elke and Fallon, Marlo and Elzo, Andrew, Cassius and Dylan. Things were left out, certainly. Nothing was mentioned of starseeds and Princesses. Handsome Princes were mentioned, but Jada knew so many. She told Vivian of her terror, the strange man who stalked her.

Finally Jada pushed off Vivian's bed, moving to another bed. “Mary.” She leaned down, clenched the girl's hand in her own. She didn't know her, but looking at the top of the chart on the end of her bed had told her the girl's name. She sat there for a few moments, quiet. Who knew how long it had been since anyone in this ward had someone to talk to them? These women were the mostly-forgotten. The ones who had been given up on by almost everyone, but who were lucky enough to have one person unwilling to pull the plug.

“Caroline.” The next girl was also given a few minutes, just soft whispering in her ear. After all, they said that if you spoke to a person in a coma, maybe they would hear it. “Jane. Elizabeth.” her hands were warmer than their, than all of theirs. She flexed their fingers, rubbed warmth into the emaciated, unused limbs. Some of them had been in here for... so long. And while Mary was an older woman, most of the others were young. She stroked her hands through matted hair, adjusted little things about their still bodies to make them more comfortable. Or what looked more comfortable. “Landscape?” her voice was amused. Then she saw the scratches on the chart, that no one had bothered to reprint. “Ah, Laney.” Like the others, the white-haired girl had her time. “I can't imagine a name like Landscape.” Jada made a face as she stroked blood into the small fingers.

No one of the strangers got any more time than the others. Each of them given warmed hands and hair detangled as best she could, each of them with soft words in their ear. Each of them told, right before she stood up and moved to the next girl: “Don't give up. Someone is waiting for you.” The fact that each of them was still alive meant someone was waiting for them. That someone loved them, and that they weren't forgotten. Finally she moved back to Vivian. Sat down on her bed, briefly, careful not to squish any tubes, and leaned down to give the girl a shaky hug. “I'll be back.” she promised. “I can promise that.”

She moved back to her wheelchair, sat down in it. “I'll be back and visit all of you.” she promised the quiet room. Her stomach knotted. “I promise.” she wheeled to the door, tugging it open with difficulty. A nurse caught her trying to get out and clucked at her, a disapproving little noise.

When Jada made it back to her room, her mother was gone, a small scrapbook of ideas sitting by her bedside.