TITLE: Eight

SUMMARY: These are the territories I live for. I'd still give my everything to love you more. Onesided Norgatha, dark.

A/N: Finished ParaNorman, immediately opened a Word document. Written while listening to the music (not the poem) part of "Song Of Myself" – Nightwish. Fitting, I think, if you see the lyrics. (Look them up, though. A lot of connections to Agatha can be made.)

Writing time: ~1 hour

i.

She heard somewhere, once, that all things come in sevens.

It's funny, she thinks. Her death came in seven verdicts.

What she doesn't know is that the ugliest things come in eights.

ii.

This is not a love story.

This is not one of those stories where they couple gets married and has babies in the end, living happily ever after.

This is not the kind of story her mother tells.

iii.

She remembers thinking, as they slipped the rope around her neck, that she shouldn't cry. Her mother always told her not to show when she was hurt, that her tormentors would go away if she just showed them that she didn't care.

But I do care, she thought, as they removed the chair from under her feet and the rope tightened and her neck didn't break didn't break didn't break didn't—

And the minutes passed—

And she choked and kicked and tried to scream—

And her neck still didn't break didn't break didn't—

There.

She cared as much as any dying little girl could.

iv.

Thinking back, maybe part of why she never moved on from that grave was because she was scared of what she would find on the other side.

Her Puritanical upbringing always told her that those hanged for witchcraft were hanged for a Very Good Reason, because they were evil, or what have you. Because God didn't love them.

But who needs God, she tells herself now, if they have Norman?

v.

Ah, yes. Norman.

Even after she wakes up in what seems like Heaven, even after she sees her mother again and they cry together and hug and don't let go for ages…

Even then, she thinks of the boy who saved her.

vi.

He insisted.

We're not so different.

If we aren't different, she muses, watching him from the sky…

(He's older now, he's much older, he's kissing a girl—)

If we aren't really different…

(He's so close to her—)

Then…

(And she wants to scream and kick again—)

Why don't you make anyone suffer?

But he does, she thinks, curling into a ball and sobbing. He does.

vii.

And there's no worse emotion in the world than guilt, she knows.

She replays the scene in her head, every single day she thinks about it, about once trying to kill the boy (the man) she'd love one day.

I didn't know. I didn't know.

It will not fade with time.

viii.

Time heals no wounds.

She knows that, after three hundred or so years.

It's healed a few things: the rope burns on her neck and hands, the pain of losing a mother. She's dead and with her mother again. It shouldn't possibly get better than that.

But it will never heal the crippling agony she feels when she thinks of him.

She was killed by seven evil people.

But she is the eighth. They attempted and failed to destroy the innocent.

Seven-eighths executed someone hideous.

But one of them, that very same little girl, made the attempt on someone who didn't deserve it at all.

You're just like them, Agatha!

And he's right, she knows. He's right.