The Runt of the Litter

I've Been Trying to Convince My Shadows

Note: Um... as much as you all deserve happiness, i'm providing you a downer of a chapter today, so i hope you're cool with that... anyway, it's 3:15am, and i am finished writing this and i'm sad, so now you get to share that feeling.

giant thank you @Musicpotterhead  for helping me think of a title for this (which comes from a longer quote by Rudy Francisco) and for all around putting up with my 3am brain. ily so much you're the best ever

this chapter was written for voidpottah, who requested to see Anna dealing with depression. thank you so much for the request, it is a super important one

i wrote the chapter for this request, however it's something i've been intending to write for a long time. i've always had in mind for the character that this would be something she struggles with, and i've even attempted to write chapters about it a couple times before. but i often shied away from being explicit about it, or i just plain gave up. but the issue got closer and closer to home, and i finally knew that i needed to write it (and it was definitely therapeutic, if painful, at times)

this chapter is a follow-up to Chaos as Therapy and The Straw Girl. and there may be more eventually. so, as in those chapters, Anna is sixteen.

I've Been Trying to Convince My Shadows

Anna's cold fingers curled around the wooden post of her bed. She stared at the shadows on her bedroom wall, thought about shutting her lamp off but didn't move. She didn't have any idea what time it was, but it didn't matter. It had been a long time since she'd crawled into bed, tired and scared, and wanting the world to go away for just a few hours. That was all she needed to know... that it had been too long and she was still awake.

There was a time she would have walked down the hallway and knocked timidly on someone's door. There would have been a little grumbling from whoever she woke up, but then there would have been hot chocolate and comfort.

There were a hundred reasons Anna didn't do that now. But the two biggest? She felt old, too old, so old. And she didn't really want comfort. Or she didn't believe she could find it in the same places she used to. Maybe both.

She didn't feel like she could do anything real, but she also didn't want to lay motionless under her blankets any longer. So Anna pulled herself into a kneeling position on her bed, staring down at her pillows. They were tear-stained, unwilling to let her forget the cry-fest she'd had a couple hours ago... unwilling to let her forget how not-okay she was.

Looking up, she startled at the sight of her own shadow plastered against her wall. She looked massive, monstrous, malicious. She reached over and moved her lamp a couple inches over on her desk. Her shadow shrunk, and she looked human again. Anna took a slow breath, her eyes itching with tears that didn't fall.

She'd been a monster the week before last, when she went to that party with Kate, and she'd been a monster every day after until a couple days ago when the boys had sat down to talk things out with her. She'd been massive, monstrous, malicious. And then they'd poked her in the right places, shifted the light, and she'd been small again, sweet again... silent again.

Anna moved her hand in front of the light, watched the room bathe in near darkness, only a few small triangles of light hitting the wall around her fingers and then slowly moved her hand further and further from the lamp's shade, until her hand was a tiny shadow. It looked like a clever drawing, the top darker than the bottom and the fingers curled like she was about to play the piano or reap a soul.

Anna dropped her hand, moved it to her desk, and flicked off the lamp.

The dark hurt, but it felt like home.