When you'd scream, I'd fight away all your fears.

[kaleigh nicole black]

I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone,

[/i][/color]
But though you're still with me, I've been alone all along.[/color][/font]

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[/b][/color] Kaleigh murmured quietly, halting in her steps as she reached the front of her sister’s grave, the headstone marked with the name she had known literally since birth too alien and distantly familiar at the same time. It was a first for her, being perhaps the only Black, or person at all who had known the body lying five feet underneath the ground now, who had not yet stepped foot into the reservation’s cemetery once the girl had passed two years ago. Passed.[/color] It was such a calm, delicate way to phrase the death of Spencer, where in which calm and delicate were two very distinct words that didn’t come close to carrying the weight of just how she had died at all. After all, saying her flesh and blood had passed was so much less truth than saying she had been slain by one of them, which held the scarring honesty of what had truly happened. She ignored the somewhat fresh flowers that had been placed on the soft earth and didn’t once rethink her actions as her knees sunk to the ground, her head bowed low as she talked to the headstone, the hard humor dissipated from her voice as she spoke again. “Better late than never, anyway, right?”[/color] she started once more, and paused the exact length of time it would have taken for her to reply back, as if she could have. In Kaleigh’s mind, she might have, and she continued as if she had. “I know, I know. That’s exactly what I said four years ago during our summer soccer tournament, and you whacked me over the head so hard sometimes I’ll still imagine the bump,”[/color] she said, and although the memory was as vivid as if it were mere hours before, she did not smile or allow a laugh to escape her lips; not because it would have been inappropriate, but because she felt it beyond her now. A lot of things were, now, like not the memory, but the real laugh and grace of having her best friend since day one beside her. Not underneath her. Not buried. Not gone.

Her throat became obstructed with some invisible, hard object that seemed to grow in size with each passing second, the exact feeling the girl had been trying to avoid. The girl, not the young woman that she was physically, because even at twenty years of age, she felt as vulnerable as five months old here in the one setting that would always manage to unnerve her to the very deep set of her bones. Here, where the wintry cold of the night air didn’t touch her as it should have, nor did the heat of her descendants’ bloodline give her warmth like it usually had, but where nothing had reached her. Absolute nothingness, as well, her body’s needs for warmth or shelter or food or anything else it might have wanted at that moment, going unnoticed – and Kaleigh was sure it would stay unnoticed if she tested it and knelt here for weeks. The simultaneous terror and longing to stay and not feel at all anymore was so attractive in theory, and she might have, maybe, if. “If I was strong enough,”[/color] she finished out loud, barely more than a whisper, “But I’ve never been as strong as you.”[/color] She never would be. Even as the eldest twin, there was no room to doubt what Kaleigh had so achingly believed, and that was that Spencer was stronger somehow, had always been, in life and death. And she would let people argue against her, too, if they should so wanted, and she would remain silent as always; never once voicing the thoughts that had pained her since the day she had come upon a scarlet-stained body in the woods. “If I was strong enough,”[/color] she repeated, unaware her voice and very frame had started to shudder and betray her grief, “I would’ve saved you.”[/color] Her head could not have fallen fast enough to the ground to avoid the engraving of Spencer’s name written on the headstone, blurry vision and wet spots on the earth faintly making her realize the presence of tears. I could have,[/color] she thought, not bothering to wipe them away; crying never brought back a life never meant to end. If she had just taken patrol a bit more seriously that day, made her rounds a bit more faster back to that side of the woods, or started them early, so she would’ve caught Spencer in time to race her home before – before… “I’m not asking you to forgive me,”[/color] Kaleigh’s body began to shake uncontrollably, not at all a match for her tone, consumed by despair and more than anything else, overwhelming guilt, “I’d actually rather you didn’t.”[/color] She didn’t deserve it. She didn’t even deserve being here to even think anything in her defense. She didn’t deserve anything at all, even the very breaths she gulped for air, the ones that rightfully belonged to her sister instead. Belonged to anyone else, but her.

Kaleigh lifted her head to stare at the three engravings on the tombstone, the seventeen letters representing seventeen years that could never be relived no matter how far back into the past her heart wandered. “Just,”[/color] she tried to start up again, failing to do so as her watered eyes distracted her for a few seconds, “Just know the wrong Black died that day, Spence. Just know that.”[/color] The trembling of her form had slowed slightly, not as violent as it once was, but still pointedly there as she turned and moved to grab the one item she had carried with her to the cemetery. The round, spherical object was visibly aged and well worn, the original black and white faded to a dusty grey and dull off-white. It had practically spelled out a long history of use and distant memories of dewy springs, hot summers, cool falls, and snowy winters year round. “Most people bring flowers,”[/color] Kaleigh bit her lip as fresh tear tracks made their way down her face again, “But if it was me – ”[/color] Like it should have been.[/color] She broke off mid-sentence, the thought invading her conscience before she could have stopped it. Not that she would have. Kaleigh continued as if she hadn’t been interrupted, like the tombstone she was speaking to could have inquired with the same smirking grin Kaleigh loved that Spencer had, what had she been thinking. “I know I would like it all the same.”[/color] With that she had let the soccer ball slip from her hands, resting on the grave next to the arrangements of flowers from visitors before. Yes, Kaleigh had certainly believed that Spencer would appreciate the old soccer ball from their youth, kicked around in open fields with each other, and sometimes in the house if their mom wasn't home. Her head bowed once more, and she rested it against the stone, closing her eyes as if she were there and they were just greeting each other after a long absence, like that one time they had both gone to different summer camps for three weeks and Kaleigh, still clad in her jersey, had raced up and down the terminal for her flight to land second. Like old times. Like how it would never be again, no matter how the long the days and nights would stretch on and no matter how her heart beat painfully without its second half not there anymore, ticked out of all the beats, torn out of all life. Of all that Spencer Alexa Black was, and of all that Kaleigh Nicole Black would never be, would never aspire to be, not without her best friend by her side. That was where she had belonged, and that was where she had desperately wanted to be, whether it was on the ground or five feet under.

She sobbed through the night, an entirely appropriate gesture given where she was, and where she wasn’t.
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APPAREL here.
MUSIC my immortal - evanescence
WITH no one; no replies.
SETTING la push cemetary.
NOTES </3