MARIJKE + MEG + RAYNA // clean up

[firstsyzygy]

Who: Meg, Marijke & Rayna
When: After this.
Where: The Golden Hour.
Rating & Warnings: PG-13 for gore.

It stunk in the areas of the medical labs most weren't meant to see. The fumes wafting up from the acrid chemicals stored down here helped to overpower the stench of death, but there was always enough of it to make her gag. Rayna had tied a scarf around her nose before putting her hand into thick leather gloves. The lye would eat her flesh away as easily as it did those poor souls in the tub. Strangely, she didn't cry, she just went about inspecting the pit with a large metal tool, like she was stirring a pot of stew. The liquid contained in it was a milky pink. Milky with lye and pink with flesh. The textbook had said eight hours was enough to melt a man away. Rayna didn't plan on waiting any longer.

The tubs each had a handle for evacuation. You held it down and the chemicals and liquefied remains ran down the tilted floors into a drain to Cita knew where. It took three deep breaths for Rayna to lean her weight against the handle. The water went out in a great slush while the bones clattered against the metal grate.

She picked them up, every piece of the colleagues she'd turned to nothing, and set them back in the tub. Too many. The tub was half filled with bits of femurs and skulls and Rayna couldn't bear to think about grinding them into a paste after stripping the skin from them. She wrote to the adepts that were still alive and sunk herself in a corner far away from the chalky path the lye made from that tub.

She'd said she would do it. She didn't know why, she'd done enough after all, hadn't she? She'd 'cleaned up', as Godric had said to do. She'd cleaned the cellars below of blood, she'd gathered wood to burn what hadn't been put to dissolve in the vats. And she'd cried, and been sick, and hadn't been able to sleep for longer than an hour at a time before some horrid vision woke her up again into another fit of crying.

They'd made a mistake and she'd taken responsibility for it at every opportunity. Maybe this was just the next step to alleviate her guilt.

She knew what to expect when she got down there. She put on clothes she didn't much care for, an apron for added protection, and was tying the cloth fast about her mouth and face when she stepped into the room, her clunky boots making an equally clunky sound on the floor. Where was Rayna? Not that she really wanted to face the woman. What did you say to the woman whose husband you had seen cry like a child while slitting throats and gathering chunks of collegues from the hallways, knowing that it had, in part, been your fault all this had happened in the first place? Not that she would ever confess to it.

Her stomach trembled and she hesitated, flexing her hands and darting glances around, not thinking to look in the direction opposite the lye tubs. She wanted this over with, quickly.

It was taking longer to do things nowadays than it had before. Absolutely everything; Marike simply lacked the motivation to do it. She was tired in a way that made her unable to sleep, hungry but struggling with eating.

But this needed to be done, was what she'd said to Rayna, and it was true. People were notoriously resilient creatures.

Marijke went down in silence, stopping only twice when she needed something (the wall) to lean on. She capped her hair, hesitated for what felt like hours just beyond the threshold, and walked into Hell. Despite all of her shaking, she felt absolutely nothing.

When Meebles arrived, Rayna hardly looked at her. It took her a few moments to gather the courage to face this. Meebles had come to help her. She couldn't hide in the corner any longer. The adept was getting to her feet, her dress splattered with white dots where the chemicals had begun eating through the fabric, when Marijke came in. She almost screamed, but managed to just straighten her shoulders and close her eyes.

A moment later, Rayna started walking to the tub, her arms folded. She wanted to hug herself with them, but was strong enough to keep them loose. "Thank you for coming," she said. It sounded as if she was greeting them for a dinner party. "How do you think-" She took a deep breath and looked to Meg. "Should one of us smash them, then the others grind them to dust? Or should we all-" Rayna took another breath. "I don't know."

She made a small noise when Rayna moved behind her, trying not to look tense but it was a wasted effort. She clamped her hands together, twisted her fingers, then looked at her hands and flexed them in plain view before turning to get herself some gloves.

She did scream when Marijke turned out to be behind her, and she covered her mouth to cut off the noise quickly. Her brow creased in annoyance, mostly directed at herself. "Is it so hard to use our words," she mumbled to herself crossly, glaring at the floor as she stalked over to the worktable, grabbing a pair of overlarge leather gloves and struggling to get them on. Leather, thankfully, didn't bother her, but almost everything else would. Lye, well... what did it matter if you were allergic to lye?

Her eyes were conveniently elsewhere when Ranya looked to her, her straggly blonde hair like a shawl around her shoulders. "Whatever you two want to do least. Let's just get this done."

The screaming made her flinch as hard as a slap might have.

"I am sorry," Marijke said. "I did not mean to startle anyone." They were in lye pits, surrounded by the remains of the wrongfully dead. There were more pressing things to be afraid of, but she couldn't begrudge Meg or Rayna the frayed nerves. Hers were down to the quick as it was, but blunted and dull. "It would be faster, I think, if we all...It would be faster."

She geared up in a fashion resembling Meg's, pausing to stare at the ceiling until her vision straightened out and breathing came easier to her.

Even then, it was hard to turn back to them. Whatever was fastest...

'Shut up,' she almost hissed at Meebles. They were here to clean up the mess that others had left behind, but there was a responsibility that came with that. If they screamed like green girls, people would come to see what was so upsetting.

Rayna took a deep breath and tossed an extra pair of leather gloves to Marijke. "Grab the bones. Throw them... anywhere." She'd brought down some bludgeons after setting the bodies in the pits. She tried to think of them as giant pestles. That would make it easier. "There can't be any fragments. The guards will find them no matter where we dump them."

Meg looked ashamed for only a moment, quickly pushing the look off her face and down her throat with a thick swallow. Marijke had seen what they'd been doing. She doubted Rayna had been told. Instead of coming up with something snappy, she nodded without looking at Rayna and looked around for a good place to start.

She didn't know these people, she thought to herself cheerfully, taking bones carefully from the lye vats, pressing her lips together, biting her tongue to keep from retching. She didn't know these people, see them in the mess hall, pass them in the hallways, critique their work, say hello on a daily basis. Well, not anymore. She coughed, pressed her mouth into her shoulder as she backed up and put the bones onto the floor, almost spilling them by accident when she got caught between trying to put them down gently and doing the job quickly.

"Easy," Marijke said curtly. She was short with Meg less out of impatience and more because opening her mouth for prolonged periods of time opened it up to the foulness. Hair capped, face covered, she took a bludgeon of her own and claimed an area of the room far enough away that she might play at privacy.

The sound of the almost-bones hitting the ground was almost as sickening as the noise the lantern had made across the boy's head, the sound someone's organ had made under her heel.

Marijke blanched, and looked skyward again.

"They should have been buried properly." She hadn't meant to say it, but it came out unbidden regardless, betraying that these had been people, once, and still were to her.

She set her bones down a few paces from the tub. There, against the stone, they looked like models, like toys. Rayna couldn't convince herself that was all they were no matter how hard she tried. After settling herself, she drove the bludgeon into an eroded pelvis, cracking it into a dozen pieces. She set about turning each of the dozen pieces into a dozen more and a dozen more. They were dead. It didn't matter what they did to their bodies now.

"Bury the rest of us with them, then." Rayna's face was stern, unforgiving. She had nothing against Marijke, but why would she say such a thing? They couldn't bury them, couldn't acknowledge so publicly that this had happened. Because something like this would happen again. Everyone knew it.

She took up one of the bludgeons, sitting on her knees in front of her pile of bones, taking one of the femurs and setting it down on the ground. Like a hammer and nails. She breathed in and out, then began to smash them as well, trying to ignore the other two. She didn't want to think about it. It would never happen again, never ever again. It couldn't.

One, two, buckle my shoe. Three, four, shut the door. Five, six, pick up sticks. Seven, eight, lay them straight. Nine, ten, start again.

She repeated it over and over in her head while she worked, bashing the bones into smaller and smaller bits. They would have to scrub the floor clear of the chalky whiteness the bones left. She hadn't even noticed she'd begun her quiet sobbing, intent on repeating the rhyme and keeping what little she'd eaten in her stomach. She paused only to push her glasses up with her shoulder. Her arms were tiring quickly.

Rayna's words made Marijke flinch, but the truth of them hit home. She had said a silly, stupid thing, but perhaps they might as well all have been buried. The consequences of and the responsibility for the accident weighed heavily on them, all of the survivors with their fires and lye pits and lies. She had been an Adept for years now, had seen death and destruction and Others going mad with their curses and science turning blood to poison. She had seen a lot of things.

But Rayna couldn't really understand. The wolf's jaws had snapped inches from her face and she had smashed a boy's head in, and she had -

She had been through what others had. They had all lived through this.

Stop crying, she nearly snapped when Meebles began her sniffling. Stop. Crying. Her fingers were tight around the bludgeon; beneath the gloes she imagined they were white. As bone.

"Meg," she said, and it was all she could manage to say. She looked from Meg to Rayna, teeth pulling at her lip hard enough to make it bleed.

Rayna kept at her pile of bones. She drove the bludgeon into them til the pain in her shoulders was unbearable, til the room was ringing with the sound of metal on stone. Meg's sobbing registered on some level, but the adept refused to let it in. This had to get this done before she could consider anyone's state.

"Leave her," she said, her voice reedy, before smashing a jaw. She wanted to comfort Meebles as much as Marijke did, she imagined, but her motherly instincts fueled her. You did what was right, not what people would love you for. "Both of you," a bit of bone went skittering to the side when she hit it at an odd angle, "Focus."

She nodded, gulping. She understood what Marijke wanted from her. She understood what Rayna would do if she could. But she also understood that those things didn't matter right now. She jumped when the bit of bone flew past her, and she took a ragged breath

She stopped, her arms burning. Wiping her nose on her sleeve, picking through the pieces while trying not to snivel, putting smaller pieces aside in favour of bigger ones, everything felt mechanical. Was it because she was tired? She coughed and took the bludgeon in both hands, using it to crush the things from above. She didn't know what pieces she was smashing anymore. She didn't know what to compare it to. Was there anything? Shells, which were composed of similar materials, but easier to break, having been soaked in the lye and the sludge that the flesh around them had become. She gagged. There was still marrow in the bones and it stank as badly as anything else. Or maybe she was just imagining it, needing something else to focus on, not that it was any better.

She staggered to her feet and went back to get more bones, hugging them to her chest as she did her notebook. She put them down, started again. She'd have to burn everything she wore. How many were there? She didn't dare to ask, lest one of them snap at her again. Like it was all her fault. It wasn't! It really wasn't. She knew where the convict had been placed, one of the other adepts must have moved him. She could picture him clearly in his cell. They hadn't moved him after the experiment, someone else must have used him for something. It wasn't her fault, it wasn't, who would ever want to let something like this happen? And here she was, smashing the bones of her collegues before the guard could find them. Why were they doing this again? Couldn't they just confess to their dead?

Marijke understood. She really did. But, helpless and exhausted, she glared fire at Rayna's back anyway. The girl looked near ready to collapse; she might even have had it worse than the two of them combined.

But Meg kept working, and Rayna kept working, and she kept working.

Her arms weren't tiring as quickly as Meg's, but Marijke found herself pausing regardless, in a mix of physical strain and mounting horror. Her left leg had long ago gone numb beneath her weight, but the loss of sensation was something acute, a narrow target she could focus on. The needles in her upper thigh kept her moving, and, oddly, for shifting to relieve the pressure.

Pain was a terrible motivator, but a swift and sound one. Marijke took a pile down to splinters before crushing them further down, taking her brief, haunted breaks. There was only the noise and the needles, and the needles and the noise, and suddenly she was so angry, at Rayna and herself and the wolf that still lived, and the bones seemed easier to destroy.

It had to get done. The guards worked for the crown and the crown was controlled by the duchess. They had to cover their tracks. Godric had said so. Admitting to this many deaths when, really, who could point to the parties responsible for this debacle? It would be easier to have the king's justice laid down on all of them.

The bone shadows were almost gone by now, the powder and bits left over easily pushed down the grates. Rayna took a moment to sweep back the hair from her sweaty forehead and shuddered when she felt grit on her fingertips.

"Are you almost done?" she asked, her voice still forcibly flinty. She couldn't bear to watch the other women crushing their piles, not when she was the one who asked them down here. As the adept went to take the last few pieces of bone, she felt a warmth on her cheek. It was only when she saw water dotting her sleeve that she knew she was crying.

Arms trembling as she stopped, turning to look at Rayna, she had to look back to her pile before she could answer. Flushed, red-eyed, she had to push her glasses up her nose again with her shoulder. She was overwarm, which wasn't a word she'd usually use when she was working. And she had to think of this as work or she'd start thinking of them personally again. Shouldn't it be easier? she wondered. When they'd been ... she'd had to see their faces. Hear their voices. Touch their skin. She was used to surgeries, cutting into flesh wasn't a new thing, but the blood had been too hot on her hands, as though it had begun boiling in their veins.

More imagination, maybe.

"Done," she said, voice cracking. She looked away again from both of them and got to her feet, looking steadier than she felt. "Is this... enough? Or should we do more?" Meg looked at Rayna again, then away again, pressing her lips together with an expression that could only be described as angry. Ashamed, maybe. The last thing she'd wanted was to catch Rayna crying.

"I am nearly done," she said, seeing red in the sandy fragments of bone at her knees. They disappeared easily enough, dust and bits of bony glass pushed through the grates as though blown in by her reedy, pained voice. "Make sure your station is cleared," she reminded Meg, once she had cleared the powder and unleashed her unbidden anger on all that was left of these forgotten people. There were bits of it still clinging to her; the stench would likely never leave.

She cleared her throat then, which was little more than a strangled cough. "Rayna," she said as unobtrusively as possible. Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry. "What else is there? The - the smell?"

She was finishing with the last of her work. Her throat twitched as she kept her eyes on the far wall. Finally, when Meebles spoke, Rayna's brain started to come back to her. "No, it'll fit," she said, though she sounded very uncertain, "Push it down and we'll see..." Her own pile clattered down easily. Easily? Well, it slid through the slats well enough.

The smell. She didn't know what to do about the smell. The bone-bits were well-hidden, liable to wash out of the city and not leave a trace. But the smell would stay behind. "One of the herbalists. They'll know how to mask it."

Rowan had offered. She could write to him.

She took the broom from Marijke once the other girl had finished, not looking her in the eye, her especially, who had seen, who knew what she and Duncan had been doing. Her hand was steady, though. It was one of few blessings she had. A good memory, a steady hand, though that had come with a lot of hard work. And she had become valuable, through her own efforts.

Words stuck in her throat. Explanations, apologies. Everything. Anything that could be reflected harshly on her, she couldn't force past her lips. This was the last place for her. She couldn't bear the weight of her mistake coming to light. She had done enough. She watched the dust and bone fragments clatter through the grate.

She had done enough. It was no one's business to know the truth.

"I can't. I can't help with that." There was a pause and she added, her voice strangled, "allergies. I can't get in contact with anything a herbalist would make."

"No one blames you for that," Marijke said. She'd done enough; this was the least Meg could avoid. She had spent at least twice the time as Marijke down in the medical ward, and she had been with Duncan to the last. "Rowan was injured in the - accident, but he should be feeling stronger now." Of her friends, he had been the worst, and she had been so frightened. "He may need assistance." What she meant was, 'Someone may need to do the work for him.'

The gloves were ugly and heavy on her hands. Marijke took one off, prying it away by the index and middle fingers, and stared at her empty, pale palm. Her hands were sore and her knuckles pained her. Without the gloves, her hands were smaller, and weak, and useless. But gloves or not, they were her hands, and gloves or not, they had to act, and as she stood frozen with her eyes on her lifeline, she added, "Regardless, he should know what to do."

Rayna nodded. She pulled off her own gloves and tossed them in the corner of the room. She'd fetch them later. Now, she only wanted to tug her fingers through her hair, letting the weight of her head yank on the roots enough so that she could keep her focus. After a deep breath, she nodded again and let go. "Thank you again." The adept let out a sigh and turned her back on the other women. "I'll wash the tubs again."

She had no idea what either one of them had done or seen. Rayna hardly knew what her husband had said or done. Still, she suspected they needed the rest more than she did.

Yes, she'd been much in the medical ward. Keeping an eye out for anyone hiding a bite. Overdosing them on nightshade and other things when she found them, when she had a chance. It hadn't gotten easier. There had been at least four people- no, four infected- that she'd exterminated on her own. She couldn't think of them as people. Even in remembrance she had to think of them as something else, something inhuman, or like to be.

She couldn't even look at Reilanin anymore, knowing a thing of such vicious appetite lurked beneath the thin frame.

But for all she had been doing, she could only look between the two of them, lost, mounting anxiety in her thinned features. "I," she started, but she couldn't say anything else. Her reason overrode her feelings. Her feelings told her she should do everything she could, even this, even if it would harm her, make her sick, while her reason told her she should bow out gracefully and find other things to do and not ruin herself in her attempts at self-reconciliation. "I'm sorry," she said finally, feeling on the verge of tears again. She'd hardly been able to keep anything down- she had no idea where all the moisture could be coming from. Meg took off the gloves with some small difficulty and took the cloth from around her face, rubbing at her nose with her sleeve. She dropped the gloves on the table and left without another look or word, fingers buried and digging into her skirts as she walked out. She would burn them as soon as she could.

She meant to thank Meg for helping, but the words were not there, and the girl was long gone before Marijke could speak. She cast her eyes at the floor, almost ashamed, and looked up again when staring at the floor proved too uncomfortable.

"I will help, if needed." She did not want to help. The very thought gave her another tremor. But Marijke would not say it; she would not break again like so many waves on the shore. "Otherwise," her voice felt eerily detached, and she remembered feeling nothing the first time she'd walked into the room, "you can write me."

"No, it's alright." Rayna came off as dismissive, as if she were talking to one of her servants in the Evandros compound. Wincing, she went to get a bucket. "I'll write to you." 'And check on Meebles,' she wanted to add, but it wasn't her place.

"Thank you," she said in ways of 'get out.' This situation was no one's fault. Meg and Marijke deserved none of her anger. Still, they'd been close at hand. Rayna walked to the pump at the far end of the room, sick with everything. The sooner she rinsed the tub, the better.