My Beautiful One (Jonathan Morgenstern Fanfic)

Skeletons For Children* (Part 1)

24 NOVEMBER 2008

Waking up had been a very painful for Beth.

Not entirely because of physical pain she was in but the fear of reality and emotions that emerged and gripped her with opening her eyes made it almost unbearable.

There was no small gap in time frequently mentioned in books where she woke up and everything was blissful and everything seemed right in the world and there wasn't a worry in her. The moment consciousness pierced her thoughts and sprang feeling and control into her limbs once again, she was aware of everything and remembered all that had happened.

The surge of incoming memories--of Hunger and her father and the demons that had invaded her once peaceful home--made Beth jolt with terror and shock, her muscles going taut and her senses sharpening in the way they always did when she hunted demons, in the presence of danger. She gasped at the sudden blossoming pain resulted by her movements in her side and her darkness crept on the corners of her vision. Her heart sped up drastically and her fingers fisted in the warm silk sheets underneath her.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she forced herself to relax, allowing her body to sink into the much-too-soft mattress she was lying on. Her stomach churned sickeningly and for a moment, Beth thought she was going to vomit. She swallowed sparingly, feeling the bile rise in her throat as discomfort attacked her mercilessly. She shuddered at the foul, unforgiving taste in her mouth and a consistency that felt like slime in her.

The room she was in was silent, devoid of people and conversation. It unsettled her. Slowly, she opened her eyes and saw a white canopy above her, suspended by four posters. Lifting her head, she realized that she lay in a standard character-less Institute bedroom. The Victorian lamp on the bedside table gave little illumination to the four walled room she was in.

She shut her eyes again as images of what she remembered last replayed in her head like an old recording--fogged and faded. She wondered if it was the disorientation of waking up that made her memories look so foggy or if it was her brain blocking out such painful memories. She then remembered the images of corruption and evil she had been forced to witness, implanted in her mind by Hunger and found that they were crystal clear, far more defined than her normal memories and shuddered as she tried to shove them out of her mind completely.

The ghost of the agonizing frostbite that had branched out in her chest when Hunger had touched her reappeared and she rubbed the skin, trying to create enough friction to warm herself.

Like a bolt of lightning, she remembered her desperate run towards the Institute and her eyes were flung open as worry dug a hole in her chest and mind, creating cavities that were filled with dark, undesirable thoughts about her parents accompanied by the dominant questions that she asked herself.

Where were her parents? Were they alright? Had they been saved? Had her attempt at saving them succeeded or had it been futile and naive on her part; that the moment she dissapeared from Hunger's sight, he had commanded his scum to kill her parents?

Clamping down on her bottom lip, Beth pushed herself into a sitting position, gasping in pain as she did. A large amount of bandage had been wrapped around her middle and she wore a light green shirt a size too big for her and baggy gray sweatpants with drawstrings pulled tight to cling to her hips that were definitely not hers. Never in a million years would she ever personally, willingly own something as fashionably blasphemous as sweatpants. They were comfortable, however.

Crimson and warmth crept onto her cheeks at the thought of someone in the Institute striping her of her tattered, destroyed clothes and helping her into what she was wearing now as she swung her legs over the side of the bed, all the while ignoring the burning protest her side was making.