A/N: OMG IT UPLOADED!!! D

Chapter Seventeen

Rose Da Silva did her best not to allow the devil's words to launch her into panic mode; her eyes focused on Cybil as she steadily wavered in her partially upright position, weakening with the continuous outward flow of blood. The young mother wriggled against the bonds of the wires, trying ever so subtly to convince the beast to free her so that she could reach her friend, and ignoring the flashes of pain which sliced through her as the barbs embedded themselves within her skin. At last, the monster seemed to have gathered her intentions, and it lowered her a foot or so above the ground and dropped her onto her feet, in the process ripping the enormous thorn from Cybil's shin and causing her to let out another cry, and topple over to one side, undeniably weak and anguished; vomit rose in her throat but she forced it down; blood on the ground was enough.

Rose dropped to her knees beside the cop, gently forcing her hands away from the wound on her leg, her own trembling violently as she did so, likely from fear and concern; her senses heightened when she felt the presence of the lord's head-like appendage near them; the mist was released from its mouth a second time, and the wounds upon both their bodies simultaneously and instantaneously vanished as had occurred earlier. Rose gasped at the sensation of the slashes to her stomach closing; Cybil groaned slightly at a similar, likely more painful sensation of the same kind. Rose moved her into a more upright position without looking at her; her attention was focused now upon the monstrosity which was gradually receding into the inferno beneath. When its form had completely vanished, the two women looked at each other, each silently asking the same question, until Rose at last spoke it aloud.

"What the Hell just happened?"

Cybil seemed so ultimately shocked by the past occurrences that she was thereby rendered incapable of answering—or incapable of understanding her friend's words; Rose wasn't sure which was the case. Her violet eyes stared straight into those of Rose, yet they were unseeing, and this disturbed the young mother. She gripped the cop's shoulder and shook her roughly for a moment, and at long last the other woman let out a sharp exhalation which she hadn't known she'd been withholding; swaying to one side as she moved her head in a quick semblance of disbelief, the officer made to get her feet beneath her, and stand. Rose did the same, her gaze steady on her friend in making certain she was all right. The cop's authoritative, yet smoothly feminine voice split the air an instant past.

"Whatever that thing was, I can't say I regret meeting it."

She moved her once injured arm freely, and examined her shin as well. There was a long, oddly shaped scar on both areas of her body, but she could live with them. Besides, scars told stories, and she'd always liked the attention she'd received for those stories. Rose, however, was not nearly so pleased, and examined her bullet-struck wrist; the fingers of her opposite hand probed over it, fretting over the scar, and she mumbled several words and phrases of questionable morality to herself which shall thus remain unrepeated. Quite plainly, she was the more self-conscious of the two.

"Hey—c'mon. We should get going," Cybil said gently from beside the young mother, though she was looking not at her, but at the place where the floor had only moments before been lacking in solidity; where there once had been an enormous pit of fire, there was no naught but stone and earth combined to create the basement's foundation. Rose shot one last disapproving frown in the direction of her wrist, and then looked down at her chest so as to take in the tattered remains of her blouse. When she had finished her visual inspection, though it was difficult in the dim light, she moved forward a step or two, awaiting Cybil and the flashlight. Its beam with fading, and quickly at that; within a few moments the two were engulfed in a raging darkness, which swirled and twisted about them, clutching at their throats with its poisoned air; the toxins burned after the short relief of the mist. Rose coughed once, and Cybil turned her gaze sharply upon her companion, making a motion as if to grip the mother's shoulder, but thinking better of it, the motion died and her arm slumped back to her side, whilst the other held the pistol in its holster.

"We need to get out of here. The air's even worse in this building than it is anywhere else," the cop said grimly, looking around as they made their way cautiously and painstakingly slowly forward, unable to see much without the flashlight, and wary of falling into some unforeseen trap. Rose looked in her general direction, but did not focus on her directly, for she could not see her.

"We need to find Dahlia, is what we need to do," the stricken mother replied stiffly.

"Well sor-ry. Excuse me if I wasn't doing enough to help you out."

Ah, so Cybil did indeed have a temper at times.

Rose shook her head, the mass of uncleanly hair atop it swaying back and forth as she did so; the officer stared at what she presumed to be the floor, placing each foot carefully in front of the other, and occasionally reaching an arm out to protest Rose's tendency toward faster movement. It felt good to suddenly be injury-free; she'd taken it for granted before, but never again. Rose felt similarly. Suddenly, Cybil froze in her place and inhaled sharply, causing Rose's heart rate to quicken several speeds and cease forward motion also.

"Did you hear that?" the cop whispered worriedly, and Rose stared at her dark figure blankly, with a frightened expression barely visible on her face. "Let's go."

Breaking into a desperate dead-bolt, fleeing some unseen yet decidedly unfriendly entity, both women raced through the inky bowls of the institution, stumbling slightly in the lack of light; all at once there appeared a slim slit of light amongst the infinite blackness now turned finite; gathering speed, they rushed toward it and crashed through it; sunlight waited on the other side—if it could be called sunlight. The familiar landscape of fog, fallen, and falling ash greeted them, and though the light was welcome, what now lay in their sights was not.

A mechanically marred malformation of a once silver Jeep Liberty rested on all four ravaged and tireless rims before them; the guardrail-punctured windshield seemed to stare unblinkingly at them, the twisted wipers reaching out and beckoning them forward, yet continuously threatening them and warning them not to fall into their clutches; the roof was twisted and bent beyond recognition, and a section had been peeled backward so as to reveal the ruined interior of the vehicle. The passenger side door was missing completely, and the hatchback was raised up on only one hinge while the other hinge, along with half of the hatch itself, was folded back upon itself. Behind it lay the bridge into Silent Hill, complete and connecting; to one side rested the sign with the forever to be flickering yellow light; mother and officer looked at one another with widened and narrowed eyes, both equally as questioning as the last, and neither able to provide the other with an adequate explanation.

Upon returning their shocked gazes back to rest on the form of the destroyed truck, a loud crack was heard just before the front bumper removed itself from the otherwise imprisoning bolts of the decaying vehicle. Both women leapt away from it as it tumbled toward them and then swiftly melted and dissolved into the ashen landscape beneath. Rose's sea eyes now raised to stare inquisitively at the remainder of the truck, and, much to Cybil's disapproval, stepped forward, slowly at first, and then gaining impulsion before she found herself stopped beside the driver's side door. The tattered seats within were empty, or so it appeared; one could never be quite certain in this world, she reasoned as she reached out to touch the twisted and partially melted black latch on the door. Out of nowhere, strong arms wrapped themselves around the mother's surprisingly thin midsection, and she was pulled backward just as the machine burst into a ball of blue and white flame. In an instant it had dematerialized just before their eyes, and Cybil took a moment to understand that she had suddenly found herself with a familiar woman very nearly in her lap, and that she was lacking the sort of discomfort which would otherwise have been present during such a meeting. This in itself was more disconcerting than anything else at that moment.

Rose however, made no move to free the cop from her position, and instead seemed focused on a particular area of the surrounding landscape; a woolen cloak had been carelessly thrown upon the earth and somewhat singed, likely due to the blast of heat having previously emanated from the now vanished Liberty. It was strangely familiar to the young parent, and without a second thought she got to her feet—much to the relief of Cybil—and moved over to examine it, squatting down upon her ankles. As she neared it with her hands, it too burst into flame and she toppled over backward, to which Cybil responded by way of a hurried raising of her position to the elbows, and a titled back head.

"Good Lord Rose!" the cop gasped wearily as she rolled over to stand up, as Rose scurried to her own feet a second time. "Do I honestly have to tell you not to touch everything you see?"

The mother looked at the officer with partially widened eyes, for a moment not really seeing her or understanding the words which had been spoken, as she caught her breath and came to her senses; with a gentle shake of her dirtied blonde locks, her attention focused truly on her friend. "I think that was Dahlia's robe," the mother said calmly, completely ignoring Cybil's question, which ended with a rolling of violet eyes. "Why would she leave it?"

"I'm inclined to believe she had something to do with what just happened here a minute or so ago."

"With the truck?"

"What else?"

"Good point."

"I didn't like the sound of what that thing said back there."

Rose looked at her sharply. "What do you mean?"

"'One mother must perish.' Bullshit if I'm going to let you die here. He might as well just have said 'Dahlia must die.'"

"A little overprotective are we?"

Silence reigned for a brief moment.

"Shut up Rose."

A light, jingling chuckle passed from the young mother's throat, something which Cybil hadn't heard during their time in the Hellish Silent Hill, and she was surprised to find that such a simple sound would enliven her to the point of smiling in return. Happiness wasn't something that was easy to come by in a place such as this; anything even remotely similar to such an idea was welcome to them both, and they took advantage of it for the short instants during which it remained. Rose's sea eyes shifted to stare through the spaces in the chain link fence surrounding numerous rusted vehicles—which bore a striking resemblance to how the Liberty had appeared just moments before—and then spoke.

"Have you ever been up there?" she asked, gestured to the hills upon which the vehicles' skeletal remains rested. "I've never been up there."

Cybil followed her gaze worriedly upward, her short-lived smile fading, and a barely audible groan of disapproval escaped her against her will. Rose's perseverance was marked by a deep intrepidity and fortitude; the admiration the cop held within her was growing with each and every moment she was in the woman's presence; at one point in her life, her own goals had been fixated in her mind, and she had been bound and determined to reach them at any cost. That determination had failed her in later years, however, and Silent Hill was near rock bottom for her; yet Rose's sudden appearance in her life had abruptly given way to a new set of ambitions, be they honest or dark; the woman's survival came first and foremost on her list of objectives now—even before her own preservation. Whatever the mother was doing to cause such a change in the lady deputy, Cybil was in no way eager for her to cease.

"No," she vociferated finally, shaking her head and lowering violet irises so as to blend them into ocean blue. "No…I've never been there."

Rose nodded to herself quietly, as if reassuring herself of something. A short time later and she had pivoted quickly on one scarred, leather heel, and started off toward a gap in the ancient fence, muttering a few words which were indiscernible to the officer who followed closely behind, removing the pistol from its holster, and stripping it of its safety. Suddenly, the blonde stopped, swinging herself around to face her friend.

"How many more bullets have you got in that gun?"