[closed/complete] Characters: Medb (perversely & Lethe (lethe) Date/Time: June 7 Location: Medb/Raphaela's home Rating: G Warnings: None Summary: Post-Rome Raphaela wants her life back to normal, Lethe wants her sister back and makes things worse
It wasn't real. Everything shared between them, all the implanted memories of a lifetime as sisters. It never happened. Lethe knew that, but most of her own memories were stolen from elsewhere anyway. Trips to countries she never been to, movies she never watched, all blurred into a fabricated past that wasn't hers and never really involved her. But these memories were personal, more real despite not being at all, and Lethe felt an emotional connection that she rarely experienced and didn't want to let go. So when her sister of the two weeks that felt like forever dismissed her so easily, was planning to move on as if it never happened... Lethe snapped.
Finding where Raphaela lived hadn't been the problem, but getting inside to see her had been. They denied her entrance despite the insistent claims of being her sister. She had no sister and Lethe was near tears in frustration trying to prove otherwise.
--
It was likely easier for those people. That had been the thought on Raphaela’s mind once she was brought back to her world, her ordered, sensible world. If she believed in such nonsense as Gods, angelic creatures or heroes from eras long gone, a trip to Rome and back would have meant nothing in the long run. But she didn’t and couldn’t do so. Hence, the return to her normality was taking a little more than she wished. To focus on things like paperwork, on the members of her family which could be as vicious as a pack of wolves. All in all, she was exhausted; planning to take a good amount of free days in order to get herself on track.
She had just given up on the last task of the day when the noise reached her office. Her employees, she could hear one of her guards loudly ordering someone to leave the entrance, another laughing over the noise, arguing which persisted in not disappearing. Raphaela rested her fingers against her forehead, waiting patiently for the situation to diffuse without her interference. Such didn’t happen. With a sigh, she raised from her chair, pressed her suit carefully with her hands and left towards the commotion.
And if her presence didn’t reduce the guards to silence, her carefully polite voice inquiring what was going on certainly did.
--
The voice and the woman's presence was unmistakable and the recognition instant, the one she was seeking so desperately, although in this context it wasn't much the same at all. The clothing, the guards, the house... Lethe realized she really didn't know much about this woman's life outside of Rome at all, and that usually wouldn't be a concern except it was that life that she blamed for keeping them apart. That her sister that had an entire existence without her, and Lethe was left once again without even a glimmer of a family. And even a small taste of normalcy, Lethe was left craving a bit more. She selfishly wanted all of Raphaela's memories for her own, to only include her.
Maybe Raphaela wouldn't be able to shake her off so easily now that she was here, guards forgotten and Lethe called out to her softly. "Sister," she whispered, a plea in her voice while reaching out. "I came for you."
--
“You shouldn’t call me that.” Because these people, they weren’t aware of anything Raphaela would call insane in her life. That community and all it represented, it was a closely guarded secret for the Italian woman. To have Lethe barging in here, it would raise enough questions that she didn’t want posed, nevermind answered. She could see them already touching her employee’s minds, the way she hadn’t thrown the other woman out immediately, how she wasn’t calling her insane.
Damnit, this wasn’t how she wanted this to go.
Quickly, Raphaela abandoned the threshold of her office, walking closer to grip Lethe’s arm; her eyes were hard, her expression ever so annoyed but her attention was mainly on those barring her passage.
“I’m taking care of this. You’ll leave. Now.” Hesitation took over those in front of her, unlike the usual pleasant obedience she received in that house. It only made her more annoyed. “I said now. Or you can leave permanently.” And in her mind she couldn’t help but to ask what the woman by her side was doing there.
--
A flash of hurt was obvious across the sensitive girl's face, not quite understanding what the other woman was going through to handle this as she was- what Raphaela suddenly had against knowing her. Whatever the reasons, even if Lethe herself was the one being unreasonable, it felt like a sharp stab of betrayal to hear those cold, impersonal words invalidating everything she'd been feeling. They were perfectly fine before the return to New York, as close as she could imagine sisters to be without really ever knowing what it was like to have a human sibling, and it was the first time Lethe felt like she truly knew what it was like to be... somebody beyond nothingness, completely immersed in a family and a past. And her relationship with Raphaela, no matter how fabricated it was, was at the very center of that.
But finally they were alone as the guards retreated reluctantly, and Lethe latched onto the other woman with both arms wrapped around her. She wasn't sure if she meant to do it, if her emotions weakened her control over her powers because it wouldn't be the first time, but she knew it as soon as she wiped all of the woman's memories of everything but what they shared together in Zurvan that she made a mistake. One that she could not reverse, and she simply held Raphaela tighter.