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❝ Soldier down on icy ground, looked up at me with honour and truth, broken and blue, so I called off the troops. That was the night I nearly lost you. I really thought I'd lost you. ❞
— THE GREAT WAR, TAYLOR SWIFT
SYDNEY LIU knew she would regret it in the end; surviving.
Her hunger for survival was the key to her own misery. From the ripe age of seventeen, when the agents found her curled up in the corner of the old barn; her frail body covered in deep gashes, harsh bruises, and the thick layers of crimson — her own blood and the blood of the monsters who had stolen her innocence, she knew her life would forever be altered. When questioned while she lied helplessly in the hospital bed, Sydney was forced to go into tremendous detail of her trauma, going over every little moment of her captivity and the days of torture she, her sister, and her friends had endured over time before her rescue. And when it was over, the girl found herself living in her own isolation of regret and internal suffering.
Sydney would soon become famously known as the lone survivor of the Wayward Massacres — a series of violent murders carried out by Victor and Mariam Wayward and their two sons. How she managed to find the strength to fight back and save herself, Sydney wouldn't even know how to answer that question herself. She would go on to live her life searching for that answer while her choice to maintain her own survival that night slowly started to creep up on her, looming over the girl like a deadly shadow. Everyone would tell her she was the lucky one. Her mother would express her gratitude to the lord above for sparing her other daughter's life while she lost the other, her father would learn to neglect the only child he had left, and the rest of the world would turn her horror story into a public spectacle.
You survived, Sydney. You should consider yourself lucky.
Except Sydney Liu never felt lucky for being the one to survive the long days and nights of horror. She wanted to scream and cry at every single individual who celebrated her survival because Sydney didn't feel like a survivor. The Wayward's stole what was left of her teenage adolescence, ripped it from her trembling body, and chewed on it like a pack of hungry wolves until it was nothing more than a pile of nothing. A distant memory of who the girl used to be. But her parents would tell her to fake her smiles and gratitude until she didn't have to pretend anymore because the world liked a survivor. If she couldn't be what the public needed, then she would surely wither and die.
