From the Ashes of Victory: The Complete Series, page 19
part #0 of From the Ashes of Victory Series
"So you didn't throw it? And it wasn't otherwise on purpose?"
"Not at all." November shook her head. "I wasn't angry, I was disappointed, as I said. And a little sad. But not enough to throw a mirror to the ground."
Dr. Garland seemed to accept this. "Just an accident. Good. Understandable, in your case."
'Just an accident.' November smiled ruefully at the words; she'd performed three miracles in the span of a few days, and in the time since, they were still the best ones she had to describe how. "Thank you."
"But tell me, did you experience any dizziness or nausea in the time leading up to the incident?"
November shook her head. "No. In fact, I felt quite clear-headed and determined up to that moment."
"I see. After your spill with Mary, I was afraid you might have had some lingering symptoms. But if that is not the case, I suggest we get on with today's proper session."
November nodded, and slid back into the leather chaise lounge that was increasingly becoming a platform for her frustrations to manifest themselves. It was nice and comfortable, but she could never relax on it completely. Policing her tongue about her abilities was still too important, even if it did retard whatever progress Dr. Garland might be able to draw out of her about everything else. She took several deep breaths, trying to clear her mind of such a ridiculous contradiction.
When she finally allowed herself to close her eyes, she found the insides of her eyelids didn't look much different then the last time she'd been forced to stare at them. For all her own feelings about not getting comfortable, flat on her back it was difficult to fight off the sudden, tugging allure of sleep. Along with everything else, she couldn't remember what it was like to not be tired.
If she could just say nothing, maybe she could drift off without being noticed, she thought, but Dr. Garland's voice broke in just in time to stave it off.
"Let's start with the tattoos," he said from somewhere above and behind her. She knew where he was seated, but in her hazy half-asleep state it was hard to hear him as coming from anywhere in particular.
"Very well," November said. It wouldn't be the first time they had, and it wouldn't be the last, either, barring some miracle.
"The number 11. Focus on it. Picture it in your mind's eye," Dr. Garland said.
November could see it easily enough, she'd been obsessing over it since she woke up.
"Tell me anything you associate that number with. Don't think about it, just say the first things that come to mind."
"The Armistice," November said immediately.
"And how do you feel about that?"
"Only that it's significant," she said with a trace of unhappiness. "Nothing emotional or personal."
"You don't find that odd?"
"Of course it's odd!" she snapped, jolting herself closer to awake again. "Everyone feels something connected to that day. That I don't is disconcerting."
Dr. Garland scribbled somewhere in his far away place. "Also enlightening."
"How so?"
"Your amnesia seems to be in relation solely to deeply personal memories. If you have something deeply personal connected to the war, then it would make sense that your amnesia would be blocking the source. Your feelings would be blunted, because you have no memory associated with it beyond the facts of its existence."
November puzzled over this. "Also the fact that I have 'November' on the other arm would lead to a similar conclusion."
"Correct. I think you have significant trauma associated with the war, and so when it was over, you marked yourself indelibly with the date on which it ended."
"That's quite the memorial."
"Indeed. When I mention the war, what do you feel?"
"That it was bad," November said, chiding herself for sounding like a child. "I mean, I don't have any specific feelings about it. It was a tragic event, like the sinking of the Titanic."
"Britain lost many brothers and husbands to the Great War, and very few of us got away untouched by tragedy. Perhaps yours was greater than most, given how much you seem to have blocked out."
November hugged her arms closer to herself. The theory had a clear ring of truth to it, but rather than coming as a relief, it became another burden draped over her already-laden shoulders. "When my memories return, that's all going to come back at once, isn't it? Am I going to have to re-live all of it again?"
"It's hard to say. If they return piecemeal, you may have a chance to acclimate."
"And if they don't? If I get them all back at once?"
"That day may be more difficult than you had imagined," he said sombrely. "You may not re-live the specific events, but all of the emotions you currently don't feel about them will come back. But at least you will know why."
"Doctor, is it possible this whole episode is my brain's way of coping with something awful that happened? That I've simply blocked out everything connected to it?"
"I would like to give you a definitive answer on that," Dr. Garland said, "but I'm afraid I can't. Your head wound occurring at the same time is far too coincidental for my taste."
"Mine as well," November said. "Someone close to me died and I don't remember them?"
"A tragedy unto itself," Dr. Garland said. "However, you mentioned before that you were accused of being a white feather girl—that's one possible piece of specificity. Does it mean anything to you?"
November's right arm twinged. "I really don't know."
"I thought not. Back to '11,' then."
This time the word triggered the same fire November had felt while doing the washing, only this time it was in her right arm. Pain. Not the burning, but in her mind. A deep, festering pain that shone as red as a fresh burn and persisted just as much. She groaned, rolling onto her right side, pinning that arm under her body.
"Miss November?" Dr. Garland said.
"It hurts. It hurts so much," she said through clamped teeth.
"Tell me what you're feeling!"
"Sadness. Overwhelming sadness. Pain. Regret," she moaned. Underneath her, her arm throbbed and her fingers tensed up just like they had before, only this time they were clamping into her thigh. The same icy fire flooded her veins, curdling in place and leaving every bit of tissue and bone beneath her tattoo a quivering mass of hideous agony. She could feel it tethered to her mind—something within her fed it, pumping something she couldn't perceive into her arm as a kind of fuel that stoked the fire higher.
In her anguish, she knew what it was. The tragedy the doctor had spoken of was there, but she couldn't see it. It had shape and presence, but no other definition. A horrific monstrosity had reared up from the crater of her memory and was lancing her with the venom of its intensity, yet she couldn't even identify it, let alone fight back.
"God, make it stop!" she heard herself shout, but the faceless memory only twisted the pain it caused, knocking the breath from her and doubling her over into a tight ball.
Staring up at her attacker, it had a tormenting familiarity to it, like she was in a struggle with a long-unseen family member, only this one was not human.
Through the blasted ejecta around her memory crater, she crawled on her hands and knees to get closer, to get a better look—though the effort caused her blinding pain, she had to get close enough to find out what it was.
When she gained the crater rim, she reached out to the black mass. If she could only touch it, she would know! As her fingers grew nearer, the pain intensified until her right arm felt all but dead beneath her. Still she struggled, straining in her mind for anything, even more pain, if it meant remembering something.
With the last of her strength, she shoved her consciousness forward to touch what was before her, and she was rewarded with the sensation of her mind being encased in ice. A frozen presence crawled through her skull—she could feel everywhere it wasn't, where her memories should be, and her consciousness slowed to near nothing as it crawled around that black void even as she tried desperately to steer herself into it.
Like straining against a great weight, she forced her thoughts through the ice, to power through the cold that tried to keep her at bay. It was slow and torturous, but like a massive ship, she felt the turn begin.
The moment she gained the advantage, however, the mass that had risen from her memory crater shattered into a cloud of shards that exploded in all directions around her. She ducked away from them, and could hear pieces of it as they hissed by her.
When she looked up again, what had been a single mass was now eleven distinct pieces, each of them identical to the other, the same black void of colour and light as before. Eleven vertical scratches, like some great animal had slashed them into the sky above.
As she watched, each one began to sprout what looked like arms from about a third of the way from the top. But they weren't arms, and when they stopped growing she was left with what were clearly eleven crosses. In a moment, they were no longer black, each flaring as bright as the sun before settling back to a brilliant white. In the dark foreboding of her mind, they glowed like beacons. And like beacons, she yearned to follow, to understand what they meant.
Eleven white crosses arranged in a row from one side of her vision to the other stood out proudly against the sky, but the moment she finally came to understand what she was looking at, they fell as one back down from where they'd come.
Crying out, she threw her hand over the edge to catch them, but they were already gone—she was only in time enough to see their glow swallowed up by the abyss.
From far away, she heard her name being called.
From below, too faint to be made out, came what she knew was her real name, the name she'd been given by her parents.
From behind, clear as day, came the only name she knew, the one given to her by a stranger.
Everything that Niamh had said about what had happened to Selene and Ivy repeated in a loop in Millie's mind as she stared up at the ceiling from her bed. She'd been in a frustrating dance with sleep since she'd laid down, as it was proving to be an unreliable partner.
He screamed as his brain boiled in his skull, Niamh had said.
How was Millie supposed to sleep after being told something like that? It was so horrifying it was difficult to imagine it was real, to the point Millie almost wanted Niamh to be lying, or at the very least exaggerating, so she could feel somewhat less disturbed by it. The worst part wasn't even the imagery of it, the helplessness of being brutally killed by something you didn't understand and being aware of it while it happened, like being eaten by an animal while you were still alive. No, it was the fact that Niamh had said that Millie might have to do it herself some day.
Breaking into the view of the ceiling came Millie's hands. She turned them over and over—nails that ended well short of her fingertips, freckles that dotted the backs like faded tea stains, too-visible blue veins that coursed beneath the creases in her palms…
Were they capable of such a thing? Her knuckles were still a bit raw from the fight, reminding her that they were more than capable of violence. They had been doing that for years, but never once had she considered escalating that violence to the point of taking a life—at least not in such an immediate way. She'd come to ADAM ostensibly to learn magical violence, she supposed, but that somehow didn't line up with what Niamh had described. Poisons, cursing people into toads, or whatever types of magic Millie had imagined before she'd become a witch were one thing— maybe she hadn't imagined enough, given their goals—but Niamh had described personal, up-close murder. Literally shoving magic into a man's brain with her fist and watching him die at the distance Millie's hands were from her own face.
Shaking her head sharply, Millie shoved her hands back under her covers and rolled onto her side, trapping them where she wouldn't have to see them. She tried not to retch.
Maybe she'd needed to hear what Niamh had described. To hear what it was actually like to use magic in the way that Millie had only conceived of in a sideways, abstract kind of way. There was blood and pain involved. Fear. Fear on that man's face as he realised what was happening to him, but also the fear Niamh must have felt to drive her to do such a thing.
At least, Millie told herself it was fear. That level of savagery could be motivated by many things, but fear was the one Millie wanted to believe had consumed Niamh that day. It was somehow more justifiable than anger or revenge, even though Millie had been supporting Victoria's pursuit of just that since they'd met.
It was a thought that pushed sleep off even further, as Millie's heart began pumping white flashes into her tightly-closed eyes.
Vickie had wanted revenge for her brother and her parents. She wouldn't have hesitated for a second to do exactly what Niamh had done to the first German she met—and now, it seemed, she had the power to do so. She had Manifested in self-defence, but who knew what kind of damage she could do if she turned that power to something far more proactive.
It was a chilling thought, and once Millie had had it, she knew it was true. For Vickie, the answer to the question of whether or not she was capable of that kind of violence was yes, given the right provocation.
What about Elise? She had seen horror and death up close. She'd seen men die at arm's length, in her arms, even as she scrambled to save them. The Germans had shelled the home she grew up in and men had died by the tens of thousands within sight of it, but not once had she ever expressed anything akin to desire for revenge. The only thing she'd ever wanted was to help—to heal and mend those to whom violence had happened, not cause more. What would she think if Millie had done what Niamh had done? If she'd stabbed a man in the heart while he slept, let alone four?
Then Millie thought of Elise with Selene's scars, of her being captured and taken away to be tortured for God-knew-how-long—that gentle, kind soul being twisted in pain and fear by those who weren't even worthy to speak her name, and Millie flushed with anger. Elise, alone and scared, being cut open, burned, having those delicate, life-saving fingers broken by some brutish thug acting on his own sense of righteousness to do nothing but cause pain to the woman Millie… cared about very much.
What would she do then?
She would kill them. The burning anger the very idea filled her with would scorch them from the face of the earth. She would kill every single one of them by any means available to her—and she would be able to sleep with it better than she was able to sleep right now.
Victoria and Elise were not helpless, Millie knew that. They were strong witches, stronger than Millie, at any rate. But Selene and Ivy were strong too, and they had suffered anyway. What Niamh had said about them had been a warning, but not in the way Millie had thought at first. It wasn't to keep her from choosing the path she now knew she was on—it was to let her know what lie at the end of it, and that she had better make peace with that fact because she'd already chosen it.
Victoria had a higher calling than mere violence, and Elise should never have to stain her soul with it. One of them had to be there to make sure the others could do the real work—to be what witches should actually be.
The realisation was liberating, and cleared a fog that Millie hadn't even known she was trapped in. She knew the direction her Manifest lie now, all she had to do was reach it, just without knowing how far away it was.
Everything would all work out, as long as she got Vickie back from a horrible place that showed no signs of willingly giving her up, and Elise could stay in Britain by virtue of placating a man she didn't like who had no real incentive to help them succeed.
Small concerns, really.
Steam clouded the air, thick and heavy. Fresh from the boiler, the water that flowed from the showerhead was as close to scalding as November could stand; any hotter and she would burn herself. As it was, she was a shocking shade of pink from head to toe.
It wasn't enough: there were still ice crystals circling the drain.
Huddled against herself on the shower room floor, she let the water flow over her as it would, searing her back and sending rivulets streaming from her matted hair.
She knew sitting on the floor wasn't a good idea, knew it wasn't clean enough for her to spend any more time than was strictly necessary on it, she just didn't care. What did it matter? She was turning steaming-hot water into ice in a matter of seconds without knowing how or why, what was a little uncleanliness? Part of her was hoping she would just fall through the floor altogether and not have to worry about any of it. But whatever it was that let her do impossible things seemed content to leave her where she was.
So she sat. If it was for minutes, hours or days, she couldn't have said. She was no longer of the firm conviction that time mattered anymore, either. Nothing did.
The very thought of 'November 23rd' had sent her to such a dizzying high, she had gorged herself on hope and drunk deeply from the fountain of optimism, but now she was suffering from a hangover that made her wish she'd never woken up in that grave. Bertram should have just shovelled dirt over the top of her and let her be; at least that way would have spared her from feeling how she felt now.
She wondered how he was getting on without her and determined the answer was most likely 'better' given the way they'd parted.
Though as November ran a finger through the slush building up beside her, she was thankful that her… condition had only been removing heat as of late, rather than adding it. Burning down the hospital with her mind in a fit of pique was something she was more than happy to keep a nightmare.
But what if she couldn't? Two of her incidents had happened in front of witnesses, what if it happened again? She wasn't going to be able to hide it forever, but she had no idea how to go about telling anyone, least of all the doctors. Maybe if she had someone to talk to, it wouldn't seem quite so scary. But then again, telling the wrong person would make her scary. And dangerous. Well, she was dangerous. It was the biggest reason she'd surrendered herself in the first place.
There were no good options she could see. It wasn't just her memory that could get worse, her condition could, too. She could lose complete control over it, or it could get stronger without her learning the first thing about it. What would happen then? Too much stress, or another crushing disappointment, then what? She could hurt someone without meaning to in a way that was completely inexplicable to anyone, even herself.
