Freefall | Eren x OC *CURRENTLY BEING RE-EDITED*

Chapter 07: Dance in the Dark

In her dreams, she can feel the ground rumble beneath her feet. She sees lightning, watches an ominous thick reddish cloud of steam and unbearable heat begin to spread across the sky above her head. There's an intricate key dangling in the air, a baby's scream ringing in her ear and the sound and feel of waves crashing against her again and again. A soft kiss, hands intwining, a colossal foot pressing into the earth. A blazing bright sunset burns in the background of a single tree on top of a hill. Figures of people flash across her mind again and again; the white bird watches her once more as it stands on the shoulder of a women Rose can't make out. Finally, there's flash of violet eyes staring into her own azure eyes.

"Nine months... I'll see you again...Rose..."

Rose gasps as she wakes, panting heavily as she stares at the staccato ceiling above her head. She looks around her bedroom, flooded with morning light as her alarm wakes her up at exactly 7:00 on July 26th, 2023. It's official; she's 30 years old.

She raises a hand to the pounding heart beating rapidly in her chest. She takes deep breaths, in and out, in and out again.

It was just a dream... it was only a dream...

Once her breathing settles, she blinks in brief recognition; oh god, she's 30. She quickly raises her hand and gazes at it through sleepy eyes, half expecting wrinkles to have formed overnight. Of course, they haven't, and so Rose sluggishly pulls herself out of bed.

She treads through her walk-through closet to step into the bathroom with its frosted panoramic windows overlooking the street. Rose stares at herself in the mirror, inspecting herself. She doesn't look any different, but she feels completely different, as if that dream's rattled her to her core. She feels like she's moved away from herself, like she's staring at her life through some camera screen, removed from herself. There's a veil between her and the life she's leading and she's not sure why such a disconnect seems to exist.

Rose groans in irritation, feeling that all too familiar pounding in her head. She quickly raises a hand to her temple to massage it, feeling it thud against her palm.

This is all because of LaMarcus and that bird, that goddamn bird who seemed to reach into her soul and bring forth the worst nightmare she's experienced in months. She sees it standing on her car hood all over again in the dark, staring at her as if it knows her down to her soul. And those flashing violet eyes... something about them unsettles her even now in the warm light of consciousness.

Rose shakes her head, wincing a little as it rattles her headache. She can't let that dream or that bird get to her. She needs to leave those thoughts behind if she plans to function at all today. She quickly steps out of her bathroom and out into the narrow hallway of the second floor, treading to the open door of her bedroom. She glances at the memorabilia taking up space on her second-floor mezzanine and purses her lips in discomfort. She stops in her tracks to look up at the framed photos lining the wall of her hallway. Pictures of her father's family, black and white photos of members long dead before Rose moved in, hell before she was even born.

There are pictures of him as a poor half-Creole kid back in Louisiana; a family picture of him with his single mother and three older sisters taken back in the 50s. There's a photo of Alfred and his first wife on their wedding day back in the 70s and pictures of LaMarcus growing up. There are pictures of Rose's aunts, uncles, and cousins, scattered across Marley or back home in the States. The only person missing from any of these pictures is Rose herself

She's always felt a sense of sadness and disconnection like some sort of outsider to her father's family. She's felt that way during church sermons as a child, she's felt that way during family cookouts; the illegitimate daughter who effectively broke her father's marriage with the much-loved Yvonne and drove Alfred to drink himself into an early grave. She didn't even look like her father or any of his family; she, to this day, is the spitting image of her mother, Annelise, the Eldian adulterer. And she was and will only ever be Rose Wieder, the Eldian black sheep of the Woods family.