Chapter Text
I began preparing for the long haul. This time was going to be different. Home seems just a figment of my old imagination. I was forced to put my old life behind me two weeks ago. Life on the road wasn’t my plan, but when your "social worker" leaves you with some new family, what else are you supposed to do, hide and wait for him with the small hope that he’ll come back? No, not for me, He left me with no hope. He said he would be back when he would be back if I needed help, which he didn’t. Other than that, he left me with Gabe, a cat. But Gabe was a special cat. Gabe can talk, but I am the only one who can hear him. It’s not like he has that much to say, other than getting me in trouble with my powers. Gabe seems to follow me everywhere chatting his head off; I wish he would shut up. You would too if all you heard was him talking about how good fish would taste, and you can’t even answer to tell him to shut up, cause you’d look crazy. That’s one other place I would never go back to. Foster parents turn you in, cause your powers freak them out. That’s when he found me. My guardian angel, Castiel, broke me out of that hellhole and put me in a new home. But hiding your powers is hard, and that’s how I got discovered again.
three months ago:
“Alice, you have a visitor. Ms. Collins, you need to come out of your room. You have a visitor,” one of the nurses said. I never did bother to learn their names. I figured that the foster family would come back for me by now, figured that they would have thought that it was just their imagination. But they haven’t. It’s been four months now that I have been here. But maybe they were right, I am a monster, I just needed to own up to it. “Ms. Collins, Alice…”
“I’m right here,” I said opening the door. “Who is my visitor?” I never get any visitors, and when I do it’s some sort of doctor that they have flown in to deal with my “issues.”
“He says that he is your new social worker. He definitely looks the part.” Great, another new social worker for Alice the freak. We walk around the corner and I see him, and he absolutely looks the part. Trench coat, suit and tie, confused face, probably thinking ‘how crazy is this girl?’ I hate those kinds for social workers. All equipped with their holier than thou attitude. We walk into the room and he turns around fully, then says, “I would like a few minutes with Ms. Collins.” Great he is one of those ‘I’m going to try to relate to you’ types. He offers that we sit down at the table.
“I know about your powers,” he whispers. It takes me by surprise, but I have practiced for this moment for weeks.
“What powers?” I reply. There, threw it back in his face.
“The powers that got you put in this place. I have been observing you for a while now…”
“How long?” How long has this guy been stalking me? "How long have you been watching me?"
“About nine months now, when your powers first started surfacing.” My 17th birthday, that’s when my powers first started surfacing. I did all I could to hide them, but my foster family found out when I broke the vase on the table with a flick of my wrist. It was a small argument with my foster brother, and then next thing I knew, police were taking me away to the loony bin “for my own protection”. That was the biggest load of BS I had ever heard. “I am here to take you out of here, you are going to stay with a new family. “
“Hell no! And why should I trust you? You know me, but I am supposed to trust some guy who says that he is a social worker? Who are you really?”
“My name is Castiel, I am an angel of the Lord.”
“Really? You sound like you belong here more than I do.” I learned never trust anyone at a very young age, right about the time my mother went crazy and committed suicide. She wrote everything down in a letter to me, saying that she never really knew what my father really was and how she just couldn’t live with me and what I would become. She said that my father, some guy named Azazel, came to her and told her what I would become. And because of what I was, I lost both parents. No one really wanted the suicide baby, everyone thought that I would have memories of her but I don’t, and I'm glad I don't. The only thing I have left is a picture. Actually, I should say had, that’s the reason I am in here. My foster brother ripped it up right in front of me, and then the vase broke and then the pieces just happened to fly at him but they hit the floor before they could hit him. I really hate foster families.
“Don’t you want to get out of here?” he whispered. He was right; I wanted to be anywhere but here, even if it meant going to a new foster family.
“Fine, I’ll go with you.”
And that’s how I got Gabe. Cas said that Gabe was his brother’s name and both the cat and the brother were troublemakers, so it fit. Gabe was to watch over me and make sure I didn’t use my powers, even though here and there he told me to use them. I also got an angel’s teardrop, which Cas described as a transporter of sorts for when something bad happens.
*present day
Hiding in the forest really isn’t for me, but I got discovered again by, you'd never guess who, my new foster family, and now the whole town is hunting me. Gabe and I have been moving around throughout the little town’s outer forest.
“I think we should call Castiel,” Gabe said from next to me.
“I told you before, this is a minor issue. We don’t need Cas for every single thing that goes wrong. He’s busy anyway.” To be honest I have no idea if he is busy or not.
“You’re mean. You need to make some new friends.”
“Not going to happen. First of all, I have you. You are enough. Second of all, I don’t need another person I have to keep my powers from. Remember, the whole town is looking for us. With guns, knives, pitchforks, and whatever else they could scrounge up.”
“Well, you could take it in a figurative sense, or you could take it in a literal sense. You are the one with demonic powers.”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to encourage me using my powers.”
“We aren’t around anyone. It wouldn’t hurt to try.”
“Fine, but if Castiel shows up, you are taking all the blame for it.” Gabe rolled his eyes at me then sat down on the ground near a patch of flowers.
“Try these,” he said looking a the flowers. I walked over and held my hand out, thinking over and over again, human, human, human. In the blink of an eye, up popped a girl, in a dress with flowers all over it, a black jean jacket, black tights, and black boots. She looked surprised as ever. “Alice! You did it! How did you do it?” Gabe said.
“I don’t know. I just thought human over and over again, and then here she is. How did I do that?”
“Who are all of you? What did you do to me? What am I?” she screamed.
“Please, be quiet, they could find us.” I said.
“Who? Who could find us?” she yelled.
“The people from the town. Listen, I have a ton of explaining to do to you. Just please come with us.” I held out my hand for her to follow us. She passed right by my inviting hand. “Alright then.”
We ended up walking till night fell. Once we stopped, I gathered some sticks from around us, grabbed the matches out of my back pocket, and lit a fire. The flower freaked out. “What is that? Why is it killing all those nice trees?”
“That’s fire, the trees were already dead, and this is what will be keeping us warm all night.” She still looked a little freaked out, but she relaxed.
“So really, how did you do that? One minute I was a flower, and then I’m this,” she said gesturing to herself. “So, what are you? Some voodoo queen?”
“I don’t know for sure. A letter that my mom left me said that I was a half-demon. That I have powers and can do all kinds of stuff.”
“Oh, do you get to see your parents often?”
“My father left a few days after I was born, although I have memories of him appearing to me in my dreams when I was younger, and my mother killed herself a few days after my father left. The letter that she left me said that my father was a very powerful demon and that they didn't if I would have powers too, and she couldn’t live with that, so she shot herself in my nursery. Then the next day, my father came back and found her, then he left me at an orphanage. I was about three weeks old by then. It was a hard time throughout my life. Bouncing from house to house. Then again, I wasn’t a normal child. I always knew that I was different, just never realized that it was like this,” I have to change the subject. Feelings were bad for me. “What was being a flower like?”
“We sat in the forest all day and talked about how pretty we all looked, well, how pretty they looked. I was different. I had speckles. None of them like differences and they knew that we would die in what seemed to us like years, but are days to you. I liked being different, but all the others made fun of me for it, so I just basked in my own individuality. And then you changed me. and now I am here.”
“What is your name anyway?” I asked.
“What’s a name?” she asked back with a curious look on her face.
“What were you called? Back with the flowers?”
“Specks. Everyone else was Crocus.”
“How about Iris?” Gabe suggested.
“Hey, that is perfect for you. Your were a flower and an Iris is a flower.”
“It sounds okay I guess. It’s better than Specks,” Iris said with a smile. My watch said it was around midnight, and we all needed rest. Sleeping seemed like such a strange thing to Iris, though if I was a flower less than ten hours ago, I would have trouble figuring out anything human. She eventually took a hint from Gabe who was curled up on the ground. I laid down near the fire, since all I was wearing was a blue and white dress that I wore to my birthday party. That seems like such a long time ago.
*two weeks ago *
Today was my eighteenth birthday. Finally, I never thought that this day would come. I had kept my powers under wraps for about thee months now, which seemed like a record for me. Sure I had some breaks here and there, but that doesn’t count. Sometimes they needed some time to stretch, I guess. There were small breaks, during the night, while my foster parents were sleeping. Most of the time it was small things, like putting the stars in my room so I could look at the night sky and then as soon as I fell asleep they would go away. Gabe seemed like a good companion. Three months with him and he has been encouraging and discouraging me from using my powers. He could teleport to where I was in a matter of moments, but he was always near me, so he rarely used that power. He talked a ton, lots more than I thought he would. He mostly talked about food and going outdoors. It was strange for him to be at my feet this morning, he is usually off eating or something, but there he was, on the foot of my bed, sleeping soundly. I picked him up and booted him out of my room, so I could get changed into my birthday dress my foster mom bought me. As I was dressing, I could smell the vanilla cake baking from downstairs, mixed with the scent of the lilac bushes from my open window. It was going to be a good day.
“Can I come back in now?” Gabe asked from behind the door. I zipped up the back of my dress and opened the door for him. “Thank you, I am exhausted. I thought I felt a threat, so I was awake watching you all night.”
“Wow, Gabe, that’s not creepy at all,” I said rolling my eyes and laughing.
“You really shouldn’t laugh about this Alice. It is a serious matter. You know…”
“That the whole reason that you, Gabe the cat, are here is because Castiel trusted you with my life. I know. You tell me very often. It really annoys me when you go on about how important you are.”
“Well it’s true.” I rolled my eyes again. I hate it when he’s right. “Well you had better get to your party. They are all waiting for you. Your foster mother…”
“Alice! Come on downstairs! Some people are here to see you!” Lissa, my foster mother yelled from downstairs. I slipped on a pair of navy blue flats and ran downstairs to the large porch overlooking the forest.
“Surprise!” everyone yelled. I acted surprised, even though I knew it was happening. I knew no one at the party, most of them were kids from my school who were invited by my foster parents, and the rest were my foster parents friends. I walked around, said my hellos, and made some new “friends”, most likely because everyone thought I was rich, but hey, that’s what friends are for. This must be what it’s like to have a normal life, with parents, and friends, and birthdays. After talking with some of my newfound “friends”, it was time for cake. That was when I saw him, my father, Azazel, standing off the edge of the porch. I would know the face, I had been seeing it since I was three weeks old, till I was nine, that’s when he stopped appearing in my dreams and just straight up disappeared. But seeing him now, on my eighteenth birthday, for the first time in nine years, I don’t know how to feel. I stepped away from the cake and started toward him.
“Dad? Is that really you?” The floating figure didn’t answer me. As I got closer, I found that he was barely even on the porch. “Why are you here?”
That’s when he began bleeding from his chest. I reached out for him, just to be able to pull him back in, but he kept moving farther and farther away from me, and that’s when the fire flowed from my hand to his floating body. His body lit up like a field of dry grass. I screamed and tried to put him out from the railing of the porch, but it didn’t work. The last thing that I heard from him as he was burning up in front of me was “I love you, my Alice.”
I turned around still in shock, with tears streaming down my face, to all my guests, with shocked looks on their faces. I noticed my reflection on a window. My eyes, they were just like my father’s but I still had pupils. They just saw everything, Azazel, my eyes, my powers, all of it. Then, it all came back to them. Out of the crowd of people, my foster father and one of his burlier friends came and grabbed me. I was screaming, throwing my body all around, I would not let them take me away from this. I was trying my hardest to get my necklace to get help, but it wouldn’t work.
“Gabe! Help! Gabe!” I screamed to him. Nothing. “Castiel! Please! Help me!” I yelled through my tears. Nothing. They carried me to the basement, tossed me behind the door, and down the stairs. It was painful, falling down all those stairs, but nothing too bad. I heard the door lock behind me, which was when I gave up all hope. I didn’t know what else to do. Then, Gabe appeared next to me.
“I heard the screaming. Why are you down here?” he asked trying to comfort me by
“I saw him. My father.”
“Azazel?”
“Yeah, then I went to reach out for him and I set him on fire. It was the worst thing to see.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Nothing, except ‘I love you, my Alice’ or something like that. Then I turned around and they were all staring at me. Then, they put me down here.”
“We need to get you out of here.”
“Doors locked.”
“But you can burn out, you just said that you used fire that you didn’t know you had, you can make yourself invisible, right?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“Well, just try alright?” and that’s when we headed to the backdoor on the other end of the basement. Then, I found myself alone.
“Stupid cat,” I muttered to myself. I focused the thought of seeing the fire coming out of my hands, closed my eyes and focused on the thought. I opened my eyes, the door had burned down and I had to move on to the metal storm door that was locked with a padlock and a chain. I stood in the doorway of the now burned down door, and I focused hard on the thought of the lock and chain melting and the hinges melting with it. The doors were falling in front of me and down the stairs. I stood at the bottom of the concrete stairs with the two “guards” staring at me. I was silent, and started to move, but neither of them moved towards me. I finished up the stairs and neither of them moved, still looking down there. That was when I bolted. I ran off towards the forest, where I spotted Gabe at the edge. He began running into the forest, and I caught up to him and we didn’t stop running. By now, I could hear them yelling to the two guards. They had realized I had escaped, they were coming to get me. It was nightfall by now, so Gabe took watch and I laid down to rest for a while. I was beginning to drift off when I asked, “why didn’t my necklace work?”
“What?” Gabe asked.
“Why didn’t my necklace work, it was supposed to transport me when I was in trouble, but it didn’t. why?”
“I don’t know. Just go to sleep, I will try to contact Castiel.” And I fell asleep. I kept reliving that moment in my dreams, and I would wake up every hour or two. With that same dream…
*
“ALICE! WAKE UP!” I heard Gabe and felt Iris shaking me. “ALICE! THEY’RE HERE!”
That shocked me awake. I picked up Gabe and grabbed Iris and we ran as fast as we could, then I felt it. A bullet going through my right calf. I fell in pain and in shock.
“Alice get up we have to run. Come on,” Iris said as she lifted me. We hobbled along as fast as I could go. I don’t think I can heal myself, I’m not powerful enough. “Alice hurry! We have to go.”
I felt another bullet go through my shoulder, and I barreled over on Iris. She could barely hold me up anymore. “Iris, go. Find a place to hide.”
“No, I won’t leave you.” And that’s when they came around the corner. It was about four men. They had knives and guns. Iris ran behind the tree not too far from me, but they had already seen her and pulled her out. One of them ran their knife across my cheek, I screamed as if I was on fire. Iron, not one of my human immunities. They kept at it slashing my body with the iron knives, me screaming in pain.
They had taken a break from torturing me to call in saying that they had found me.
“Iris. Take my necklace and go find Gabe.” In that moment, Iris pulled on my necklace, then Iris, Gabe, and myself found ourselves on a glazed concrete floor, looking up at two guys and Castiel.
“Cas… Iron… Guns… Knifes… Help…” then I passed out.