The Roof of the Dorms, Thursday Evening

[dressedinblood]

Today was April the twenty-sixth.

It didn't mean anything to most people. It was a Thursday, a few days before graduation. A day for packing, maybe, or catching up with people you wouldn't see again for at least the summer. Anna didn't know exactly what everyone else was doing. She hadn't really noticed.

Because for Anna, April the twenty-sixth was the day she had died.

She sat on the roof, on the ledge, her feet dangling over six stories of nothing, as she had all day, and she remembered the things she hadn't been able to remember for so many years, things she almost wished she didn't remember now.

"I'm going to the dance. And I am not coming home."

"Elias, take my daughter upstairs and get her out of this dress...You will not leave this house! You will never, never leave this house!"

She remembered struggling, smashing the pitcher against Elias' head, remembered being pinned and fighting to get free--of him, of the house, of her mother, of everything--and then...and then her mother came out of the kitchen with the knife.

"Father Hiisi, hear me, I come before you low and humble. Take this blood, take this power. Keep my daughter in this house. Feed her on suffering, blood, and death...Now you'll never leave my house."

And she hadn't. Not until Cas came. And now she was pretty sure the house was gone, and she was here, but she was still trapped and she was still dead, and today she just had to wonder how much it mattered.

(Open emo roof is open! And emo! Events under the cut taken and paraphrased from Anna Dressed in Blood. If you are remembering my original infopost for Anna and thinking this isn't right, you are correct! I had originally given her a deathday in February, but I moved it because I came to my senses and realized she wouldn't have been walking to a school dance in a thin cotton dress in Toronto in February.))

Comments

[abitlowkey]

"Oh, are you in a mood?" That wasn't exactly the polite way to ask, Loki.

The roof, he'd found, was the place where people came to brood.

[dressedinblood]

Anna turned toward him. What he could see of her face through the inky curtain of her hair was traced with black veins, her eyes filled with dirty water. Then she blinked and looked like a girl again, if one ignored the stain of blood around her dress, soaking into the stones of the building and disappearing within moments.

...yeah. It was not a good day.

"A mood?" she repeated.

[abitlowkey]

"You're a bit bloody," he remarked, not all that perturbed by the situation. Which could be bravery or stupidity.

Or, you know, being Loki.

[dressedinblood]

Anna looked down at her dress, which was white now, and watched dispassionately as the last of the blood from before faded into the stone. "Not any more," she pointed out. "Or maybe always."

[abitlowkey]

He squinted at her for a moment longer before skipping making his way over to the edge to look down. "I have heard the roof is only for those in a mood."

[dressedinblood]

"Are you in a mood?" Anna asked.

Of course, it was also possible she was projecting dark energy for miles and he was reacting to that, but it didn't occur to her at the moment.

[abitlowkey]

"Oh no, simply without something to occupy my time." Which was a dangerous thing.

[dressedinblood]

Anna stared at him for a moment before asking, a hint of suspicion creeping into her voice, "Then why did you come to a place that's supposedly only for people 'in a mood?'"

[abitlowkey]

"It's interesting?"

[dressedinblood]

Anna just stared at him, her expression suggesting it was a roof.

After a moment, she said, almost reluctant, "I suppose there's the view." Not that she'd really noticed today.

[abitlowkey]

"Subpar," he admitted, flopping down to sit on the edge of the roof, feet over the side and kicking like a child's. "I have seen places that would put all of Midgard to shame."

In books, mostly. But still.

[dressedinblood]

"I mostly saw the inside of my house for fifty-three years. Well. Fifty-four now," she corrected herself.

[abitlowkey]

"And now you are here," Loki replied. "Perhaps you should travel. Can you travel?"

[dressedinblood]

Anna shook her head, her hair moving more like reeds through water than proper hair. "I can't leave the island. Except to go to that other island where they sell furniture."

[abitlowkey]

Loki hummed, watching the line off in the distance where water began. "Then you should find a way to go as you please. No one should be forced to stay in place."

He could always look into it. And, you know, be owed a favor.

[dressedinblood]

"I've tried," Anna said. "The island doesn't seem to want to let me go."

Ha. Anna wasn't born yesterday. Unless yesterday was in 1941 for you. That was always possible, here.