Back Alley

After the show, the band and road crew were celebrating the success of their latest gig, but Faith couldn't put her heart into it. She only got news of her Aunt Aisha's death just before going on stage, so she hadn't had time to let it sink in until now. She needed some quiet time to herself.

Grabbing her hoodie and roller blades, she caught sight of Rach and Ryan as she headed for the backstage exit of the club. "I'm going to head out to the bus early, guys. Throw back a couple of beers for me, eh?"

Trying her best to smile, she waved as she slipped out the back and into the alley. She shrugged on her hoodie as she walked, looking for somewhere to sit down and put on her roller blades.

The sudden tug at the back of her hoodie was her only warning. A second later, the side of her body screamed at her as she was slammed hard into the side of a dumpster.

She grimaced as she looked up at her attacker, straightening into a defensive stance as best she could through the pain. Just because she never picked a fight didn't mean she wasn't a fighter. She knew how to defend herself; when she was thirteen, a punk kid three years older than her had tried to mug her for her wallet. She had broken his nose.

But this wasn't a teenage kid in front of her. The mugger was a full foot taller, rough-looking and muscular. A seasoned criminal, she guessed. Probably stalking the alley for an easy hit, and like an idiot she had wandered into the alleyway alone.

She didn't have time to chastise herself for her stupidity.

A beefy hand shot out at her. She ducked slower than she would have liked; the pain strangled her reaction time, but she still managed to just barely dodge.

Coming back up, her body twisted fluidly, deftly transferring the motion into a high kick that smashed solidly into the thug's head. Faith smiled in satisfaction as he reeled back, stunned and surprised. Guys never expected a girl to fight back. It was a nice advantage to have.

The glint of steel from the corner of her eye told her the thug had his own advantage; he didn't come alone. She tried to twist out of the way, but couldn't make it.

Her scream echoed through the alley as another assailant’s knife dug into her shoulder.

First-Cousin-Once-Removed

[Continued from "Speechless" found on Ryan Johnson's in-game blog.

For full story, read: "Come Undone" - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and "The Truth".]

Faith watched as the little girl slept soundly in Rachael's lap. "Awww, she's so cuuuute."

Looking over, she glanced at her cousin Aaron who had drifted to sleep on the couch, then back to his daughter Livi. "Wow, that was some pretty heavy stuff. Remind me to stay single for life, 'kay, guys?" She leaned back in her seat in thought, before continuing. "So... that makes me a first-cousin-once-removed, right? I could never figure out that crazy family tree stuff."

Stretching, Faith got up and began rummaging through her bag. "So, Ry, when is it going to be yours and Rach's turn, eh?", she asked casually. Focussed on the contents of her bag, she didn't notice her bandmates' expressions towards her question. Before they could reply, she cut them off with a victorious "Sweet! Here it is!" and pulled her camera out with a triumphant grin.

Returning to where Rachael held Livi, she made sure the flash was off so it wouldn't wake her, then took a few shots with her camera.

"She's just too cute to pass up a few quick photos," she explained with a smile.

Photos, Notes and Notation

Faith stared out the window of her room in her uncle's beach house, watching the waves caress the shore. A lone piece of driftwood caught in the current scratched patterns in the wet sand before the tide pulled it from the beach and washed away its writings. A few moments later, the waves and the driftwood returned to do it all again.

Around her room, sheets of music lay scattered on the floor, on her bed, the table against the far wall and along the window seat on which she sat. She hadn't left the familiar four walls much since she received the phone call from New York. Ryan and Rachael were around; Through her bedroom door, Faith could hear them go about their day as they went about the house. But she wasn't in much of a mood for company, so had seen little of them and vice versa.

Absently, she twirled a pencil in her hand as she looked down at the sheaf of papers in her lap, more pages littered with musical notation. Picking up the first page, she frowned, crumpled it up and tossed it across the room, not even bothering to aim for the waste basket. It was garbage, all garbage.

Not for the first time, she wondered what her cousin had been thinking when he asked her to join his band. Sure, it was loads of fun, but having fun doing something didn't necessarily mean you were any good at it. The critics seemed to believe that their band had some talent; Ry was always floored by the reviews they'd get the next day.

Sighing, she stood up from the window seat and crossed her room, the paper in her lap falling to the floor like a cascade of water. As she approached her dresser mirror, she watched as her twin in the glass closed the distance between them. Her tan complexion told of her mother's Hispanic roots, but her eyes shone with the piercing blue hue that came from the European blood of her father.

Gently, she tugged loose one of the photos tucked into the mirror's frame.

Her big sister at six years old smiled up at her from the picture with their father's same blazing blue eyes. Faith had always thought she'd see Isa again. She had been wrong.

Her finger traced the worn edges of the photograph as she stared. Two more pairs of her father's eyes smiled back with matching grins: those of her two-year-old self and those of her big brother, Nic.

She frowned suddenly at a thought. Carefully pocketing the photo, she began to rummage through her dresser, then her closet, throwing various articles of clothing onto a hockey bag sitting in the corner.

An hour later, pages of a new song sat on the kitchen counter beside a note for Rach and Ry, in barely legible handwriting scribbled on a crinkled piece of previously-discarded sheet music.

"Need to go to NY.
Sorry I wasn't much company.

-Faith"

Lost Connections

Faith was skating some warm-up laps around the artificial-ice rink when her cel phone rang. Gliding to where she had left it, she picked it up from the boards at home bench and stared at the number on the call display.

She only recognized that the area code was from New York, but her bandmate, Rachael, was the only person she knew from the 'Big Apple', and Faith would have recognized the number if it were her. Confused, she flipped open her phone to stop its desperate ringing and greeted the caller.

It was a doctor from a New York hospital.

Her sisters were dead.

She could only reply with stunned silence.

"Si-sisters?" She managed to whisper after what felt like ages. Her voice sounded small and lost in her ear.

The doctor expressed his condolences as he described the cause of death, some sort of brain-eating disease.

When the call ended, she flipped closed her phone and stared blankly past the boards of the rink.

She had had sisters.

She remembered Isa. She had kept the old photo taken at her big sister's birthday party years ago. Faith, with her short hair and baby grin at the age of 2, had sat between Isa, then 6, and their brother Nic, 5, as their father had taken their picture. Isa had been bright and bubbly; she looked like an angel with her cherub face and halo of blonde locks. Faith had always imagined she looked... had looked beautiful all grown up. Her big sister was... would have been 21 now.

Faith wiped a tear she found rolling down her cheek.

Stepping through the gate in the boards, she sat on the home bench and with stiff motions, untied the laces of her skates.

The other names the doctor had listed, Sophie, Trinity and Adaline, were unfamiliar.

She knew her father had continued to live his life without her and her mother after the friendship between her parents dissolved. But when she was in New York, Faith had caught glimpses of him from a distance as they lived their separate lives. She had seen the love he had for 'His Special Lady', the phrase her father used when she was too young to understand the term 'wife', and watched as the size of that side of her family grew without her. Eventually, there were many more children than just Nic and Isa vying for their father's love and attention.

She had never learned the names of any of her other siblings until today.

As she mechanically put away her skates and locked up the empty rink, she wondered who her sisters were. She knew their names now, but she couldn't put faces to them.

Her roller blades hung forlornly from her shoulders by their laces. She usually skated along the road to and from the beach house and the rink, but she didn't feel like skating anymore today. Instead, she walked the dirt beside the road, the pavement already too hot for her bare feet despite not yet being past noon, until it curved where it met the beach. Then she walked onto the sand and followed the rhythmic shoreline the rest of the way home.

Sophie, Trinity, Adaline... who were they? What were they like? Had they been as bubbly and full of life as Isa? As musically talented as their father? As pretty as Papa's 'Special Lady'?

She didn't know.

And now she never would.

Aimless...

Despite being freshly plowed, the sidewalk still hid underneath the light dusting of snow that continued to drift from the night sky. It was late, but Faith didn't want to go home.

It wasn't home anyway. Not really. Not anymore.

Her mother's New York apartment had always been too big. It had originally meant to be home to her, her half-siblings and her parents, but in the end, that never happened. Her mother had broken off the engagement to her father not long after she was born. Her parents had stayed friends for several years after, but then suddenly, inexplicably, her father cut ties with them.

She didn't realize her eyes were tearing until she felt the drops overflow and run down her cheeks. Hugging herself, she quickly wiped the tears away before the empty street took notice.

She didn't care about what happened between her parents. She didn't even care about why her father had left.

She just wanted her Papa back.

Her roller blades rhythmically clicked on the seams in the sidewalk. Looking around, she realized she had wandered to some place familiar. The chain-link fence was shorter than she remembered now that she was older, and the playground had been renovated with more slides and swings, but she still recognized the place. She didn't need to read the sign out front to see this was where she had once gone to school.

Skating to the gate, she tested its lock and found it was open. With a sad smile, she slipped in.

She rolled across the pavement towards the swing set, as the snow continued to fall in slow motion around her. She didn't remember much of her time in school; she had only spent two years there. Even then, her clearest memories were of her cousins and those were few. They had had their own friends to play with and she had been too shy to befriend her own.

She seated herself on a swing and sighed. Aaron used to push her on these swings when Ryan would run off with one of his friends. Now Aaron was god-knows-where doing god-knows-what, and Ryan was completely focused on the band and his girlfriend. Faith still had no idea why they had asked her to join them; she still had no idea why she had said 'yes'. Hockey was still her first love, after all.

Planting her blades into the sand and snow around the swing set, she pushed off and let herself swing back and forth like a forlorn pendulum.

Harry, an old family friend, had unintentionally unnerved her when she had run into him a few days ago. Music was his life, so he knew what he was talking about when he began explaining to her the hard work and long nights involved in being part of a band, a level of commitment she wasn't sure she was ready to make.

Not for the first time and likely not the last, she wondered what she was doing with her life. Everybody else had inspiration and motivation, and they were moving forward. Even her mother was finally moving on and dating again (even if she was dating a freaky-haired dork).

Swinging back and forth, she looked up at the sky. As she watched the pure white snow drift down, she realized for the first time she was all alone.

Everybody she knew was leaving her behind.

Birthday by the Lake

"A picnic?" Faith asked with a laugh, skating ahead of her mother on the path through the park. "That's kind of dull for a 16th birthday, isn't it, Ma?"

"Oh, shush, love. I'm not your uncle. I can't be extravagant and shower you with expensive gifts like he does." Syl chuckled back and shook her head. "Ah, here we are."

The path wound past a lake, and Syl pointed to an empty picnic table by the water. "That spot's perfect."

Placing the picnic basket she carried on top of the table, Syl pulled out a table cloth and lay it on the surface, then she began to place the food on it as they waited for the others to arrive. "You're too young to remember this, but this is actually where we celebrated your first birthday, so it's actually a fitting coincidence that we're celebrating your 16th here."

"Really?" Faith smirked as she sat down at the table to untie her roller blades. "So there's a sentimental reason why we're celebrating my birthday in a lame way?"

"Smart mouth." Laughing, Syl sat down beside her daughter, and playfully jabbed the girl in the shoulder, before resting a hand on the baby belly that held Faith's little brother.

"It runs in the family, Ma." The girl grinned as she slid off her blades, then peeled off her socks. Her bare feet nestled into the soft cool grass, a different sensation than the hot crisp sands back home.

Home

Faith was wide awake, though she shouldn't have been. She had taken an evening flight, so her plane had landed right at midnight. While all the other passengers were yawning and dragging their feet, she was wired and received strange looks from the porter who was helping to carry her guitar and her hockey bag and stick.

As she passed through the Arrivals gate, she heard a familiar voice and smiled. Scanning the small crowd hovering around the gate, she caught sight of Aunt Beth waving and calling. Dropping her bags, she ran into her aunt's arms for a hug.