Above Ground: Church Apse

The Apse of this church - basically a large dome-shaped area connected to the chapel - contains a table with several long rows of candles and an altar. Despite the fact that the place is little more than a ruin, the decor about the room still has a glimmer of its former glory.

Come here to light a candle in honor of a fallen loved one, or add something to the alter in memorial to those that fell either to give life to or save the lives of those present today.

Don't worry - the walls are in excellent shape: the candlelight won't betray us a bit! Besides... they are not truly gone, those who live on in the hearts of the loved ones they leave behind.





((I'd like to add photo links to the names, either with a character picture or celebrity look-alike... if you'd like to participate, please send me a PM with the character's name and image link... or if you can edit it in that'd be fine, too. Thanks! ~Sub

Edan lit a candle for his mother, leaving the other for either his sister or older brother to light for his father. It was the only thing he ever approached seriously.

Something about standing in the room, with the flickering candles flames the only light, made him forget all the chaos and misery.

Ironically, the cold room reminded him nothing of his warm caring mother, and let it did as well. He had a picture of her, with his father, that he always brought with him when he lit a candle.
Now he glanced down at her bright smiling face. Maybe it was a good thing that she had died... so she wouldn't have to live in so much fear and with so much worry. But a selfish part of him battled against that idea. He wanted her there with him and Rossalyn and Tav.

The last memory he had of his mother and father was a vivid one. Their partially burnt bodies laying amid the charred rubble of what had been their home. Tav had given him a shovel and told him to help him bury them. Edan remembered every tear that had fallen as he had cut the dull shovel into the hard earth. His sweet mother and chuckling father had not belonged under the ground... and yet there they laid to that very day.

Edan sighed and turned away from the candles. Without looking back, he made his way back toward the effigy room.

Rossalyn walked in to room in honor of the dead, there parents. She noticed her mothers candle had already been lit, and the candle light reflected perfectly off her mothers face.

She took up the lighter and lit her Fathers candle, she would always remember his voice when he read to her, and he had always been happy, at least form what she remembered.

He always called her Rain Fairy.

A sad smile spread across her face and a single tear rolled down her cheek. She had gone into shock when she saw there dead bodies. She just watched with dead eyes as Tav and Edan barried them, she went so deep in shock she couldn't cry. She could just stare at them in disbelif... It had been afew days later when she woke up screaming from a bad dream that she realized her Mother and Father weren't coming to her side to see what was wrong, and never would again.

She had cried her heart out for hours and hours and it had been the most painful, frightening hours of her life.

The dreadful frightening feeling never left her, it wasn't as painful any more, but there were nights she dreamed they were all back at home, laughing, hugging, playing, and so happy. But then she would wake up and realise that was just all it was a dream, and the pain from that first night would come back to her, like a water rushing out of a flood gate.

She never told Tav or Edan about those nights, afterall neither of them liked talking about Mum and Dad and she knew it. To tell them of her dreams and the pain she still carried would only burden them.

Holding her arms she allowed herself to silently cry.

It was safe to say Rossalyn had taken her parents death quite badly, they only differnce was she tried not to show it around her brothers, to often.

Eliza wandered into the Apse, trying desperatly to remember.

Anything.

A voice, a sound, even a whisper that would tell her that her parents had lived. A flicker of movement, a blurred face, a person out of focus... She would have settled for anything.

Anything at all.

Eliza bit her lip. All she remembered was Will. She could remember Darien and Diana, very faintly...and easily remembered Nick and Ana.

But they weren't her parents. They never had been.
And they never could be.

She'd had two sets of foster parents...but she could remember them, their memories still stored in her consciousness.
Her own, biological parents, Calista and Armando... She could not even vaguely remember them.

As much as she tried, as hard as she scoured her mind, the more she read old books they would have liked, possibly even have read, anything she did to try and feel close to them failed.

She would never know her parents.

She would never remind herself of their faces, their voices.

She would never know if any pictures she saw were real, or if they were her parents.

She would never know...

Eliza sat in the back right-hand corner of the Apse and fought her tears back. Resting her back against the cold stone wall, she cried in silence, eyes unfocused and gazing blankly at the opposite wall. Once more she began to search her memories...

Once more, she found nothing.

Will walked silently by the Church Apse. It was a place he somewhat avoided. Compared to Eliza, Will would seemed like he was the least bothered about his parent's deaths. The only thing was, he wasn't. He wasn't at all. That's why he joined the Remnants in the first place. It was just that, he had trouble expressing his emotions on that particular subject. There was also the fact that he was Eliza's big brother - a role Will took seriously to not only Eliza but Darius as well. He was their rock. He needed to be.

Rossa didn't notices that she was no longer alone in the church as her focus was more on her parents photos.

Sometimes she envied the people who couldn't remember them... their parents... and other times she felt sorry for them.

Still nothing stopped the pain in her heart at loosing her parents and finding them dead in your wreacked house.

Silent tears still made there way down her face.

It was then Will noticed Rossalyn. Will was headed to the Chapel, his discusion with Demyan earlier about the ghosts that lurk there made him rather curious, however, he'd appreciate the company of someone. She had her back to him so he couldn't see her tears but even so he neared her lightly.

"Rossa?" He said softly.

Rossa jumped at the sudden call of her name and spun around, she saw Will and franticly whipped her face of her stray tears.

"Will? umm what is it?" she asked trying to hide the fact she was obviously crying in fornt of her parents mermorial photos.