[WaM] 046. Keep you safe from harm.

[deep_red_bells]

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.