Ephemeral

An Unwilling Choice

I screamed as I placed my hand up to my mouth, seeing the woman flop over to the side, lifeless, as blood was gushing out of the wound. It began to pool around her and it seemed as if the time in the room had stopped. I breathed heavily, not being able to tear my eyes away from her – I wasn't able to get the sound of her hitting the steel ground out of my head. My eyes went wide as I kept replaying how the Doctor Sullivan...fell to the ground.

Dead.

She was dead.

She was just as much a prisoner as me and she was dead.

"W-What did you...?" I breathlessly asked, my eyes being locked onto her body. Her white lab coat was staining red, and the air inside of the room felt too thick and unbreathable. It was stale – dry and humid. I couldn't help it when tears fell down my cheeks from looking at her now lifeless body.

Another person I cared about died in front of me.

I couldn't do anything.

"W-Why-?" I asked, wishing that someone would answer my question. I wanted there to be a reason behind why Doctor Sullivan was dead. "W-Why-Why did you...?" I stuttered over my words.

I was hearing them, but I didn't think anyone else in the room was.

I was the only one that seemed to be affected by Doctor Sullivan's death –

No one else cared that she wasn't here anymore.

"Take that as a warning, Rafael..." Xavier muttered out. My eyes quickly snapped over to him, accusing him silently for the murder of a good friend of mine. "It will be okay, Arianna," he said gently, possibly misinterpreting why I was looking at him the way that I was.

Did he not think that anything was wrong-?

"I'm here to save you and bring you home," Xavier continued his speech while I couldn't find any words to reply to him with.

"Do you see?" Rafael asked suddenly. There was a creaking in the metal chair that I was sitting on, and I could see Rafael's body lean forward out of the corner of my eyes. "It doesn't matter to them who they have to kill..." Rafael whispered into my ear. He had his forearms resting against the back of my chair as he brought some stray piece of hair behind my ear. I couldn't move my eyes away from Doctor Sullivan, who was being ignored – it didn't seem right.

"Did you really think that he'd changed?" Rafael openly mocked, belittling me and what I had thought. I thought that Xavier would care for human life a bit more than before, especially when he was living these past few months with Isabella, my father, and even me. "Do you think any of the Mathis family is capable of changing?"

I clenched my hands tightly, listening to his words intently since he was close enough to me that they were being drilled inside of my head.

"A-Arianna..." Xavier spoke my name, sounding sad and also hurt that I hadn't acknowledged him after he had shot Doctor Sullivan. "Arianna," he spoke my name again. I was still looking at Doctor Sullivan, wishing that she would stand up and tell me that everything was alright – that she was still alive. "Arianna, look at me..." Xavier gently attempted to coax.

"You might hate me, Arianna," he spoke.

I slowly turned to look at Rafael, who was smiling pitifully over at me.

"I didn't kill anyone, though," he added with a small shrug. It was hard to refute that as he had others do his dirty work for him. Rafael had that technicality working for him since his hands were clean. "Do you want me to take revenge for you?" Rafael asked, reaching down to grab one of my hands.