There is a moment between breathing and breaking- a strange moment almost suspended in time- when your poisoned heart still believes that everything is going to be okay, that it's all going be all right the next moment...
...even as you start coughing up blood.
Sophia shook in her place, a lifetime of teachings that had been ingrained in her brain- to not be too much, to not make others uncomfortable, to not be seen still kept her quiet in this life-threatening situation. Well, as quiet she could be around the gurgling of blood.
The wine glass she held in her hands was no longer red with just the wine.
Her hand came up, in a daze, as she reached her mouth, her finger wiping the viscous fluid and looking at it in shock.
What....?
The room around her had gone silent. The laughter. The music. The warmth. All gone.
She raised her eyes, as she looked around her in alarm. Did she cause this? Did the people stop celebrating because of her?...
...Did she ruin the evening?
She opened her mouth, the words forming in her throat...I'm fine! I'm alright, please carry on...
She was going to be just fine...her mother- well adoptive- is very good at this. Given her fascination with toxins and poisons as a biologist- she would fix this if only Sophia asked for her help.
...before she looked at the faces of her loved ones.
Across the marble floor they stood- the people who she had once considered hers. They had never told her they loved her, or cared for her, but, well, they were family. Family didn't need to say those things, right?
But now, as she watched their faces twist with hate as they looked at her, with disgust, with...satisfaction...?
Something in her twisted.
The words died in her throat as she looked at them, as if seeing them for the first time.
No...No....
"Don't look at me like that," Tony, her brother said, looking away, "You should have known this was coming."
Something stuck in her throat...
Should she?
She turned towards her parents, who looked away from her questioning eyes, sipping their champagne.
"No," Sophia rasped, tears filling her eyes, "No..."
She stumbled as her hands found the table she had been leaning against in the foyer of her large family home, the glass of wine stumbling from her hands as she failed to see where it went. Her senses were already being affected.
"Wh-" Her throat croaked before she could finish her thought.
Why were they doing this? Had she not been good enough?
There was no answer anyway- not from her family and not from herself- nothing in her intensive training that could have prepared her for this moment. How to act, how to be...
...How utterly useless it all was.
Her legs weakened, and soon she was hanging on the table by her arms. No one moved from their spots, only watching, and waiting.
She knew she would fall soon, her hands were losing feeling, and so was her chest...
'The poison is doing its work well enough,' she thought morbidly, 'at least I have quality.'
A chuckle escaped her unbidden, as the hollow sound echoed through the large house. A tear finally tracked down her face, dropping to the ground.
Another splutter of blood had her lurching forward onto the cool marble floor. She twisted and she landed on her side instead of her face.
Small mercies.
She groaned as she turned around with all the energy she had, laying on her back as she stared at the ceiling, at the enormous crystal chandelier that had completely fascinated her the first day she had stepped foot into this house.
The tears were coming in droves now, falling around her and mixing with the blood that still dripped from the corners of her mouth. Her lips spread in amusement as she lay there- unable to do anything else- laughing and crying at the same time. At the sheer absurdity of it all...
Sophia had never imagined she would be dying like this. In her own blood and tears, laughing like a mad woman, poisoned by her own family for a reason she didn't even know...
She blinked slowly, vision fading into static. The chandelier light blurred into something softer, something like dawn.
Her lips curved.
Maybe next time, she thought, I'll live for me.
And then, she died.
-----------
The next breath burned...but not like the fires of the underworld. no.
More like... sunlight.
Her nose twitched as she took in the clean fresh air, the type that you can only get out of the cities these days.
Petrichor. She smelled the smell just after rain.
Sophia jolted upright as her eyes flashed open, and she immediately screwed them shut. The Sun, which was peering down on her was too bright.
Her breaths came in fast and sharp, as if she hadn't taken any in centuries. Her fingers clenched around the wet dirt she was lying in.
Slowly, and steadily, she evened out her breathing and tried, once again, opening her eyes. What greeted her astounded her.
She was lying on grass, with trees off into the distance, and a clear blue sky above her. Birds chirped somewhere- she didn't look.
Sophia rose up, slowly. Stumbling, she looked down at herself. The body that greeted her was small, with fairer skin, and dark dark hair that tumbled down in waved to her waist, instead of the neat and practical bun she had been styling it in for years.
She raised a hand, and the pale and small hand that came up was not the hand she was used to.
Her breathing increased again, as her eyes widened...
Her head swerved around as she tried to find something, anything to help her.
She stopped when she spotted a puddle. Rushing towards it, she dropped down to her knees as she peered at the reflection inside.
It was not her.
"Aaaaaaaah!" She screamed loudly, the sound echoing in the wide lands, the birds flapping their wings angrily as they flew away from the mad woman.
She dropped on her butt, scooting away from the water and the reflection as if it would change everything back to the way it had been.
Back when she looked different, had a different face and body, and a life, and a fami-
Her body paused in the panicking, her breath stopping altogether.
The memories rushed back.
The poison, the betrayal...
The air left her in a woosh, as she curled in on herself.
But this time, her eyes didn't fill with tears.
Her cheeks lifted as she smiled her maniacal smile, looking eery on the face of the young woman.
It wasn't strange to her that she had no more tears to spill. She was all cried out.
She stood calmly, brushing the dirt from her skirt, and squinted toward the crooked rooftops of a village in the distance. Smoke curled from chimneys. A rooster crowed.
It was all so normal.
Almost painfully so.
"Right," she said to no one. "New world. No money. No phone. No idea who I am."
She smiled faintly. "Guess we start from zero."
-------------
And far away, in a manor of black glass and silver banners, a man looked up sharply- as if something had changed in the air.
A thread had shifted. A presence stirred.
He smiled faintly, sensing it before anyone else.
"She's here," he murmured.