The Tainted Snow's Tale

Broken Families

I cried in Blake's arms until I began to realize that the cathedral had began to fall apart all around us.

"What's happening?" I asked.

"This place," Apocalypse began, his face flushed as his eyes danced from one object to another. He held one of his sides with his hand as he laid slouched against one of the church benches. "It's tied to the intertwined power of Kaylin and her death orb. Without them, this place can't hold it's own."

I looked at Apocalypse and remembered that he had taken my purity orb. The orb, that according to my memories, enhanced the pureness and innocence of any living thing.

The orb that kept my dark side in check.

He looked at me, and almost as if he had read my mind, he tossed me a garish looking case.

"Keep it. Keep both of them. I don't want Kaylin to ever undergo it's influence again."

I looked at him astonished as a realization shocked me. As color flooded back into his cold stoic face, I watched him in shock.

"You!" I yelled. He looked at me confused, and I covered my mouth in shock. Running my fingers through my hair, I fell to my knees incredulous. "It was you all along..."

Before I knew it, I was embraced in a hug. But the strong muscular arms didn't belong to Blake.

They belonged to Apocalypse.

"It was you all along," I cried. I gripped his arms, and buried myself in his neck. The arms that held me were the arms of a brother that had disappeared all of those years ago.

"It's you Lawrence!"

I suddenly remembered Kaylin's memories, and recalled the day the house burned down when she was abducted. She had noticed that strange people were in their neighborhood, and tried to convince her father to let them leave.

Her mother had told her what to do in the case that people ever came to hurt them. But her father didn't believe her.

He never did.

So she took her little brother and hid him in their dead neighbor's basement, a place no one would look.

I mean, no one would ever think to check the same place twice, right?

But curiosity had been to gnaw at her, like a small persistent thought that refused to leave her mind.She began to grow worried about her father and his wellbeing, so she left her brother and kissed him, promising that she would be back safely. She had asked him not to move until she came back.

Tears streamed down the both of their faces as they pinkie promised. Lawrence not to move, and Kaylin to safely come back to him.

But the moment she had stepped a foot back onto their lawn, the fifteen year old in the body of a little girl was knocked down by grown men. She was hand cuffed and taken while she bawled and thrashed. She yelled, she screamed, even when they bashed the back of her head with a rifle.

Then she saw the blood. The red that painted the green grass that surrounded her father's headless body on their lawn. After seeing that, she immediately became still, allowing them to take her away.

I remembered all of Kaylin's memories for her.

Especially how she had forgotten about her younger brother. A brother who had waited for her, starving on days without end until scavengers found him. A cold boy, wet with his own urine, and starving as he ran on dry expired hope while awaiting his sister's return.

A sister that never came back for him.

Yet a sister he still loved and killed for.

"How... how could she forget about you?" I asked tearfully.