[WaM] 046. Keep you safe from harm.

after this and this and this


They keep saying names like she should recognize them. And she probably should. Tommy and Carbone Karras. Cain and Henrietta Callahan. Julian Sark. People they tell her she knows, loves, cares deeply for, people that they tell her love her very much in return.

But they’re just names to her. Just names.

“That’s a beautiful ring, sweetheart.”

She blinks up at the kind-faced woman who steered her to the kitchen earlier and insisted that she eat. “…What?”

The woman--the mother of the man that found her in the street--she smiles, and wipes her hand on a dishtowel, reaches down to take her left hand lightly in her right, turning it this way and that to make the stone sparkle. It startles her, a little; she didn’t notice it there before. She’s…never seen it, before. “Oh,” she remarks quietly, tugging her hand back and folding her arms, suddenly uncomfortable. “It is…pretty.”

The woman makes a soft noise…sympathy, perhaps. She turns back to the stove and silence descends for a time…uneasy at first, but as the pleasant scents of food cooking fill the tiny room, the tension eases. Now that its presence has been pointed out to her, she can’t leave the piece of jewelry alone, constantly turning it on her finger, touching the stone with her fingertips. She wonders if someone gave it to her, and who, and when, and why she didn’t notice it before.

She’s afraid. If just one thing, just one thing would look or sound familiar, she’s so sure the rest would come back to her. There are people that know her, that care about her, but they‘re all gone from her mind. What happened to her?

“It’s all right, sweetheart.” Baileigh jumps a little, startled out of her thoughts as the round-faced woman sets a plate in front of her. “You’re safe with us.”

And she wants so badly to believe it. To feel safe, cared for. To feel anything but lost and confused and frightened.

She wants to. But she can’t.

“That’s all right, too,” she could swear she hears the lady murmur, almost sadly, as she sweeps across the kitchen to begin preparing even more food.

[CT] 49.1: What's missing?

after this, this, this, this, and this

It’s a coffee pot. She knows it’s a coffee pot. If someone put a can of grounds in her hand she could make coffee. But she doesn’t remember what cabinet the grounds are in. She doesn’t remember ever making coffee in that coffee pot before.

And the dish towel is blue, and surely she’s used it before, but has no memory of ever having touched it or the dishes that it matches. There’s a CD case in the living room. She likes Prince, and Neko Case, and Tori Amos, but she comes up blank when she tries to recall their voices, the songs. There are books in another room, some that have obviously been read over and over again, the spines worn with white creases so that the title and the author’s name are all but obliterated. They’re hers, he tells her. She must not have taken very much care with them…she is beginning to think that she is not a careful person by nature, judging by how battered her CDs and books are. But she must have loved the words on those pages very much, to have read them repeatedly. She traces over the creases with her fingertips and can’t recall a single paragraph in any of them. There are more shoes in the closet than a person should be able to wear in a lifetime. They’re also hers. Apparently she loves shoes. She doesn’t recall ever purchasing a single pair. It…seems pretty ridiculous to her, but there was this hint of expectation in his expression--like he was hoping for something, showing her the closet, her clothing, her things, all of those shoes. Hoping to wake something up in her.

It didn’t.

She doesn’t remember this table or that counter, this kitchen, that living room, the dog and the puppy that hover constantly confused by her lack of attentiveness to them, but it’s her home, he tells her, this is her home. That should mean something to her. It doesn’t. It doesn’t help that so many of the rooms are empty, that the furnishings are scattered and minimal, that it smells so new and feels so unlived in. It doesn’t inspire her to believe him when he tells her--hesitantly, carefully, not wanting to overwhelm her--that this is their home, together. That they’re…in love.

He sits across from her and she stares at him and tries so hard to remember. Remember his voice, and the blonde hair and the blue eyes and the crooked lips and the fair skin dusted with freckles. Tries to remember falling in love with him. Or just meeting him. Anything, she’ll take anything at this point.

What’s missing?

Everything.