Fifty Shades Different

Chapter Seven

A/N: Okay, yeah I suck, I used an excerpt from If I Stay as a guideline though I'm not copying it completely, I changed and added as I went to suit it to my imagining of what happened to Ana. I do recommend listening to Not About Angels, my plan is for it to be a large part of the story, if all goes to plan and I don't change anything. It's a little short but eh, I feel really

Since the accident, I've had nightmares, since what Steve did I've had nightmare but those were never as bad as the more recent ones. There is one thing you must understand about me, I have become a deeply unhappy person, at least since the accident, and I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there's no relief in waking. Tonight was no different, the nightmares found me not after I fell into slumber, and it always began the same, Ray's voice in my head.

"Sacrifice," he'd whispered in the car that night, "That's what we do for the people that we love, Ana, and that's all it has to be. That's how a parent manages, because love never dies, it never goes away, if never fades, so long as we hang on to it. Sometimes you make choices in life, and those choices are what make you who you are, and Ana choosing to be the father of this baby girl that would not have one had I of walked away from a being that I created was the best decision I have ever made."

I didn't say anything, and that was my deepest regret, I kept my head leaned against the car window, watching in the dark as the almost black fir trees flew by, the rain splattered over the window, scattering dots along the car interior with every strike of lightning. Ray sighed turning on the radio that my phone was still plugged into, as Birdy began the chorus of 'Not About Angels,' which was the very song I'd been planning to add into my book trailer for my new story. It seemed as though some vast coincidence, I focus on the words mouthing them to myself, I close my eyes.

You wouldn't expect for the radio to work afterwards. But it does.

The car is eviscerated. The impact of a four-ton pickup truck going 80 miles an hour, plowing straight into the drivers side had the brunt force of an atom bomb, I didn't know it was Steve who had hit us until it was all over. It tore both of the doors, sent the front-side drivers seat through passenger side of the windshield. The car flipped the chassis, bouncing it across the road ripping the engine apart, as though it were no stronger than a web spun by a spider. It tossed wheels and hubcaps deep into the forest edges surrounding us. Bits of the oil tank igniting, so that now tiny flames lap at the wet road.

And the noise, God there was so much noise, A complete symphony of grinding, a chorus, of popping and aria of exploding, and finally the sad clapping of hard metal cutting deeply into soft trees. Finally the silence, except for Birdy's voice belting out, barely finished with the first chorus, and that's how quickly it happened. The car radio somehow still is attached to a battery and so Birdy is broadcasting into the once-again tranquil January twilight.

And this is where the actual events cease, and my imagination begins, these are things that I couldn't not possibly have recalled; because I was lying in the ditch trying my best to find my end. However ever in my dream I figure that everything is fine, for one I can still hear Birdy. Then there's the fact that I am standing here in a ditch on the side of the road when I look down, the skinny jeans, light sweater, and black combat boots I put on this afternoon all look the same as they did when I left the house.

I pull myself up the embankment to get a better look at the car. It isn't even a car anymore. It's a metal skeleton, without seats, without passengers. Which means Ray and the family from the other car must have been thrown from the cars like me. I brush off my hands onto my jeans and walk into the road to find them.

The first person I see is as expected as any, Ray, even from several feet away I can make out the protrusion of his skull. "Dad?" I call, but as I make my way towards him, the pavement grows considerably slicker than it previously was and gray chunks of what strongly resembles cauliflower. I know what I'm seeing right but it somehow the chunks of my fathers brain sitting right before do not immediately connect back to my brain. What springs into my mind are those news reports about tornadoes or fires, how they'll ravage one house but leave the one next door intact. Pieces of my father's brain are on the asphalt. But his cigarettes remain intact in his left breast pocket.

The one I find next is utterly unexpected, it's my half brother, bore from my Mother and Steve. My innocent sweet six year old half brother, whom I haven't seen myself since he was three years old, there's almost no blood on him, but his lips are already blue and the whites of his eyes are completely red, like a ghoul from a low-budget monster movie. He seems totally unreal. And it is the sight of him looking like some preposterous zombie that sends a hummingbird of panic ricocheting through me. I try to force myself to draw in a breath, anxiety has noosed itself around my chest, gripping me like a vice, trying to bring in a breath causing a shrill scream to erupt from my chest as I fall to my knees beside his frail body.

I need to find my mom! She never leaves Theo alone with Steve, where is she? I spin around suddenly in a complete state of panic. It's like the last time I got lost when we were camping, of course, later I found out that Steve had talked Mom into just leaving me there, to go get breakfast he'd told her, though she had to force him to come back for me. When she'd told me, I wasn't sure whether to be happy they came back or angry that she believed him in the first place.

I ran back to the ditch that I'd come from and I see a hand sticking out. "Mom! I'm here!" I call out to her, "Reach up farther! I'll pull you up!" However when I get closer I see the metal glint of a silver bracelet with my birthstone and Ray's on it, with a silver disk engraved with 'Daddy's little girl.' Ray gave it to me for my seventeenth birthday. It's my bracelet. The one I never take off, the one I was wearing when I left this afternoon. I look down at my wrist to see that I'm still wearing it now.

I edge myself closer, now I see that it's not my mother lying there; it's me. The blood from my chest has seeped through my shirt, and is now pooling like paint drops on the white my shirt. One of my legs is askew, the skin and muscle peeled away so that the white of the bone is left exposed. My eyes are closed, slices against my forehead amongst other parts of my skull are left open, my dark brown hair is wet and rusty with blood.

I spin away. This isn't right. This cannot be happening. Ray came to get me from Camille's, we were just driving home. This isn't real, Theo shouldn't be here. I must have fallen asleep in the car. No! Stop. Please stop. Please wake up! I scream into the chilly air, again falling to my knees, screams continuously ripping through me.

And that's how it always happens, and it goes on and on until I eventually wake from my own screams. But tonight is different, I don't scream as long as I typically do, I don't reach the fetal position that I typically do, I'm awoken by Christian shaking my shoulder and screaming my name. Once I'm awake and the tears running down my face, he pulls me into his lap, he doesn't bother holding me away from his chest that he cannot stand being touched, instead he holds me there attempting to soothe me back to sleep. It occurs to me that I have not been this close to Christian in a long time.

After some time, once my sobbing had stopped and I was left heaving for air, Christian picked me up, I was to exhausted to bother asking where he was taking me. Once we got there we reached his bedroom he sat me on my feet, taking my hands he led me over to his bed lying me down, he climbed in right behind me, he looked up at me, extreme worry written all over his face.

"Ana," He whispered pulling me back into his arms, "What happened?"

"I dream about the accident," I whisper, my voice hoarse, "All the time."

Over the course of the night he never let me go, he kept holding me until sleep found us both once again.