New Year's Angel (R5 Fan Fiction -Rydellington)

Once Upon a December

May 8th 2014

Rydel

                “Dancing bears, painted wings, things I almost remember. And a song someone sings, once Upon a December. Someone holds me safe and warm. Horses prance through a silver storm; figures dancing gracefully across my memory. Far away, long ago, glowing dim as an ember, things my heart used to know, things it yearns to remember. And a song, someone sings, once Upon a December.” I could not stop the tears from falling. Singing this song before I was trapped here used to help me smile because it would remind me of Riker and his hilarious cartoon crush on Anastasia. When we were kids, we used to love watching the movie. We would sing along to all of the songs, since of course we knew every word. Riker even knew all of the dance moves from the movie. Best of all, he would always talk about how pretty Anastasia was and how one day he hoped to find a love as powerful as Anya and Dmitri’s.

                But now, this song didn’t just remind me of those happy times with Riker. It kept me thinking about him and the rest of my family. It is actually really convenient that this whole mess started back in December when everything was still happy and full of holiday cheer. Now as I sit here singing this song, it would make me miss my family so much. Each verse would remind me of a different person or memory. The song was my way of keeping them alive in my heart and having faith that they were still thinking about me. I did not know how much they knew, or if they were even trying to find me but every day I would sing this song and feel a small spark of hope. The movie is in fact about a girl in the most hopeless of situations finding her family after over 10 years of memory loss clouding up her true identity. If Anastasia could have a happy ending then so could I. At least that is what I was aiming for while singing the song. To be honest I was most terrified about how similar our stories were at this point. Anastasia’s entire family had been killed by her villain. I know mine had threatened to kill the band one by one and since the last thing I remember was the car accident, I don’t even know if Ellington or my Dad survived.

I had not been this depressed all of the time. They had made me do work while I was in here. Music did tend to heal the heart even in the worst situations. I was a song writer so I was told. I don’t know for whom or if these songs were being sung, but I was told that I was too write award winning songs for a young 15 year old girl. The girl was plastered on one of the walls of my glass box but I did not recognize her. Being in R5 had not really prepared me for song writing as Rocky and Riker had always taken the lead on that. When I tried to explain that to my captors they didn’t seem to care much. They would feed me every morning and if I had not written at least one full verse at the end of the night they would find some way to punish me. At first they would just not give me food. But when they realized that I had gotten used to living with minimal food they decided that they needed to feed me if they had wanted to keep me alive. So then they had started tearing my clothes and when they started to get impatient again they took it upon themselves to up the stakes even more. Physical violence became a popular torture method and they started putting small cuts on my face each night I had not done enough. They hadn’t realized it yet but I was getting used to the cuts too.

 Each day I would take the butter knife they had given me with my food and use it to make a small cut on the side of my ankle. This had become my calendar. I had known from the beginning that I would be here for a long time and had never wanted to lose track of the days for that would only make things worse. If I had gotten lost in time, then any possibility of being rescued would be too hard to wait for. I needed to know the story of my kidnapping. My ankle by now looked like some form of bad Morse code as there was 5 months of lines down there. But I didn’t care how sore it was to stand on or how infected it could get. I was determined to keep adding more days until the days stopped coming. Until then, I will sit here singing this song to make myself remember my family. I miss them so much.

For some reason, today I had woken up missing them even more than usual. I had dreamt that I was hearing their names and voices all around me. It was as if I was dreaming of myself shouting for them in real life. So this morning when my alarm bell was sounded, I had not wanted to wake up. It had been a long time since I had heard them and all I wanted to do was hear them again. I wonder if my mind was telling me that I was giving up. I know my body is weak from not eating but I honestly no longer feel the hunger to eat. They have never given me enough to drink each day so my body has gone into water conservation mode. The dehydration is what makes this situation the worst. Well that and the fact that there is no bed.

Since singing that song always made things seem better I started to sing it again while preparing all of the materials necessary to write. I had just finished the first verse when like a mocking jay far off in the night a beautiful voice sang the chorus back at me. I was so taken aback that I had accidently dropped all of the papers I was holding. I very slowly stood up so that I did not injure myself more. Standing up put a lot of strain on my unused muscles. As I stood with one hand pressed against the glass to steady myself I searched the surrounding dark trying to find the voice. I began singing along with it turning my head in every direction begging the voice to show itself. As we finished the song, tears fully running down my face, I realized why the voice had sounded so beautiful to me. Turning around for the last time I finally found him right on the other side of the glass pressing his hand up to mine tears running down his face as well. For the first time in 5 months I felt happiness. A smile spread wide across my face as I recognized his happy loving protecting face. “Riker!”