(no subject)

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle enters her room and shuts the door, still covered in blood from her adventure with Ellen. Her weapons get seen to first, and then the armor is peeled off and placed in something strong enough to possibly take off the paint along with the blood.

As she strips the armor off, she shakes her head in disbelief at the blood on her hands and most everywhere else beneath the armor. How the hell did that get there? That's when something Ellen told her surfaces in her thoughts, "...they capture people alive to take them to some kind of cold metal place and try to make more of themselves."

Memory is a tricky thing, sometimes. Annabelle has had human or formerly human blood on her hands many, many times in the course of her life. But what sneaks up on her and takes her by surprise is the memory that she was thinking of when she comforted Ellen after the debacle in the Vault where she found her father.

Annabelle is 16 years old, and she and Dixon have been lead to a Rational Experimentation Group laboratory by a local guide. Dixon is in the process of rigging the place to explode, and Annabelle and their guide have gone looking for the lab's human test subjects. They found them.

She shuts her eyes against the horrors in front of her, but it doesn't help. Muscle is laid bare without skin and organs are clearly visible, but they are not dead. Despite her best intentions, Annabelle throws up once at the sight. Somewhere, their guide is busy being loudly hysterical. She can't really blame him for that, as she'd rather like to be hysterical herself at the moment.

Tubes, wires, and constructions that Annabelle can't fathom are keeping them alive. There's no way that they can move them, not in their present state. Assuming, of course, that there's anyone left in there to rescue, that their mangled bodies could be made something more than an anchor tethering their souls to the world.

Annabelle distantly realizes that there's no one here capable of setting them free with a minimum of pain except for her. She doesn't have enough bullets left for all of them, so she'll have to do the job by hand. She's killed before, in self-defense or in defense of others, but it's not the same, not at all.

She moves from person to person, twisting vertebrae, her movements sharp and precise. The pain seems to leave their faces, but every broken neck hurts somewhere deep in her soul. She's failed them, all of them. There ought be something better than this, some kind of happy ending. THe Æon Society, the world, should be better than this. There should be hope for them, somewhere, for something other than the release of the grave.

She can't always reach their necks clearly enough to snap them, so she resorts to cutting their throats with a knife. They're someone's child, someone's friend, and she has to end their lives as if they were animals. Their guide is weeping hysterically, and she hates him for his weakness, just a little. She shouldn't have to do this alone, damn him. Shouldn't have to carry their blood on her hands. By the time the thing is done, the world is a bit disjointed and Annabelle is covered with blood...

Annabelle hisses once the memory plays itself out. She can feel other, darker, memories trying to rise up and swallow her. Memories of a metal room in another world and what happened there.

Much of her torso is red and purple where it isn't crossed by the fine white marks and spots of scars. In time, the warm shower washes away the blood, and sandalwood drowns out the scent of death. The yoga after the blood is gone serves two purposes tonight; It eases the aches in her muscles, and it prepares her to face a different kind of enemy: her own memories.