Indigo: Abraham, Emotion Vol. 2: Murderers, Chapter Ten: "The Island, part two"

 

Chapter Ten: The Island, part two

 

            Water rushed by like a dream and Shana surfaced on the other side, dry and alert.  She found herself floating high above Sadieville, just above the college on a stormy day.  Heart Song swayed and swam through the air, taking her between the charged particles of a cloud-to-cloud lightning flash.  She could feel it in her skin as she passed by.  The airs on her arm stood on end.

            They left the cloud line and drifted down, droplets of water breaking around them as they moved.  The rain was suspended in the air like clear beads catching the light and casting small rainbows halos.

            Below them, coming into view, were two women standing in the rain.  One was a petite blonde brandishing a rapier.  The other a brunette hiding behind her hair, slouched in indecision, with a bracer on her right arm, a red gleaming gem, a blade extended from it.  The blonde had her hand out.  The brunette was splattered with blood.

            They came to rest there, and Shana hopped off, but she kept her hand on her Voice’s side.  She looked between Alex and Carolyne.  “Where are we? And what is, well, this?”

            A moment of great struggle within Alex’s heart.  It is a point of indecision, a moment of regret.  There are many in Alex’s heart, but this one is different.  It is special to her, because it involves Carolyne, and so it is playing in an endless loop at the back of her head while she struggles for resolution.

            Shana stepped away, rain sliding around her as she moved.  She looked between them again.  Carolyne didn’t look angry, for once.  She was pleading.  Her hand was a gesture of friendship, and offer of peace, maybe, but Alex didn’t seem happy with it.  She stopped and looked back at Heart Song.  “Can I help her?”

            You are free to do whatever you like.

            Shana nodded, and she went to Alex’s side.

 

: Murderer :

 

            Alex faced the shadows.  She recognized the smell of the room, cold and clinical.  She remembered the sobs, and she couldn’t force herself to turn.  So, she just stared out at the darkness before her, shaking, screaming inside.  Her younger self was gone, abandoning her to the void, to her most painful memories.

            “What’s going on,” she asked to the darkness.  “Where am I?”

            You know where you are.  Ahead, Three Gods appeared, a tall figure looking more statue than human and bearing two faces with a third in shadows.

            “And why am I here?”

            This is it, Alex.  The moment that most defines you.  The thing that is holding you back.  Only by facing this will you ever be able to move forward.  Life is more than making a choice.  Decisions mean nothing if you lack the will to follow through.

            Alex hugged her right arm.  For the first time in the Emotion she felt truly, completely alone.  “You’ll help me, right?”

            No.  I cannot.  This is your future, and it lies in your hands.  No one else can walk this path with you.

            “But why?  You’re a part of me, aren’t you?”

            Yes, but only a part.  The strength required to overcome this will take much more than me.

            Alex glared.  “Then go away, if you won’t help me.”

            I am sorry, it whispered, and it faded away.  Alex stayed there, hugging her arm tighter and tighter until she began to cramp.  Then, with a curse, she turned, and her world turned white.  White walls, pale florescent lights, a partially transparent white curtain, and three figures standing beside a bed.  There was a gleam of tawny hair between them.

            She recognized them.  She recognized the large man with the trimmed mustache.  She recognized the dark-haired woman, thin and sunken.  She recognized the small child, sobbing beside the bed, clutching the blankets and begging for her sister not to go.  The sight made Alex’s throat tight.

            Her approach was hesitant.  She made it to them and pulled the curtain aside long enough to see and then had to turn away.  The body, she recognized, too.  Skin pale as snow, lips blue, eyes closed, tawny hair fanned around her like brush fire.

            The room was silent, save for the sobs of Alex’s childhood self, pleading and begging for her sister to come back to her.

 

: Murderer :

 

            Alex looked different to Shana.  Her eyes were always dark, and they always carried a solemn weight behind them, but in that moment, they looked like heavier than the cosmos itself.  Shana reached out tenderly and touched her shoulder, and she whispered her name. “Alex.”

            Alex moved, turned her head to face Shana with those heavy eyes.  Her gaze softened, and she fell into Shana, hugging her close, wetting her with blood and rain.  “Shana?”

            Shana held her, smoothed her hair and whispered to her in calm, motherly tones.  They parted for a second, and Alex wiped away her tears.  Shana held her by the shoulders just to let her know that she wasn’t alone.  “Alex, what’s going on?  Why are you crying?”

            Alex didn’t speak.  She looked up, past Shana, to Carolyne, who remained frozen in the rain.  “I don’t know what do,” she said, and the words seem to hurt her.

            Shana glanced at Carolyne and met Alex’s eyes again.  “What do you mean you don’t know what to do?  What’s going on between you two?”

            A deep breath and a swallowed sob, and Alex spoke.  “I want to protect people, Shana.  I want to, but I don’t know how I can.  To do it, I may have to hurt other people.”  She looked at Carolyne.  “People important to me.  If I do that, then what’s the point?  It’s wrong to hurt, it’s wrong to kill, isn’t it?  But what do you do when the other people will hurt and kill if you don’t?”

 

: Murderer :

 

            Alex kept her back to the curtain, to her family, until her younger self turned to her.  Tears flowed down her tiny cheeks.  Mucus ran from her nose.  She let out a suffocated squeal and turned to her parents, clutching them, sobbing and screaming.  “Why? Why is she gone? She can’t be gone.  She can’t!”

            No one answered.  There was no good answer, and Alex knew that.  Alicia had died, and it was a moment that Alex had always kept inside.  She had locked it away and kept it for herself, her greatest hurt, her deepest cut.  Alicia had always been sick, always been frail, but to Alex, she was the world.

            It was just as she remembered.  The white walls, her parents watching silently, too consumed with their own grief to accommodate that of their daughter.  Alicia looked lovely.  Alex had thought she was sleeping until she felt how cold she was.  Days later, her parents would say it was for the best, but that wasn’t right.  The world would forever be less for the loss of her sister, and for years after Alex would lie awake, crying into her pillow, and wonder why her sister didn’t take her along.

            “What happened,” the young Alex sobbed again, moving past her parents and to Alex.  She tugged her fingers with tiny little hands that matched her own.  “Where did she go? Why did she leave me?”

            Alex closed her eyes.  “It’s all a dream,” she said to herself, but the sobs were insistent.  She ran away, back toward the darkness, but found a wall there now and a door that wouldn’t open.  She beat on it, sobbed against it, adding her own sorrow to the sadness already there.  “It’s all a dream.  It’s all a dream.  It’s all a dream!” 

            Tears streaming, Alex collapsed at the door, and she cried with herself.

 

: Murderer :

 

            Shana considered Alex’s question, the morality of taking a life to defend the sanctity of life.  She considered her own struggle with Alex, and her love for Samantha, and the conflict she felt at the time.  They were very different situations, but they were just similar enough to give her perspective.  Both situations, at the very least, had no simple answers, no truly happy endings.

            Goliath, Carolyne, and Samantha, all stood in opposition of the safety and happiness that Shana wanted for Alex.  They all aimed to hurt others or use them for their own gain.

Samantha, who Shana loved more dearly than anyone else, used her as a tool.  Goliath fought to kill, and Carolyne had been hurting Alex for nearly a year now.  They all had the same goals, and they all needed to be stopped.  The question was what means were there to stop them, or what price would be paid to do it.

            Shana took Alex’s left hand and squeezed it tight.  “It’s not wrong to fight to protect others,” she said, and she said it slowly.  The thoughts weren’t fully formed yet, but she was at the cusp.  She simply didn’t know how to explain it.  “It’s not wrong because, well, sometimes we have to.  Some people, they don’t understand the different between right and wrong, between good and evil.  They think—They think that they have the right to hurt others, that their goals justify it, but they don’t and, well, pacifism is great and all, but it only takes one person to ruin it.  And if no one stands against them, Alex, then they’ll keeping on hurting people, even killing people, to get what they want.”

            Alex stared at her, and she seemed uncertain.

            Shana pointed at Carolyne.  “She wants to hurt people, doesn’t she?  People who want nothing more than to live.  She will kill them if you don’t stop her, and the only way to stop her is with force because that’s all that she understands.  You can’t reason with her because, at this point, she is beyond reason. At this point, she’s beyond human compassion.”

            Alex looked ahead and nodded.  “I know she is but, I still don’t want to hurt her.”

            Shana hugged Alex, and at first Alex just stood there, but in time, she hugged Shana back.  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, you know.  You don’t have to fight.”

            They parted, and Alex stared Shana in the eyes.  She looked so sad and so tired, but Shana could see a hint of warmth in her eyes, a hint of light.  They looked at Carolyne together.  “I can’t just let her kill people, though, can I?”

            Shana sighed as the loop completed, a deadly ouroboros.  “I know you want an easy answer, but there isn’t one.  No matter where you stand, you’ll be stepping on someone’s toes.  You may never be able to protect her while you’re trying to protect the world because they may always be in conflict.”

            Alex slouched again, weighted by the world, and while she was never the picture of pride, Shana could see the pain brought on by this harsh reality.  Alex was periphery even in her own life, never living for herself and always for others, and in that moment she seemed unable to pick someone to live for.

            Shana hugged her again and whispered to her, “But just because something is impossible doesn’t mean you should make the effort.  It will be tough, but the right thing is always tough.  And maybe, someday, you’ll have to choose, but if you don’t give up, and you work hard, maybe you’ll find a way.”  She pulled back, smiled.  “And, for what it’s worth, you’ll never be alone.  I’ll be there to help you along to the very end.”

            Alex was quiet, face empty, unreadable.  Then, she pulled Shana into another hug, this one tight and sincere, and she asked into Shana’s neck, “Do you mean it?”

            “Of course,” Shana said, and she hugged her friend back, holding her in the rain that wasn’t falling, lightning caught in cold, gleaming blasts high above.  “I believe in you, Alex, and I know that you can do whatever you set your mind to.  If you want to protect everyone, then protect everyone.  All you have to do, all you can do in this world, is your best.”

            As they part Shana saw Alex smiling, a true, genuine smile, not a sardonic half-smirk, for the first time in years.  It suited her.  She looked at Carolyne and stepped forward, in front of Shana.  Her wrist gleamed as she leveled her Voice, holding it in front of her, and the world blurred into motion.  The rain began to fall again, the thunder roared as the flashes of lightning faded, and Alex shouted over the maelstrom.  “I won’t let you hurt anyone, Carolyne!  I’ll protect Abraham!”

            The world dissolved, then, fading into the darkness around Shana.  As the ground gave Shana fell and was caught on the back of her Voice.  Together, they descended into the darkness.  Below, Shana could hear something, someone crying alone, pleading with the void, and she found Alex in the darkness, sobbing, and attended by a thing shaped like a woman and like a man, with three faces, two sexes, and a crown atop its head.

            Shana leapt from her Voice and landed heavily, conjuring in hand as she did.  The shapeless thing watched, and Alex remained cold and unresponsive.  The shapeless thing looked at Shana then, and Shana knew it immediately.  It said, This is her trial, and it is one she must face alone.  You cannot save her this time, Shana, no matter how much you want to.  All you can do it sit and wait.

            Shana nodded, and she settled beside Alex, hugging her close and waiting in the darkness.  She had waited nearly ten years for Alex to smile, and she was ready to wait another ten if necessary.