Can You Feel The Sun? (Cyberpunk 2077)

Prologue

Notes: Just a little short prologue, next chapter is much much longer.

Chapter Specific Warnings: Death, Mourning, Blood, Murder, Ableism (ableism is a big aspect of Aidan's childhood), Like her dad nearly murdered her as a child, so thats pretty fucked. Hitting a girl in the head with a branch, because that's occasionally the vibe

"Below the willow tree

Is where I hide the darkest parts of me

They're hiding underneath

The broken lies that I just still believe"

The bark chips away under Aidan's knife, the seventeen-year-old carving out an epithet. Her mother's ashes scattered along the roots of the towering tree, hours after she'd watch the body burned on pyre before the clan. 'Aoife Becker', jagged and uneven are the first two words to engrave the weathered trunk. Aidan's eyes sting, burning with unshed tears and her hand shaky as she carves out the next words; 'Time Will Not Dim Your Sacrifice'. She cuts her hand on the 'y', a sharp pain as the blade slices her palm, blood staining the tree, marking the words she's left for the dead.

Aidan runs her stinging palm along one of the branches that bend to meet it's roots, her mom's words on the importance of weeping willows fresh in her mind. The Herd burns their dead, ashes to ashes. City folks don't bother burying their dead anymore, but use to be everyone would. Then capitalism ruined it all, as it so often does according to her mom, but with the dead being returned to earth it was the weeping willow trees that grieved them. They bow their branches in somber remembrance, taking the weight of mourning off the shoulders of the living. The trees will remember even when the living can't, they'll take the burden and allow the living to move on, knowing the deceased will never be forgotten by nature.

Its silly, she knows, a tree can't grieve or feel her pain. It's bowed branches bare her no mind and do not pity her; they could never lift this hurt from her heart. But one day...she'll be gone too, so will her father, her sister, and everyone who'd ever known her mother. And perhaps, the tree will remain, maybe a memory can live forever even when none of them can.

There's a movement in the dark, illuminated by the distant campfire. Ava, a girl a few years her senior, with long dark hair and blue eyes looking at her with furrowed brows. Aidan called her out here and her hands move before Ava can question her.

"Run away with me," she signs, voice spilling out unintentionally, cracked and broken from a combination of emotion and lack of use. She stands before her best friend, the girl she loves.

Ava's blue eyes widen, chewing her lips, before she sighs and looks at the ground. It's not the reaction Aidan wanted, she was hoping for Ava to jump at the chance the way she did three years ago. She was hoping for a smile, bright eyes, excitement; but all she's met with is a resigned exasperation.

"Don't be stupid, Aidan."

"I'm not being stupid!" She's never been this loud, her voice hurting her throat, and her signing hands slapping together with the force of her frantic gestures.

"Quiet, of all the times for you to be loud, I fucking swear...You want someone to hear?"

They away from camp, sleeping friends and family a ways off, but not unreachable. And as angry as Aidan is, she knows Ava is right.

"I can't be here anymore. I can't do this, you saw what he did..." Aidan chokes up, emotion catching in her throat as she thinks of her mom, "it's only a matter of time before it's you or me."

"He did what he had to, it's what was best for The Herd, you know that. You can't break down every time you don't get your way. You're stronger than that Aidan, fuckin' act like it."

And she goes to walk away.

A million things rush through Aidan's mind, she wants to yell at her that she's not being a child, this isn't her throwing a tantrum because she didn't get her way. Her mom is dead and her dad pulled the trigger. And she's supposed to just be okay, because her mom was hurt, because her mom was never going to walk again, because she was weak, it was okay? It's not and how an entire clan of people can say it is, it's not fucking right.

But, right now, this is about Aidan. The already "broken" child of The Herd leader, she barely proved herself as a child, nearly put down at ninefor losing her hearing. Her mother was the one who protected her, she had thought her mom was untouchable, the one person able to melt the ice around her father's heart. And now she's gone and it's only a matter of time before Aidan is too.

Aidan's hands move before she can give it another thought, grabbing a heavy willow branch off the ground, she can't risk anyone coming after her. Not right away at least, she'll need a head start. So, she swings, knocking the branch into the back of Ava's head.

There's a hitch in Aidan's throat as Ava falls to the ground. Not hard enough to kill, she could never do that...not to Ava. The older girl's chest still rises and falls with her breaths, knocked out and incapacitated.

She swoops up her body, cradling her bridal style as she carefully packs her back to camp. Everyone is still asleep, or at least tucked away in their tents without any concern for what's going on outside. Aidan moves carefully, preparing herself to tell anyone who does come out that Ava drank too much. But no one stirs as she clumsily opens the tent she usually shares with her sister and friend.

Aidan puts Ava down on her sleeping bag, more comfortable than the dirt. A soft snore picked up by her hearing aids, the other body here, actually sleeping. Eira...

Her sister sleeps in her own sleeping bag, none the wiser to the way life is changing around her, that she'll wake without a sister. But Eira is safer here, the only person who is. Their father's last chance at continuing the bloodline. The "unbroken" child. He wants grandchildren, healthy ones without autoimmune disorders, Eira is his best and only chance at that. He won't throw that away. Aidan's fingers twitch to touch her sister, a final hug, a final goodbye.

"I love you, Eira, stay safe," she signs instead, voice trapped tight behind closed lips, it's all she can offer before she grabs her duffle bag and swings it over her shoulder.

And she runs.