Who: Darcy Lewis, Tessa Lewis, mention of Aino Minako (&open?) What: Finding Darcy, realizing what's been done to her, and going a little mental Where: Complex steps, then the Lewis apartment When: Right after this Warnings: Sadness, a little rage. Property damage! Status: Either standalone or if someone wants to be like "Uhhh, so why is the Lewis apartment open and trashed like an angry tornado just ripped through there?" that's fine too. I keep saying I have no time to thread but I keep writing narratives so maybe it's just a lie haha
Darcy was lying on the Complex steps in a faded patch of her daughter’s dried blood that still hadn’t been washed away, her hair splayed across it in waves that reminded Tessa of a picture they’d seen in a museum on one of the few school field trips she hadn’t snuck away from (off behind the building with whatever boy she was stringing along, on an adventure with James, or sometimes, whether he liked it or not, grabbing Patrick’s arm and saying ”Come on, I have a better field trip. Much more educational,” and they’d be off before he could answer, to a concert or a foreign country or just an empty field where she changed rocks into whatever she thought was interesting that day and her friend looked at her in bemused exasperation). The woman had lain on her back with her hair rippling in the water, her hands splayed to the side with her fingers contorted just so into artfully arranged rigor mortis, all the better to strew the flowers she held trail lazily in her wake. She had only half listened to the guide who explained the subject was Ophelia, and that she had followed Hamlet’s false madness into an unfeigned insanity of her own, sang a song and picked some flowers and drowned herself in a pond.
Her mother’s mouth was slightly open, and her hair rippled all around her, and as Tessa knelt down next to her she thought of that picture. She thought of the dried blood she brushed her fingers across as she reached for her mother’s cheek, of pain and blood blooming in her own mouth and her father’s face as she’d looked up at him and screamed. She thought of all that, but later, when she remembered this moment, she would swear she had thought of nothing at all. She would swear that her mind had been wiped clean so that all she could do was move her body like puppet limbs, no rhyme or reason, just following the twitches of an impulse she didn’t own. She didn’t think of the girl who had found her mother, had ignored her presence since she’d burst out onto the steps as beyond irrelevant. She simply crouched over Darcy with her back to the girl and reached out her hand to lay it on her mother’s cheek, more tentatively than almost any gesture she’d ever made.
“Mom,” she said, looking down at her intently, “where are you?” Because she was certain, she could feel, that while her mother’s body might be with her, Darcy’s mind was far away. No, she realized suddenly, everything in her stilling, even her breath, not far away, just buried, deep down and if I… she reached out with the barest brush of her power, as if she were handling glass, and examined the small whisper of consciousness she could find. It evaded her at first but, with more patience than most people would have thought Tessa capable of, she pursued it, held it in the delicate grasp of her power and…no,no.
To Aino it was probably looked like Tessa had been shocked by an electrical current. She reeled back, her face as slack as if she’d been knocked unconscious and her skin draining of color to the point of translucency. The glare she leveled more through than at the girl was enough to produce an electric charge on its own. It was a momentary impression however as Tessa pulled her mother into her arms and disappeared with her in the time it took to blink.
In the apartment, Tessa laid her mother down on the bed, smoothed her clothing and her hair until she almost looked peaceful. She stood up and backed away and for a moment and thought longingly of just backing away further, out into the hallway, to the stairs, of turning and running through the front doors of the Complex and clinging to that as the image of her mother she would hold on to. Later, she would wish she could be proud of the fact that she didn’t run, that she could point to it like evidence for a jury and say ”see, I could have left. I stayed. That means something, but she didn’t feel that, in the end, staying was something she decided. She simply walked forward and knelt down by the side of the bed with no more deliberation than if someone had shoved her forward and she had only stumbled there under their forced momentum. She took a deep breath, then took one of her mother’s hands in both of hers.
The terror washed over her like a wave, roiling her stomach, making muscles in her arms and legs twitch and flutter as they tensed beyond endurance, her heart slam frantically against her ribcage like an animal beating itself bloody as it rammed the door of a cage. It was the kind of terror that Tessa had experienced exactly once in her whole (she saw now) sheltered, comfortable life. It was the kind of terror that made animals gnaw off their legs to escape a trap.
It was only secondhand.
It abated a moment later, ebbing back to manageable levels as whatever nightmare Darcy was trapped in ended and a milder one began, but Tessa could feel the seamless nature of the dream. There was no real end, just a loop that led the dreamer down a circular path from unease to despair to terror and back again and again and again. She didn’t know if her mother could anticipate the change but she did, and she tightened her grip on her mother’s hand, knuckles going white and fingers cramping.
“Mom,” she whispered, lowering her head closer and moving so that she was hunched protectively over the sleeping form on the bed, “I’m right here, I’m right next to you, you’re not alo-“ she cut off as her throat thickened and her attempts to wrest her mother free skidded and slid across the edges of the spell that held her like fingernails scrabbling for purchase on glass.
She’s only known me a few days, she realized, she might not even recognize my voice when she’s like this. Darcy’s mind turned the corner from unease to despair and Tessa made a sound in her throat like a growl, hissing, “Fucking come on,” and squeezing her eyes shut and racing the pace of the dream loop, reaching for her mother’s mind again, “Please, Mom, I’m here, I’m trying, I-” You’re trying, the mental voice was mocking, so of course this will work, of course, if you’re trying and she thought of the past two days, of sauntering up to her father with a grin like a little girl’s and the pain of shattered ribs. She remembered half-waking to more pain than she’d thought possible and Patrick screaming her name like he was the one dying. She remembered forgiving a man who only wore her father’s face after a few neutral words and their seeds of doubt because she’d so wanted to. Most of all she remembered her mother walking out of the apartment after she’d left Tessa a message, and that she’d been too busy with knitting her own frayed nerves to do more than distractedly wave goodbye.
Doubt unfolded in her mind like origami come undone, the pretty image she’d folded up for herself over the years expanding and flattening and losing its shape so completely that it was as if it had never been. I can’t, I was wrong, I was stupid and I can’t fix this and
The beginnings of the terror started again in the mind she was reaching for more tentatively than ever, and it was like everything in her sped up suddenly, her heartbeat, her thoughts, her doubt, and her anger, until she felt like she was boiling under her skin, like she was about to burn alive from the inside out and immolate by her mother’s bedside. Fuck this, fuck him, no. She pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle a scream that never came. Instead, she leaned further over her mother, shielding her, as Darcy looped back into terror and she lost control. The clothes in the wardrobe caught fire were consumed by flames that raged and died in moments, every door in the apartment flew open, furniture slammed into walls, and, finally, every piece of glass in the place from lightbulbs to mirrors to windows shattered in unison under the force of that much directionless rage and newly learned helplessness.
The destruction abated with that phase of the dream cycle and Tessa let out a ragged breath, took out her phone to tell her uncle that she had failed to wake her mother, and then pulled herself up, into the bed. She curled up facing her mother, most of the way to a fetal position with her forehead pressed against Darcy’s shoulder. She looked small and tired and her hair glittered with fragments of broken glass.
"Sorry," she whispered, almost choking on a humorless laugh, "I think I just torched your clothes."