fire (loki's daughter)

f o u r t e e n

 chapter fourteen: distractions and the locket in her pocket

song: i'll die anyway. -- girl in red

Cameron did not like this. She did not like what was happening, that was for sure. The rest was not so sure. She'd gone her whole life (or at least what she remembered which was apparently a lie) knowing who she was. She knew that she liked hot chocolate and hated ice cream, she knew that coffee made her taste buds cringe, she knew that she loved the color orange and that green was her least favorite, she knew who her mother was. But now, as Tony ran the DNA of Maryanne Frasier that he'd stolen a blood sample from the infirmary for, she began to wonder if anything she knew about herself was true.

There was a nervous silence in the room. It was only Cameron and Tony but it felt like there were a thousand eyes watching, waiting for the results, just like them. The computer screen said that there were only three minutes remaining in the process and Cameron didn't know if she could wait. She was tapping her hand against the table as she sat. She couldn't deny that she was extremely nervous. And she couldn't deny the searing pain in her forehead. Part of her just wanted to leave the room, go to bed, and deal with it all tomorrow. The logical part of her knew that she couldn't possibly do that. She wouldn't be able to sleep without knowing the answer. She didn't know if she'd be able to sleep knowing the answer either, but it was more likely. And she had school in the morning. She couldn't deal with this tomorrow if she wasn't even here. So she waited for what felt like an eternity.

Finally, finally, the system completed its analysis. And the answer was exactly what Cameron was afraid of. Maryanne was, in fact, her mother. What was she going to do now? Her head hurt like mad, her vision was blurred, she was dizzy. She stumbled out of the room. She didn't know what was going on, but she knew that she had to get out of here. It was late and she had school in the morning. That's why she was leaving, right?

Her room was dark and Cameron didn't even bother to turn on the light. She didn't even bother to put her pajamas on, she didn't even bother to brush her teeth, she didn't even bother to make sure everything was set for school in the morning. She just climbed under the covers and closed her eyes.

She didn't sleep well that night. Her alarm went off early the next morning and to make matters worse, Loki was in the common area when she went down for breakfast. He noticed her as soon as she entered the room and Cameron used a serious amount of will power not to do something she'd regret. She set her backpack on the counter and made herself a piece of toast, doing her best to ignore the man staring at her.

People stared at her at school too. The news of Rachel's death had traveled quickly and so had the rumors. In the first hour of school alone, she had three people ask her if she'd been the one to kill her foster mother. Within the second hour, she'd lost count of the number of times she'd heard somebody talking about her behind her back. The pain in her head had faded considerably since she'd been able to focus on something other than her newfound heritage and the bits and pieces of memories that she wasn't quite sure were her own.

Cameron had a free period right before lunch that day and of course, she found herself in the library. She decided not to do any of her homework so that she'd have an excuse to hide when she got back to the tower. Instead, she began to search the internet for records of Maryanne Frasier. She found a few little things, but there was absolutely nothing about her mother on the internet in almost ten years. She was about to give up when Ainsley sat down across from her.

"How's it going?" Ainsley asked, dropping her bag in one of the empty chairs. Over the past two weeks that Cameron had been attending Midtown, the two had spent all of their free periods and most of their lunch periods together.