Vengeance

4- Freefall

Tommy felt panic rise inside him, he tried his best to suppress it. All he could hear was the whooshing of air past his ears as he plummeted towards the ground.
He scrunched his eyes up and relaxed his body, preparing to hit the ground.

Preparing for it to all be over.

All the pain, gone.

Tommy felt a sharp pain hit his left shoulder.

He felt himself being thrown to the right from the force of impact with whatever had hit him.
He opened his eyes in confusion and fear before falling through a leafy canopy, hitting multiple branches before he finally landed in a pond.

He had narrowly made it in to the water. Tommy stared at the patch of grass to the left of him. That should've been where he had landed.

Tommy brought his hands out of the water and pulled his knees up to his chest. The adrenaline had begun to kick in. The blonde begun shaking, sat in a pond, covered in cuts and bruises as the night sky above and a stranger in the distance watched on.

The boy brought his hands up to his head and clutched his dirty blonde locks as he shook. Silent tears dripped down his cheeks and fell on to his tattered shirt that had begun taking in water from the pond, chilling the boy's slim body.

"Why the hell am I alive?" The boy whispered to himself, feeling the cold more so as the adrenaline began to subside.

The boy clutched his forehead in shock.

"Am I even alive?" He questioned.

He looked down to the water, and in the slightest bit of moonlight saw his raggedy reflection staring back at him as if he had seen a ghost.

Out of rage, Tommy hit the reflection in the water, sending out ripples in the still pond.
He let out a frustrated wail.

"Absolutely useless." He muttered to himself through gritted teeth.

The boy stood up and began walking. He thumped out each step, his confusion guiding him nowhere. He just walked.

The sun was rising in the distance. It's pleasant orange hue tainted the sky with day. Tommy walked. He had been at it for hours. He couldn't tell how long or how far he had been walking for, he didn't care any more. He had been dead to his friends for a long time but now, he was dead to himself.

Snow fluttered down around the blonde, his damp shirt catching a chill as he shivered his way forwards. A little white tuft of frost landed on Tommy's hair as he trudged on in his tattered shirt. He felt the cold to be more welcoming than whatever remained for him at Logstedshire.

Tommy's eyes were barely open, he couldn't tell when he had last slept and the snow made it hard to see. There was no use in even trying, everything in front of him was shrouded in a white veil. Tommy felt his breath catch in his throat before exhaling another puff of steam.

Exhaustion overtook him, he fell to the ground. Tommy barely managed to bring his knees to his chest as he lay in the snow, a vulnerable child, lost and alone in the world.

He barely managed to lift his head as he heard footsteps crunching towards him.

Black boots.