Lost In Lucidity

One Last Trip

Val sits with her mother for hours, and I never leave the spot a few feet behind her that whole time. She finally brings herself to pull away, still letting a torrent of tears roll down her cheeks, and I help her up, to which Tom and Paul are already prepared with a sheet to cover Mrs. Romero with. Val never looks back through her watery eyes as we return to the dorm.

With how long we had been sitting there, Claireese seems to be a lot more sober by the time we meet her in the doorway once again. She doesn't speak, however, just steps aside for us to pass with teary eyes. Tom stops me before we cross through.

"Don't you kids worry about anything out here for now," He tells me, sympathetically peering past to Val as she moves for the bed. "We'll get everything sorted while you rest."

I strongly feel like there's more I could be doing to help, especially with the predicament that us and a bunch of strangers now find ourselves in, but having just now added a couple more hours of wakefulness to my count, my brain is operating at its absolute lowest capacity. I nod in agreement with Tom with a weak smile before shutting the door.

Claireese waits behind me when I turn around, still in absolute shock from everything that's transpired in the last few hours. I tentatively reach out a hand to lie on her arm. She allows the touch, and I caress my fingers over the fabric of the hoodie before we both turn to Val. She sits on the side of the bed staring down at the floor, tears now silent staining the carpet. I cross over and take a seat next to her, to which she clenches her fists and shakes her head.

"I'm going to kill, him, Wes." Val declares through gritted teeth, "I'm going to kill that stupid fucker that put that shit inside her..."

I can't find anything to say to that. No words of encouragement. No arguments to make. I'm upset myself that I let Mason get away; I can only imagine how Val feels. I hope she's not upset with me-

'Stop it, Wes.'

Right. No more of that.

Instead of trying to reassure her with a gesture I know will fall short, I slip my hand into hers, just to let her know I'm here. She sniffles and squeezes it tight, almost composing herself, but then, all at once, she becomes unglued again, cracking into a shattered mess of sobs.

"W-Was that the right thing for me to do, Wes?" she pleads to me with teary eyes, "Was there something else we could have done?"

I'm not sure I have an answer. The sight of Val shooting her mom through the side of the skull was a difficult one to see, and I definitely wish it hadn't happened that way. Still, what other option did she have? Right out the gate, Mrs. Romero's new perception of us was a terrible one, and with the sundance making her unpredictable, we had no idea how she would react to anything else that happened, even if we calmed her down in that moment. She even drew a knife on her own daughter... in all of my research and browsing of archives back at the barracks computer, I hadn't found one case of someone who had eaten sundance being integrated back into a normal populous. They couldn't be; I knew that first hand that once the petal has a grip on your mind, you don't think the same as normal people. It's all that you want. It's all that matters. Anything getting in your way is just a threat...

"No." I tell her, sternly, but lovingly, "Valentine, do not start doing that to yourself." Her eyes try to dart away from me, but I use a hand to guide her face back, "Look at me. That wasn't your mom anymore, Val. Maybe parts of her, but take it from me, once that petal is inside you, you're a different person. Even if we would have found some way to subdue her, whenever we get out of here and back to safety, you know that the city would have..." I hesitate before finishing the sentence and pick a lighter phrasing, "They wouldn't have let her stay."