Attacca ─ Five Hargreeves

22. Epiphany

To put it into a proper sentence regarding what was happening to Genevieve Kilday was a bit unraveled. At first, it was an archetypal tenebrosity, it swirled madly until her brain savvied nothing but darkness, and then everything was lost. Her memories and abilities were gone, before she knew it, she had completely reverted to being a thirteen-year-old girl who only blindly followed her mother's instructions, hiding and sleeping behind the resilience of steel. It was quiet, but terrifying, a cavern of tabula rasa. All she could feel at that moment was that she wasn't supposed to be here, she was in the wrong neck of the woods, and after the next thump of her heartbeat, came the destruction.

Ruins, dust, smoke.

It all crashed together, like a raging storm ready to suck up every thread of life. Genevieve found herself in the middle, she stood there all alone, she blinked and everything, everyone was gone. Five was nowhere to be seen, he was always missing. But there was solace, and a sliver of dread seeped in on the other side, her feet planted stubbornly, all her senses guarding riotously, her mind determined that this was her reality, until it wasn't. When she was at the apocalypse, she didn't have so many nightmares since she was currently living through it, what she didn't expect was the aftermath. Genevieve realised the Commission did not offer her a second chance to live, they gave her a lifetime room to remember.

And it worked. It always worked.

All those restless nights, staying awake until sunup, burying herself inside the four walls of OR, studying a stack of books about herbs and poisons, taking care of her Lotus, while dulling the throbbing of her erratic heart and head, pushing away the thought that other people were invading her gravity and monitoring closely. She vividly remembered every piece of the badlands, every laboured breath, every step that edged her closer to death, she remembered and the nightmares began.

Ruins, dust, smoke.

For the first few weeks in the Commission, they labeled Genevieve as a flight risk, it wasn't her fault, though. She didn't know or trust these people, referred her to a different ward from her partner would only pack off pellucid signals to constantly attempt to escape. She was alone, and sometime later, she learned that they never informed Five about it, all he knew was that she was separated from him for special treatment to ease her headaches. She wasn't, though. She was isolated, once again compelled to recall the cataclysmic event. They had let her drown, seemingly foretelling her they could easily drop her alone in the dark, over and over again. She had expected nothing more, perhaps this was the price she had to pay, and she had never told Five about that harrowing experience. She couldn't, as much as she wanted to.

It was her pain, it was her suffering. A personal vendetta against herself, one not worthy of involvement. She was a healer, after all, she could handle it on her own. She had to. If others weren't okay, she needed to be the hand that extracted them to the surface, to breathe, to live. She recalled her mother's words; do not hesitate. So, she never did. The first time she woke up all those years ago, she didn't hesitate to follow after Five, she didn't hesitate to mend his body even if it meant risking her own life, she knew trailing behind his steps would hurt her, but not even once she hesitated.

Ruins, dust, smoke.

The difference now, was Genevieve was beginning to revere the adage of hesitance, a sliver of dread was starting to thrive bigger, evincing its existence boldly. What would happen if she hesitated? She kept asking herself, spawning the possible list of recourses in her head. How it might make her decision easier, how it might induce everything a little less painful, how it might spare a certain bliss behind, how it might bestow a potential to actually live. The darkness was getting closer, her body was getting weaker, the regrets were pouring out—the nightmares loomed upon the solace, and she began to run, itching to reach the only gleams at the end of the road, away from the barren ground. She could not stay, she could not hesitate, not today, at least.