Her name was Eva.
Eva was quiet. Where Tinga and Brin were giggly and Syl was spontaneous, where Max and Jondy were outgoing, where Jace was obedient- Eva was quiet. She was shy but courageous, gentle but purposeful. She was full of spirit.
Eva was my sister and I know she's buried here, in this part of the forest. They pulled down the rest of the Wyoming facility but they left the graveyard intact, deep here in the forest. It was probably out of respect for the dead. Somewhere here, she's buried beneath her barcode.
None of us were there for her burial; but then again, we wouldn't have been allowed to say goodbye. It makes me feel sick to imagine that they cut into her to remove the bullet, that somewhere Eva's heart probably beats inside the chest of some... Nomaly. That's just sick. The heart of a hero, a patriot, a good soldier- pumping the life fluid of a Nomaly? She was a soldier. Didn't they have any respect for her?
Looking back, I think we ignored Eva. I don't think looks were really an issue- we were equally attractive, all of us, to give an impression of innocence. She wasn't like the pathetic sap sitting in a far corner, wheezing and giving high-pitched giggles. Eva didn't really laugh all that much. Eva was calm. I don't remember ever seeing Eva look afraid.
Eva put up with all of us, so patient I often wonder how the hell she managed to do it. She was quite nice to Jace, because we ignored her too, I think. She probably felt bad for her, because at least we respected Eva. We didn't play pranks on her or call her names. X5s who were that cool and collected didn't get teased.
I will never forget the look on Eva's face when guns were first put into our young hands and we were told to try and hit a target. Her face, usually like some beautiful piece of art, like some Virgin or Madonna, was marred with emotion. She looked afraid, and enthralled, and inspired, and revolted- and yet completely unchanged by this turn of events.
The TAC leader yelled at her, "766, do you have a problem?"
Eva snapped to attention. "Sir, no sir!" she yelled, and even so she hesitated slightly before shooting at the target. It was like... even so young, she understood that for the first time she was holding death in her hand.
Eva definitely didn't like shooting living people. If we were sent after convicts in the woods carrying guns, she'd make a point of missing them on purpose. Zack and Jace and I yelled at her for that.
Sometimes, late at night, when I was young, I used to imagine what we X5s would have been like growing up as a normal family. A huge family- there were about fifty of us living in this place- but a normal family. I think Eva probably would have learned music. I can imagine her being very good at playing the piano.
If Eva had lived, Eva would sit at a piano in some club, all grown up. Not one of those sickening, smoky places with bawdy music playing that I inhabit from time to time, but a really classy place where everyone would be just dying to see Eva play. She'd be absolutely beautiful, sitting and playing some song and everyone would stare at her and cheer like crazy as the last haunting notes would fade. She'd smile gently, look around at everyone in this bemused way as if they were only there to amuse her, and finally she'd spot me standing at the back and leave the piano despite her fans pleading for an encore. Then we'd leave together.
She really did like music. Eva was aware of music, but in a very naive way. Once, when it was raining so hard outside one night that we were sent straight to bed, we passed by the nursery, where the youngest X5s, not old old enough to train, lay in cots like ours. Some had pulled the blankets up to their chins in fear, and two shrill female voices would dramatically shriek every time the lightening flashed. A small blonde girl, only about two, sat on her cot. Flashes of lightening illuminated her features and thunder crashed as she sat bolt upright, calm as usual, on her grey blanket.
Frowning ever-so-slightly as we stopped outside the nursery, yawning as Lydecker talked to some faceless soldier, I watched the little blonde girl as one hand drifted from her lap onto the blanket and she tapped the cot absentmindedly.
She jumped, and stared at her hand like it had developed a mind of its own. Then, her mouth a line of concentration, she tapped the blanket again, lightly.
A small smile curled her infant lips as she tapped the blanket twice in succession.
Although I never was completely sure it was Eva, she'd often sit bolt upright in stormy nights, humming and tapping her hand on her blanket. That was, until Maxie and Jondy would start calling. On cold nights they'd share a cot and often begged Eva to join them.
Jondy and Max quite liked Eva. They definitely weren't as close to her as to each other, but if they'd been a Max-and-Jondy-and-Someone-Else instead of Max-and-Jondy, they probably would have been Max-and-Jondy-and-Eva.
My sister Eva wasn't an Eva-and-Someone-Else. She loved everyone the same, but didn't really object to some attention from Jondy and Max.
Eva would often pick up songs, too, the most strange random tunes. I can't imagine where she managed to learn them. The sight of Eva humming a few bars of what I now know were pre-Pulse songs like 'Angel's Eye', 'Mary Had A Little Lamb', 'Copacabana', 'Stan' or 'Right Here Right Now' as she tied her shoelaces or polished her gun... it was odd. But in a good way. Nobody paid any attention to them, but I bet she could have sung all of them if I had only asked.
Once, we sat up at the High Place and Eva brought out something she'd 'borrowed' from one of the guards- a radio. We stared at her as she expertly tuned it, because Eva never did anything that put her in the limelight so much.
A blast of sports noise, a crooning love ballad that made us cringe even though we'd never heard anything of the like before, a guitar riff- and she found some piano music. Somebody, some woman with a beautiful voice was singing.
"Oh oh my goodness
I didn't know I was here
Do you know my name? (Can't go wrong when you try)
Always got to try
No matter how long that shit take
Yeah, yeah
Uh
Whatever stops you from dreamin'
Whatever tries to stop you from livin'
Flip it
Welcome home
'Cause right now, what I got to do is
I gotta amp myself up as well as you
So yeah, so what, it took me like
Maybe two years and shit
But I fell in prepared
(But I'm feelin' prepared?)
You know what I'm sayin'
And I'm feelin' a little more ready for the world
And less lost
As I once was
So come on
What 'chu waitin' on?
Feel me, feel me, feel me
What, uh, yeah
What, uh, yeah
What?"
We were silent.
"What's she doing?" asked Maxie in wonderment.
Eva replied softly. "She's singing."
Zack ordered that Eva take the radio back, but you could tell the song had made an impression. And the next morning, as we scurried to our lockers at the far end of the dormitory, pulling on sweatpants and shirts, Eva forgot herself and began humming the song happily.
"766, stop that noise!" barked a soldier from the door, and Eva jumped. She looked mutinous for a whole second, like she WANTED so much to keep humming, but her face became calm again, became Eva.
She nodded and yelled, "Sir, yes sir!" Eva barely made a noise the whole day and night, although she flipped Zane on his back with more conviction that usual... like she was venting.
Eva was so quiet, so overlooked that about the only words the soldiers and teachers and doctors ever heard her say were, "Sir, yes sir!" or "Ma'am, no ma'am!" They didn't think she had much potential- she was up to scratch, definitely, she wasn't weak but she wasn't particularly noticeable.
Which was probably why Lydecker looked so shocked, so angry at her as she held the gun to him. I know he considers us his kids... he thought he knew everything about us and yet, in that moment, he knew nothing.
For it wasn't Jack who convulsed and twitched on the floor, it was Max. It wasn't order and rules that held us together, it was fear, and bravery, and love. It wasn't Zack, who so looked and acted the part of a leader, the oldest, the bravest who held out the gun, it was Eva. Young, overlooked, gentle Eva, whose blue eyes burned into his like never before.
And he shot her. He shot my little sister right through the chest, like some cold-blooded fiend. He was the Nomaly. The beast. The monster. No one ever thought that Eva could die. Eva had to live, and grow up, so she could always be there. To inspire us, to put up with us, to lead and to follow and to make me invincible with a mere smile.
It was unimaginable that Eva could die.
I'm standing over her grave as the last shadows of day disappear. I read out her barcode aloud. "331065661766. Eva."
The graveyard is silent. There are the resting places of fearsome Nomalies, dead unborn transgenics who never even made it to the nursery, X-series, psy-ops... two of my dead child brothers, Danny and Jack. And Eva.
I sit down on the earth beside Eva's grave and pull away the overgrown grass, trying to neaten it up, Eva's place. All it says is her full number. No name or anything. Not a word about how young she was, how brave, how sweet and calm and courageous. Only her number.
Which, I guess, was what Eva and all of us primarily are.
If I could, my brothers, my sister, I'd have you buried in a graveyard among real people, with lives and families. You'd have gravestones with your names, and after I go to Mass I'd come to your stones and talk to you.
If I could, my brothers, my sister, I never would have let you die. Because when you fell, each of you, a little part of my soul died with you. You would be here today.
If I could.
"Eva?" I whisper. "Are you there?"
There is no answer.
"Eva, give me a sign that you're here. Anything. Eva, I love you."
I sigh as the wind lifts the leaves on the trees in a silent song.
"Eva, why did you die? Why was it you who picked up the gun and led us down the hall?"
I remember her, remember my awe at her in the hallway as she led us, saved us.
"You always did want to be the hero, Eva. The one who got a shining moment for them alone. Too bad it had to be your dying wish. What were the last words I ever said to you? I honestly can't remember. I wish I'd told you I admired you and I loved you."
The sky dims as the golden shadows of the sunset live their final glory before the impending darkness falls.
"Hear that, Eva? I loved you. I still love you."
And the stars show themselves in the sky...
I turn around and for one heartbreaking, wonderful second I imagine the thin hand of a child on my shoulder, and Eva standing behind me, standing on her own grave.
Alive.
I imagine with clarity her smiling cynically at me. Her mouth forms the silent words I wish I had said to her in her brief time on this earth. "I love you."
"I love you," I echo, and she fades quicker than she came.
Slowly, I get up and walk through the woods, fighting the urge to cry. Soldiers don't cry. I haul open the sliding door of my van and toss a gun to the frightened man inside.
"Run," I say shortly, and he takes flight.
The stars are out. I feel tears prick at my eyes and I take a deep breath. "This one's for you, Eva," I say, and as her big brother Ben I futilely imagine that she feels proud of me.
But Eva hated killing things. Eva loved that song we heard on the radio the one time, Eva loved her family- but Eva would hesitate, cut corners when it came to killing things. That's why she couldn't pull the trigger.
She was my sister. Her name was Eva. Her body is under the earth, but her memory will live on for all time.
* * *
DISCLAIMER: 'Dark Angel' belongs to Fox and James Cameron. Not me. So don't sue. 'Piano and I' belongs to Alicia Keys and her record company.
NOTE: This is sort of my tribute to Eva, who, like Jace, will not leave my mind. I mean, in the few seconds we saw of her, Eva ROCKED.
Eva was quiet. Where Tinga and Brin were giggly and Syl was spontaneous, where Max and Jondy were outgoing, where Jace was obedient- Eva was quiet. She was shy but courageous, gentle but purposeful. She was full of spirit.
Eva was my sister and I know she's buried here, in this part of the forest. They pulled down the rest of the Wyoming facility but they left the graveyard intact, deep here in the forest. It was probably out of respect for the dead. Somewhere here, she's buried beneath her barcode.
None of us were there for her burial; but then again, we wouldn't have been allowed to say goodbye. It makes me feel sick to imagine that they cut into her to remove the bullet, that somewhere Eva's heart probably beats inside the chest of some... Nomaly. That's just sick. The heart of a hero, a patriot, a good soldier- pumping the life fluid of a Nomaly? She was a soldier. Didn't they have any respect for her?
Looking back, I think we ignored Eva. I don't think looks were really an issue- we were equally attractive, all of us, to give an impression of innocence. She wasn't like the pathetic sap sitting in a far corner, wheezing and giving high-pitched giggles. Eva didn't really laugh all that much. Eva was calm. I don't remember ever seeing Eva look afraid.
Eva put up with all of us, so patient I often wonder how the hell she managed to do it. She was quite nice to Jace, because we ignored her too, I think. She probably felt bad for her, because at least we respected Eva. We didn't play pranks on her or call her names. X5s who were that cool and collected didn't get teased.
I will never forget the look on Eva's face when guns were first put into our young hands and we were told to try and hit a target. Her face, usually like some beautiful piece of art, like some Virgin or Madonna, was marred with emotion. She looked afraid, and enthralled, and inspired, and revolted- and yet completely unchanged by this turn of events.
The TAC leader yelled at her, "766, do you have a problem?"
Eva snapped to attention. "Sir, no sir!" she yelled, and even so she hesitated slightly before shooting at the target. It was like... even so young, she understood that for the first time she was holding death in her hand.
Eva definitely didn't like shooting living people. If we were sent after convicts in the woods carrying guns, she'd make a point of missing them on purpose. Zack and Jace and I yelled at her for that.
Sometimes, late at night, when I was young, I used to imagine what we X5s would have been like growing up as a normal family. A huge family- there were about fifty of us living in this place- but a normal family. I think Eva probably would have learned music. I can imagine her being very good at playing the piano.
If Eva had lived, Eva would sit at a piano in some club, all grown up. Not one of those sickening, smoky places with bawdy music playing that I inhabit from time to time, but a really classy place where everyone would be just dying to see Eva play. She'd be absolutely beautiful, sitting and playing some song and everyone would stare at her and cheer like crazy as the last haunting notes would fade. She'd smile gently, look around at everyone in this bemused way as if they were only there to amuse her, and finally she'd spot me standing at the back and leave the piano despite her fans pleading for an encore. Then we'd leave together.
She really did like music. Eva was aware of music, but in a very naive way. Once, when it was raining so hard outside one night that we were sent straight to bed, we passed by the nursery, where the youngest X5s, not old old enough to train, lay in cots like ours. Some had pulled the blankets up to their chins in fear, and two shrill female voices would dramatically shriek every time the lightening flashed. A small blonde girl, only about two, sat on her cot. Flashes of lightening illuminated her features and thunder crashed as she sat bolt upright, calm as usual, on her grey blanket.
Frowning ever-so-slightly as we stopped outside the nursery, yawning as Lydecker talked to some faceless soldier, I watched the little blonde girl as one hand drifted from her lap onto the blanket and she tapped the cot absentmindedly.
She jumped, and stared at her hand like it had developed a mind of its own. Then, her mouth a line of concentration, she tapped the blanket again, lightly.
A small smile curled her infant lips as she tapped the blanket twice in succession.
Although I never was completely sure it was Eva, she'd often sit bolt upright in stormy nights, humming and tapping her hand on her blanket. That was, until Maxie and Jondy would start calling. On cold nights they'd share a cot and often begged Eva to join them.
Jondy and Max quite liked Eva. They definitely weren't as close to her as to each other, but if they'd been a Max-and-Jondy-and-Someone-Else instead of Max-and-Jondy, they probably would have been Max-and-Jondy-and-Eva.
My sister Eva wasn't an Eva-and-Someone-Else. She loved everyone the same, but didn't really object to some attention from Jondy and Max.
Eva would often pick up songs, too, the most strange random tunes. I can't imagine where she managed to learn them. The sight of Eva humming a few bars of what I now know were pre-Pulse songs like 'Angel's Eye', 'Mary Had A Little Lamb', 'Copacabana', 'Stan' or 'Right Here Right Now' as she tied her shoelaces or polished her gun... it was odd. But in a good way. Nobody paid any attention to them, but I bet she could have sung all of them if I had only asked.
Once, we sat up at the High Place and Eva brought out something she'd 'borrowed' from one of the guards- a radio. We stared at her as she expertly tuned it, because Eva never did anything that put her in the limelight so much.
A blast of sports noise, a crooning love ballad that made us cringe even though we'd never heard anything of the like before, a guitar riff- and she found some piano music. Somebody, some woman with a beautiful voice was singing.
"Oh oh my goodness
I didn't know I was here
Do you know my name? (Can't go wrong when you try)
Always got to try
No matter how long that shit take
Yeah, yeah
Uh
Whatever stops you from dreamin'
Whatever tries to stop you from livin'
Flip it
Welcome home
'Cause right now, what I got to do is
I gotta amp myself up as well as you
So yeah, so what, it took me like
Maybe two years and shit
But I fell in prepared
(But I'm feelin' prepared?)
You know what I'm sayin'
And I'm feelin' a little more ready for the world
And less lost
As I once was
So come on
What 'chu waitin' on?
Feel me, feel me, feel me
What, uh, yeah
What, uh, yeah
What?"
We were silent.
"What's she doing?" asked Maxie in wonderment.
Eva replied softly. "She's singing."
Zack ordered that Eva take the radio back, but you could tell the song had made an impression. And the next morning, as we scurried to our lockers at the far end of the dormitory, pulling on sweatpants and shirts, Eva forgot herself and began humming the song happily.
"766, stop that noise!" barked a soldier from the door, and Eva jumped. She looked mutinous for a whole second, like she WANTED so much to keep humming, but her face became calm again, became Eva.
She nodded and yelled, "Sir, yes sir!" Eva barely made a noise the whole day and night, although she flipped Zane on his back with more conviction that usual... like she was venting.
Eva was so quiet, so overlooked that about the only words the soldiers and teachers and doctors ever heard her say were, "Sir, yes sir!" or "Ma'am, no ma'am!" They didn't think she had much potential- she was up to scratch, definitely, she wasn't weak but she wasn't particularly noticeable.
Which was probably why Lydecker looked so shocked, so angry at her as she held the gun to him. I know he considers us his kids... he thought he knew everything about us and yet, in that moment, he knew nothing.
For it wasn't Jack who convulsed and twitched on the floor, it was Max. It wasn't order and rules that held us together, it was fear, and bravery, and love. It wasn't Zack, who so looked and acted the part of a leader, the oldest, the bravest who held out the gun, it was Eva. Young, overlooked, gentle Eva, whose blue eyes burned into his like never before.
And he shot her. He shot my little sister right through the chest, like some cold-blooded fiend. He was the Nomaly. The beast. The monster. No one ever thought that Eva could die. Eva had to live, and grow up, so she could always be there. To inspire us, to put up with us, to lead and to follow and to make me invincible with a mere smile.
It was unimaginable that Eva could die.
I'm standing over her grave as the last shadows of day disappear. I read out her barcode aloud. "331065661766. Eva."
The graveyard is silent. There are the resting places of fearsome Nomalies, dead unborn transgenics who never even made it to the nursery, X-series, psy-ops... two of my dead child brothers, Danny and Jack. And Eva.
I sit down on the earth beside Eva's grave and pull away the overgrown grass, trying to neaten it up, Eva's place. All it says is her full number. No name or anything. Not a word about how young she was, how brave, how sweet and calm and courageous. Only her number.
Which, I guess, was what Eva and all of us primarily are.
If I could, my brothers, my sister, I'd have you buried in a graveyard among real people, with lives and families. You'd have gravestones with your names, and after I go to Mass I'd come to your stones and talk to you.
If I could, my brothers, my sister, I never would have let you die. Because when you fell, each of you, a little part of my soul died with you. You would be here today.
If I could.
"Eva?" I whisper. "Are you there?"
There is no answer.
"Eva, give me a sign that you're here. Anything. Eva, I love you."
I sigh as the wind lifts the leaves on the trees in a silent song.
"Eva, why did you die? Why was it you who picked up the gun and led us down the hall?"
I remember her, remember my awe at her in the hallway as she led us, saved us.
"You always did want to be the hero, Eva. The one who got a shining moment for them alone. Too bad it had to be your dying wish. What were the last words I ever said to you? I honestly can't remember. I wish I'd told you I admired you and I loved you."
The sky dims as the golden shadows of the sunset live their final glory before the impending darkness falls.
"Hear that, Eva? I loved you. I still love you."
And the stars show themselves in the sky...
I turn around and for one heartbreaking, wonderful second I imagine the thin hand of a child on my shoulder, and Eva standing behind me, standing on her own grave.
Alive.
I imagine with clarity her smiling cynically at me. Her mouth forms the silent words I wish I had said to her in her brief time on this earth. "I love you."
"I love you," I echo, and she fades quicker than she came.
Slowly, I get up and walk through the woods, fighting the urge to cry. Soldiers don't cry. I haul open the sliding door of my van and toss a gun to the frightened man inside.
"Run," I say shortly, and he takes flight.
The stars are out. I feel tears prick at my eyes and I take a deep breath. "This one's for you, Eva," I say, and as her big brother Ben I futilely imagine that she feels proud of me.
But Eva hated killing things. Eva loved that song we heard on the radio the one time, Eva loved her family- but Eva would hesitate, cut corners when it came to killing things. That's why she couldn't pull the trigger.
She was my sister. Her name was Eva. Her body is under the earth, but her memory will live on for all time.
* * *
DISCLAIMER: 'Dark Angel' belongs to Fox and James Cameron. Not me. So don't sue. 'Piano and I' belongs to Alicia Keys and her record company.
NOTE: This is sort of my tribute to Eva, who, like Jace, will not leave my mind. I mean, in the few seconds we saw of her, Eva ROCKED.