Dawn Chorus (Proxies x Reader)

Did Sleeping Beauty or Snow White or any princess cursed with slumber rest with an awareness that they are asleep and unable to escape it? Caught not in dreams but a string of consciousness so thin they could not break free to open their eyes? To have knowledge of your real body sitting there with no access to it is frightening. That type of sleep also strips away all that responsibility you have to yourself. But I am no princess and was never meant to be. I've always known that.

"She is just a weird kid, Sue. Falls asleep standing up. She'll just stop walking and fall asleep standing with her eyes wide open, and if we try to move her--God forbid you try to move her--she screams," my mother says.

She sits behind a curtain of cigarette smoke, brushing loose hair back from her face. Our neighbor, an older woman whose age only shows in the finest of wrinkles, sits across from her, stooped into the steam of her coffee. I shouldn't be watching. I like the narrow hall and its mountain of clothes exploding from the hamper. I can hide here and watch. I am a dragon on my hoard of dirty clothes and secrets.

"I just wish she'd be like her sisters."

"Some kids are weird, (M/n)." Sue reaches out to lightly rest her fingers on my mother's shoulder. "She's a smart kid, well behaved, sometimes that comes with little quirks. You're seeing weird because you're looking for ghosts."

And I think yes, yes I am ghosts.

My sleep is spent mostly small in that dimly lit living room of my early childhood. There are no walls, and each piece of furniture is a mountain far too large to climb. Picture frames lay face down. My mother preferred all glass so I can see the white backings and her scratchy handwriting in pencil on the back of each photo. I could stand under the tables and look up at the faces in the pictures, but I will not move from my spot, curled up in the center of the living room. I don't want to get any closer to the dark, the distant sounds of sad country music and sobbing and the occasional scream. An echo demanding I call emergency services or not call emergency services pierces through it, makes me smaller.

I lay spread out like a starfish on my bed. Sleep is distant and has been for three days. My mother will yell at me for being awake, does not believe me when I tell her I don't need to sleep. My limbs are too short and my hair too long. I feel like a collection of scrap pieces strung together.

"(Y/n)?" Whispers a tiny voice.

I turn my head to see (S/n), or the outline of her in the dark of the room. Her hair is in long tangles, and she is so small. I don't want to see her face, so I don't.

"I can't sleep," she whimpers. "The scratching."

"It's ok," I whisper.

I shimmy to the side of the bed, until I am cradled between the mattress and the wall. (S/n) crawls up next to me. She curls into a ball but unfurls like a bloom in spring as she falls deeper in sleep. I curl smaller to make space for her, still she kicks and hits me. I fall asleep with her foot lodged between my ribs.

I wake alone in a different room with walls the color of frozen lemonade and no other bed. I am bigger and sadder, though maybe I am happier too, as if every aspect of me has grown dramatically in those moments. It is still night and there is knocking at my window and a face in my mirror that isn't my own. These are normal occurrences. What woke me is just as common but manages to bother me. The screaming I can drown out if I breathe deep enough, but when the glass shatters, I know blood has been spilled, and that is where I have drawn the line.

I've never had a penchant for violence. I've taken plenty of hits solely because I would not hit back. Those are moments I don't dwell on, lest I grow bitter and regretful for choices already made and made well. There has been enough cruelty, in this house, in this family, across my body. We all hurt and thus keep hurting.