Fissure

[Fiori]

"Well, that's a shame..." Shawn said quietly with his arms crossed, staring out at the horizon at the outskirts of the mining facility.

((Shawn Bellamy & Bethany Lyon continued from Wendy House))

They had just finished exploring the mines, hoping to see what was inside only to find themselves standing outside a blocked entrance. For some reason, he felt a tinge of sadness seeing the mine all blocked up like that. As if some primeval part of him longed to see what it was like inside, pondering what mysteries were hidden behind that wooden barricade. Gold and riches ripe for the taking? Eldritch horrors best left long forgotten? Some dreadful secret that their enigmatic organisers would rather they didn't happen across? Or perhaps more realistically, there was nothing to be found behind that barricade other than darkness, rubble and death.

All the more reason why it was a shame it wasn't left open, really.

Well, no matter. They continued onwards until they found themselves out in a large plain of snow just outside the facility, hoping to get a better view of the town so that they could figure out their next move. He turned back to Bethany, who was keeping an eye out for any unwanted visitors. The two had opted to scout out the rest of the mining camp, see if there were any safer alternatives to the labyrinthine complex they had left. Given Przemek's condition, they decided to leave him in a safe spot out of sight, told to wait for them to scout out their surroundings and find somewhere for them to move to.

It also, conveniently, gave Shawn that opportunity he'd been waiting for to have a little word with his old friend...

"So, with the mine blockaded, the rest of those buildings..." he began, thinking back to the lone snowman they had passed on the way over. "Occupied, from the look of things, I suspect it'll probably be for the best if we headed elsewhere"

"The further we move Przemek," Beth grumbled,

"The greater the risk. The town's probably a battleground as we discussed, and the cave is off limits."

Not that she had a plan of her own. She had glared at the snowman when duo passed it back at the mines. Its smug aura seemed to mock her. Just who the fuck was building snowmen in a time like this? The terrorists? Just to screw with them?

"Where do you propose, Shawn?"

She didn't intend for the snippy tone that was coming out of her mouth, but it was hard to constrain. The more she thought about their situation the more hopeless it seemed. She wanted to be making some kind of progress, yet the only good option she could envision was sitting tight and waiting to die. Zugswang, that was a term she'd heard Shawn use before, meaning compelled to move - in chess, one always had to make a move, even if every possible choice left you in a worse situation than if you simply did nothing. Beth's compulsion was entirely her own, of course, nothing was actually forcing her not to go back to the shithole office and kill time, but still.

She scowled as she thought back to that snowman. A violent urge to destroy it arose in her mind, but she restrained it. For now.

"Well... Battleground it may be, with Shemmy along for the ride the town is probably our only realistic option" Shawn replied with a sigh.

"I mean, if it was just the two of us we could probably cover a fair bit of ground, maybe even scope out one of the two campsites mentioned on the map. But... Ah well..." 

Beth turned back to Shawn quickly. Her scowl remained, initially meant for the irritating snowman, but perfectly applicable to him.

"And leave him to starve, or,"

Once more her knuckles were white beneath her gloves as her grip tightened about the handle of her pickaxe. Taken from Przemek, no less. She was trying to remember the right word: dehydrate? No, that seemed too weak. Fuck it.

"Die of thirst?"

She lifted her weapon, taking it in both hands. It wasn't meant as a threat to Shawn, but nevertheless, it certainly might've looked like one. Right up until she turned about and buried the pointy end into a nearby tree stump, picturing that snowman's smug face.

"That isn't who I am." Or at least, she didn't intend to let it be any more.

"What, no! I didn't say that we should leave him without his stuff..." Shawn replied, his hands raised in the air. 

"It's just... Y'know..." he continued, with a sigh. "Let's be realistic here. Much as it pains me to say this, but Shemeck... He's not making it to the end of this game, not in his condition. At this point he needs a miracle, one that neither of us are capable of providing" he said, briefly glancing up at the sky.

He kept an eye on that pickaxe, observing just how deep into that stump she managed to bury it with a single swing.

"If we stick with him, our own odds of survival are pretty much as good as his. But if it's just the two of us? Well, we might actually have a shot at making it to the end of all this. A slim one, sure, but one that'd go to waste if we spend what little time we have..."

He paused for effect, taking a deep breath. "...delaying the inevitable."

"Let's be realistic?"

Another grunt accompanied pulling the hefty lump of metal free from wood, with quite some difficulty.

"Let's assume he can even find his food and water if we leave it with him. He's going to sit in misery and pain until someone comes and kills him for them, cursing the monsters who abandoned him to his fate."

The pick came down at Beth's side again, loose in her grasp. She regarded Shawn with something between caution and curiosity. Her words sounded like a challenge, but there was something more. Like she wanted him to rise to it? To justify the thoughts she hated to admit even having, even to herself?

"The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. And if you're unwilling to do that, Shawn, then why not simply put him out of his misery? Put those supplies in the hands of the only people we know for sure aren't enthusiastic killers? What's the point in the waste and the suffering, hm?"

She meant to follow up with a strong and definitive conclusion that ergo, of course they were going to keep looking after Przemyslaw, because obviously they weren't going to kill him and take his things. But it caught in her throat, and she hesitated, waiting to see how Shawn would reply.

Shawn raised his brow slightly, waiting to see if Bethany was going to follow up on her little tirade before deciding to cut in.

"I mean..." he began, thinking for a moment. "Moral implications aside, if either of us did that we'd still be in the same sticky situation. Don't forget that he's been outed as a killer. An accidental one, sure, but..."

Shawn tilted his head slightly. "I mean... It WAS an accident, right? I wasn't there, but you saw it happen? You know for certain he didn't actually mean to shove Ethan like that?"

He shook his head. "No, I'm sure you're right... Point is, as far as everyone's aware, Shemeck's a killer. If we help him, all we'll achieve is alienating everyone around us, all to protect a man whose fate is already sealed."

Shawn took another long sigh. "Bethany, he's... He's already dead. The best we can do for him at this point is leave him somewhere safe with his stuff, and let the big man upstairs decide whether he makes it out of this or not. There nothing else we can do for him, other than throw our own lives away."

He looked Bethany in the eyes. "I wish there was another way, but... Either we all die, or we make the hard decisions needed to ensure that at least one of us make it back home."

So far as Shawn could see, Bethany stood. And she thought. Perhaps the proverbial cogs were visibly turning, but her expression stayed mostly static, her body unmoving. Would it be so terrible to be announced as having killed Przemek, from a strategic standpoint? They'd implied he killed Ethan on purpose. "Kept his eyes on the prize,", Mr. Danya had said: a crass pun on his maiming, but for anyone that hadn't been on that mountain top to experience it, it just sounded like he'd murdered him. And... wait, no, she hadn't done it on purpose, no. Why was Shawn asking that?

Her brow furrowed, just for a handful of seconds. No... no, it had been in panic, what sort of teenage boy would take that as an opportunity to murder someone? No... that would be crazy. Wouldn't it?

Why was she even considering this anyway? Her proposal had been a strawman, a Devil's Advocate not to be dignified with actual thought or discussion. Of course they weren't going to kill Przemyslaw, bad optics or not. No. No more thinking about whether she'd be seen as a murderer or hero for killing a helpless blind boy, nor thinking about if he pushed Ethan on purpose. Because he didn't. Right?

"How do you know our being there for him..."

She paused, her voice was already uncertain. She steeled herself before continuing.

"Isn't God's decision for him?"

Bethany closed her eyes for a moment. Remembering. There was always a passage that could express her feelings better than she could articulate.

"And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. Looking after Przemek obviously won't be easy. But He rewards good works. Not selfishness."

She didn't want to say the word redemption. But there was a reason she'd instinctively thought that she was being punished, on waking up at the Hot Spring. But wasn't that in itself still a kind of selfishness? Fuck. Her brow began to crease again, and she wanted to bury the pickaxe in the snowman again.

Shawn exhaled. "Honestly? I don't know. Though if you ask me, it wasn't god who blinded Shemeck, nor was it god who shoved Ethan off that cliff..."

He looked back up at Bethany, taking a step closer. "And I'm not asking you to be selfish, I'm asking - as your friend - to not throw your life away" he continued, maintaining eye contact. "Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time?"

Bethany wasn't the only one who knew her bible quotes...

He took a step back, throwing his hands up. "But, at the end of the day, if you really think being there for him is going to make any difference... So be it. But I really do think you can achieve so much more if you were to unshackle yourself from him, free yourself of this self-imposed burden. You're smart, resourceful, have all the skills you need to survive this frozen wasteland they've dumped us on. If you really put your mind to it, I bet you can make it way further than any of the yahoos we've had to put up with these past few years."

"And it..." he continued, momentarily pausing. "It just pains me to see it all go to waste on a guy like Shem. To have all that potential squandered on a guy who would selfishly pull others into the same ditch as him, rather than accept his fate and ward off those who actually have a chance of making it through all this."

He hoists his bag over his back. "As for me? I'm afraid that's a path I can't follow, not when the ending is clear as day. You can stay with Shemeck, let him hold you back and drag you down into the grave along with him. Or, you can come with me, and together we actually stand a chance at making it to the end of this thing."

He pauses for a moment. "The choice is yours, Bethany."

Of course, Beth wasn't surprised. Disappointed maybe, but unsurprised. Maybe it wasn't guaranteed to come to this, but from the moment Shawn had brought the subject up she'd been expecting the ultimatum. One or the other.

She wanted to tell him he was a coward. That he was despicable. That Heaven's gates would forever remain closed to him. That whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard.

But she didn't say any of those things. Because she knew he was right. Because God loveth a cheerful giver' presumably not one who feels obliged, shackled to a lost cause and ruining herself along with it. She pictured the old metaphor of crabs in a bucket, pulling one another down rather than let those at the top escape. Usually it was how she thought of communism, the bitter poor wallowing in poverty together and dragging dynamic people down to their level. God above, was that her? Surrendering to Przemek's misery rather than pulling herself up?

Her scowl deepened. Hardened. Suddenly Bethany was swinging. No more composure, no more pretending that she could handle the insanity she found herself in. Again and again metal met wood, louder and louder her grunts of exertion, of frustration, of anger. Fuck whoever thought to build a stupid fucking snowman here, fuck the cold, fuck the island, fuck the terrorists, fuck it all.

And at the end of the day, fuck Przemek, right? Why was he her problem, and hers alone?

She'd read somewhere about such a thing as a 'primal scream' , some kind of therapeutic technique. Not that her parents would deign to be seen having a kid that needed therapy, of course, but she'd entertained the curiosity. Someone to help parse the way she felt about her father, about the intersection of her faith and her politics, about her identity as a young woman.

Someone... like Shawn, really. When all was said and done, he'd been the person that she could count on to listen. Better; to hear her. And what she needed to externalise in that moment, what he was there to hear, was that scream.

High and piercing, Bethany's wordless frustration cut through the air as readily as she'd cut into the remains of a long dead oak.

And there she stood. Panting. Red with effort and with embarrassment. Dusted with the cold white debris of her outburst, weapon of choice bobbing along with the rise and fall of her shoulders. At length, Beth was able to bring herself to meet Shawn's eyes, the beginnings of tears welling in the corners of her own.

"I hate that you're right."

Shawn remained silent throughout Bethany's outburst of emotion, his expression changing little as he waited for her to just let it all out. 

"Believe me, I wish I wasn't" he replied, a sympathetic look in his eyes.

Catharsis.

That's a word Bethany knows too. One she'd be more comfortable using in a normal conversation than primal scream, for sure. But the entire experience, by and large, was a cathartic one for her. A peak reached, surmounted. The uphill battle was over from then on.

"It's going to keep feeling wrong, isn't it?"

Of course it is. She knew that the kind thing to do for Przemyslaw was still very much to stay with him. She just also knew that kindness was not the lone virtue. That charity began at home. That if she died for nothing, she'd just be making herself an extra victim of Aracelis' crime.

Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. But no law existed on the island for Bethany to appeal to, no civil society, no means by which to live peaceably with all men. So what next?

"But if..."

Pause. Saying it out loud would make it real, wouldn't it? But she'd already made the offer to Przemyslaw. Indirectly, but she'd said it. They hadn't really resolved that question. Time to answer it.

"There is something we can do for him. For everyone that's been killed and hurt already, everyone who will be. There's no law here... but us, right?"

She stepped slowly towards Shawn, meaning to embrace him. He'd been there for her before, and he'd been there for her in her crisis of faith, her turning point. Plus, she didn't want to say the last part entirely aloud yet. She'd whisper it first. Just to him.

"I want to kill her. And everyone like her."

Shawn would accept that embrace, albeit with the expected awkwardness of someone with an inherent aversion to close contact.

There was an ambiguous look in his eyes as she whispered her confession, one that showed mixed feelings of concern and contentment, though it was impossible to tell the whats and whys without taking a closer look at the cogs turning in his head. For the moment, he would remain silent, pulling away to look his friend in the eyes.

"Well... For now, I think it's best we make tracks. Suspect we've lingered here just a little too long..." he said, taking a quick glance to survey their surroundings, before motioning her to follow. "Perhaps it'll be best to check out the town first after all, since it's so close."

He turned back to the girl with the pickaxe, his hands firmly in his jacket pockets.

"Who knows, if we get lucky, we might bump into some old friends..."

Bethany cast her eyes in the opposite direction, towards the twin mountains' initial foothills, and the pass between them.

"I have a thought..."

((Shawn Bellamy & Bethany Lyon continued in Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature))