Sage

prologue.

My hands were so cold, I could barely keep my numb fingers wrapped tightly enough around the hilt of the knife to get the proper leverage and pressure I needed.

I knew this kind of bone-deep chill well, had experienced it enough times to recognize this awful time of year. To fear the weeks and months the howl of the wind would be the symphony that accompanied the wracking shakes and shivering of my body that I would curl tightly into a ball during the night, attempting to chase away the feeling I'd sometimes get, thinking I would never be warm again.

Because that was fucking stupid. The warmth of spring and summer would come back around as surely as the winter months did in the cyclical hell of New York City seasons. Winter was just more difficult to tough out on the stone-cold pavement that retained about as much heat as the too large jacket with the broken zipper I kept wrapped around me year-round.

Still, I pounded the end of the knife with the flat of my palm, adjusting the angle and turning slightly with each strike of my hand until the compartment sprung open with a loud pop, and the change trickled neatly into the awaiting Ziploc I had ready.

My nose scrunched with irritation. If anyone knew me, though there was no one left who really did, they would know the tell hid the way my heart sank with disappointment.

I used to be able to score $40 or more a piece from these old school cash-only vending machines back when I was a kid. Now I was barely scraping together $5 from an entire row. More and more these machines were being replaced with the kind that accepted your fucking credit card, like everything else in this city. Ruining what few safe avenues for quick cash that I had left.

Still, I pocketed the money along with the knife, and slipped out of the 24-hour laundromat and back onto the dimly lit street.

Despite no one around but some lost, drunken partiers at the end of the block, I hid my shaking hands in the depths of my jacket and kept my beanie-clad head down, anyway.

I saw it as a weakness—being too cold and weak to put up a fight—and so would anyone paying attention. It was the same reason I kept my long, overgrown hair tucked right up into my hat and my face trained on my duct taped boots. Looking like some sullen teenage boy on the streets gets me fucked with a whole lot less than the shaking little girl they would see me as.

Not that I haven't used it to my advantage, when the situation calls for it.

With nothing but $5 in my pocket, no food in my stomach, and the promise of the first snowfall of the season whispering with each blow of frozen air; I might have to decide whether the situation is calling for it now.

~*~

It wasn't always like this, my life.

Sometimes, when I can't fall asleep, and the angle isn't right for the wall of the alley and the side of the dumpster to completely block the wind from reaching my curled position, hand wrapped tight enough for a sure grip should anyone sneak up on me around the knife I always keep my pocket, I can't stop myself from remembering.

Warm meals and and warmer embraces. Love. Happiness. Even the triviality of school, my boring friends. It all causes an ache to still form in the center of my chest, so deep and tight and so, so cold, it rivals the real, physical environment I'm in now.

I'm old enough now to realize what I remember of my home wasn't the full, true picture. It was fractured and fake. Pieced together with childlike hope and ideals.

A fantasy I didn't wake up from until my father shot my mother point blank in front of me, in our gleaming white marble kitchen after he found out she had been fucking his bodyguard.

The aftermath of the sound of the shot rung too loudly in my ears, a terribly distracting, shocking sound. But I had still felt her hot blood coat me. My face, my hair, my perfect clothes.

I ground my teeth and held my breath as another gust of wind threatened to rattle my bones apart.

Pathetic. If I had the strength to scoff, I would.

Poor little Lia, still crying over what life dealt me, like I had some right to do it.

I'd been on the street for 6 years, since the night I ran away at 13. When my father lost his fucking mind. I spent plenty of nights in the beginning terrified out of my mind, tears frozen to my cheeks, with no idea how I was going to survive the next week, let alone hope of surviving a few years.

I'd done pretty fucking well, actually. Witnessed many more street kids coming from worse backgrounds and not lasting half as long as I've somehow managed to.

At this point, I think the only thing that stops me from giving up, to stop trying—what I've seen more people go from than I've seen from hunger or addictions—is through some unnatural force of will, or maybe rage. My father always cursed my stubborn persistence and defiance in the face of his orders.

Liliana, why is it that you test me?

And it's because this—that despite the aching, infinite cold, and the hollow emptiness of my stomach, and the knowledge of what I have done, and what I'll need to do soon to get my next meal—despite all of that, I smile.

For surviving, for outsmarting him. For my mother.

Or maybe I've fucking lost it, too.

————

A/N:
Sooooo, this isn't a Lost Daughter update, but how do we feel about this? :) I've been thinking about this story for a while, I just needed to get it out. 

This is just the prologue, so it's a little bit shorter than I aim for, but it's to get a sense of the story and Lia as a character. Next part soon!