~Blood Rose~
Sleep while you can now,
so watery and warm.
For outside this world,
Is a terrible storm.
Soon you'll discover,
the taste of your tears.
So sleep now my loved one,
My baby, my dear.
(From Ultrasound Poem, author unknown)
Chapter 13:
Rae sat in the Quartermaine sitting room, rubbing her temples and resisting the urge to scream. Adam had finally gotten back from his business trip to receive the message she'd left for him at his estate. Instead of calling her, he'd decided to 'grace' everyone with his presence. It had taken a long time, longer due to his periodic outbursts, to explain Skye's disappearance, especially as she also had to explain Skye's coming to Port Charles in the first place, which of course lead to who the Quartermaines were in relation to Skye. Not even waiting to sort everything out and calm down, Adam had demanded Rae take him to the Quartermaines, and as she knew he'd confront them with or with out her, she decided it would be better with.
She wasn't sure how long the shouting matches had been going on. The Quartermaines and Adam seemed to be engaged in an argument of who was the worst family to Skye, Alan being the most vocal on the Quartermaine side, going head to head with Adam. The biggest explosion came when Adam found out Skye was pregnant, Rae hadn't had a chance to tell him with his demands to be brought here.
Sighing, Rae stood up to try, yet again, to get them to realize their arguments certainly weren't helping anything, but the last few shouted words prevented her from doing so.
"Well why haven't you found her yet? With your supposed resources it can't be that hard for you," Adam sneered at Alan.
"I've told you, we're trying, we've got all the best people working to find her," Alan said back through clenched teeth.
"If you had the best people then you would have found her by now!"
"If you know anything about Skye then you know she's smart and would hardly make it easy for us to find her if she didn't want to be found. We know she sold her car then was seen at the airport. There are no records of a Skye anything departing, she must have used a different name, and it'll take time tracking other passengers to see if any of them remember having her on their flight."
"No records of a Skye you say? Did it ever occur to you to look under her first name!" Adam shouted at Alan, his face flushed, and for once Alan didn't seem to have a reply nor, apparently, did anyone else. Instead, everyone stared at Adam trying to process his last words.
Finally AJ broke the silence with a simple fragment of a question. "Her first name?"
Adam laughed bitterly, glaring at all of them, "You try to call yourselves her true family and yet you don't even know her first name. Tell me, do you know anything about my daughter?" Adam's eyes blazed, and Alan geared up to match him, when Rae finally stepped in, speaking quietly.
"And you have room to talk Adam? Like you really know anything about Skye besides perhaps some stunts she pulled in your presence. I don't think any of us knew Skye as much as we may have thought but rather made assumptions, which I believe now is exactly what Skye wanted." With a heavy sigh, she turned to Adam to ask a rather ironic question if you thought about it, "What's my daughter's first name?"
"Antoinette, Skye's her middle name, she didn't start using it till, well till she didn't want me knowing she was my daughter."
The statement brought confused glances all around, but Rae prevented any questions on the matter, for the present time at least, by turning to Alan.
"You notify your people, I'll go talk to Jax so he can do the same."
Exchanging brief nods, Rae grabbed her purse and headed out, feeling like an absolute failure. It never had once entered her mind that she didn't know Skye's full name, bothered to ask her middle name, which would have lead to learning her first, didn't know really anything about her. She had made observations about her walls, her mannerisms, the way she'd react to things and had thought that was enough to say she knew who Skye was; now she had an awful creeping feeling that was telling her, apparently she didn't know much more than the shell that was Skye, leaving everything that really mattered untouched.
Jax slept lightly on the couch, he hadn't been able to sleep in the bedroom since Skye left. He'd too often find himself staring at the spot where Skye should have been, waking up from the occasionally slumber reaching out into the air, wanting to touch her, hold her. What sleep he did get was restless, filled with dreams of Skye that made his heart ache, and more often, nightmares, and today was no exception.
***Dreamland***
The woods were dark and damp, the branches above hid the stars, blocking any guiding light they might have provided. Along a winding uneven path a man ran. His pants were tattered and bloody but he did not stop, not even to rest, but kept running, and running.
He was aware of the pains shooting up his legs, aware of how hard it was becoming to breath, he was aware that his body was crying in protest but he didn't care.
Right now only one thing matter, getting to her. He could here her screaming in terror and pain, the sound vibrated in his ears, throbbing, echoing. So long as she was screaming, so long as he could hear her, he knew that she was alive, that he could find her. The screaming stopped.
With a groan, he stumbled into a clearing, falling to his knees. Pale moonlight streamed down, reaching for the ground. Looking up Jax saw something, a figure on the other side of the clearing, lying motionless on the ground.
Forcing himself up, the man rushed towards the figure, recognizing the flaming red hair revealed by the pale moonlight. He reached out for her, his fingertips brushing her fair hair, and in that instant she was gone.
The ground lurched, throwing the man to the ground. He struggled to his feet, finding himself no longer in the dark woods but in an open expanse of grassland, the sky dark and cloudy above him. Looking around, looking for her, he heard a new sound, breaking through the silence.
A cry, innocent and pure, reached his ears, the wail of a baby's sobs. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw a dark figure running through the tall grasses, the cry getting further and further away.
"Wait!" he called, running after it, fighting through the grasses, struggling to find a path. He ran faster and faster, pouring all he had into his flowing, rhythmic movement, but the figure only got further and further away, the cry becoming weaker and weaker.
The figure slipped beyond his slight, the crying no longer reaching his ears. Blindly he kept running. Running and running.
Falling.
The earth disappeared beneath his feet; he fell as everything shifted once again, changing. Landing softly in sand, he rolled down a small embankment, onto more sand, only wet. To his left the ocean spread out for an impossible distance, and before him on the ground was a trail of footprints already being swept away by the softly rolling waves.
Picking himself up, he ran along the trail, feet hitting the wet sand, the salt water causing his open cuts to sting. On and on he continued, flowing a disappearing path till it veered away from the sea and up a small dune. Racing up the sandy side, he neared the top when again his vision swirled and blurred as everything changed.
His heart skipped a beat, and his body shuddered. He stood now in the middle of a cemetery, rows and rows of graves marked by slabs of granite to either side of him and beyond. There was no sounds, obscure figures, or the simplest of trails to follow but it didn't seem to matter. As if they had a will of their own, his feet carried him forward. A great sense of unease took him, a feeling of foreboding as he walked a seemingly familiar way, passing numerous graves.
Then in front of him he saw what he'd strangely been expecting. Three tombstones stood out, apart from the rest and together with each other. There were no words on the graves, no markings of any kind; there was no need for them
With out having to be told the man knew whose graves were before him.
One was hers, one the baby's, and one his own.
***'Reality'***
Jax came to with a start, falling off the couch with as he jolted awake. Sitting up so he was leaning against the couch, he passes a hand over his face, trying to push away the images burning on the inside of his eyelids.
It took him several moments to come to the realization someone was knocking on the door. Dragging himself up, he hurried to the door, throwing it open to reveal a very surprised looking Rae.
Elsewhere…
Antoinette sat upon an old log that had been deposited on the sand by the waves at high tide. On her lap a novel she'd picked up on her last trip into town sat untouched. Instead, a small picture held her attention, an ultrasound picture. She cried, looking at the outline of her baby, wondering if she'd ever get to hold the little one in her arms, wondering if the life inside were would have a chance know what it was like to live.
Looking away, she stared out at the ocean with out really seeing it at all.
Sleep while you can now,
so watery and warm.
For outside this world,
Is a terrible storm.
Soon you'll discover,
the taste of your tears.
So sleep now my loved one,
My baby, my dear.
(From Ultrasound Poem, author unknown)
Chapter 13:
Rae sat in the Quartermaine sitting room, rubbing her temples and resisting the urge to scream. Adam had finally gotten back from his business trip to receive the message she'd left for him at his estate. Instead of calling her, he'd decided to 'grace' everyone with his presence. It had taken a long time, longer due to his periodic outbursts, to explain Skye's disappearance, especially as she also had to explain Skye's coming to Port Charles in the first place, which of course lead to who the Quartermaines were in relation to Skye. Not even waiting to sort everything out and calm down, Adam had demanded Rae take him to the Quartermaines, and as she knew he'd confront them with or with out her, she decided it would be better with.
She wasn't sure how long the shouting matches had been going on. The Quartermaines and Adam seemed to be engaged in an argument of who was the worst family to Skye, Alan being the most vocal on the Quartermaine side, going head to head with Adam. The biggest explosion came when Adam found out Skye was pregnant, Rae hadn't had a chance to tell him with his demands to be brought here.
Sighing, Rae stood up to try, yet again, to get them to realize their arguments certainly weren't helping anything, but the last few shouted words prevented her from doing so.
"Well why haven't you found her yet? With your supposed resources it can't be that hard for you," Adam sneered at Alan.
"I've told you, we're trying, we've got all the best people working to find her," Alan said back through clenched teeth.
"If you had the best people then you would have found her by now!"
"If you know anything about Skye then you know she's smart and would hardly make it easy for us to find her if she didn't want to be found. We know she sold her car then was seen at the airport. There are no records of a Skye anything departing, she must have used a different name, and it'll take time tracking other passengers to see if any of them remember having her on their flight."
"No records of a Skye you say? Did it ever occur to you to look under her first name!" Adam shouted at Alan, his face flushed, and for once Alan didn't seem to have a reply nor, apparently, did anyone else. Instead, everyone stared at Adam trying to process his last words.
Finally AJ broke the silence with a simple fragment of a question. "Her first name?"
Adam laughed bitterly, glaring at all of them, "You try to call yourselves her true family and yet you don't even know her first name. Tell me, do you know anything about my daughter?" Adam's eyes blazed, and Alan geared up to match him, when Rae finally stepped in, speaking quietly.
"And you have room to talk Adam? Like you really know anything about Skye besides perhaps some stunts she pulled in your presence. I don't think any of us knew Skye as much as we may have thought but rather made assumptions, which I believe now is exactly what Skye wanted." With a heavy sigh, she turned to Adam to ask a rather ironic question if you thought about it, "What's my daughter's first name?"
"Antoinette, Skye's her middle name, she didn't start using it till, well till she didn't want me knowing she was my daughter."
The statement brought confused glances all around, but Rae prevented any questions on the matter, for the present time at least, by turning to Alan.
"You notify your people, I'll go talk to Jax so he can do the same."
Exchanging brief nods, Rae grabbed her purse and headed out, feeling like an absolute failure. It never had once entered her mind that she didn't know Skye's full name, bothered to ask her middle name, which would have lead to learning her first, didn't know really anything about her. She had made observations about her walls, her mannerisms, the way she'd react to things and had thought that was enough to say she knew who Skye was; now she had an awful creeping feeling that was telling her, apparently she didn't know much more than the shell that was Skye, leaving everything that really mattered untouched.
Jax slept lightly on the couch, he hadn't been able to sleep in the bedroom since Skye left. He'd too often find himself staring at the spot where Skye should have been, waking up from the occasionally slumber reaching out into the air, wanting to touch her, hold her. What sleep he did get was restless, filled with dreams of Skye that made his heart ache, and more often, nightmares, and today was no exception.
***Dreamland***
The woods were dark and damp, the branches above hid the stars, blocking any guiding light they might have provided. Along a winding uneven path a man ran. His pants were tattered and bloody but he did not stop, not even to rest, but kept running, and running.
He was aware of the pains shooting up his legs, aware of how hard it was becoming to breath, he was aware that his body was crying in protest but he didn't care.
Right now only one thing matter, getting to her. He could here her screaming in terror and pain, the sound vibrated in his ears, throbbing, echoing. So long as she was screaming, so long as he could hear her, he knew that she was alive, that he could find her. The screaming stopped.
With a groan, he stumbled into a clearing, falling to his knees. Pale moonlight streamed down, reaching for the ground. Looking up Jax saw something, a figure on the other side of the clearing, lying motionless on the ground.
Forcing himself up, the man rushed towards the figure, recognizing the flaming red hair revealed by the pale moonlight. He reached out for her, his fingertips brushing her fair hair, and in that instant she was gone.
The ground lurched, throwing the man to the ground. He struggled to his feet, finding himself no longer in the dark woods but in an open expanse of grassland, the sky dark and cloudy above him. Looking around, looking for her, he heard a new sound, breaking through the silence.
A cry, innocent and pure, reached his ears, the wail of a baby's sobs. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw a dark figure running through the tall grasses, the cry getting further and further away.
"Wait!" he called, running after it, fighting through the grasses, struggling to find a path. He ran faster and faster, pouring all he had into his flowing, rhythmic movement, but the figure only got further and further away, the cry becoming weaker and weaker.
The figure slipped beyond his slight, the crying no longer reaching his ears. Blindly he kept running. Running and running.
Falling.
The earth disappeared beneath his feet; he fell as everything shifted once again, changing. Landing softly in sand, he rolled down a small embankment, onto more sand, only wet. To his left the ocean spread out for an impossible distance, and before him on the ground was a trail of footprints already being swept away by the softly rolling waves.
Picking himself up, he ran along the trail, feet hitting the wet sand, the salt water causing his open cuts to sting. On and on he continued, flowing a disappearing path till it veered away from the sea and up a small dune. Racing up the sandy side, he neared the top when again his vision swirled and blurred as everything changed.
His heart skipped a beat, and his body shuddered. He stood now in the middle of a cemetery, rows and rows of graves marked by slabs of granite to either side of him and beyond. There was no sounds, obscure figures, or the simplest of trails to follow but it didn't seem to matter. As if they had a will of their own, his feet carried him forward. A great sense of unease took him, a feeling of foreboding as he walked a seemingly familiar way, passing numerous graves.
Then in front of him he saw what he'd strangely been expecting. Three tombstones stood out, apart from the rest and together with each other. There were no words on the graves, no markings of any kind; there was no need for them
With out having to be told the man knew whose graves were before him.
One was hers, one the baby's, and one his own.
***'Reality'***
Jax came to with a start, falling off the couch with as he jolted awake. Sitting up so he was leaning against the couch, he passes a hand over his face, trying to push away the images burning on the inside of his eyelids.
It took him several moments to come to the realization someone was knocking on the door. Dragging himself up, he hurried to the door, throwing it open to reveal a very surprised looking Rae.
Elsewhere…
Antoinette sat upon an old log that had been deposited on the sand by the waves at high tide. On her lap a novel she'd picked up on her last trip into town sat untouched. Instead, a small picture held her attention, an ultrasound picture. She cried, looking at the outline of her baby, wondering if she'd ever get to hold the little one in her arms, wondering if the life inside were would have a chance know what it was like to live.
Looking away, she stared out at the ocean with out really seeing it at all.