I Cut My Hand In A Piece Of Glass And I Hope The Scar Last

There Was A Time I Wasn't This Brave

The first thing she notices when she wakes up is that she's alone. The bed is empty. Lexa must have gotten out during the night. Valkyrie sits up and stretches. The muscles in her back burn after sleeping for so many hours. She lets herself fall back onto the mattress and stares at the ceiling.

The second thing she notices is that she's not tired anymore. She smiles for a second as she rubs the sleep out of her eyes. She'd probably just been too tired to have a nightmare. The bandage scratches over her skin. She'd almost forgotten about the wounds on her knuckles.

She sits up and gets out of bed. She puts some sweatpants and a t-shirt on, socks and trainers, and throws a hoodie over her shoulder. The rest of the house is quiet. Her trainers make no noise when she walks down the stairs into the living room.

She smiles at the sight when she peeks over the couch. The dog is lying on the couch sleeping soundly, head on the armrest and legs stretched in front of her dangling off the couch.

She gets out of the house quietly. It's sunny again, a rarity in Ireland on this time of the year. She shivers for a moment before putting the hoodie on and starts running towards the forest that engulfs the house.

She discovered there are some old train tracks not even 5 minutes away from her house in her last run.

The air is frosty, hurts when it comes in through her nose, birds are chirping all around her while she focuses on not tripping over any roots, the dense foliage has overgrown over the barely seen train tracks, but she follows the path, slow but steady.

She loves running, makes her feel free, just like flying, she can go anywhere she wants to, that glorious pain of muscles burning beneath skin.

She runs over two kilometres until she comes across something decaying on the ground, flies flying over it, a rat eating whatever it can reach. She stops for a moment to inspect; the rat running away as soon as it notices a human being, it's the carcass of what looks to be a dead dog, rotting away beneath an old weathered tree. It's matted fur decomposing as maggots and creepy crawlies devour what's left of it. She stays there emotionless just staring at the dog. Tears fill her eyes, but she does nothing to wipe them away.

The girl starts running without looking back.

...

"Matt and I were skating at a hospital parking lot, on top of a huge hill overlooking a valley, it was a sunday so, there wasn't much movement.

An ambulance came in and took out a dead woman. Matt asked me why she wasn't moving or blinking, he was only 5 years old."

"Wait, wait. But who is Matt?" Valkyrie asks frowning her eyes. She is at Nats pub, again. Drinking at 2 in the afternoon. She had nothing better to do, Skulduggery was off somewhere working in the case. She wasn't feeling like tagging along.

"Oh, sorry, yeah, he was my step-brother, back when we were living in New York," she smiles passing her hand through her hair making it ridiculously messy, Valkyrie likes that, "Those were some nice times, yeah. Well, back to the story. The woman, she was dead, they hadn't close her eyes yet, she must have died on the way, probably a few moments before they reached the hospital. A car full of family and friends came in with the ambulance; They were all crying and hugging each other. One woman screamed hysterically and grabbed at the woman's body asking her to wake up."

Valkyrie avoids her gaze for a moment, thinking back to when she had done exactly the same thing. Brings her legs up on the chair and balances the drink on one of her knees.

"I had to tell Matt that her soul went to heaven," Nat continues saying, a sad smile is lingering in her lips, "I didn't believe a word of it, but I knew it would be easier for him to understand."

She stops for a moment to take a sip from her drink, fringers trembling slightly.

Valkyrie gives a squeeze to her hand sitting on the table.

"Two days from that at 9Am, the planes would hit the World Trade Center killing almost 3000 innocent lives and I will tell Matt that there is no god, and that everything is meaningless. He didn't know it, but that same day our mothers split up and the family was torn apart, we moved far away and we didn't see him or talk with him for five years," her eyes become wet at that and the grip on Valkyrie's hand tightens.

She stares at the hand and doesn't speak more words for a few minutes. They just stay there sitting in silence, gripping their hands together tightly, giving comfort to each other.

"You don't have to continue, you know," the girl searches for her eyes while tilting her head to one side.

"No, you already told me your sad story. It's my turn," Nat nods while still looking down.

She draws a deep breath. Air coming in through her nose and exhaling it gradually through her mouth.

"They died, in a car crash, hit a tree. He and her mum went through the windshield and hit the edge of a fence. Her mum died on the impact, broke her neck or something. But we got enough time to at least say goodbye to him, he passed a couple of days later when his lungs collapsed. A magic doctor could have probably saved him but they were mortal so, yeah, he died."

Valkyrie looks down, not knowing what to respond, takes a sip of her glass to give her a few more seconds. Everyone has lost so many people in their life and then there is she, the killer.

"The next day we were up at dawn and on the highway, heading to this park we used to go when we were kids" Nat says suddenly, "Mom slept all the way against the window, my brother didn't want to come, said he wouldn't stop crying if he joined. I don't blame him. I hardly managed to drive all the way there. But I hummed a song to keep me company, just like my step-mom used to do on long drives, guess I was feeling nostalgic," she snorts, "Mom was the one who spread their ashes, in the creek, so we would always remember where they are. We laughed on the way home, I remember she was saying that she was tending to their garden, because they had no one else and that made her feel closer to them. I don't got much left to lose you know but, I keep close to my heart the things I still do."