A/N: As I near the end of Her Twisted Providence I am editing the whole story chapter by chapter, until I am satisfied with a final polished version. No big changes will occur, but HTP is my baby, and I want to leave it on the best note possible. So as I revise, please continue to enjoy and review what, rather unexpectedly, turned out to be one of the darkest stories I´ve ever written, not to mention one of the most fun to write.

Happy reading!

-Maat, July 10, 2009

Her Twisted Providence

Chapter One: November Chills

The threat of rain hovered in the air, the dirty sky over the city smudged with gray and brown, the trees lank and bare. Outside, students stood with mittens and scarves to ward off the early chill, small dots of color in the fading light.

She brushed a strand of pale blonde hair away from her eyes as she turned her face to the twilight. She hated how the winter stole the light from the day, slowly cutting off pieces of time until nothing existed but wan grey and cold nights.

She tried to focus on the book in front of her but the library was so stiflingly warm and the small crack in the window was letting a cold breeze flow past her face and if she closed her eyes for one moment she could just forget…

"Chris!"

She snapped her head up, hands rising to rub her eyes. A small boned, painfully thin girl was leaning over her, dark hair pulled tautly away from her face, exaggerating her sharp, prominent features and deep-set eyes.

Christine blinked, her brain still fuzzy, her cheeks flushed with the room's heavy heat. "I just closed my eyes for a second, Meg. What time is it?"

"It's almost two and the library is about to close."

"Two?" she yelped, pulling herself to her feet. "Oh God, I didn't even finish my readings…"

Meg frowned at her. "You have to stop working yourself so hard."

"But I need…" Christine gestured wildly, her hair straggly and the imprint of words running down her cheek from where she had rested her head.

"You need to relax and not kill yourself!" Meg could hear her own mother in her voice, that tight mixture of concern and snappish anger. She took a deep breath. "Come on, let's go before they turn the lights out."

Christine gave her the look of a drowning child. "What am I going to do?" she whispered, on the edge of a breakdown. "I need to finish this but I need to go tomorrow, I need to…" she drew a deep breath, willing herself not to cry. "Tomorrow is three years. I have to go. But I have to finish this, I can't disappoint him…"

Meg had heard Christine say that phrase so many times it was driving her crazy: after a difficult test, a failed audition, whispered at night as she cried when she thought Meg couldn't hear, breathed fretfully in church when she clenched her eyes as if making a wish.

"You'll finish it in time, and you'll get to go." Meg took a breath before finishing bluntly: "And maybe you need to stop living for your father." She turned and walked toward the door, unable to take that look on her friend's face any longer. "You coming? Oh, and you have ink on your face."

Christine rushed after her, rubbing her face in a hurt, sullen sort of way, and as they left the room the security camera turned slightly, quietly, as if to watch them go. Neither girl noticed.

The night was bitterly cold, and as they emerged from the library their feet crunched on early frost. Christine paused for a moment to survey the sky. The stars were barely visible in the city's haze, and the pollution had tinted the hovering clouds a coal red, but the night was cold and the moon so big. She breathed in gratefully.

Maybe Meg was right. Maybe everything could be okay.

The moment broke as she stepped into the streetlight, lightly jogging to catch up to her friend's smaller figure. The glassy air slapped color into her cheeks and brought clarity to her image.

She had a soft featured, almost blurred face, like she was looking at the world through the haze of a faded black-and-white photograph, like if anyone looked at her too closely she would fade and disappear. She was ephemeral, barely there: so thin and sickly pale, her yellow hair clouded around her face and shoulders, her eyes wide and grey, her face round, her mouth small. She started running, long legs flying, running even as she passed Meg, moving toward her apartment and cutting through the night air until her lungs ached. She wanted to keep running forever without thinking, with only the night and the cold and the sky.

But as she reached her door and waited for Meg as she always did, and the security camera glared down at her as it always did, the pain came back, as it always did.

Tomorrow she would go to her father's grave. Tomorrow she would try one more time to say goodbye.

"You should be on the track team." Meg jogged up behind her. "Feel better?"

"Yes," she lied, pushing her lank hair out of her eyes. "Yeah, I'm okay."

They entered the dimly lit apartment building in silence, took the elevator to the top floor, and tramped into the small, dorm-style one bedroom apartment. Christine knew that Meg wanted to talk to her more, possibly about the upcoming day, but she couldn't take it. Her small bed looked warm and inviting; she fell into it without even changing into pajamas, and slept and dreamed, as always, of beautiful music.

November tenth dawned bright and frozen, and the light crept over Christine's sheets like a thief, robbing her of sleep and graceful dreams. She pulled herself up and rubbed her eyes, her hair knotted and flattened against her head. She yawned hugely, shivered, and pulled a heavy book onto her bed; finals were only three weeks away and she would get no other work done that day.

Christine glanced over at Meg, snuggled comfortably on her side of the room, only the top of her head visible as she snored softly. 'How easily she sleeps,' she mused. 'Does she hear the music at night, too? Does she dream of beautiful things?'

A laugh caught in her throat. Sometimes she acted as if the dreams were real, as if some divine voice was really singing to her, playing her father's violin and leading her into the warmth of quiet sleep. As if such a voice could exist, outside of an angel.

How childish.

Christine's father taught her about angels just as other children were raised on Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. He fed her mind with stories, made her believe that anything could be hers if she tried hard enough, that angels guarded her every move, that happiness was inevitable. He kept her a child, catered to her, built her a lovely, delicate glass house that protected her from the world but shattered when she breathed.

'How could you leave me?' she thought desperately. 'I miss you so much, so so much and I'm so alone, I feel like I'm choking! How can I live like this? Why did you leave me? Daddy!'

Christine wrapped her arms around her thin frame and cried, small gasps of breath as she tried to stay quiet. She cried until her face was red and puffy, her eyes ringed and dull, until drops of water hit the page of the heavy book still on her lap, blurring the words into jumble.

'I'm such a drama queen,' she thought bitterly after she had calmed down. 'How Meg deals with me I'll never know. Always crying, always panicking… I'm such a child. She's right, I should get over it. It's been three years. I can't do this anymore.'

Three years. It was a long time, but every morning as she woke up and lingered in that in-between place of dream and reality she still expected to hear his voice.

In school Christine pushed herself hard, but despite her best efforts the business classes produced nothing but stress and apathy. She knew that she never really wanted a job in business anyway, but it seemed a solid choice, and he had been so enthusiastic when she told him. He wanted her to have a real job, to provide for herself, to pull herself out of the respective poverty that she had grown up in.

He had wanted her to sing as well, to revel in an art as he had the violin and her mother had with her paintbrushes, and again it was only his desire that kept her from abandoning her once coveted dream. She hated it now, hated forcing the music from her throat, but she auditioned and occasionally received parts, and sang every day, for him. She worked and struggled in a life that she hated, alone, for praise she would never get, to make proud a man who had been fading to dust for three years.

'What else am I to do, except what you wanted? It's all I've ever known about my future,' she thought resignedly. 'You're the only person who ever really loved me; you're everything in my life that ever mattered. I don't even care what happens anymore.'

The only time Christine ever found peace was when she slept, when she dreamed of music, the music she was sure her father was sending to her. It was her sign that she was doing the right thing, that he was proud and that maybe there really were angels to guard her.

Christine closed the heavy book with a sigh and pulled herself out of bed to pad across the floor in old socks. Taking a chipped mug out of the cupboard she filled it with water and stuck it in the microwave before digging in a small wooden box for her favorite tea. She put bread in the toaster and fished out the jam from the refrigerator. Every move she made was automatic, the same every day, and when she opened the jar to find out that there was no jam left she had a moment of just not knowing what to do.

Meg stumbled into the kitchen just as Christine was finishing off her second piece of dry toast and smiled blearily.

"There's butter in the side door, you twit," she muttered before shutting herself in the bathroom, and Christine blushed.

An hour later, showered and clean, her hair bundled under a wool cap and her body hidden under the folds of her father's ancient, over-large pea coat, she took Meg's car keys with the solemn promise that she would bring it back intact.

"And don't you dare go daydreaming again," Meg ranted. "Remember that dent you brought back with you last time? I don't want you to listen to any music; just concentrate on the road. And don't go too fast!"

"Yes, mother," Christine recited in a dull voice as she walked into the hallway.

"Or too slow!" Meg called after her. "And if you think the engine's starting to overheat you can…"

The end of her sentence was cut off by the elevator doors closing. Christine slouched against the back panel, idly playing with the frayed ends of her coat. She knew she wasn't the best driver, but Meg harped on her too much sometimes.

'I am grateful,' she thought wearily. 'I just didn't need that before I left. God, I'm so tired of all of this.'

The sky was grey as she stepped outside and the air was heavy with the smell of impending rain. The frost from the night before was gone, but in its place the ground was mushy and wet, clinging to her shoes as she walked. The security camera tilted almost thoughtfully as it watched her climb into the car and drive away, and as she disappeared into the distance its small blinking red light faded and went out.

The hour car ride seemed achingly slow, and by the time she stood at the edge of the graveyard the clouds covered the sun and the temperature had dropped painfully.

Christine shifted from foot to foot like a child, a few small flowers clutched in her hand. She didn't want to pass through the gate. Being in that place of death, seeing his headstone was like realizing he was truly gone all over again.

Slowly she stepped forward, and the wind sighed, urging her on.

His grave came into sight, emerging from behind the other faded clusters of granite. It was small, tucked off to the side, faded and out-of-place amid family plots that were meticulously clean and surrounded by flowers. Carefully she knelt by it and brushed some of the dirt away.

"Hi, Daddy," she whispered, pulling out weeds with studied concentration, as if the headstone were a face she could not look into. "I know I haven't been here for a while, and look at you, you're all overgrown." She threw the weeds to the side. "I'm sorry. I should take better care of you, shouldn't I? But you know how I've never been able to stand graveyards…" she trailed off, not sure of what to say after being away for so long.

"I'm sure you know how life is now, I mean you're watching over me, aren't you? But things aren't working out the way we thought they would. I'm unhappy, Daddy. I'm alone." She looked up at the words engraved in front of her and ran one finger along his name, tracing the letters. "What am I without you?"

She paused, unsure of how to continue. "I know that you told me to never give up, and I've tried, I really have. But I'm so tired, so tired of all of this. I don't know what to do." She bent her forehead to the cool stone as if in prayer. "Please tell me what to do."

She waited in that pose, but there was nothing but still air and distant noises.

And then, the violin.

It was so quiet, the sound so light and far away that for a few moments Christine wasn't sure she heard it at all. But it was there, rising out of the air like a piece of her dreams, and Christine raised her head from the stone to listen with raptured joy.

She knew that it was not her father, or an angel. However much she liked to hope that such things as ghosts and angels existed, she was not stupid. She daydreamed, she fancied, but in the end she still had her feet planted in reality. Christine wanted to believe, but part of her was afraid that if she left her reservations behind and embraced her childhood beliefs she would truly lose touch with reality and the last small grip she had on a normal, rational life.

But still, the music was so divine, so achingly beautiful that she couldn't help but hope.

Carefully, silently, as if not to scare away that far-off player, Christine stood and looked around her. She spun in a slow circle, staring hard at the hills and tombs around her, but there was still no explanation for that soft, ethereal music. Finishing her turn, she stood once again facing her father's tombstone, and found herself looking at an impossibility.

There, balanced delicately on top of the granite, was a small sheaf of papers that had not been there when she stood up.

She stared at the papers cautiously, as if they might jump up and bite her. Quickly she scanned her surroundings again, but there was no one around.

'This is impossible,' she thought, fear and curiosity winding their way through her stomach. 'Papers don't just appear out of nowhere. Maybe they were here the whole time and I didn't notice them.'

Even in her head it sounded ridiculous.

Still glancing uneasily around and noting that the violin had stopped, she stuck out one trembling hand and took the papers from their resting place. Leafing through them, she realized at once what they were.

Music.

A song: flowing, elegant, unlike any she had seen before. Written in her vocal range. Quietly she hummed a few bars, delighted at how lovely the tune was. Each note had its own resonance and beauty, and when strung together the result was smooth and clear.

It had words too, typed neatly onto the page in contrast to the tune's red, handwritten pattern. She had started to read them, intrigued, when something fell out from between the few pages and fluttered to the ground.

Trembling again, Christine bent to pick it up. It was a small piece of paper, neatly folded over once, the surface knotted and rough in the way handmade paper was. Carefully she opened it and stared at the scrawled red words in clumsy, childlike handwriting.

What did this mean? Where did this come from? How could someone have overheard her whispered conversation with a dead man? Her skin was cold even under the heavy coat, and she didn't know whether to cry or scream or smile. Instead she walked quickly back to the car, still scanning the graveyard for any sign of life, and only after she was safely locked inside the small vehicle did she open the note again and stare dazedly at the small red words.

'Don't give up.'