xp_logs | Going home

Sarah moves quickly through the dark tunnel, hoping that maybe she can lose Betsy before she gets too far. She's almost silent, except for the occasional thud when a bone hits the floor. She keeps one in her hand, held close just in case.

The purple haired telepath, followed the preset path Sarah laid out for her, two steps to the left, four to the right. Just keep moving. In her mind, Betsy saw bones and blood splatters decorating the floors and walls, yet she remained quiet. She was here to protect, to keep safe what was left of the Morlocks, she was to be the barrier. And no matter how hard the young child wished it, she would not leave. A part of her focused on the path and the rest of her body tensed at the slightest movement. It was a balance she fought hard to keep.

Sarah barely stops to look at a small, thin skeleton, and mutters something under her breath. "Here's the first body," she says, loud enough for Betsy to hear. "And there's more where this came from." She continues walking. "Can you smell the blood? We're getting closer."

Her face manages a grim turn in Sarah's direction, but she refrained from commenting. After a few moments of forward movement, she says firmly, "Keep going, shall we?" Sarah bristles at her comment, but she remains unphased.

Continuing, Sarah takes sure steps through the darkness. She's made this trip a thousand times before, and could do it under any circumstances. The tunnel opens up into a fairly large open space, and she takes a step down careful not to step on anything. "It happened here."

Betsy kept her expression stoic, as she viewed the cavern through the images Sarah inadvertently fed her. She felt tinges of pain and sadness covered by her fierce anger, "how long...has it been like this?"

Sarah shrugs, surveying the room, careful to notice if anything was out of place. "Years. I was.. eleven? twelve? Nothing's been touched." She moves further into the room, to a wall with writing on it, splattered with blood. "Not even by me."

"Hrm." A chill crept through her bones and all she could do was shrug. There was nothing to this place that could be considered a home for anyone. Partly, she was grateful she couldn't experience the place first handed without the biased views from her viewer. It was so strange to see the blood without the faintest hint of disgust, she had to shiver. She faced Sarah and smiled, "Where to?"

"Well," Sarah said, turning to glance at Betsy, "I'm staying right here. Where you go is entirely up to you." Turning back to face the room, she went around the room, counting bodies. Occasionally, she muttered names under her breath, remembering what each one looked like before the massacre, and what they looked like when she found their bodies.

Betsy body mimicked Sarah's murmuring the slow chain of names. She shook her head and felt weary after some time. It was tiresome to look after the dead. She found a stone that jutted from the floor and sat on its smooth surface. Sitting was good for her, it would be out of the way and therefore non-threatening for the young Morlock, at the same time, she could brood and be content.

When she was sure that the tunnel hadn't been disturbed, Sarah made her way over to the far wall again. She traced some of the writing with her fingers, slowly reading the words of poetry written long before the massacre. "Even the light can't save you now..." Painfully aware of Betsy's presence, Sarah scowls but continues reading.

Betsy felt Sarah's growing anger at her intruding even without provocation. "I'm not here to hinder what you have to do, Sarah. So don't feel that this is why I'm here." She turned her head in the direction of the grime and writing. "May I ask who wrote that?"

"Tommy. She wrote everywhere... including the walls." Sarah sits on the floor, seemingly unaware of the body close-by. "She was the first one I saw, and the only one I could really identify. They must have followed her in...." She pulls a bone from her shoulder, and places it on the floor beside her. "The poetry written in blood up there, that's mine," she says casually.

Betsy felt the pull before she actually realized she was being taken within. She found herself, seeing it for the first time. She watched as a younger Sarah traced red streaks with her cracked, grimy finger. A sick turn filled her stomach as Betsy watched her refill her finger with fresh blood and continued, ignoring the stench that filled the tunnel and the mangled bodies that littered the floor as decoration. She grimaced as she pulled herself from Sarah's memories and felt close to retching, but didn't. "'One survivor. Always alone, never happy, never beautiful. A monster weeps for fallen comrades afraid, unable to move.'" Betsy stopped her recitation and looked almost amused. "I thought you said you couldn't write a line, but here we have two strong statements with no trouble in expressing themselves. Did you write this for Tommy?"

"For them all." She takes the bone in her hand again, pressing its point against her finger. "Maybe I should start writing my assignments in blood, and in the memories of massacred classmates," She says, dryly. "I didn't know what else to do. They had to know that somebody cared. Of course, they probably would have called me weak if they could. I should have been hunting down whoever did it, not crying and writing on the walls with blood."

"I've told you this before Sarah, but you honor their memory by being here. You are what lets their legacy live on, and even though you are living this pretty-pretty life you are now, doesn't mean that they would wish their fate on you." Betsy approached Sarah, walking amongst the scattered bones and continued, "To continue living doesn't mean that you have to forget, just try not to let that life take control of this one."

Shaking her head, Sarah scowls, the tip of the bone nearly breaking the skin. "I don't belong there, in the pretty-pretty world. I'm not like you. I belong down here, as a Morlock." She turns, facing the wall and the words scrawled there. In one hand she holds her bone, and in the other she takes a rag doll that sat discarded beside a pile of bodies.

This was not the time to try and talk Sarah out of her wayward thinking. "In time, I hope you can consider yourself apart of both worlds." She would have time later for that. Betsy moved away from Sarah and made her retreat by the side wall. She would wait here, away from the stack of bones and dried blood, distancing herself from its' dark memories, and one lost child's need for absolution.

tell me a story,
one that doesn't end with death,
destruction, one survivor.
always alone, never happy, never beautiful
a monster weeps for fallen comrades
afraid, unable to move.

i will never forget.