The Cleanup

Participants:

melissa3_icon.gif

Scene Title The Cleanup
Synopsis Melissa begins to clean up the mess that was once Jacob Shields, and has a minor breakdown once the truth of what's happened hits her.
Date July 27, 2010

Abandoned Auto Shop - Staten Island


Kendall and Ling have gone. Melissa isn't sure if Kendall is going to go home either. The way he looked at her…He's scared. Confused. And she's very sure that he'll never trust her again. She'll be surprised if he ever comes home after this. She never wanted him involved.

Mel looks down at the body, for it is just a body now, slumped over in the chair, eyes empty, the back of his head missing. Such a mess. She's never seen such a mess before. Eyes close even as they fill with tears, and a few leak out, trailing down her cheeks.

This isn't how it was supposed to be. She wasn't supposed to be killing anyone. She was just supposed to keep him safe. Keep him alive. Keep them alive.

She draws in a deep breath and nearly gags at the smell of bodily fluids, then sets the gun on the table. The closet that Jacob was kept in has plenty of cleaning supplies. No reason to leave a mess, and the work will help. She hopes. A bucket is filled with water and bleach, rags grabbed, and she moves back into the other room, kneeling in the pooling blood, surprised at how hot it feels through her jeans.

She begins to scrub automatically, her body and mind disconnected from one another. This was different. Montana, it was a mission. She didn't see the faces close up. She didn't talk to them, hear them begging for their lives. Even just two days prior was different. They shot at her first!

Tears begin to pour down her cheeks as the action of rag into bucket turns the water pink and heavier pieces of Jacob settle in the bottom. What has she become? Is she any better than Humanis First now? Than the Institute? She's killed in cold blood.

She's a murderer.

She lets out a wordless scream of pain and rage. The bottle of bleach is thrown to smash against a wall. The table is overturned, sending things clattering all along the concrete floor. She stands and picks up a nearby lamp, hurling it at the wall, unsatisfied at the sound of glass shattering. Or at the sound of tools hitting metal before clattering to the floor. A stool is picked up, thrown towards a window, which has it cracking, spiderwebs forming in the glass, but it doesn't shatter completely.

Melissa suddenly falls to her knees as she fights against a sob, but it's a losing battle. She pushes back from the body, sliding through the blood until her back hits part of the car lift, and she starts crying. Loud, body wracking sobs. Her knees are drawn up, arms folded over them, and she lays her head down, just letting herself cry for all the things she lost. And all in the name of love.

A love she may very well have already lost. Maybe he was right. He hasn't really caused her to be hurt in any physical way. But emotionally…these are the scars that will never fully heal.

Ten minutes later Melissa's head lifts and she wipes her face on her upper arm, smearing blood and tears over her skin. She crawls back over to the mess on the floor, sniffling, giving an occasional soft hiccup, but she resumes her cleaning. She can't get out of here until it's taken care of.

Except…How is she supposed to move the body? Just scrubbing the floor like this is hard enough on her injured body, and it took her and Ling both to move him before. She sits back and stares, her mind drawing a blank. Who can she call? Abby's out of the question. Harrison is too innocent for this. Ling is injured as well. Ash doesn't like torture. She cringes as she comes up with the name of the person that she knows she's going to have to call.

But that doesn't mean that she has to like it.

She wipes her hand off on a clean part of her pants, and grabs her phone, making the call. When it hits voicemail, she's quiet for a few seconds, then her voice is shaky, hoarse from the crying. She sounds almost as terrible as she feels.

“I…I'm sorry to call, but I need your help. There's no one else I can call. I'm sorry.”

She disconnects, slides the phone away, then looks at her hands. She doesn't want to be seen like this. Blood on her hands, her clothes, her face. It's probably even in her hair. Yet somehow, she just can't work up the energy to care enough to clean up. It just doesn't seem as important with a body laying a mere twelve inches from her.


Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License