Cause and Effect

Chapter 27

cicatrize [ci-ca-trize]

(n). to find healing by the process of forming scars

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Returning back to the burned down remains hurt more than it should have. Under the smears of the early morning light, the curls of smoke hissed and lifted in tendrils of ghost-like whisps, kissing the blushing sky. Ashes fluttered down, and crunched under their tentative steps, dirty white against sandy soil. The hideout had been destroyed, black twisted remnants smoking in a sad sort of way against the shimmer of the bay laying at the back of the hideout. 

The air felt heavy here, too. Like the weight of the deeds witnessed here was still encapsulated through the sheer energy of the place. The wind was not as eager to blow here, maybe it didn't want to blow the bad intentions to the purer parts of the world. Or maybe the breeze just didn't blow as hard here. 

The three stood for a few long moments, staring into the caved in entrance of the hideout, hesitant on entering through, and back into that fiery night. They could hear the call of the carrion birds, and the foreboding chill ran down their spines at the eerie call. Those calls were a call of misfortune and of death. If they looked, they could see the birds hunched around flesh, tattered wings raised high around curved necks, sharp, serrated beaks tearing cold stiff flesh from grinding bones underneath. A sickening array of the circle of life. 

But they were here for clipping loose ends. To prevent any more queries into their already overtaxed lives. 

Charles already sensing the weight of the place on Arthur's shoulders, sent the man off to collect the hidden bikes, sending Lenny with him. He would scour the place for any fallen gang members. It hadn't occurred to him how he would get them out, just that he owed it to them to find them, and honor them. 

Death was a strange thing. At least to Charles it was. He wasn't entirely sure what followed after that terrible uncertainty, but as a child he'd always found a sense of comfort in his mother's half-remembered tales concerning the after and maybe now he was drawing from that to depend on that. 

Light streamed into his eyes, and he jerked a hand up to block it. He loved the sun, the early morning light, it felt good and pure, like he could see the world as it should be for those few early moments. Not here though. Here the light felt like a facade to the ashes and the stench of rot and death. Nothing pure could filter through the destruction brought by his own hands. 

The first body he came across was Micah's. Unlike the other bodies that he had forced himself to look at, Micah had no carrion birds. No bird was willing to stoop down and strip his cold flesh from his bones, not even for survival. 

It was ironic, in a morbid sort of way. 

He stood and stared at the man. His face was drawn up still, in that terrible scowl of death. All muscles taut and pulled, eyes clouded and milky. Something churned in Charles's stomach, and he gazed up at the brightening sky. He didn't know what to do with the man. Whether to drag him out, and give him a burial, or to let him lie there, amidst his failures and rot. 

In the end, Charles burned him. Fitting somehow, he thought, as he adverted his eyes from the body, and the eager flames that ate the man's corpse, fitting that he should be done like this. With fire, and ruin. 

He leaves the fire burning behind him, it fits anyways, and goes off to find Dutch and Mac. 

Mac is lying on his back, blood, dark and black, and spent, all over his legs and his clothes, and his hands, and the debris-riddled ground under his back. It's everywhere, but where it's supposed to be, and Charles just sighs heavily as he kneels down next to the man. The gun that he had tried so hard to revenge his fractured life with still lay snarled in death-stiff fingers, and Charles cringed as he pulled the gun out, fingers cracking and snapping under his gentle administrations. The man's shirt is crusted and stiff with blood, but Charles is gentle as he pushes the shirt aside, looking for something to take from Mac. For remembrance, for memorial sake. For alleviation of guilt, maybe.