Disclaimer: I still own nothing. Nothing at all.
AN: I think this one speaks for itself, actually.
August 26
On the 26th of August, Sam didn't show up for her shift. It wasn't a matter of being late.
In fact, she came early.
She came running, a bloody body in her arms. The body belonged to a child, but even so it was tinier than it should have been: it was missing both its legs, and one arm had been reduced to a stump. Blood stained woman and child alike; only furious tears washed the gore from Sam's face.
"Let me in," she snarled when she reached the door of the airlock. "Dammit, let me in!" Frantic, she threw herself against the door, kicking and screaming until it burst open.
A student shouldn't have had such strength. Even a soldier shouldn't have been able to do it.
But air locks were never designed to hold against sisters.
Peter was on his way through the inner door, his gun raised, his every muscle poised for a fight. He didn't stand a chance. In an instant she plowed past him, all but trampling him as she burst into the Geppetto's workshop.
That was where her strength failed her. Her knees buckled and she tumbled to the floor at the Scientist's feet, clutching the tiny twitching body against her chest.
"Geppetto," she choked, barely able to form the words. "Geppetto, please."
He could only stare, his mouth agape in horror as blood pooled around them.
"It was a mortar shell," she tried to explain between gasps. "It went through—it – you have to help her, Geppetto. Please, do something, do anything…"
"I don't…" he whispered. "I can't…"
"You can save her, remember? That's what you said, you can save pieces of someone—so life goes on—you explained it to me and you can do it now—please don't let her die—please…" She tried to say more, but the words were lost in frantic sobs. In her arms the mutilated child moaned.
"I can't do that," he said, his voice still shaking.
"You have to!" She wailed. "I know you can—you can save her—you have to—please—"
"No." His voice was firm this time. Solid as a knife in her heart. "Don't you understand?" he knelt in front of her, his coat stained crimson in the deepening pool of blood. "If I bring her back now she'll spend the rest of her life running from something she can't even begin to understand. She will live in constant fear. She'll be in agony, Samantha—"
He had never been a religious man. He'd never thought about his soul until he began to dabble in the Black Arts, and by then it was already too far gone to be worth preserving—he'd lost it when he created the Machine, though he could still feel the jagged edges from the bits of it that had been torn away. It was something he could do to himself, but not to this child. Not to this innocent little girl.
"She's out of time," Samantha begged. "Please."
"You have to let her go," he whispered, wrapping his arms around both the girls and squeezing them in a tight embrace. "Let her find Narnia."
Lizzy whimpered one last time.
A shudder ran through what remained of her body, and she fell silent.
Soldiers poured into the bunker.
They seized the woman and tore her from Geppetto's arms, dragging her up and out of the shelter.
A few of them tried to remove the body, but they couldn't pry it from her grip.
They didn't see the tears pouring from behind bespectacled eyes. They didn't see a tiny striped doll run for his life, his pen-nib fingers bright with blood, his mind already disintegrating from what he had witnessed.
They just kept dragging their captive away until she stopped struggling and left her where she lay.