— A person who exists —

She closes her eyes. 

(She'll claim it was easy, some day. She'll never know if that's true or not.)

"My power is my own!" she snarls, or something in her does, wild and furious and burning. 

And then her knees buckle. 

Oh thank fuck.

She drags the other girl the fuck away from the mysterious evil patch of air, hissing, "Close your eyes!" She needs to get something in between them, some visual barrier - there's basically just the couch, and it's far - her head swims briefly - she starts pressing her balled up shirt to the other girl's wounds, and then drags her behind the couch.

Her eyes were already closed, and, well, opening them won't be a problem.

She passes out.

Lily's Dream, Age 7

Lily's angry. She always is.

This time, she's angry because her parents are getting rid of her. They say they're not. She knows they are. Why else send her to some horrible town she can't find on a map, where there isn't even TV service, to stay with a man they've never once mentioned? 

They say he's her great-grandfather. That she should respect him and do what he says. Mother is tense the entire drive down, and Lily keeps the anger in her chest bottled up until it buzzes under her skin.

She hasn't even gotten to really bring anything. No books (her parents found out one of them was stolen from the library, so Lily lost book privileges), no games (she stole a Game Boy cartridge from a classmate two weeks ago), not even any music (she didn't even actually steal anything there, but her brother decided to lie; plotting her revenge has been her only source of entertainment that isn't staring out a window, since she's not allowed to talk while mother's driving).

Everything here looks poor and dusty and old, and Lily's skepticism rises. Her perfect rich mother is out of place, here, and her fancy city car is complaining about the pot holes and the dust.

But there'll be an old man on his porch, and her mom won't even get out of the car, and Lily won't turn around to say goodbye - 

An old man with wrinkles on his face like mountains, who looks like someone made him out of the dust. An old man who lives alone, joints swollen with arthritis but eyes keen beneath all the wrinkles, with grey coarse hair and threadworn clothes. A house with no AC, no TV - no electricity at all - and water from a well. A house where the only rule is no alcohol is to cross the property line. She hates it, she decides, before she gets out of the car.

She hates everything. 

(She'll wonder, months later, while she's seething with anger that her parents have decided to take her back, why they ignore him, why he lives here alone, abandoned by his family when he's spent his whole life fixing things. She'll be in his workshop, surrounded by the pieces of something she's repairing - she'd taken over all these finicky jobs, and she'd started to daydream about taking over the whole shop. She'd been learning how to use the register that last week, and no one minds if she's rude to customers. She'll be sitting cross-legged on the floor, and he'll be at the desk, and he'll look so, so sad, and say - Not a single one of us should have to say a single word to the people who've broken us, little dustbunny. And I hurt your grandmother more than anyone has.)

(She'll stare at him for several long moments, tools held loosely in her hand. And then she'll bend her head and go back to work, and she'll make dinner for him that night with vegetables the neighbor gave her when Lily helped carry in groceries, and when her parents come to take her away, she won't say a single word to them, not ever.)

(But that's then.)

This is now, and now it's several weeks into her stay, and she's scowling at a stupid broken radio because there's nothing to do here except poke things in her great-grandfather's shop. She got bored of stealing a couple days before. No one here reacts, not really. Her great-grandfather's sitting nearby, only half watching her, a weird level of inattention that feels like freedom, not neglect. 

"I wish you were here," she says, suddenly, picking up a piece and turning it over in her hands. He dies not very long after her parents steal her away, she knows that, but...

"I'm sorry I'm not, little dustbunny," he says, and his voice is as real as ever. Tired, and a little amused. "I'd like to be in your audience."

Turn. Turn. Turn. "I want you to fix it. Lots of stuff's broken here." She doesn't know at seven what's wrong with this stupid thing; she does at twenty, and her fingers travel of their own accord to repair it. "I think including me."

He looks pained. "I know," he says, voice raw.

"Can you tell me what to do?" she asks. "What the catch is, how to fix this?" She picks up another piece of the radio.

"No," he says. "No one can tell you that, little dustbunny. There's no shortcuts, here, no tricks with glue or thread. Not when something important's broken."

"Then what do I do?" she asks, hands tightening on something metal until pain shoots up her arm.

He's before her, then, kneeling in the midst of what had been a total mess the last time this happened. Then, the only thing she couldn't fix was a radio. His hands, large and dry and cracked, envelope hers.

"You get up, little dustbunny, and you give her hell," he says, and the metal thing slides out of her hand, leaving behind something - else - 

"Hey, wake up, come on - "

It's almost a mantra. She hasn't been able to stop the bleeding. Not really. She doesn't know why, and every moment's turned into an eternity while she's been trying.

"Please wake up - "

She does.

She feels horrible, and only somewhat because of the blood loss.

And because of the wire through her right arm. That's contributing pretty nastily to her feeling horrible. The end looks severed, covered in blood and laying trailing behind her back towards the - thing on the other side of the couch, but it's in sight, so. The other end, the one sticking out of her wrist, isn't, and she - knows, somehow - that it's still attached to the thing. It's buzzing, vibrating against the bones it's rubbing against.

It only passes through her arm twice, but -

The wire - her mind's trying to analyze what happened - the wire entered at the base of her palm, slides through and comes out her wrist, and she's not going to be able to bend it, not really - and then back through her forearm -

"You're awake. Thank fuck. C'mon, help me get the bleeding stopped, we need to press down on it..."

"The wire," she says, groggy. "It won't stop bleeding until the wire's out."

" - What wire?"

Oh. Of course.

"We're seeing different things," she says, awareness coming back a bit with the jolt of adrenaline. That idea shouldn't be as scary as it is, but... Lily relies a lot on her perception of reality functioning like it should. "I'm seeing a wire - thicker than that, a cable - through the holes in my arm. It's - making everything worse - "

She scowls down at the wounds, like that'll make the mystery cord appear. "Explains why I can't get the bandage in place - but I can't see it, so I don't know I can help remove it."

"I'll get it. You - get the bandages ready better." ...That's the girl's shirt. The girl is topless. Okay. "I have a knife in my pants pocket."

Deep breath. "Roger." She digs through Lily's pocket, as gently as she can, emerging with the kinda large pocket knife Lily carries around, and then starts cutting her shirt into strips, then scowls at the soaked fabric and stands to remove her pants and cut those up. She's trying to leave enough she'll still have shorts, but - stopping the bleeding's more important.

She puts together makeshift bandages pretty quickly.

Good, because Lily isn't waiting for her. She needs the thing out, blood loss or no. "It's gonna start bleeding more," she warns, as she moves to grab the wire, but -

There's something in her left hand. She glances at it, baffled, and -

That's her great-grandfather's screwdriver.

...She doesn't want to touch the wire, at all, but the screwdriver's handle is basically insulated -

She hooks the shank behind the wire. She'd expect this to be incredibly awkward, but it works okay. Then, to the other girl - "Ready - now - "

She yanks, and the wire slithers back through her arm.

She gets the bandage in place - she's made little pads, like makeshift gauze, to go over both wounds, and broad ties so she can pull it tight while hopefully not cutting off circulation just on a pin point.

"Wrist's more delicate," she says, "So you might wanna go slower." She still can't see the wire, but - she saw the screwdriver, and she saw how fast Lily moved, and how the wound distorted a little then started bleeding more.

"It's already fucked," she says, voice shaking. (That hurt.) "I - there's a big cord through it - "

But the cord was obviously small enough to avoid her bones, and - her fingers are tingling, but not too bad. Logically, she should remove it slowly and carefully.

She's going to need to touch it. There's no convenient loop on the other side, and it's already kind of a miracle yanking the bit in her arm out the way she did didn't already fuck up her wrist more.

She doesn't want to touch it. She especially doesn't want to touch it long enough to be careful.

...She cuts a strip out of her shirt and hands it to Lily. "Use this for insulation," she says.

" - What?"

"You just used a screwdriver to pull something in your arm out. I'm guessing it's bad to touch directly. So. Use this." She pushes the cloth at the girl again.

"Thanks," she says, numbly. (She could've asked before pulling out the part in her arm. She should've asked.)

She takes the fabric and grabs the cord with it. It's not so bad like this, and the fabric's tacky with her blood, which means it sticks okay.

And she starts to pull. Slowly.

It's grating against her bones, she thinks, the vibrations worsening. It hurts, and something worse and weirder than hurts, a screaming in the back of her teeth.

She keeps pulling. She pulls, constantly, unceasingly, until it's out.

It's a good thing she has someone here. She sways and nearly faints again, and she's definitely not fast enough to get a bandage on herself.

That's a lot of blood.

It's okay. She's here, and she's been holding the bandage ready and close since the other girl started pulling, and she's fast with it. She gets Lily's wounds covered.

Once the bandage is on - they're not bleeding as much as she'd been afraid they would. They haven't soaked through yet.

She prioritizes stopping the bleeding - and then goes to catch the other girl as she sways.

She leans, exhausted, shaky.

They - can't stay here.

Lily picks up her great-grandfather's screwdriver again and puts it in her pocket. "My knife?" she asks.