Sacrifices

Chapter 8: The Order Of Time

"We are bound by the order of time."

The passage of awareness measuring our existence - time - had a funny way about it. The linear movement progressed at an ever constant rate but one's perception of time tended to distort the continuum. When asked how old she was, Jackie was technically well on her way to being two and a half centuries old. Yet in her mind's eye, she had barely been alive for thirty of those years. The same could hold true for Danse. His mind allowed him to believe that he had roamed the wastes for over three decades, but how much of that time had actually occurred?

The question scratched at her skull; if she could change her perceptions, could she shift her reality? Alter time?

As much as she wished for it to be true, Jackie knew it wasn't that simple. There was no way to halt the forward movement of time. Impossible to hit the rewind and go back to the effortless moments before time and the world unraveled.

Steel walls presently held her captive as she mused and took a turn about the room. In the span of then and now, it seemed that an entire season of her life had come and gone. Despite the deception, barely half a day had passed since the waking hours of the early morning when Jackie had joined the renegade movement to overthrow the Brotherhood.

Now, she was trapped in her quarters and the repetitive thud of her boots on the floor was a satirical echo that rang through her ears. A soft whispering of lies that stretched their roots to the far reaches of her mind. Cruel and relentless, the voices in her head screamed that she had achieved nothing but failure. She would never be good enough. Never amount to anything. Always a step behind, she had failed her mission.

Forsaken herself to protect the ones she held most dear. But they had ended up broken or dead regardless of her best efforts. Jackie had given up everything only to find that the value of her sacrifices were worthless. She was worthless.

Her baby had grown into a man who perpetuated the perverted mindset that brought the world to its knees and she was powerless to stop it. Unable to fulfill her duties, she had failed as a mother. While the death of her husband had torn a hole in her heart that she thought would never close.

Thrust into a world that was never meant to be hers, over the lapse of time, Jackie had somehow found the wound in her chest had started to heal. The hemorrhaging eased, the trauma had begun to mend, and slowly the fractured piece were knit together. But then...then-

The room lurched and blurred as she reached for an empty bottle on the desk and hurled it at the wall. It shattered against the metal, spraying glass across the floor.

Goddammit!

Jackie clawed at her scalp trying to force out the torrent of mind numbing guilt. Fingers dug into her flesh, scraping through her hair. Skin pilled beneath jagged, dirty nails as her fingertips dragged into tight fits. The burning of weeping, scratched flesh was but a dull throb in comparison to the crippling ache in her chest.

All the shit that had happened to Danse had been her fault and she couldn't even begin to process how it had affected her. The truth had ripped her open and left her raw and exposed. Left her so incredibly vulnerable. Laid bare for the wastes to consumer her, or more specifically Arthur Maxson.

Speaking of which, she had a date with the devil and it seemed he had stood her up.

Her mind was quickly shifting to a different kind of storm and Jackie stared, hands falling to her sides with sharp pants, at the broken glass strewn about the floor.

Hours had passed and still that insolent child had left her, caged like an animal, in her room. Letting her mind run rampant with the possibilities of what he would do to her. Guilt permeated her thoughts and propelled her body with nervous energy.