Bite into the apple of Eden and you'll cough up blood before you could even swallow. It's made of maggots and rotten flesh, the poison that will punish the sinner for even thinking of eating the treasures of paradise. One can feel them crawl, bite away to create a system of tunnels that'll kill them faster. To rott away underneath dirt and wood or to rott underneath the sun and gazes of suspects, it wholly feels as though none are didived by differences. Both act as if they can be a savior, when none are who they promise.
Jude resents them equally.
As though they are holier than thou, they punish what whispers they are not. Violence they crave, when they all promise to give peace and health. They create a system of lies, a web full of loyal liars that clean the dirt beneath their shoes and the blood beneath their nails. Astonishment they knit into their fictional stories, paints them like the stars and the sun hang onto their hands. Each of the wonders of earth are made by them, for them, and will be met with their demise by their order. Earth shall revolve around only them, even when they only speak one language only. Just one detail they forgot, and it makes them look weaker even more. Mortal is who everyone is, and neither they nor their loyalists believe they are. High up their mind, they wear wings and crowns, sit in gold and overlook the corpses that form their kingdom. Each who kills, who murders and mutates forgets one thing on their high of life; the victims they leave behind.
Now, you should take into consideration to not call them what their dead counterpart was, but rather who they are now, who they have become. They are survivors, brave souls who bare the mark of death on their heart. Heavy it holds onto, as days and months are spent to mourn who had been taken away. They didn't die, they were murdered, taken with little care. But between millions who mourn, and the little who seek vengeance and succeed, there rises one of a kind, a child no less and most often, the product of grief, who survives. They run with heavy breaths and so many tears, it clouds their sight and makes them trip. It leaves them empty of care, attacks them with brutal visions of who had died in which way. A bullet to the head or throat slit with a rusty knife. They'll all see it on a loop, reminds them they are now responsible for never letting their memories, their names die. It is heavy to shoulder, harder to carry, but if that's what a survivor should do, they'll take on every weight that clings onto them.
Dear Jude, who had never even known of death before September, was now plagued by it. The names that'd been tattooed onto her live to tell a survivor's tale, stand in black to show they are not forgotten. Eden who was smart, Diana who had been younger than all of them, Ahmed who wore the sweetest smile out of all of them and Faisal who reminded them that there was still good in humanity left. Each had been younger than eighteen, barely reaching seventeen (except Eden), but all of them hadn't deserved to be slaughtered like animals, as though they were less human than their killer. To become more than a child, to follow their parents path, that's what they had wanted. To live, to survive, to stop their murder by pleading. None they had achieved, but still, they were greater than Jude could ever be. They were loved, remembered by more than dear Jude, and so missed by everyone who knew their names. Jude who survived, Jude who was left to remember all that had been done to her friends, she has no support anymore. Her family was slaughtered, and now she is left to crawl and scatter like a rat with a cut tail.
Jude with no last name, Jude with no lasting support, was a runner for quite the time. Jude who was still standing, ran into her biggest problem yet. Jude who was believed dead, Jude who saw and sat at her own gravestone, was seen to be not so dead after all. Jude, who craved vengeance more than her family's rise to liveliness, hadn't ever expected to be saved (or tricked), by the myth and symbol of brutality. Jude, who trusted not even the rats that screeched at her for day and night, must trust one who has no trust at all, especially for a girl that has no apparent last name.
Jude, who feared living on more than anything, must work alongside one of a kind who had lived on despite being dead. For her family, she must remind herself.
For her family.
Just Jude.
Jason Peter Todd.
Jason Todd is my bbg