Fan Fiction ❯ Frailty ❯ The end has no end? ( Chapter 5 )

"Frailty"

Chapter 5- "The end has no end?"

You were soft before...brittle...weak...and yet you thought you were so much more...It's nice for someone like me, getting to see how defenseless you truly are...

Her eyelids begun to creak open. Blurred and distorted, the world almost looked sane through eyes that were not yet fully functional. She had awoken in the center of the workout grounds, face-down in a mixture of rainwater and blood. Sputtering and coughing the concoction from her mouth, Raven slowly sat up, sliding her calves underneath her.

It took full minutes of rubbing her eyes and clearing her throat of the liquids before she could adjust to her surroundings. It was quiet. Daftly quiet. The only noise was the constant sound of rain splattering against the ground, it's gentle eclectically doing a trinket of soothing her troubled mind. In a way, she had come-to running on auto-pilot, almost immediately remembering where she had been headed.

"Past the last court..." The girl murmured while clearing a soaked lock of amethyst hair from her forehead. She knew she had been twice bitten by Carnate's curse, but was doing everything possible to keep from thinking of it. There would be time for that once she had found Dr.Killjoy, wherever he hermitted himself on this doomed island. Groveling over her own demons at the present moment would only allow her hunters to gain on her.

She had not noticed it till she staggered to her feet and surveyed the area, but in the time of which Raven had more-or-less peacefully slumbered, all of the spot-lights that were positioned on the watch-towers had gone dead. The only illumination that premised her to see was a bizarre out-burst of flames that dotted the recreation area, bathing much of the ground around them in a dull, red light. It was strange enough that the on-going downpour was failing to extinguish the numerous wildfires, but what bewildered the titan more was questioning how on Earth they had gotten there.

Realizing that her inquisitive thoughts were slowing her down, Raven shrugged the spontaneous blazes off and proceeded toward her next, and only destination--the building that lay beyond the basketball court.

Attempting to guess where she would be lead to seemed like a pointless enterprise, but as she ventured toward the door that lay just beyond the fenced-in court, Raven could not keep her mind from forging expectations. Maybe a parking lot, or another visitor's area. Perhaps just a dirt road that led far off into the distance...

Ironically, when the door was opened and Raven stepped across the thresh-hold, she found herself in the very place that was at the bottom of the list of her anticipations. An aged, beaten up hallway that stretched forward a short distance, then swung off to the left. Tacked to the wall opposite the entry-way door was a worn sign reading, "Cell Block-D"

The bitter truth had been un-vieled in that instant. She was no closer to escaping this place now then when she had been separated from Harvey. This wasn't a prison. This was a bottomless abyss.

As she had many times before in the night, Raven released her doubts, disappointment, and every other form of negative emotion out through a long, heavy sigh and pressed on. The hall would turn to the left once more before coming to an end, sporting a closed steel door in the center of the wall. The room that lay behind it was something a little less redundant than what she had been seeing lately, to say in the least.

Roughly twenty square-feet in it's size, the place was furnished with plain wooden benches that were arranged in rows of six, almost dividing their accommodations in half. Against the walls in series of three were fairly recent looking foot-lockers, which Raven wasted no time ran-sacking. At first there had been nothing worth noticing, much less taking with her. It wasn't until she came to the third compact storage did the mood of the moment change--for the worst.

Inside was wide variety of common tools. Ratchets, hammers and tube-cutters that were in no identifiable sync. After sweeping aside a pile of bolts, she caught sight of a sticky note, still half-way buried underneath the plethora of instruments. With her curiosity struck, Raven seized an available corner and jerked it out of the foot-locker. The contents were simple, but more than enough to steal the air from the room. Scrawled in an almost childish hand-writing were the words,

Look behind you!

Raven didn't immediately respond, too frightened to do such. Slowly, she gazed over her shoulder, revealing a painfully familiar face.

Hermes.

There was no way of positively identifying how he had gotten there, but it was clear that the note found in the foot-locker was his doing.

The apparition was dormant with his arms crossing his chest. Identical to the last encounter, a stoic demeanor hung about him heavier than the green midst that he was confined inside.

"You!" Raven gasped while backing away.

...There is far more to this island than simply escaping it...

The spirit murmured while floating toward the door that would persist the journey.

....But I'm sure that you have realized that by now....even if you have been cleansed of Carnate's curse, would you be able to continue living with such a tainted mind?

Raven raised her eyebrows thoughtfully at the question, but didn't dare answer, granting Hermes the permission to continue. He spoke once more before simply dissipating into the air.

Your suffering will be perpetual....Regardless of the solutions you find...the end has no end....

Raven stared blankly for full minutes, speechless. She was unable to avoid thinking of what was said. Even if she had escaped, could normal life in Gotham persist after everything that was seen and done?

*Author's note*

I would like to apologize for the length of this particular chapter. I did this for several reasons.

My only real intention for this chapter was to introduce a new fear.

It's been rather long since I last up-dated, thus I didn't want to make the people who read my fic think I had simply given up

Trying to fluidly continue the chapter in my usual 18K size would have been particularly difficult with what is to happen in the near future.