SOTF Mini

Kyle could not tell what was going on anymore. There was movement; footsteps followed by screaming, the sound of fire burning somebody, and a bang in the room. It was like a sensory overload without any of Lily's illusions around to make his head spin, but his mind was stuck on how much it hurt right now.

There was a never-ending reminder in the room of the smell... It was rancid and made him want to vomit. It was the scent of clothes burning and skin peeling away and skin that seared into clothes, becoming one.

Kyle tried to move, he really did, but any slight change in his limbs caused the pain to flare even more than before. He had landed awkwardly on top of his right hand, close to the wound. Parts of him falling out were landing on it. Specks of flesh and skin, burning away.

His left hand lay in front. It had managed to avoid being consumed by the hell that had once been his stomach. It was shaking in place on the ground, fingers locked out and refusing to close. Compounded by his wheezing breath and the small sounds that he could make...

He raised his head slightly from its sideways position on the ground, he tried to look around. He needed to see her... One last time. But he could barely tell what was in front of him, his eyes were like a blur. All that were around were shapes, vague ones at that. As far as he could tell there was one in front of him. He tried to brace his eyes to see, it was difficult to do so, and he managed to do so but what was in front of him was almost unrecognizable, but somehow, he could tell.

The sounds they were making... These horrid, poor noises that told him of agony that almost certainly was more than what he had... There was no one else that it could be. He tried to reach out to her, his right hand slowly dragging itself across the ground towards her. It hurt, it hurt so much. But he had to...

Kyle's hand seized up a quarter of the way. His fingers slightly twitched after it went back towards the ground, same with his head slumping back down cheek first, and his eyes glazed over to the wall before rolling back. A pool of blood leaked out from underneath him, compounded by his clothes still being on fire, only some of which had been settled by his fall. All that was left of him was the stench and his mind slowly going away.

If only... He was a real bird...

Wi...ngs...

To..geth..er...

Kyle Benson: Deceased

Lily didn't move as she laid there, slowly dying, chest slowly rising and falling as weak, shuddering breaths passed in and out of her gaping mouth. She wasn't able to feel much of anything anymore, save for the occasional flash of pain when she dared to attempt to move from her new resting place.

She had failed every step of the way. She had failed Sydney. She had failed Kyle. She had failed herself. She had even managed to fail Mercy, not saving her from the path she was going down, and getting everyone involved killed in the process. Now her body had been reduced to cinders, her mind only half-conscious, hanging on by a thread as it was buried under a blanket of soot and choking fog.

Up until this very moment of her short, sad life, she had never seriously thought about death, and the fact that it would inevitably happen to her. Yet, now that she was facing it, she was full of nothing but regret for her failures and rage at the people that had so cruelly cut her life short.

But she had a luxury that few were afforded in their last, dying moments: plenty of time to think.

And so that rage eventually turned itself inward, into sadness, and a longing for absolution. What an idiot she had been, to get where she was now, trapped in a prison of her own dying flesh, surrounded by the bodies of those that she had brought down with her. She wanted to apologize, to Kyle, to Sydney, even to Mercy, for what she had done and the mistakes she had made. She wanted to apologize to her parents as well, for now they were about to lose their only child. Outward her desire for forgiveness spiraled, until she longed to apologize to everyone in her life that she had known, for depriving them of herself, and failing to stay with them longer.

Caught in a loop of self-flagellation, she went over those thoughts again and again and again. Yet, she still had even more time to think, her organs only shutting down at a snail's pace, as they had been left mostly untouched by the blaze that had charred her skin. Lily wasn't the type to settle on negative thoughts. Through whatever hardship that she went through, she had always tried to strive forward with a smile. Although there was no forward path left for her to walk, and no lips left to smile with, her fundamental nature wasn't about to change right at the end.

At least she wouldn't hurt anymore, she thought. The pain, the loss, the failure; none of it would matter, wherever she went for her next life, be it the chilling embrace of the void, or something more, something greater. She hoped whatever poor afterlife bureaucrat that would have to deal with her lost soul would like her. Maybe she could use her Gift to put on a little show for them, assuming she still had it (and she hoped that she did).

That would be fun, she thought.

Eventually, she grew so weak as to not be able to even take a breath. The heaving of her chest and the whimpering sighs that accompanied it finally sputtered out. As the last dregs of oxygen left in her blood were used up, and she felt herself starting to fade, a strange wave of calm washed over her. There was nothing more to be said or done, the only task left for her was to drift off, as peacefully as she could, into the eternal night.

In her last conscious moments, she allowed her mind to wander, and once more shape the world to its whim.

She dreamed of a boat on the open ocean.

S001 - LILY LITTLE: DECEASED

It was fitting, she supposed. That any victory here would be pyrrhic.

The blare of gunfire echoed through the corridor, moments before Lily’s body set aflame, a beacon standing in the middle of the hallway, form completely indistinguishable. The bullets scythed through Mercy’s body, each one a punch to a separate section of her body; one to her shoulder, one to her chest, one to her stomach. Now that the itching sensation had been burned to cinders, she felt the full impact of every bullet, and the searing agony that followed, as blood spurted out and streamed down her body. She didn’t even have enough inside of her to scream anymore, though. Maybe her vocal cords had all burned up as well. All that came out of her mouth was a series of desperate gasps for air, and a bloody, hacking cough.

She stumbled backwards, standing upright for a fraction of a second longer than Lily. Then she crumpled, in slow motion, falling first to one knee, then to her other, then keeling over forwards onto the ground, face down, single remaining arm splayed out in front of her.

Mercy could taste dirt in her mouth, could feel warm and sticky blood seep into her tank top. She twisted her head agonisingly slowly to the left, and the movement sent the room keeling, her vision blurring and doubling up for a moment. The ringing in her ears was back, louder than ever before.

She was dying. She knew she was. There wasn’t a chance in hell she’d live through this. But it refused to register in her mind. She was almost totally burnt out. A tiny flickering flame inhabiting a broken shell.

She could see the top of Kyle’s feathered head, body collapsed a few meters away from her, a still bubbling liquid pooled around his lifeless body. She could see an unrecognisable mass of charred flesh in front of her, smoke still drifting off of it, forming a layer of haze above them, a vessel that had once been known as Lily Little.

She could see a flickering light in the blurred corner of her vision.

Her body worked entirely on instinct as her fingers dug into the ground and clawed herself forwards, slowly, utterly agonisingly, body scraping against the hard concrete floor, a gruesome snail’s trail of blood left behind her. The flame inside of her body refused to die out, kept on willing her forwards, even as her fingernails broke and something in her arm snapped in half. She couldn’t stop. It wouldn’t let her stop.

Not until she was lying on her side, blood coating every inch of her torso, facing the shattered surface of her brother.

“H-hey… dipshit…”

“ℍ𝕖𝕪. 𝕐𝕠𝕦 𝕗𝕚𝕟𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕪 𝕔𝕒𝕝𝕞 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕗𝕦𝕔𝕜 𝕕𝕠𝕨𝕟?”

Lincoln still couldn’t move. He couldn’t feel any pain, and he could still speak normally, but he knew he was dying too. He could feel the part of himself inside his orb growing dimmer. Colder. He had never really understood how it worked. No-one had. But he was dying.

Even around the black spots in his vision, he had seen it all. Lily and Kyle were no more, now just charred bodies on the floor. He didn’t care about them. He had seen what they had done to his sister, and what she had put herself through. He had to watch her destroy herself first hand, and he could see her clearly enough to know just how fucked up she was. It was the worst thing he’d ever had to see in his life, and that included watching his own neck explode.

He probably should’ve been crying, but he wasn’t. Even if he could cry, he didn't think he would. He was really tired. Too tired. He couldn’t understand how it had gotten to this point. One minute they had been getting on the bus. The next, they were both here, dying, with the consequences of their Gifts reflected in their final moments. The air was thick with the odour of burnt ash and flesh, but he couldn't smell any of it. He couldn't turn his head away from the scene he was ending his life in, because he could see everything at once in between the darkness. No-one was coming to save them.

Maybe this was all some crazy dream. He’d wake up on the bus, and they’d still be going to that potato farm. He’d feel stupid, but he’d be fine. He’d have his arms and legs, and he’d be able to see normally, and smell and feel things again. Mercy would be a few seats over, talking to Kaine or August, not a wound in sight.

That was a nice thought.

“𝕄𝕖𝕣𝕔𝕪?” he said, voice quiet.

“𝕋𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕗𝕚𝕖𝕝𝕕 𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕡. 𝕀𝕥 𝕗𝕦𝕔𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕤𝕦𝕔𝕜𝕖𝕕.”

“Link, we… were going to a potato farm…”

It was a struggle to get each word out; she hadn’t had this much difficulty saying the word ‘potato’ since she was two years old. She could barely imagine what she looked like right now, if Lincoln could even see anything at all. The shell was still embedded in the crater that had been punched into him, cracks coating almost every inch of the rest of his surface that made it impossible to see her own reflection; and no doubt, the effect was the same on the other end of that two-way mirror.

She had reached some measure of calm, though. And there was every likelihood that was only because the fire that had roared so fiercely inside of her had finally tapered out, the lava running through her veins cooled down and hardening as she struggled for each breath. But even in her near-delirious state, she thought there was more to it than that. That if this had to be the end, if everything had to be cut short so soon, so suddenly, then at least she wasn’t alone. At least she had…

“It was gonna… suck ass anyway…”

The stump on her left-hand side, pressed into the dusty ground, twitched, still trying to move its phantom limb. She let out a short, harsh groan, as she forced her other arm to move, every last ounce of her strength dedicated to pushing her shattered limb towards her brother, scrabbling for him. Her hand collapsed on top of him. She could still feel a little bit of warmth in her fingertips, like whatever switch that had been keeping him online had only just been flicked off.

Slowly, Mercedes’ arm moved back towards her body, elbow scraping the ground, rubbing it raw. She tried her best to keep Lincoln level. Didn’t want to start rolling him, after all, didn’t want to disorientate him even further than he surely already was.

“I’m… sorry…”

Two words that could have been about anything at all, any of the great number of missteps and mistakes that had occurred over the past 48 hours. So she let them sit as they were. No need to elaborate or extrapolate on them any further. It wouldn’t reverse everything that had happened, or change the fates of the four ill-fated friends in this corridor, after all. The words themselves would have to be enough. They were all she could give, now.

Lincoln was so grateful for his sister pulling him closer, and the care she took in doing so despite the mortal pain she was in. He wished he could close his eyes more than anything, but he was forced to watch every moment through his cracked lens.

He knew he couldn’t feel anything. His orb could never feel anything. But he could feel Mercy next to him. It was a feeling he’d known since before the two were born. It was one of the things in the world that, more than anything, could help him feel better. Even as one of the only people in the world who was always in two places at once, he always had that second link with his sister to remind him that he wasn't alone.

More than anything, he wanted to stay like this.

He didn’t challenge her words. He could guess what his sister meant. No matter how hot she got, she never wanted to make people worried, or really hurt people. She hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. It had though.

It didn’t matter. Lincoln didn’t hold it against her. He didn’t want to. He wished that he could squeeze her back, to let her know that it was OK. But he couldn't, so he just stayed there, hoping she could read the words he couldn't find, like he could read hers.

He just wanted to be with her until it was over.

“ℍ𝕖𝕪.” he finally sad, voice quieter still.

“𝔻𝕠 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕜 𝕄𝕠𝕞 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝔻𝕒𝕕 𝕒𝕣𝕖 𝕘𝕠𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕥𝕠 𝕓𝕖 𝕤𝕒𝕕?”

He hadn’t thought about either of his parents much since all this had started. He’d been so focused on finding his sister, making sure that she didn’t get hurt. He’d failed spectacularly on that one. Maybe, in the back of his mind, he just thought he'd see them when it was over.

The truth was he’d never get to see either of them, or his sister, ever again.

“𝕀'𝕞 𝕤𝕔𝕒𝕣𝕖𝕕, 𝕄𝕖𝕣𝕔𝕪.”

She held him close to her body, the last embers of warmth smouldering against her chest. Her arm looped delicately around him, both twins as delicate as each other, keeping him cushioned there, as safe as she could manage. He didn’t say anything in response to her, but he didn’t have to. Coming back to find her had said more than any words ever could. She lay there, on her side, each of her senses slowly dimming. Even the ringing in her ears had finally given up the ghost and begun to fade away.

It was still almost impossible to hear him, though, no matter how close he was to her. The key words filtered through, at least. She tried to think of an answer for him, tried to will the cogs in her brain to start spinning again, just for a little while. She thought she could give him some sort of response to the first question, at least.

“They’ll be… they’ll be… fine…”

She forced the lie out of her mouth. Maria Guenther had never responded to even the tiniest of mishaps with anything other than hysterics.

“They’re gonna be… proud of…”

A pause, a long long pause, pistons in her head creaking into action, trying to help her brain figure out what felt so wrong about her planned final word.

“Of you.”

She was silent again, bright white spots in front of her eyes clustering together every time she blinked, burning permanent holes in her vision. What could she say to him now? What could she possibly conjure up to comfort him, moments before the end? Of course he was petrified. She was certain she would have been as well, if she hadn’t been running entirely on the last remaining fumes of her own willpower.

“I…”

The words tumbled from her mouth, slurred and drunken sounding, entirely independent of her brain, the last remaining beats of her heart given sound and voice.

“It’s… okay… I’m here, I’m… right here. We’re together. And I won’t… let you…”

Lincoln just let Mercy talk. He didn’t think about what she was saying about their parents. He wasn’t sure he could any more, even if he wanted to. He felt so weak.

But they were together. He let her words sink in, her promise that they were together, that she wasn’t going to let him go. It was the sweetest thing he could ask for. His one Mercy in all of this. It almost made the fear disappear. Almost.

“𝕄𝕖𝕣𝕔𝕪.”

He looked at his sister. Everything but her face sank into darkness.

“𝕊𝕖𝕖 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕠𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕠𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕣 𝕤𝕚𝕕𝕖.”

No response. The fire inside of her had finally been extinguished.

Her eyes closed. She’d never felt this cold before. It enveloped her, wrapped her up entirely. It was comforting. She’d never wanted to stop moving, to stop fighting for her life. But now that she had, now that she was finally at rest, her body welcomed it, let her slip into the cool embrace, her brother held close to her the whole time.

She had just enough strength left inside of her to rest her forehead against the top of Lincoln, before all her functions flickered out permanently.

Smoke hung in the air above this warzone within the compound. The corridor, finally, was silent.