I Never Wanted to Be This Tragic

Anna had raced back from town as quickly as she could--she was clumsy and uncoordinated, and having some trouble with breathing and running at the same time, but she'd made pretty good time for all that because--well, because she was terrified of what she was going to find when she got here and terror gave one wings, it seemed. It had taken her two tries to get into the dorms, but by the time she crested the stairs to the second floor she'd basically forgotten that lesson in her panic, which was why she ran full-tilt into the door to her room--and, of course, rebounded, clutching at her nose. "Ow!"

Then she tried the doorknob and remembered oh, yeah, she didn't have a key. Because she was in the wrong body. (Also, she usually didn't bother carrying the key around anyway, since it wasn't like she needed it. But that was beside the point.)

"Hello?" she called softly through the door, both afraid of waking Stacey if she was in there and...well, afraid of what else might be in her room. "Are...is anyone in there?" And more importantly, how inexplicably homicidal did they or did they not feel right now?

Anna was having one of her bad days.

She'd been okay during Pinkie Pie's class--the city had been beautiful, and even when the dolls had showed up, she hadn't really understood what the big deal was at first. But then she got back to her room, and looked at her half, still completely bare like no one lived there, and it hit her that no one did. Because she was dead, and this was all just some kind of sick joke by the universe. What was the point of a ghost going to high school, really?

So she was curled up on her bare mattress, sobbing streaky grey tears into her hands, when she...heard something or felt something, she couldn't say which, and looked up, hurriedly wiping her face, to find a doll in a weirdly appropriate dress sitting in the middle of the floor. She thought dimly that if the doll had had dark hair, it could have been her. "You can't hurt me," she told it in a tear-choked voice. "I'm already dead." Then came a fresh flood of tears, and she buried her face in her hands again.

When she looked up again, the doll was sitting on the edge of the mattress. Anna eyed it for a moment, then looked away to sniffle and wipe at her face with the hem of her dress. She felt a small weight settle against her side, and when she looked, startled, the doll was right there, leaning against her. She looked down at it, and the doll...turned its head to look up at her. Right. Anna tentatively wrapped her arms around the doll, and when it didn't attempt to claw her face off or anything, she curled up around it, pressed her face to its head, and quietly let tears like charcoal-tinted water seep into the doll's already dirty synthetic blonde hair.

((Door is closed but post is open if anyone wants to deal with an emo ghost girl! Yes, Anna has made a friend. I couldn't resist.))