UNDERGROUND, THE DEAD OFTEN SPOKE TO ONE ANOTHER. IT WASN'T EASY, BUT YOU HAD TO TRY LEST YOU DECAY INTO LONELINESS. YOU ACQUIRED A TASTE FOR THE BITS OF DIRT THAT TRICKLE INTO YOUR MOUTH. YOU GET USED TO THE COLD AIR AND WORDS STOLEN, (EATEN), BY THE WORMS IN BETWEEN YOUR GRAVES. AND BESIDES, SHE'D FALLEN DOWN A LONG, LONG WAY TO BE HERE TONIGHT. WORMS, DIRT, FRIGID EARTH; THE GRAVE BE DAMNED. JUST BECAUSE WE ARE BELOW, WHY SHOULD WE NOT BE REAL? THE JOURNEY HERE HAD BEEN MADDENINGLY CYCLIC. BURIED ONLY TO RISE. RISEN ONLY TO FALL AGAIN. NEXT STOP: BROAD BEAMS OF WARM SUNLIGHT.
Enthused and amused, was the way she grinned at the other woman. Who did you have to kill? Why, she didn't have to kill anyone! Not this time around, anyways. Gun metal eyes would've sparkled with glee if they could catch any of the dim, and still dimming light, blinking sporadically throughout the train - car. As bright as her grin was, none of that delight reached the eyes. Cold and dead, buried and cold, underground. WORMS, DIRT, FRIGID EARTH. Her laughter rung off the tin metal of the train - car shell and stayed with them, a third voice in the discussion. And here was Charlotte's! " No! No, I didn't. . . Was I supposed to? Should've I had? " she asked in absurd innocence, A TOURIST LOST BETWEEN TERMINALS.
In truth, she hadn't taken a single life with her down to the depths of this grave. A grave that possessed the ridiculous notion of being a perpetual motion machine. Not a single stop or station had been announced since they'd gotten on, yet even bullets had to slow, whether in impact or not. Charlotte imagined that this grave would not slow and open itself to the above - world until all had been said and agreed upon between the women here. And then, they'd have to climb all the way back up themselves, hand over hand, one fistful of dirt after the other. Along the way, they could very well find bits and pieces of the people Charlotte had DISSECTED to find her way here herself, but nothing vital. Nothing but the bits of flesh and blood that life itself could do without, though most people would prefer to keep their surplus.
Some of the souls had been kinder than others, and Charlotte wondered if the spy would feel any better knowing that most of the walking - archives she'd approached had been rather reluctant to share what they knew. For some, it'd been out of fear. An irrational, baseless fear, of course, BUT FEAR NONETHELESS. Annoyingly potent stuff! For others, it'd been out of mistrust. In nightmares, one blonde tended to look, to feel, just like any other. Something written in the brain tissue would not allow them to speak to freely to the woman before them; she, half - apparition, half - summer vision of strawberries and sunny kisses.
But she was careful in her surgical approach and no, dearest, no one has died. And that was exactly the point. NO ONE HAS DIED. ( No one but her and that was all very much the same thing. ) " You have talents that I don't have, and. . . Listen, I've got someone gunning for my life and I can't go to the authorities with this. I know where they are going to be and I need you to take care of them for me. I can't do it myself. If I could, I. . . Yeah, I would! Probably. But I can't. " A string snapped against the doll's back and it stopped its onslaught of rattling. For another impossible second added to the nineteenth - minute of the third hour of another day, the body across from Yelena stilled and did not shift even for a breath. If another answer was to be given, that string would need another yank. . . Gears turned in Charlotte's head as she tried to write the memory in the same instance as she tried to remember the lie or another life.
@bledyshka / CONTINUED FROM HERE.
