xp_logs | Sooraya & Angel: Bad news

After they get home, Angel tells Sooraya bad news...

Trigger alert: Discussion of child fatality

The first thing Sooraya did when she got back to her room, was hitting the shower. Yvette wasn't there and Sooraya didn't quite know where she was. Her most logical guess was to the Medlab though. She didn't have a particular need to be clean in a normal sense, but after having been around so much pain and suffering and the blood on her own hands she wanted to get clean in a different. Carefully she moved through the steps of the ghusl, the larger ritual ablution in Islam. The washing of the hands, rinsing out her mouth, making sure she was clean all over, even the skin under her hair.

After the ghusl she had dressed and taken her favorite prayers robes, feeling the soft silky material drape around her as they settled around her. She had gathered up her prayer rug and now she had settled in... She wanted to give thanks for making sure they all got home safely, if not entirely unharmed... And she wanted to ask for forgiveness... for the life that she had taken...

The prayer seemed to calm down her feelings that were still rolling around that comfortable layer of numbness that she had wrapped around herself, she realized as she rolled up her rug and returned her robes to their normal place. She had just settled on the couch in their living room, sipping some juice from a bottle that luckily had still been unopened and stared out of the window. She startled a little though when she heard someone knocking on the door.

Angel had deliberately put off doing this. She'd done the mandatory "let the doctors check everyone out" before retreating to her suite and taking a shower (not as long as she would have liked, but Lorna had wanted to get clean too). She'd tried to eat - normalcy dictated that she should have been hungry. But after about two minutes she'd given that up and made a quick call to both her parents to let them know she was safe, and everything was okay. Kind of a lie, but they didn't need to know that.

And now there was only one thing left for her to do. She knew she needed to do it - Sooraya needed to know. And it would be better for her to hear from a friend instead of reading about it in a status report or in the comms...but that didn't make what Angel was about to do any easier. She sucked in a deep breath before knocking. "Sooraya?" She called softly. "It's Angel."

Sooraya had looked up at the knock and at her friend calling out she was on her feet to open the door. Not that she really wanted to see other people, but for her friend she'd make an exception. "Hi Angel." She greeted her softly as she opened the door. "Come in. Are you okay? Was there something I can do?" Taking care was good... seeing if help was needed was always a good terrain.

Angel slipped into the suite, clasping her hands behind her back. "No...nothing for you to do," she replied apologetically, fidgeting just a little and looking around carefully before fixing her eyes back on her friend. "Are you busy, or do you have a minute to talk?" She was torn between wanting Sooraya to tell her to get out so she could put this off until another day and wanting Sooraya to say she could talk.

"I am not doing anything in particular. So I have the time to talk. Have a seat." She gestured at the chair and moved over to the kitchen. "Would you also like some juice? Or something else?" If her help was not needed, being a good hostess worked as well... Still something safe and familiar...

She really wasn't thirsty, but she sensed that Sooraya was grasping at straws for normalcy, so Angel replied, "Um...just water, please." She waited until Sooraya had gotten the drinks, and they sat down on the couch. "There's...there's something you need to know. About Genosha, and what happened there." The images flashed through Angel's mind, accompanied by a soundtrack - Doug's yelling, Kurt's fervent praying, Korvus' soft, foreign melody, and of course, little Rachel's pain-wracked screams.

Control, control, control, Angel ordered herself angrily when she realized she was starting to shake. She couldn't break down, not now, not here. There would be plenty of time for her own breakdown later.

"Right before we left, the professor posted on the comm to let us know that Rachel Dayspring had been kidnapped by the Genoshans," Angel finally started. She met Sooraya's eyes, but refused to acknowledge the emotions running through their dark depths. If she let herself be distracted now, she was never going to finish. "And after we were captured, they brought us to the...to the mutate room - to show us the process, scare us into cooperating. And they..." Her voice broke for the first time, and she sucked in a sharp breath before continuing. "They tried to put her through that process. But...something went wrong. Rachel wasn't strong enough or...or something. She just disintegrated...right in front of us."

There. She'd said it.

It was as sharp as a scalpel as it knifed though her... An lancet cut through the comforting numbness that had been with her for a while now, followed by a rush of mad whirling emotions as Sooraya realized what Angel was trying to tell her.

"Wha... what?" She struggled to keep her emotions under control, to stop their mad rush. He voice was shaking, having lost the flatness it had earlier. "No... you must... you must be mistaken... Everyone was safe... Everything was gonna be okay..."

Images flashed through her mind... Baby Rachel happily crawling on the ceiling so soon after she arrived at the mansion for the first time during a language lesson... Working in the boathouse through several papers on human trafficking and slavery with Yvette, the little girl playing around them without a care in the world... Singing her to sleep when Nathan was in the medlab yet again... The joy in Rachel's eyes when she saw Sooraya again last November when she had lunch with her and Nathan... The time last March when Sooraya had babysat Rachel and they had fallen asleep on the couch together while watching Beauty and the Beast...

"No... Angel, please... please tell me you are wrong..." Tears started to well up in Sooraya's eyes, slowly making their way down her cheeks, but she ignored them, focusing her pleading eyes on her friend.

"I wish I could." Oh how she wished she could. She wished there was someway what she had seen in that room could be interpreted differently. She wished she was wrong.

Sooraya may have been able to ignore the tears, but Angel couldn't. She forced back her own emotions (no time for that now) and reached out, carefully brushing the tears away from her friend's cheek. A futile action, perhaps, but Angel didn't have a tissue handy and she wasn't about to try and leave to go find one. She wasn't leaving Sooraya for even a second. Not now.

"I'm sorry, Sooraya." Maybe Angel should have waited to do this. But time wouldn't have made the news any easier to hear, and the longer she waited, the more chance there would have been of Sooraya hearing it a different way. "I'm so...so sorry."

For just a moment Sooraya leaned into the touch of her friend's hand on her cheek, seeking the tiny flash of comfort it provided. But then another bolt of pain and anger shot through her and she could not remain seated. She shot to her feet and walked over close the window, staring outside and muttering furiously words that no one could understand, but that sounded pleading nonetheless.

Then she spun around, grabbing for a empty vase that was standing nearby and threw it at the wall, the ceramic splintering in dozens of little shards. Sooraya ignored the shards that feel around her. Instead she slowly sunk through her knees, the first shuddering sob shaking her body.

"~Oh Allah... why Rachel... Why her... Why... why did she have to go?~" Sooraya spoke softly, to no one in particular, her voice shaking even worse on the words 'go'. "~She was still so young... Still so much to live for...~" Without noticing she had switched back to Dari.

Angel was all but frozen for a brief moment as the sound of vase shattering echoed in her ears. But Sooraya's sob, her murmured words, propelled the redhead into action. She was off the couch before she processed that she wanted to move, ignoring the slivers of ceramic that tried to cut at her feet as she walked over to Sooraya, kneeling down next to her crying friend and wrapping her arms around Sooraya's shaking body, holding her as tightly as she could. She didn't speak for a long moment, because there was nothing she could say, no words that could make the murder of sweet, innocent little girl any easier to understand. There were only so many times the word sorry could be tossed around before it came trite and meaningless, and saying something like life just isn't fair sometimes would have been nothing but salt rubbed viciously on a very raw and fresh wound.

It was truly a horrible, horrible situation.

"~She's not gone,~" Angel finally whispered, switching to Dari. "~As long as you have your memories of her, as long as there's still someone you can talk to about her...~" It didn't make things better, not by a long shot. A seven year old was dead because a very sick, very twisted man. There was nothing okay about that, and Angel couldn't fix it.

But she was a firm believer in making the most of one's memories. Memories of good people in good times could do wonders for breaking through the darkness and gloom of present day. At least, that was what she believed.

Sooraya buried her head in the crook of Angel's neck as she sobbed. "~It's not fair, Angel, it's not... She was innocent... Just a little kid...~ She spoke before another sob took her voice. "~We made a choice, but she never had the chance.~"

That one was the main thing that stood out in her mind. The students... Maddie... Rachel... they were all so innocent in this... And now it had cost Rachel her life... And the pain for Nathan and Moira... Angelo... and everyone else who loved the little girl... She had to give up speaking though, the sobs coming even stronger and robbing her of every breath she'd be able to use to speak...

Angel swallowed hard, hating this entire situation more and more with every sob that tumbled off Sooraya's lips. "~I know,~" she whispered, moving one hand to rest it against the back of Sooraya's veiled head. "~I'm sorry,~." God, she felt so absolutely helpless. But there was nothing else she could say. Sooraya was right - Rachel had been innocent. Rachel hadn't had a chance to make a choice. She hadn't asked for this, she'd been dragged into it. It wasn't fair.

The effort of keeping her own tears in check became too much. Angel turned her face away as a single tear slipped down her cheek, and her grip on Sooraya's trembling body tightened just a bit more. This wasn't right. Even knowing that the people responsible had paid their dues for what had happened didn't make the situation any easier to handle.

She wanted to say it had been quick, Rachel hadn't suffered, but the girl's screams would haunt Angel for years to come, and she wasn't going to lie to Sooraya. There'd been far too many innocent bystanders in this battle - Rachel perhaps the most innocent of all. So of course, she would be the one who suffered the most.

It was just a strange whirlwind in her head, a mess of bits of thoughts, flashes of memories and pure, raw feelings, but no many coherent thoughts. So Sooraya tried to simply not to get overwhelmed as she cried, leaning on her friend for support.

She didn't know how long she cried, just that she was getting a little sleepy after a while and that she was leaning more and more into her friend, her sobs slowly quieting to soft sniffles.

Angel noticed when Sooraya's head started to drop. She was falling asleep. This would be a bad position to fall asleep in, and there was no way Angel was going to be able to carry her. "~Come on, Sooraya,~" she whispered, gently coaxing her friend into a standing position, supporting a good deal of her friend's weight. It was late, and it had been a long two weeks. Sooraya needed to sleep. "~Let's get you to bed.~"

"Mmmm..." Sooraya just let herself be coaxed to her feet, not really caring about where she was going exactly. She was far too relieved at the fact the crazy maelstrom seemed to be subsiding a little and let herself be guided gratefully. As soon as she felt her head hit something soft, she just let go...

Angel watched as Sooraya quickly succumb to unconsciousness. As soon as she was sure her friend wouldn't miss her presence, she slipped back out into the main area, cleaning up the remnants of the vase in record time. She put Sooraya's bottle of juice back in the fridge, and dumped out her untouched cup of water and rinsed the glass out. Now what?

After a moment of thought, she grabbed a piece of paper and a pen, scribbling down a note, and slipped into Yvette's room - Sorry, Yvette - snagging a pillow and blanket from her bed and heading back to Sooraya's room. The makeshift bed she made for herself next to Sooraya's bed wasn't entirely comfortable, but she was tired enough to sleep on a bed of nails. And she wasn't about to leave Sooraya, though that was for slightly selfish reasons - after everything that had happened, she needed the reassurance of knowing the people she cared about were nearby and safe.

One last check on Sooraya, and Angel left the note she'd written on the bedside table before lying down in her makeshift nest, curling up in a tight ball under the blanket. She didn't give in to sleep as quickly as Sooraya, however - her thoughts were turning too fast for that to even be an option.

The note sitting on the table read: Hope you slept well. Wake me up as soon as your awake - I'm right here if you need anything - Angel.