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Linarite had fallen unconscious after her ordeal on that deserted street at nearly three in the morning so it stood to reason that eventually she was going to have to wake up. No one, not even Zinkenite, could be sure that she would actually wake up; to guess what her state of mind would have been like if she actually did return to consciousness was even harder to guess.

Someone evidently cared enough about the young woman to have undressed her enough to make her comfortable, dumping her prone body into a bed that was actually quite comfortable to wake up in. Daphne, at first, hadn't paid much attention to where she was. Her brain was fogged from sleep and she was ruminating on the fact that for once in as many nights as she could remember, she had not dreamed of flames as she slept. There was no waking up panting, a scream trapped in her throat, the echoes of others trapped in her head, only peaceful sleep for...how long had she been asleep?

Golden eyes slid open which was when the bluenette realized that her head felt a little heavier than usual. And the bed didn't feel right beneath her...the sheets were the wrong color. Shooting up into a sitting position Daphne's head whirled around, solid sapphire curls smacking her in the face in a way they hadn't in the months that she'd sheared them off. Reaching back with a hand, she pulled them in front of her face, staring with shock and considerably mounting confusion.

How had her hair grown back? Where was she? How had she gotten here in...her underwear?! Desperately her mind searched back to the night before. At the club with Kess, walking around with Kess, making out with Kess...and the attack. Zinkenite. Wait, why was he attacking her? And why was he looking so strong? Her head pounded, her chest felt like someone had stomped on it repeatedly, and she was alone in a room without her clothes.

Doing the next best thing she pulled the sheet off the bed, making a toga that would make any frat brother burst with pride, padding out of the bedroom to look around. "Hello?" She called out, voice carrying through the stillness of the house. Was she alone?

The amount of relief that flooded Daphne as she stood in the hallway felt as ridiculous as she looked. Waking up when you had about a half-ton of blue curls while being a messy sleeper didn't really do anything for it all except look like you'd stuck your head in a dryer, wrapped in a sheet, with a few bruises on her arms from where she'd been held during the struggle for her soul (which she did not remember at all)? Ridiculous. One thing that was a noticeable difference from the Daphne that Kess would have known was that the customary slope of her shoulders was replaced by decent posture.

Daphne could not, even if you'd said the name Audrey Collins to her, remembered anything about being that person. She couldn't have remembered years of being a social outsider with a tendency to be a little snippy, a lot awkward, with no friends to speak of. Daphne only remembered having fantastic friends in the form of Kess, Zac, Jada, Helen, hell at this point she was even remembering her ex-boyfriend as something to be confident about. After all, she'd dumped him hadn't she? Not something spineless Audrey would have ever had the courage to do.

The weight of her misfortune as a young teen had vanished with the memories; there was nothing to weigh her down and nothing to be self-conscious about. At least, not yet. Daph didn't quite remember the fact that she was only a captain of the Negaverse now, didn't remember that she was coming back to the fold after months of being away. All she remembered was that her date had been attacked by Zinkenite before everything went...fuzzy. Being that her mind was announcing, clearly, that she had never left the Negaverse to begin with why he was attacking someone she cared about was entirely off!

So with a bounce in her step, concern in her eyes, the young woman rushed over to Kess to exclaim over her arm. "Kess! You're okay! I woke up and was like the hell am I, remembered about last night, and was super worried about you!" Without even thinking, slim arms threw themselves around the blonde's waist to hug her tightly. As far as Daph went it wasn't really much of an overboard show of emotion but considering the night before?

It was titanic.

For now it was worry that was clouding her eyes along with a dose of a confusion but that phantom sadness which had been present from the moment Freckles had met Caramels in the candy shop was only a light cloud over Daphne instead of the potential thunderstorm it had always been. Her failed relationship, the death of her mother, the fact that everyone she'd been trying to save considered her a traitor and, most importantly, a weakling didn't leave much room for happier times. Now her eyes were bright, her shoulders were back, and even as she clung to Kess she was smiling.

Smiling without effort, in fact. It was a genuine full-faced Audrey Collins smile with all of her naive hope for the future unspoiled by the interminable war that gripped Destiny City. Her slate had effectively been wiped, to a point. What that point was they were all going to have to discover over time.

Feeling Kess press her face into blue curls had her worrying just a little bit more, squeezing harder for just a moment before tilting her head up. The tip of her nose brushed lightly at the taller woman's jaw, moving back and forth for a few seconds in a reassuring gesture of affection before talking. She wanted to ask if the blonde was really sure she was okay but...if Kess wasn't okay she'd say so. Prodding wasn't really how they worked. "So hey...where are we? And please say you were the one who took my clothes. Please."

Leaning against the counter in a mess of hair and sheet Daph put her chin in the palm of her hand and snorted amusedly. "Would that be because you've been eating my food? I just seem to be going through so much lately." Not that Daphne minded at all because cooking was, she'd realized, something that she enjoyed immensely. It was fun, it was actually somewhat relaxing to pay attention to all the minor details, and somehow it just always came out tasting okay even if she thought she'd messed up a bit. Plus when you had someone to cook for it just felt really good.

Nope, Kess could have basically moved in and she wouldn't have minded much.

Tracing her finger across the counter thoughtfully, there was something sticking in her mind that couldn't be avoided. Despite dimples the hug that Kess had given her was just a little too tight and she didn't remember Kess' arm being in a brace last night. "So...we're at your house, which I'm guessing is the rest of what is your Kesscave. But I barely had anything to drink last night, not enough to black out, plus I just remember being attacked last night on the street." Serious amber eyes turned themselves on her not-girlfriend.

"What happened last night? Why am I all bruised, why are you hurt, and why don't I remember?"

Zinkenite attacked Kess but when he saw Linarite he hesitated? Prince? Who was her prince? Did he mean...who did he mean? Watching the girl leaning on the counter try to puzzle out what it was that had happened, who she was, what anything that Kess had said actually meant was perhaps one of the most agonizing moments in their history. Fingers reached back to knot through her curls as she thought, winding them around her fingers, unwinding them, and starting over again.

The moment of clarity, that horrible moment when a lot of things were pulled out of her fragmented, disjointed memory was announced by the dawning look of horror on her face. Horror as she sifted those solid blue waves in front of her face; over a foot of hair that she'd cut off months ago and was only recently growing back as of last night. "That's right I...I left. I ran away but I don't remember any of it. I woke up this morning wondering why one of my lieutenants was attacking my girlf..my friend." There was a slip almost more dangerous than what she was saying right now, then it hit her that Negaverse things were being talked about openly.

Eyes considered Kess for a long moment, thinking about a few things, trying to put pieces together in her mind. There was no memory of Kess as anything but the flirty, lively partner in fun as well as a few other pioneered areas of her life but then her mind reached back trying to put anything but the name Zinkenite to the face and came up with a gaping hole. Nothing. There was nothing. Quietly, she whispered to herself. "Who am I?" The answer was clear: Daphne. That was the name that sprang to her mind and obviously that was who Kess knew, eyes flicking up to her own for some kind of reassurance.

"Kess?" She had to be Daphne because Kess knew her. But had she always been Daphne? More blanks, more questions, things that didn't make sense and never would. Her whole body shook with the shock of what had just come to light and with a thud, she sat down hard on the floor. Why hadn't Zinkenite killed Kess for learning the identity of the bluenette? Why?

Oh hell was Kess a senshi? Had she kicked his a**?! Or something more elevated in rank than...someone who could recorrupt someone who had left the fold? She wasn't even aware that could be done! So many questions, no answers, there was only one thing she wanted reassurance of.

Who was she?

Didn't care? It was one of those things that was really almost too good to be true but there were a lot of memories of Kess that hadn't gone away. Memories of the freckled blonde in front of Daphne were actually quite vivid along with a lot of other things like that she worked in a candy store with a gloomy guy named Zac Bantock, that she had a cat at home that was a gift from her ex-boyfriend, that she lived in a pretty nice house that was somehow significant...a memory lost to why it was. But Kess had never pried into her life before because it apparently just didn't matter to her.

She was going to take the words at face value because really, she couldn't remember Kess lying to her before. Why would she lie now when it was more important than anything Daphne'd ever asked of her before? Kess was calm, Kess wasn't freaking out, and it didn't especially look like she'd been sedated. So reaching out, hugging on again tight without much warning (Kess' personal space bubble didn't really exist anyway), the bluenette smiled in that new, sassy way again.

"Thanks Kess. It means...a lot to hear that. There are a lot of blanks and missing pieces but I'm not alone. Right?" Ah, that was a bit more familiar, that question which should have been rhetorical being genuine. It wasn't that she feared rejection, simply that she wasn't entirely sure that there were going to be pieces to find to put back in. "I guess if I forget everything, we'll just have to come up with new things to remember." Well, some things didn't change!

"I'm going to have to go lock Zink in a closet or something until he tells me what happened but..." Fingers brushed the brace Kess had on her wrist. "He'll have to apologize." Sheepishly she colored a bit, looking up as fingers played in her hair again. "I uh...take it you're aware of the whole soldier of darkness thing. Hope so anyway because otherwise things are going to get so awkward with us." Not like they hadn't already. Not like she remembered.

Puzzled it out but wasn't bothered by it in the slightest? That was hopeful. There was a bit of a 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours' antsyness that was putting her blood pressure up just a little bit, not nearly as high as before which was, everything considered, a good thing. Maybe Kess didn't have another side to her which would be the best possible blessing and maybe she just didn't want to bandy it about that they were all going to sail the same dark tugboat down the Chaos river.

That's what intelligent people did anyway. Mistaking Kess' lack of give-a-damn for someone who wasn't at all intelligent was a stupid mistake that probably wasn't uncommon but thankfully Daphne knew her better than that. Considering that she was having an existential crisis that couldn't be resolved in a morning breakdown on the kitchen floor, she had to realistically put it aside until a later time. Everything would work out, or it wouldn't, and there was nothing that she could do to change that outcome at this point.

Perspective! It hadn't abandoned her! Maybe she was over-simplifying things but again how could that hurt her right now? Sitting on Kess' kitchen floor wearing nothing but a sheet wasn't going to solve such important questions as 'Who Am I?' and 'What The ******** Happened To Me?'.

Kess was, actually, fairly distracting in all the best ways. It was probably really inappropriate to be thinking the way she was but Daph just couldn't help reaching down and very lightly squeezing what she knew was a delightfully freckled backside. "I'll let you know when you should scram. Just yanno, don't hold your breath or anything. I look better in blue than you do." Some things would never change.

Others weren't ever going to be the same.

Remembering that there wasn't any food near the Kesscave she tucked her tongue in her cheek, plucked at her sheet meaningfully, and patted her stomach. "We should go for pancakes or something. I should have clothes or something, hopefully something, because I know my butt doesn't fit in your pants!"

Kess was hiding her clothes and she was the one doing the sexual harassment?! Well really Daph wasn't complaining in the slightest, laying around all day in her underwear and a t-shirt that was probably going to be very quickly stolen off whatever looked like the clean pile down in the basement room. If Zinkenite really wanted to see her she'd just power up after dark and go sit somewhere fairly unobtrusive; he'd find her.

Wait, did Kess just say she could play Pikachu?! Man she must have been really pathetic for that offering to have crossed the table. Next thing she knew there were going to be cinnamon rolls or something of similar taste involved and the world was totally going to implode. It had nothing to do with the fact that Kess was being thoughtful and everything to do with the fact that Daphne was, apparently, looking that bad off.

Except the blonde still wanted to get her naked. That was good, right? She was going to take it; it wasn't like Jigglypuff had been offered. That one was even worse than Pikachu and then the dreaded rung below that was Yoshi. Only once had Daph played that annoying little b*****d, swallowing Kess and spitting her out for the entire round before things got...heated. Not really in the good way either, to her dismay at the time.

Grinning, moving to push herself off the floor, she nodded. "You got yourself a deal babe. I am going to Pika your chu into next week, I have good feelings about next week." Thinking about it for a long minute, remembering the empty fridge, she added on: "Maybe you should get two pizzas. Just in case. The food shortage around here is kinda dire."