Sacrifices

Chapter 2: Moving Forward

I'm broken when I'm open

And I don't feel like I am strong enough
'Cause I'm broken when I'm lonesome
And I don't feel right when you're gone away

-Broken, Seether_

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Danse had long since abandoned his post beside her, but Jackie remained, slumped against the wall. The bunker was cold and damp with a mist that saturated the room. It clung, suspended in the air, and collected on the skin like dew at morning's first light. Slick with condensation, the walls wept with the tragedy that had transpired here. Bleak, dull grays blurred together with the cool stone and concrete that framed this dungeon within the ground.

Buried beneath the broken earth, this pit contained a man, reduced to rubble because a single phrase told him he no longer held the right to life. Forced him to believe he was less than human. Brought into this world an object - a machine.

Within this pit, a woman was concealed as well. A woman who had once held steadfast to her ideals, but now crumbled beneath the consequences of those same ideals. Flayed for holding her ground and remaining true to what she perceived as right and wrong. Except now she wasn't so sure if she was right. Or had she been wrong all along? Buried beneath the weight of her improprieties, she was losing herself to the internal struggle.

Decades had passed, untouched by time, down here in this hole. Mold and mildew grew, dust and filth choked out the oxygen and stamped out the chance for survival here. Yet two beings remained unearthed in the ground. Scraping the pieces together, trying to live in a world they didn't belong, attempting to continue and move forward with what little dignity they had left.

Jackie watched from behind the safety of her knees as Danse roamed about the space, igniting the fire and attempting to jump start the heartbeat of life with the inconsequential warmth that sputtered from the stove. The fire was stoked, water boiled, and their meager provisions thrown into a pot to make a grisly stew that could laughably be called food.

How long had it been since he had maintained these duties to sustain life in this place that was inhospitable for life to occur. Despite his neglect for himself, Danse seemed content to let the survival instinct take seed, if only for her benefit. He would make an attempt for her. To take care of her and ensure that she didn't die down here.

He approached with slop in hand and Jackie watched through the slits of her eyes, bloodshot and watery, but with nothing left to give. Provided only with the peripheral around her knees, his boots appeared beside her. Slowly, carefully her eyes climbed his withering form. Only to be met by the listless, lackluster expression that haunted his hollow features since her return.

The once sturdy man, stock with lithe muscles beneath taught skin, the touchstone for fighting fit, now wasted away. With his obvious neglect for his own self-care, Danse had lost a considerable amount of body mass. His clothes fit loosely on his haggard frame when once his bulk stretched the seams of his t-shirt and jeans. His eyes were blank, revealing the emptiness contained within his soul. The sheen of his dark hair lost to the mop that now hung in his eyes and his beard a scraggly mess of unkempt strands. It seemed he had decided that he himself was no longer worth the effort of self-preservation.

That was her fault. Danse had needed her and she had abandoned him, betrayed him, and he had failed to continue thriving in the wake of her broken promise. But who was she to judge? Jackie's unwilling return to the Brotherhood had caused her own decline.