Release, Part Fifteen

by Tangerine

Betsy could feel the darks forces tugging at her body, beaconing her into the sweet abyss beyond the realm of reality. She could hear the melodic hum of the dark as it writhed and swooned around her, reacting to her every movement, her every thought, but the shadows were also invading her mind, carelessly tearing away the layers of who she was.

Bobby worked busily, painfully aware of her watching him with her surreal, golden eyes. For the most part, he ignored it, focussing his attention onto Warren's ravaged form, struggling to save his body when Bobby was neither a doctor nor anything close to it. He knew nothing about what he was attempting to do, but he would do it because he had no choice anymore. It had all fallen to him.

Betsy untucked her figure from the corner and stood, walking up to Bobby as he furiously worked to save her lover. Brushing a strand of golden hair from Warren's face and extremely careful not to touch his flesh with her own, she blew a gentle kiss on his cheek.

Bobby watched her wearily, pausing in his work. Betsy caught his eyes with hers, blinking slightly, and for a second, the bright glow dulled. Bobby found it odd the strongest light source would come from her when the room itself was dim with darkness. Betsy had not been able to tolerate the overhead lamps.

"You stay here... save him," Betsy said slowly, speaking like a child, "and I must go."

Bobby stared at her in question, a look of deep concern on his boyish face. "Go where, Betsy? Where do you have to go?"

Betsy bit her lip, and she closed her eyes then opened them again slowly, the light captured within glowing brighter. "I must go into the light." She stopped and winced as she struggled with a language she had somehow forgotten. "The light can heal. The light can save."

Reluctantly, Bobby nodded and turned away from her, leaving her to do as she wished. She walked from the room, touching the overhead light switch as she went. She yelped slightly as the brightness flooded the room and came in contact with her skin, but she continued walking, stumbling but determined to retain her poise.

Bobby closed his eyes as he heard an anguished scream echo down the cold hall, and in response, the shadows in the room twisted violently. At the sound, Warren stirred beneath his hands, and Bobby upped the anaesthetic, returning to his suturing as, with tears burning in his blue eyes, he tried to block out the painful, torturous cries as they sounded into the silent night, shattering his self control, and finally, Bobby wept for all that had been lost. He wept.

* * *

Hours later, Bobby sat and stared at the wall, finding something fascinating in its whiteness. There was nothing there save for one smeared carcass of a bug and a hole where Hank's signed picture of the Rolling Stones had once hung before Bobby stole it and hid it somewhere in the mansion. Hank still hadn't found the cherished item.

Bobby chucked slightly at the memory before abruptly stopping. It seemed too out of place here, too wrong, when death and suffering stifled everything living. He shouldn't be laughing when Warren had been violated completely and Betsy had lost herself to the shadows.

Bobby stood and noticed Betsy was back in the room, watching him as she sat on the ground, her naked form clothed only in a knitted blanket she had found abandoned. Funny, he could not remember her reentering.

Betsy's skin had faded after her exposure to the harsh light, but it still held a faint tint of black, like she had been dirtied by ashes. Her eyes were no longer vibrantly golden, only a dull reflection of what they had once been. She had almost become normal again.

She caught his eye and held it, making him painfully aware of her recent suffering. He could see it there, etched deep in her violet eyes for all time, for it had been worse than death itself.

"How are you feeling?" Bobby asked quietly, leaning against the chair and crossing his arms over his chest. "Can I get you anything?"

Betsy's eyes dropped to the ground as she clutched the blanket tight around her naked form. "Take me back to yesterday, so I'd know she would do this. Erase my memories, so I wouldn't have to remember what I felt in that horrid realm of darkness. Make it that Warren would still be alive, and whole, and complete."

Bobby's expression saddened, and he licked his dry lips, ill at ease with the requests. "He's not dead, Betsy."

"In body, maybe he still lives, but what of his mind? You didn't see her, Bobby, you didn't see Candy's eyes, the pure hate living in them. You can't understand how Warren loved those wings more than anything in this world, and to loose them again is to die again for him. The Warren I knew is dead."

"Don't you dare say that!" Bobby cried suddenly, pointing at her with an accusing finger. He wouldn't let her give up, not when there was so much hope left yet.

"Why not? It's true, isn't it? To say, to think, anything else is to delude yourself, Robert."

"He wants to live. I know it!"

"And how would you know that? You've never been anything more than a snivelling, little child who has refused his entire life to live in the real world!"

Bobby flinched slightly then brushed the insult off, dismissing it. "If that's what you want to think about me, go right ahead, Betsy, I'm not going to stop you." He neared her, crouching to her level. "But he called me for help. Despite the pain he was in, he forced himself to the nearest phone for help. If he had wanted to die, he would never have done that."

Betsy stared at him for several minutes before she turned away from him, nodding slightly in agreement. "I'm sorry, then. That was wrong of me to say, but," she paused, suddenly unwilling to give her thoughts away, but Bobby gently urged her, "but I'm so afraid, so utterly terrified, that when he wakes up I will have lost him forever. Before him, Bobby, there was nothing here." She clutched a fist to her breast, and she lowered her head to hid her tears as they streamed down her cheeks. "I can't go back to the way things were."

"You won't have to. It might take him awhile to get past this, but he will, and then you'll have the rest of your lives to spend together."

Betsy was torn between the urge to laugh at the sick joke or cry because she knew the truth, and Bobby was still on a misguided path. Didn't he understand he hadn't saved Warren? He had merely given him another month, another week, another day, to live. Only Betsy knew Warren was to die either way in the inevitable end.

"What is it?" Bobby asked, reflecting upon the sudden look of despair on Betsy's face.

Betsy had realised now she couldn't go through this ordeal alone. She could not support Warren without help, and Bobby would have to be that help. The choice had been made the moment Warren had chosen to involve Bobby with that call. "Warren's dying."

"No, he isn't. I told you, he's stable now."

Betsy shook her head at his ignorance. "No, he is dying. What I'm about to say, you can't tell anybody else. You have to promise not to tell a soul, not even Hank or Jean or Scott, especially Scott. Promise me you won't utter a word of this, Bobby."

Bobby stared at her for a moment, contemplating whether or not he should accept this secret. What if it was too big to hold? What if by keeping it he'd only be hurting himself, or Betsy, or Warren? But Bobby nodded slowly, accepting the truth. "Okay, you can trust me."

"I know I can," Betsy murmured, brushing a stray lock of hair away from her shadowy face. "I know I had no reason for believing her when she said it, but there were other things, things I had picked up from his mind, that made me unable to deny the truth any longer. Now, when I look back, there is nothing he has done that hasn't given it away, and now... now I don't know why I didn't see it before!"

"Betsy, I'm not following you here."

Betsy sighed deeply, clenching her fists in frustration. "Candy told me he had never really been alive after the plane exploded, not for real anyway, and she told that he was dying now. He can't live without Apocalypse, Bobby, so if Warren doesn't go back to the madman, he'll die..."

"And Warren would never return to him, so he's dying now." Bobby shook his head weakly, wishing Warren had never got himself into this mess in the first place. How had Warren not realised he was making a deal with the devil? "I get you."

"What are we going to do?" Betsy asked quietly, looking past Bobby into the dark room where Warren slept fitfully, muttering his hellish nightmare as he continued to live it within the dark recesses of his mind.

"Well, since I've been dragged into..."

"You agreed to keep quiet, Bobby, I didn't drag you into anything." It was only a half truth, but she needed no resentment from Bobby towards her. It would only make things worse.

Bobby cleared his throat loudly, ready to continue. "Since I've been willing invited into this secret, I can honestly say I don't know, Betsy. Questions are going to be raised when the others return; Scott and company are going to want to know what happened here."

"Then we leave that part of the story out. They don't need to know what he really is, and it works just as well without it," Betsy added, shivering in the cold of the room. Bobby handed her another blanket from a nearby table, and she accepted it graciously. "And you can leave out the part about the shadows. They need not know about that, either."

Bobby nodded silently, wishing he could escape her abruptly cold attitude. There were times when he considered Betsy a friend, somebody he could get along with and like, but then there were other times, times like this, when he was glad Warren had to deal with her aloofness and not him.

Betsy stood suddenly, darting towards the door as the blankets flowed behind her like water. Halfway out of the infirmary, she paused and turned back to face Bobby. "Two things, Bobby. One, I am going to change into something more practical. I expect you to tend to Warren until I return."

"And two?"

"And two, let me remind you, I am a telepath, Robert. I warn you to be careful of what you think because God knows Warren's not quite up to dealing with me now." Betsy spit the last few words, and Bobby winced inwardly. Sparing him once last, menacing look, Betsy left the room, and Bobby was left alone with his stupidity.

* * *

"I'm sorry," Betsy apologised quietly as she stood behind Bobby, having returned as quickly as she could.

He jumped in his seat, nearly spilling hot coffee on a rather important part of the male anatomy, and turned around to look at her. Her skin continued to fade to a tan colour, and her eyes were normal once again, but she still looked so foreign to him. She was dressed in jeans and was wearing one of Warren's 'emergency' shirts. Her hair was tied back, but her appearance bothered him. She looked so different from the Betsy he had seen last week, so aged and utterly exhausted. He barely recognised her anymore.

"It's okay. You have every right to be in a bad mood after, you know, everything." His eyes rested upon Warren for a brief second, and Bobby's pity for him, for Betsy, was quite evident. "Betsy, tell me, is he going to wake up?"

"I want him to," Betsy responded, hugging her cold body. "I want more than anything for him to wake up, for everything to be like it was before, but there's this part of me, this huge, gaping part, that's screaming I've lost him already. The trauma is so severe, his body's been hurt so badly, I can't fool myself into thinking for sure he's ever going to come out of it."

Bobby nodded his understanding, and for the first time since they had returned back to the mansion, he realised something both of them had forgotten. Another character in this play of sorrow and despair had been overlooked. "Candy, she's still there."

Betsy's face darkened, her eyes narrowing into crescent slits. "We should let her rot there with the rats and maggots. God knows it's the least she deserves."

"Fine." Bobby sighed deeply, aware of the horrible task that fell to him to accomplish. "You stay here and look after Warren. I'll go to Soho to," Bobby paused, shuddering at the grotesque idea, "clean up before anybody realises something's up."

Betsy stared in indignation, but even she could not deny things would be far, far worse if anybody else was to suspect what had gone on in the night. Finally, she nodded slightly, agreeing to his idea.

"I'll be back soon," Bobby assured her, placing a hand on her arm in assurance, and her attention was caught by the shoddy bandages wrapped around his burnt arm. Bobby looked at them, aware Betsy had no idea what had happened to cause it. "It was an accident. I didn't know your skin would burn me."

"Then I did that." It was a statement, not a question, and Betsy felt ill at the unwanted knowledge.

"The shadows did it, Betsy, there's a difference, a big difference, all the difference in the world," and Bobby found himself doing something odd. He found himself kissing her cheek in a gentle gesture of friendship and concern. "I'll be back. Watch over him, Betsy, you're his Angel now, don't forget that."

[next part]

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