Her shoulder-length reddish-brown hair, held together in a messy ponytail, danced and tickled her nape slightly, swaying in the breeze as she stood motionless; emotionless.

"Wow," she muttered under her breath, creating a misty cloud in the cool morning air, and the music was far too loud, drowning out any other sounds that might have been heard.

They finally found her parents. 'Were they even looking?' she thought in amazement, as it had taken them six years. 'For an organization like VAULT, you'd think they could do better.'

A sound of disgust ripped from her throat at the thought of the mental gymnastics they had to go through to justify this fact when the truth was so obvious.

Buds in her ears provided her with someone singing about a person who never wanted to give them wings; who never wanted to set them free. Words so out of context in their meaning within the song she listened to, yet so fitting, in the end, to her quandary.

"And what if I did?" Her head slightly tilted when asking out loud. "What if I 'lay down and play dead and stay dead,' would they leave me the fuck alone then?"

The thought process annoyed her, but she felt that it would probably not happen anytime soon. It made her shake her head and pull her mind in another direction.

Sighing, she looked at the grave in front of her with more intent this time. It was decorated with a family picture, enframed in the memorial stone on top of it.

As far as she was informed, that stone had been paid for by her late grandparents. Grandparents she didn't get to meet to ask any questions.

Questions like: "What were my parents like?", "How did we live?", or "What kind of person was I?"

In the end, though, it was a nice little memento, she had to admit as much. Unconsciously, her hand moved to the small space above her collarbone. Another token to add to her own ledger one day.

Her fingertips fiddled with the delicately shaped silver around her neck, making out the word "Celia". It was the same word written in the center of the tombstone in front of her.

"'Celia Smith' is no more, I guess," the young girl said as if it were a random thought. "How does it feel to be someone? I really can't say."

Celia asked the void around her, but she knew that the one she was talking to would receive her words either way. They had known each other for six years now, but to her, it was a lifetime's worth of memories.

No matter how much she looked at it and went over it in her mind, it didn't feel earned. It didn't feel familiar. She had once thought that maybe once she found the place where she belonged, all the things she was missing would be returned to her. Except that wasn't true.

Reality hit her like a freight train when she had to understand that it wasn't going to be that easy. Would she ever feel at home? Or that she was her own true self? Maybe it just wasn't an attainable state as long as she was a chess piece with the VAULT logo basically inked onto her forehead.

'Will you not accept your name?' His words reached her over the music in her ears, turned up to maximum volume.

She blinked at the question directed at her after the long silence. "Why do you ask if you already know the answer?"

It was a phrase she had always used when he asked a question she didn't really want to answer, even if the answer was obvious.

But that didn't make it a false statement.

She licked her dry lips and blinked at the names of her supposed parents, then swallowed and forced a smile. "Nice to meet you," the fourteen-, no, thirteen-year-old said, "I'm Celia Whit-"

Her voice broke in the middle of her introduction to the family she had searched for so long, depriving her of the chance to acknowledge who she really was for the first time in her life.

Pain shot through her body and she sank to the ground, numbing her mind and making her forget what she had even wanted to say.

Breathing became harder as she clutched her jacket tightly in front of her chest. She had felt a pulling sensation, similar to someone tugging at her hair, but it affected her entire body.

Suddenly, her heart seemed to follow a rhythm she had never heard before. The song she had on repeat, still blaring from the headphone that had fallen out of one of her ears and was lying in the cold mud next to her, felt so ironic.

"But if I lay down and I play dead and I stay dead - Then will you get bored of killing me?"

It would have made her laugh if that had been at all possible. But apart from her hands, clenched rigidly in the fabric of her clothes, she could do nothing but stare straight ahead with a twisted smile on her lips, as her heart barely managed one arduous pump after another.

The intervals in between were growing longer and longer until she felt the world around her darken considerably. She could barely feel the strain anymore either.

She had imagined how it would happen and feel if she died, but this wasn't it. A gurgling sound came out of her mouth and the taste of blood spread on her tongue. There was no way her heart could fail her, yet it felt as if it was ripped out, like a lie.

'No way,' she thought, as the realization kicked in, 'is this it?' After all she had done and all she had managed to survive, this was to be her end?

"Sucks...," she slurred, barely audible and with her eyes wide open, as her consciousness finally faded.