Shards of Memory, chapter 2
Get back here, muse! ^_^
Title: Shards of Memory
Pairing: Ivy/Rachel
Rating: PG-13 so far, may go up later.
Disclaimer: Not being Kim Harrison, I don't own them.
Summary: What do you do if your entire life is erased, someone is trying to kill you, and the ones trying to keep you safe scare you even more? Post "For a Few Demons More".
Imagine being able to remember almost nothing. You have no idea where you are, you have no idea who you are, and you have no idea what happened to you. Now imagine you're hurt badly enough to prevent you from going anywhere, or even defend yourself if you have to. You've just been informed that vampires and pixies (which, evidently, are some kind of mutant bug/human hybrid, and I wasn't sure I wanted to think about how that combination had come about) and who knows what else are real, and some of them claim to know you. Now imagine you've just been left alone with the vampire, and don't even know who to call for help if she tries anything.
I dare you to not start freaking out.
My breathing immediately picked up, and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest as I tried to edge away from Ivy as best I could. I know what she'd just said about vampires taking care of the sick and injured, but how was I supposed to believe that? I didn't even know this woman!
Ivy flinched, as if my actions were causing her physical pain. "Rachel, calm down, before you hurt yourself worse. I promise, I'm not going to do anything." She took a few steps away from the bed - ah ha! That's what I was laying on! - as if to prove her point. "I could never stand to hurt you," she added, speaking so softly I'm not sure if I was actually meant to hear it.
That was just strange enough to distract me from my rising panic. "What, vampires don't like it when their food can't get away from them?" I asked, only half sarcastic.
She smiled, but even I could tell it was strained. "That's... not actually an issue." She paused as something evidently occurred to her. "Rachel," she asked slowly, "do you know what werewolves are?"
Where... whats? "Um..."
"How about banshees?"
"No."
"Trolls?"
"Huh?"
"Leprechauns?"
"...are you just making up words, now?"
Her lips twitched again, but it looked more real, this time. "I'll take that as a 'no'." She paused again, then carefully asked, "What about witches?"
I frowned as I thought about it. "The word... sounds vaguely familiar, but it doesn't seem to be attached to anything," I finally replied.
"Then how is it that you know what a vampire is?"
I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it again with an audible click as I realized I had no idea. "I... I don't know. I just... do." I looked down, just then noticing that there were a bunch of somethings hanging around my neck. I considered getting rid of them until I knew what they were, but some instinct told me to leave them be. "You think someone did that on purpose? Why?"
She grimaced. "I suspect because they wanted you to distrust me, to make you want to stay away from me, so that they could get another shot at you."
"Or maybe vampires were involved in... whatever happened to me," I countered, not quite ready to believe everything this Ivy told me just yet.
"Perhaps," she allowed. "But vampires can't do magic, and that's the only thing that could have affected your memory like this. They probably left you with just enough information about vampires to want to stay away from us, because they knew I'd die before I let anything else happen to you." She blinked, then looked away, and I could swear she was blushing. I got the feeling she hadn't meant to say that.
Naturally, this aroused my curiosity. "Why?" From the little I did know of vampires, that didn't make a bit of sense.
For a long moment, she kept studying the wall, obviously not wanting to answer. She must have felt the weight of my stare and realized I wasn't about to drop the subject, though, because she looked back at me and gave me a small smile. "You're my best friend, Rachel."
The really strange thing? I believed her.
Her reactions suggested there might be more to it then that, but then, I was hurt and still a bit foggy, I didn't know enough about how she normally acted to compare to how she was acting now, and she might also be stressed about what had happened to me.
I know I certainly was.
"Uh, thanks, I guess," I said uncertainly. That probably could have been said a bit more nicely, but I think under the circumstances, I could be forgiven. "So..."
"So?"
Did I really want to ask this? "So... That Jenks guy is a pixie, and you're a vampire, which makes me...?"
Apparently, I did.
"You're a witch," she told me. She had that look on her face again, the one that said if she was another person, she might be crying now. Wow, she must have really hated to see me like this.
Maybe we really were that good of friends.
"Which means what?" I asked, gesturing with my good hand towards the seat I could see near the bed, hoping she would take that as an apology for my earlier freakout.
The way her eyes softened told me that she understood exactly what I was trying to tell her, and she moved to the chair. She was still careful not to get too close, I noticed. Considering that I was still not entirely convinced she was who she said she was, I appreciated that. She began filling me in on the basics of many of the various "Inderland" races, leading to the most surreal conversation I could remember ever having.
Which, admittedly, was hardly a challenge.
She'd just gotten to trying to explain the difference between living and undead vampires - which was something that my fractured memories did not cover - when Jenks finally returned, the doctor in tow. "All right, Miss Morgan, we're going to take you to get that arm X-rayed now, after which you're scheduled for an MRI."
"Um... right."
"Tink's knickers!" Jenks exploded. "Did you really think she was going to understand any of that? You'd be better off getting another witch in here to look at her. You don't really think all this is because she hit her head, do you?"
"We'll know more after the tests are complete," Doctor Bartlett said, which was almost an answer.
I sighed, getting the feeling that I was not particularly going to enjoy this.
Long story short? I was right.
Over the next several hours, I was X-Rayed, MRI'd, poked and prodded by someone claiming to be a witch (which felt SO strange in ways I can't even convey), I talked to psychiatrists, police officers (well, FIB officers, anyway; Ivy had mentioned something about an IS, though she'd been reluctant to go into any details beyond the fact that they didn't like me because I used to work for them, but quit for some unspecified reason), doctors, nurses, and they'd come to a stunning realization: something had happened earlier that night to erase most of my memory.
For a minute, I seriously thought Ivy was going to go for the doctor's throat when he told us that. I'm not sure if I would have tried to stop her, or cheered her on, honestly.
He also explained (after looking rather nervously at Ivy) that my arm was, in fact, broken, and I did have a minor concussion. I also had a whole lot of bruises, scrapes, and minor burns, and everyone from the FIB to the hospital staff to even Ivy was at a loss to explain just what the hell could have happened to me that would result in all that.
The end result was that after I had a cast put on my arm (just my forearm, thankfully, so it wouldn't limit my mobility all that much), I was released. That was fine by me. After all, if they didn't have any tests left to run on me, didn't have a clue what was wrong with my memory (beyond the fact that it wasn't there), and couldn't recommend anything beyond bed rest and taking it easy for the next few days, there was really no reason I couldn't do that at home, was there?
Wherever 'home' was.
It took me a few minutes to work up the nerve to get into a car with Ivy - still kinda worked up vampire, enclosed space? Yeah, that sounded like a good idea - though she was nothing but patient and understanding. It actually helped a bit that Jenks was there as well... though if you tell anyone that I felt better because a pixie was there, I'll totally deny it.
The drive home was... odd. It was like Ivy had to keep reminding herself that she wanted to drive safely and not exceed the posted speed limit. (Yeah, even I could manage to figure those signs out without any help.) Part of me wondered what she was normally like behind the wheel.
The rest of me? Did not want to know.
I kept my gaze fixed firmly out the window as we drove, and it wasn't just so I had an excuse to try and ignore Ivy. I studied the people and buildings we drove past, hoping to see anything that looked familiar.
I didn't.
There really aren't any words for how scary that is, recognizing absolutely nothing. I almost wanted to go back to the hospital, if only because I knew I'd been there already. To try and distract myself from the growing urge to curl up into a ball and hide somewhere, I decided a few more questions were in order. "So," I began, noticing Ivy start in surprise out of the corner of my eyes as I broke the silence in the car. "Home is... where, exactly?"
That ended up being a weird conversation. Supposedly, we - and yes, from what they said, we did all live together, which just seemed very... convenient - lived in what had once been an old church. This, naturally, lead to an explanation of just what a church was, with a minor digression into the subject of religion, before explaining just why any of us would want to live in such a place.
This, of course, meant Ivy had to finish explaining about undead vampires, and also tell me about demons, and why some of them really didn't like me.
My head was spinning by the time she finished - I barely noticed Jenks' interjections - and I noticed we were there. I had no idea when we'd stopped, but she'd even shut off the car, so I guessed it had been several minutes, at least.
The 'church' itself looked to be an old stone building, which we evidently ran a "runner's service" out of. Blessedly, Ivy cut the conversation off there, saying we could talk more after we'd gotten some rest. She lead me inside, at which point we were swarmed by more pixies then I could count.
I took a nervous step back, hands half raised in front of me, though I naturally had no idea how I would have defended myself from them, if it had been necessary. These, it turned out, were Jenks' kids, and clearly he and the missus had been... busy. Well, it was nice to see that they had such a loving relationship. It also argued strongly in favor of he and Ivy being who they said they were. Nobody evil could have a wife who loved him enough to have that many kids, right?
They kept buzzing about me even as we took a quick little tour of the former church, giving me names for the various rooms: living room, kitchen, sanctuary, and so on. Their chirping dialogue reached a fever pitch in the hallway that had our bedrooms, sending a fresh spike of pain through my head.
Ivy, thankfully, managed to extricate me from the pixie horde, saying she needed to help get me ready for bed. Despite the embarrassment of needing help, I didn't argue with her. The day was catching up with me, and I was so tired I could barely see straight.
While Jenks and his wife - a perfectly charming lady named Matalina - corralled their children, Ivy lead me into what she called a 'bathroom'. She disappeared for a while, giving me a minute to look around - even this didn't look familiar, nor had anything else they'd shown me, making me want to cry - before returning with a change of clothing. The hospital had done a good job of cleaning me off, so I didn't need a shower - which was good, because I wasn't sure how I was supposed to keep my cast dry like they told me I had to, since from what I could figure out, the shower featured water pretty heavily - but I obviously couldn't sleep in what I was wearing.
Ivy helping me undress was... Yeah. Her cheeks seemed a bit redder then usual, and she was avoiding looking at me whenever she could avoid it. It was also clear that she was not happy about my injuries. Well, there was something we had in common, at least. Since I couldn't see it myself, she looked at my back for me - I was still wearing something she called a 'bra', at least, but this still felt... odd. "You must have been slammed into something pretty hard," she said softly. "This is going to be a gorgeous bruise by this time tomorrow." She gently trailed her fingers over my lower back, and I couldn't stop a shiver as - I swear to that God person she'd mentioned earlier - I felt a jolt of of electricity shoot up from where she was touching me right into my brain.
Naturally, she noticed. "I'm not going to hurt you," she said, voice barely above a whisper.
"I know," I replied, just as quiet. Of course, that lead to the natural question: if it wasn't fear, what had that been?
Frankly, I was just too damned tired to figure it out. I finished pulling on the oversized nightshirt she'd gotten me - she did, at least, let me change my underwear and get rid of my bra by myself - and staggered out into the hallway, heading for one of the bedrooms. She must have been picking up my dirty clothes, because I actually managed to get inside one before she noticed where I'd gone. "Um, Rachel..."
I was really, really too tired for this. Or anything, really. "Ivy, please, I just... I just need some sleep."
"I know, but-"
"I'll see you in the morning," I told her, managing a smile - really, I wasn't blind to how nice she'd been about everything - before I shut the door. It was rather dark in there, so I decided I'd look around tomorrow, and carefully felt my way to where I'd seen the bed. The last thing I needed was to injure myself even worse.
I didn't hear Ivy leave, but she must have, so I just chalked it up to vampire stealth and forgot about it. I took a deep breath and... Wait. I sniffed again. No, I wasn't imagining it.
The room smelled... familiar.
Finally, something I recognized! Even if it was just on a subconscious level, I knew that smell. I reached the bed, and slid inbetween the sheets. They were really soft - I'd later learn the material was something called satin - and the smell was even stronger here. This, more then anything else, seemed to prove that Ivy and Jenks had been telling me the truth.
And more then that, being surrounded by that smell somehow made me feel so... safe. Like nothing could possibly hurt me, as long as it was around.
It was enough to let me get to sleep.
Title: Shards of Memory
Pairing: Ivy/Rachel
Rating: PG-13 so far, may go up later.
Disclaimer: Not being Kim Harrison, I don't own them.
Summary: What do you do if your entire life is erased, someone is trying to kill you, and the ones trying to keep you safe scare you even more? Post "For a Few Demons More".
Imagine being able to remember almost nothing. You have no idea where you are, you have no idea who you are, and you have no idea what happened to you. Now imagine you're hurt badly enough to prevent you from going anywhere, or even defend yourself if you have to. You've just been informed that vampires and pixies (which, evidently, are some kind of mutant bug/human hybrid, and I wasn't sure I wanted to think about how that combination had come about) and who knows what else are real, and some of them claim to know you. Now imagine you've just been left alone with the vampire, and don't even know who to call for help if she tries anything.
I dare you to not start freaking out.
My breathing immediately picked up, and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest as I tried to edge away from Ivy as best I could. I know what she'd just said about vampires taking care of the sick and injured, but how was I supposed to believe that? I didn't even know this woman!
Ivy flinched, as if my actions were causing her physical pain. "Rachel, calm down, before you hurt yourself worse. I promise, I'm not going to do anything." She took a few steps away from the bed - ah ha! That's what I was laying on! - as if to prove her point. "I could never stand to hurt you," she added, speaking so softly I'm not sure if I was actually meant to hear it.
That was just strange enough to distract me from my rising panic. "What, vampires don't like it when their food can't get away from them?" I asked, only half sarcastic.
She smiled, but even I could tell it was strained. "That's... not actually an issue." She paused as something evidently occurred to her. "Rachel," she asked slowly, "do you know what werewolves are?"
Where... whats? "Um..."
"How about banshees?"
"No."
"Trolls?"
"Huh?"
"Leprechauns?"
"...are you just making up words, now?"
Her lips twitched again, but it looked more real, this time. "I'll take that as a 'no'." She paused again, then carefully asked, "What about witches?"
I frowned as I thought about it. "The word... sounds vaguely familiar, but it doesn't seem to be attached to anything," I finally replied.
"Then how is it that you know what a vampire is?"
I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it again with an audible click as I realized I had no idea. "I... I don't know. I just... do." I looked down, just then noticing that there were a bunch of somethings hanging around my neck. I considered getting rid of them until I knew what they were, but some instinct told me to leave them be. "You think someone did that on purpose? Why?"
She grimaced. "I suspect because they wanted you to distrust me, to make you want to stay away from me, so that they could get another shot at you."
"Or maybe vampires were involved in... whatever happened to me," I countered, not quite ready to believe everything this Ivy told me just yet.
"Perhaps," she allowed. "But vampires can't do magic, and that's the only thing that could have affected your memory like this. They probably left you with just enough information about vampires to want to stay away from us, because they knew I'd die before I let anything else happen to you." She blinked, then looked away, and I could swear she was blushing. I got the feeling she hadn't meant to say that.
Naturally, this aroused my curiosity. "Why?" From the little I did know of vampires, that didn't make a bit of sense.
For a long moment, she kept studying the wall, obviously not wanting to answer. She must have felt the weight of my stare and realized I wasn't about to drop the subject, though, because she looked back at me and gave me a small smile. "You're my best friend, Rachel."
The really strange thing? I believed her.
Her reactions suggested there might be more to it then that, but then, I was hurt and still a bit foggy, I didn't know enough about how she normally acted to compare to how she was acting now, and she might also be stressed about what had happened to me.
I know I certainly was.
"Uh, thanks, I guess," I said uncertainly. That probably could have been said a bit more nicely, but I think under the circumstances, I could be forgiven. "So..."
"So?"
Did I really want to ask this? "So... That Jenks guy is a pixie, and you're a vampire, which makes me...?"
Apparently, I did.
"You're a witch," she told me. She had that look on her face again, the one that said if she was another person, she might be crying now. Wow, she must have really hated to see me like this.
Maybe we really were that good of friends.
"Which means what?" I asked, gesturing with my good hand towards the seat I could see near the bed, hoping she would take that as an apology for my earlier freakout.
The way her eyes softened told me that she understood exactly what I was trying to tell her, and she moved to the chair. She was still careful not to get too close, I noticed. Considering that I was still not entirely convinced she was who she said she was, I appreciated that. She began filling me in on the basics of many of the various "Inderland" races, leading to the most surreal conversation I could remember ever having.
Which, admittedly, was hardly a challenge.
She'd just gotten to trying to explain the difference between living and undead vampires - which was something that my fractured memories did not cover - when Jenks finally returned, the doctor in tow. "All right, Miss Morgan, we're going to take you to get that arm X-rayed now, after which you're scheduled for an MRI."
"Um... right."
"Tink's knickers!" Jenks exploded. "Did you really think she was going to understand any of that? You'd be better off getting another witch in here to look at her. You don't really think all this is because she hit her head, do you?"
"We'll know more after the tests are complete," Doctor Bartlett said, which was almost an answer.
I sighed, getting the feeling that I was not particularly going to enjoy this.
Long story short? I was right.
Over the next several hours, I was X-Rayed, MRI'd, poked and prodded by someone claiming to be a witch (which felt SO strange in ways I can't even convey), I talked to psychiatrists, police officers (well, FIB officers, anyway; Ivy had mentioned something about an IS, though she'd been reluctant to go into any details beyond the fact that they didn't like me because I used to work for them, but quit for some unspecified reason), doctors, nurses, and they'd come to a stunning realization: something had happened earlier that night to erase most of my memory.
For a minute, I seriously thought Ivy was going to go for the doctor's throat when he told us that. I'm not sure if I would have tried to stop her, or cheered her on, honestly.
He also explained (after looking rather nervously at Ivy) that my arm was, in fact, broken, and I did have a minor concussion. I also had a whole lot of bruises, scrapes, and minor burns, and everyone from the FIB to the hospital staff to even Ivy was at a loss to explain just what the hell could have happened to me that would result in all that.
The end result was that after I had a cast put on my arm (just my forearm, thankfully, so it wouldn't limit my mobility all that much), I was released. That was fine by me. After all, if they didn't have any tests left to run on me, didn't have a clue what was wrong with my memory (beyond the fact that it wasn't there), and couldn't recommend anything beyond bed rest and taking it easy for the next few days, there was really no reason I couldn't do that at home, was there?
Wherever 'home' was.
It took me a few minutes to work up the nerve to get into a car with Ivy - still kinda worked up vampire, enclosed space? Yeah, that sounded like a good idea - though she was nothing but patient and understanding. It actually helped a bit that Jenks was there as well... though if you tell anyone that I felt better because a pixie was there, I'll totally deny it.
The drive home was... odd. It was like Ivy had to keep reminding herself that she wanted to drive safely and not exceed the posted speed limit. (Yeah, even I could manage to figure those signs out without any help.) Part of me wondered what she was normally like behind the wheel.
The rest of me? Did not want to know.
I kept my gaze fixed firmly out the window as we drove, and it wasn't just so I had an excuse to try and ignore Ivy. I studied the people and buildings we drove past, hoping to see anything that looked familiar.
I didn't.
There really aren't any words for how scary that is, recognizing absolutely nothing. I almost wanted to go back to the hospital, if only because I knew I'd been there already. To try and distract myself from the growing urge to curl up into a ball and hide somewhere, I decided a few more questions were in order. "So," I began, noticing Ivy start in surprise out of the corner of my eyes as I broke the silence in the car. "Home is... where, exactly?"
That ended up being a weird conversation. Supposedly, we - and yes, from what they said, we did all live together, which just seemed very... convenient - lived in what had once been an old church. This, naturally, lead to an explanation of just what a church was, with a minor digression into the subject of religion, before explaining just why any of us would want to live in such a place.
This, of course, meant Ivy had to finish explaining about undead vampires, and also tell me about demons, and why some of them really didn't like me.
My head was spinning by the time she finished - I barely noticed Jenks' interjections - and I noticed we were there. I had no idea when we'd stopped, but she'd even shut off the car, so I guessed it had been several minutes, at least.
The 'church' itself looked to be an old stone building, which we evidently ran a "runner's service" out of. Blessedly, Ivy cut the conversation off there, saying we could talk more after we'd gotten some rest. She lead me inside, at which point we were swarmed by more pixies then I could count.
I took a nervous step back, hands half raised in front of me, though I naturally had no idea how I would have defended myself from them, if it had been necessary. These, it turned out, were Jenks' kids, and clearly he and the missus had been... busy. Well, it was nice to see that they had such a loving relationship. It also argued strongly in favor of he and Ivy being who they said they were. Nobody evil could have a wife who loved him enough to have that many kids, right?
They kept buzzing about me even as we took a quick little tour of the former church, giving me names for the various rooms: living room, kitchen, sanctuary, and so on. Their chirping dialogue reached a fever pitch in the hallway that had our bedrooms, sending a fresh spike of pain through my head.
Ivy, thankfully, managed to extricate me from the pixie horde, saying she needed to help get me ready for bed. Despite the embarrassment of needing help, I didn't argue with her. The day was catching up with me, and I was so tired I could barely see straight.
While Jenks and his wife - a perfectly charming lady named Matalina - corralled their children, Ivy lead me into what she called a 'bathroom'. She disappeared for a while, giving me a minute to look around - even this didn't look familiar, nor had anything else they'd shown me, making me want to cry - before returning with a change of clothing. The hospital had done a good job of cleaning me off, so I didn't need a shower - which was good, because I wasn't sure how I was supposed to keep my cast dry like they told me I had to, since from what I could figure out, the shower featured water pretty heavily - but I obviously couldn't sleep in what I was wearing.
Ivy helping me undress was... Yeah. Her cheeks seemed a bit redder then usual, and she was avoiding looking at me whenever she could avoid it. It was also clear that she was not happy about my injuries. Well, there was something we had in common, at least. Since I couldn't see it myself, she looked at my back for me - I was still wearing something she called a 'bra', at least, but this still felt... odd. "You must have been slammed into something pretty hard," she said softly. "This is going to be a gorgeous bruise by this time tomorrow." She gently trailed her fingers over my lower back, and I couldn't stop a shiver as - I swear to that God person she'd mentioned earlier - I felt a jolt of of electricity shoot up from where she was touching me right into my brain.
Naturally, she noticed. "I'm not going to hurt you," she said, voice barely above a whisper.
"I know," I replied, just as quiet. Of course, that lead to the natural question: if it wasn't fear, what had that been?
Frankly, I was just too damned tired to figure it out. I finished pulling on the oversized nightshirt she'd gotten me - she did, at least, let me change my underwear and get rid of my bra by myself - and staggered out into the hallway, heading for one of the bedrooms. She must have been picking up my dirty clothes, because I actually managed to get inside one before she noticed where I'd gone. "Um, Rachel..."
I was really, really too tired for this. Or anything, really. "Ivy, please, I just... I just need some sleep."
"I know, but-"
"I'll see you in the morning," I told her, managing a smile - really, I wasn't blind to how nice she'd been about everything - before I shut the door. It was rather dark in there, so I decided I'd look around tomorrow, and carefully felt my way to where I'd seen the bed. The last thing I needed was to injure myself even worse.
I didn't hear Ivy leave, but she must have, so I just chalked it up to vampire stealth and forgot about it. I took a deep breath and... Wait. I sniffed again. No, I wasn't imagining it.
The room smelled... familiar.
Finally, something I recognized! Even if it was just on a subconscious level, I knew that smell. I reached the bed, and slid inbetween the sheets. They were really soft - I'd later learn the material was something called satin - and the smell was even stronger here. This, more then anything else, seemed to prove that Ivy and Jenks had been telling me the truth.
And more then that, being surrounded by that smell somehow made me feel so... safe. Like nothing could possibly hurt me, as long as it was around.
It was enough to let me get to sleep.