Something important, something . . . good. Had she saved something? Someone? Was she a hero?
“Who do you think you are?”
The whisper startled her. She remembered, vaguely, a sense of fear at being prodded without knowing who it came from, but at first nothing came to her. Then, something that was cold and solid, yet strangely comforting, surrounded her.
< < You left to where I could not follow. > > This voice was irritated. Familiar.
Thane . . . ? She heard the rattling of bones and relaxed just a bit as the presence coiled about her possessively. Where are we?
< < Your mind, of course. As spacious and empty as usual. > >
It was barbed, yes, but she welcomed something that she could cling to without fear.
“Look at your shadow.”
There it was again! She was about to clear her throat and ask what it meant, given that the voice wasn’t exactly producing light . . . And yet she did see something shift below her and looked down. The shadow—her shadow?—was wriggling and writhing with dissatisfaction, and she felt herself sinking the longer she stared at it. It continued to twist itself into alien shapes until the lines smoothed out and she saw it was not her figure anymore, but that of someone else’s. Far taller, robed, and wielding what looked like a staff.
She stared into red eyes and felt a cold shiver of fear, though Thane hissed for her to be still.
“Your have forgotten something. Memories. You have forgotten something in your blind hope that this will somehow make things better.”
And on the figure went about how she was naïve, that one day the truth would come and bite her whether she was ready or not. And she wished she could understand, ask the figure what he meant; but her mouth was sewn shut by something she did not know was of her own volition or of supernatural causes.
And as her surroundings began to fade away and the shadow blurred, she heard the dark voice utter one last ominous warning: “When your heart, your core finally calls out for Revenge, I will be there.”
And then Stormy woke.
It was abrupt and unsettling unlike when she normally was roused, and her heart was pounding just a bit from residual anxiety. It did not help that seconds afterwards, Thane was grumbling in her head. < < There is something upon me, > > he stated with distaste. < < I feel a disturbance. > >
But she didn’t address it at first. First Stormy rubbed at her eyes wearily and yawned, feeling tired and ambiguously moody after the odd dream. When at last she had gotten out of bed, she noticed that she was alone; Nevada was probably out on patrol. Good.
Fully awakened, Stormy finally summoned the greatsword to her hands and placed it on the bed to inspect—and she saw the problem in seconds. There was a new addition to the hilt, a lock and several dark chains snaking around it and some of the lower blade, the former giving off what looked like black smoke. She stared at it, speechless for a moment.
< < Take it off, > > Thane ordered, bristling at the sight.
I don’t know how.
< < Find a way, you useless ape. > >
But Thane’s voice sounded far away, and his anger didn’t reach her. Memories were starting to stream into her mind of what had happened. There were odd blips as though someone had skipped over something, but Stormy recognized that a lot of old memories had suddenly been brought to the surface of her mind. Most of which she had thought she had forgotten.
His face kept staring at her. Smiling. Leaning against the wall. Looming over her. Staring from a distance.
“Lina~”
The weapon was desummoned promptly. She did not want to remember him because he did not matter, not here, not so long as he stayed quiet and never did anything else and never followed her again—
“Nice hat.” He beamed and she smiled back, giddy about the attention. “Dr. Who, right? That police box thing?”
“TARDIS~”
He snickered at the word before dipping down to greet her with a kiss, his lips chapped but inviting, his fingers cold and stiff as they entangled in her hair—
Again and again and again, because he didn’t know when to stop. Even now far away he was there haunting her, a ghost whose grave had been disturbed in the Tear and now clung to her, invisible hands caressing and grasping and pulling and teasing.
Where were they.
The witch was bored of her own power, laughed at her attempts to bite back verbally. There was no contest here, just a little hunter who thought she could. Nails that dug into her scalp, pulled at the roots and tried to rip away.
Where were they. She found herself at the dresser, the drawers seeming to open at her will as she dug around.
There.
Mad cackling turned to screeches. Tables turned. Red curls like solidified blood in her hand as she pulled her to the stump to be executed, the pain in her head like a constant throbbing wound, that perhaps she had tugged so hard she had partially torn some of the scalp off—
She grabbed her hair and pulled it as far as she could, and the scissors winked at her as it devoured the majority of it within a handful of bites. Snip. Snip. Snip. Gone was the vanity of keeping her hair long because she knew he liked it, gone was the bumbling little girl who pined and hoped that her prayers and dreams alone could make her life better, gone was the lonely creature who had taken a desperate gamble with someone and lost. That was Lina—the old life.
And then she felt lighter. Her body did not weigh her down, nor did the hands of the past come to wring her dry like a towel. There was a mess to clean up, but the weight had been shed. She could breathe again.
I am not her, Stormy repeated to herself as she began to feel her new haircut around, nibbling away some of the more ragged edges as best she could. Every snip made her feel better—more uniform. More solid than the dainty thing she once had been.
< < Then who are you? > >
I am mine, of course.
