Because sometimes the muse doesn't leave you much choice...
I've never actually written for this fandom before, but this bunny wouldn't go away, and... Well, there you go.
Title: Shards of Memory
Pairing: Ivy/Rachel
Rating: PG-13 so far, may go up later.
Disclaimer: Not being Kim Harrison, I don't own them.
Summary: What do you do if your entire life is erased, someone is trying to kill you, and the ones trying to keep you safe scare you even more? Post "For a Few Demons More".
Ow.
It was the first coherent thought that entered my head, managing to sneak its way past the blinding headache that kept me from opening my eyes. Dimly, I was aware of something cold and hard underneath me, feeling rough and abrasive. I tried to force my eyes open anyway, to try and get some idea of where I was.
Mistake.
I hurriedly shut them again as the pain spiked upward to crippling levels, not even really noticing the faint whimper escaping from my throat. Eventually, it became vaguely tolerable again. I kept waiting, though, until I managed to work up enough courage to try again, far slower this time.
What a letdown. All I could see was gray and black. At first I thought something was wrong with my eyes, but no, that was really all there was. Concrete, or asphalt, or something like that. Couldn't quite tell. It was blackened in places, as if it had been... Had been... I poked my sluggish brain with a stick. Burned, that was it. Melted, even, in a couple of spots. At least, it was in my line of vision, which, given that I was sprawled face down with my head tilted to the right, didn't cover a lot of... wherever the hell I was. I tried to push myself up, to take a look around.
Mistake number two.
It seemed whatever was wrong with me was not limited to just my head. My entire body screamed at me that no, I would not be moving anywhere anytime soon.
What the hell happened?
I honestly had no idea, and if the pounding headache I had wasn't making it so damned hard to think, that probably would have upset me a lot more then it did. Gradually, the whole-body agony faded to several specific sources of pain, which was... sort of good news, I guess. At least there were parts of me that weren't trying to melt my brain.
Somewhere off in the distance, I could just barely hear a voice calling someone's name. I couldn't quite make it out, and frankly, I wasn't feeling inclined to care. I did have my own problems to deal with, after all.
Where am I, anyway?
Another good question. Hopefully, I'd start coming up with good answers sometime soon, because this was getting frustrating.
I heard the voice again, closer this time. A woman's voice, and not one that I recognized, calling for somebody named... Rachel?
Still not caring.
I chanced another movement. Okay, my right arm felt a bit sore, but otherwise all right. My left, though, wasn't quite responding the way I wanted it to, and an attempt to move it properly resulted in it telling me, quite clearly, that it was being dipped in molten lead.
Okay, note to self: Don't do that again.
My legs... Well, they were still there. I levered myself up on one arm to get a look at them, and through the grime-streaked red curtain that fell across my eyes, I could see they were bruised and singed.
Better not to chance trying to move just yet, I decided. I lowered myself back to the pavement - and I still couldn't quite tell where I was - as my arm began trembling. Well, getting out of here would prove to be... interesting.
"Rachel!"
I was really beginning to wish this Rachel person would just answer whoever that was, if only so she'd shut up and stop distracting me. Didn't I have enough to deal with, already?
I shifted position, accidentally jarring my left arm in the process. I couldn't quite choke down the resulting cry of pain entirely, and I could feel something wet sliding down my cheeks.
Because of that, I almost missed what happened next. That voice cried out "Rachel!" again, only this time it was a lot more excited. Evidently she'd found her. Well great, whoop-de-freaking-doo. Huzzah for Rachel. It wasn't like I couldn't use some help myself.
Then there was... someone there.
I didn't have a clue where she'd come from. It was like she just... appeared. I flinched at the sudden movement out of the corner of my eye, and made a pained noise as my body informed me that it hated me.
"Sorry," the woman apologized, which was nice of her, I guess. She sounded like she meant it, anyway. Actually looking at her to find out, though, was out of the question. That would require far too many movements. I grunted out something unintelligible, which she seemed to take as an acceptance. "Rachel, what happened?"
Wait a minute... "Are you talking to me?" I was stunned at how quiet and raspy my voice was.
Judging by her reaction, so was she. After an uncertain silence - and don't ask me how silence can sound uncertain, but it did - she replied, "Yes. Are you feeling all right?"
That made me want to sit up, if only so I could swat her. "Are you... kidding?"
"I don't mean physically," she 'clarified'.
"I don't know." I coughed harshly, which my throat did not appreciate. "Shouldn't you be trying to help that Rachel person you were looking for?"
I seemed to surprise her again, though I couldn't figure out why. "I am," she said, which was just ridiculous. My name wasn't Rachel. It was... It was...
Hmm. New Problem.
Suddenly she was in front of me, kneeling down. I couldn't quite pinpoint just what the name of the brown material she was wearing was, but it looked good on her. I got the feeling, though, that just about anything would look good on this woman. "Do you recognize me?" she asked, sounding worried.
I frowned. "Why would I?" The pain in my head had become a dull throbbing, and it was getting hard to keep my eyes open.
"Rachel, look at me!" the woman begged, sounding well and truly panicked now.
I still didn't get why, and couldn't quite manage to care. I was just so tired, and hurt, and confused, and all I wanted to do was go to sleep.
"Rachel!"
So tired...
The woman was talking to someone else, still upset, but her voice had become incomprehensible to me, and darkness fell over me like a blanket.
beep, beep, beep
Voices. They were the first thing I noticed upon waking up. The second was a gratifying lack of pain. I wasn't awake enough to feel like moving around yet, but I appreciated having the option.
Gradually, the voices became clearer. "...telling you, she didn't even recognize her own name, let alone me." Oh, hey, it was... that woman, again.
"She took a pretty good blow to the head," another voice replied. Male, this time. "Concussions can be nasty, Ivy." Ah ha! The mystery woman finally had a name. I felt vaguely smug for all of one second, until I realized I hadn't actually done anything.
"Tell me something I don't know," Ivy shot back harshly. There was something in her voice, an old pain of some kind, that I didn't like, and I felt the strangest impulse to go to her and give her a hug.
Fortunately, my brain chose that moment to remind me that I had not been in good shape before blacking out, and that even trying to go anywhere would be a spectacularly bad idea.
"This is different, Glenn," Ivy continued, giving me a name for the other person in the room. Wherever the room itself was. "She's-"
"She's awake," a new, higher-pitched voice broke in. No one asked how he could tell, which was annoying since I wanted to know. It wasn't like I'd moved at all. Only one way to find out, then. With some effort, I opened my eyes, wincing at the glare of the lights in the room.
Nope, still couldn't tell where I was now.
Whatever I was laying on wasn't terribly comfortable, but it wasn't exactly uncomfortable, either. It just... was.
I was distracted from my perusal of he room by the figures clustered at the side of the... thing. There was Mystery Woman Ivy, all right, along with Some Guy Named Glenn. Then something buzzed in front of my face, and I reflexively reached up to swat at it with a squawk of surprise.
It darted back, giving me a good look at it. Was that... Was that really a tiny little man with wings? Some kind of mutant bug, maybe? "Geez, Rache, nice to see you, too," the bug told me.
Holy crap, the bug talked!
I tried to reply, but my throat felt drier then... then... Well, then something really dry. (What was wrong with my head, anyway?) Apparently aware of this somehow, Ivy reached over and picked up a paper cup with ice chips in it, gingerly feeding me a few.
Once the blessedly cool water soothed my throat, I managed to summon up a weak smile. "Um, thanks," I told her softly.
"Not a problem," she assured me. There was a pause as she tried to figure out what to say next. Before she could, though, a brown-haired man in a white coat walked in.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Miss Morgan," White Coat said. "My name is Doctor Bartlett. How are you feeling?"
There was another, longer pause, and I frowned at him. "Are you talking to me?" I didn't like how uncertain my voice sounded, but there wasn't anything I could do about it.
"Yes." And didn't he look serious, all of a sudden? "What do you remember?"
"...about what?"
"How about what happened in that parking lot before we found you?" Glenn broke in from where he'd moved to the end of the... thing I was on.
"...parking lot?" What was he talking about?
"Yes, the parking lot. Damn it to the Turn, Morgan, do you know how worried people have been about you?"
"What's a turn?"
For some reason, that simple - well, I thought it was, anyway - question brought the conversation to a screeching halt. The mutant bug-man was so surprised that his wings actually stopped, sending him dropping down onto the... thing... next to my right leg with a tiny squeak. Everyone else just stared at me.
Geez, what had I said?
"I think I'd better bring in a neurologist," Doctor Bartlett muttered to himself, writing something on the square thing he was holding. "I'll be back shortly, Miss Morgan, don't go anywhere," he told me, then left the room.
"Where would I go?" I wondered aloud.
"With you, one can never tell," Ivy replied, giving me something that had probably supposed to have been a smile, but hadn't quite made it. "Glenn, you might want to go tell Edden about this."
By this point, I wasn't exactly surprised that I had no idea who she was talking about.
He nodded, looking worried. "Feel better soon, Rache," he said, patting my foot before following the doctor.
I honestly wasn't sure what to think. Either there was something very wrong with me... or I'd been kidnapped and these people were trying to get me to believe that they were my friends for... some unknown reason. And now that I'd thought of that, the idea wouldn't go away, no matter how ridiculous I told myself it was.
The bug-man was up in the air again, and since I didn't know how long we'd be left alone, I had to ask now. "Who are you people? What are you?"
"You really don't remember me- us at all, do you?" Ivy murmured, sounding like her heart was breaking. I didn't understand it.
"I don't remember... anything," I replied, and it was slowly starting to sink in just what that meant. I could feel the fear rising within me, even as something told me this was not a good time to allow that to happen. I couldn't quite stop it, though, and some reflex I didn't recognize made me look warily at Ivy.
Unlike me, she seemed to understand. "Don't worry, Rachel. Vampires take care of the sick and injured, we don't hunt them."
"Vam-" My voice choked off. She was a... Holy crap!
"My name is Ivy Tamwood," she continued, looking pained for some reason. "This is Jenks," she added, gesturing to the bug-man. "He's a pixie."
That meant nothing to me, but I nodded anyway. I didn't enjoy being the only one who had no idea what anyone was talking about.
Jenks landed on my shoulder. "Don't worry, Rache, we'll find out who did this to you," he said comfortingly. And despite how weird it was, I actually did feel a little better with him there. There wasn't any real reason for it, but I did kind of trust him. Them.
Kind of.
Naturally, Jenks picked that moment to take to the air again. "I'm going to go see what's keeping that doctor," he informed us before zooming out of the room.
Leaving me alone with the vampire. Common sense told me I'd be all right, that the door was still open, so even if she wanted to try something, it wouldn't be there and then. I'd be just fine as long as I didn't do anything to set her off.
So, naturally, once I realized it was just the two of us, I instantly panicked.
Title: Shards of Memory
Pairing: Ivy/Rachel
Rating: PG-13 so far, may go up later.
Disclaimer: Not being Kim Harrison, I don't own them.
Summary: What do you do if your entire life is erased, someone is trying to kill you, and the ones trying to keep you safe scare you even more? Post "For a Few Demons More".
Ow.
It was the first coherent thought that entered my head, managing to sneak its way past the blinding headache that kept me from opening my eyes. Dimly, I was aware of something cold and hard underneath me, feeling rough and abrasive. I tried to force my eyes open anyway, to try and get some idea of where I was.
Mistake.
I hurriedly shut them again as the pain spiked upward to crippling levels, not even really noticing the faint whimper escaping from my throat. Eventually, it became vaguely tolerable again. I kept waiting, though, until I managed to work up enough courage to try again, far slower this time.
What a letdown. All I could see was gray and black. At first I thought something was wrong with my eyes, but no, that was really all there was. Concrete, or asphalt, or something like that. Couldn't quite tell. It was blackened in places, as if it had been... Had been... I poked my sluggish brain with a stick. Burned, that was it. Melted, even, in a couple of spots. At least, it was in my line of vision, which, given that I was sprawled face down with my head tilted to the right, didn't cover a lot of... wherever the hell I was. I tried to push myself up, to take a look around.
Mistake number two.
It seemed whatever was wrong with me was not limited to just my head. My entire body screamed at me that no, I would not be moving anywhere anytime soon.
What the hell happened?
I honestly had no idea, and if the pounding headache I had wasn't making it so damned hard to think, that probably would have upset me a lot more then it did. Gradually, the whole-body agony faded to several specific sources of pain, which was... sort of good news, I guess. At least there were parts of me that weren't trying to melt my brain.
Somewhere off in the distance, I could just barely hear a voice calling someone's name. I couldn't quite make it out, and frankly, I wasn't feeling inclined to care. I did have my own problems to deal with, after all.
Where am I, anyway?
Another good question. Hopefully, I'd start coming up with good answers sometime soon, because this was getting frustrating.
I heard the voice again, closer this time. A woman's voice, and not one that I recognized, calling for somebody named... Rachel?
Still not caring.
I chanced another movement. Okay, my right arm felt a bit sore, but otherwise all right. My left, though, wasn't quite responding the way I wanted it to, and an attempt to move it properly resulted in it telling me, quite clearly, that it was being dipped in molten lead.
Okay, note to self: Don't do that again.
My legs... Well, they were still there. I levered myself up on one arm to get a look at them, and through the grime-streaked red curtain that fell across my eyes, I could see they were bruised and singed.
Better not to chance trying to move just yet, I decided. I lowered myself back to the pavement - and I still couldn't quite tell where I was - as my arm began trembling. Well, getting out of here would prove to be... interesting.
"Rachel!"
I was really beginning to wish this Rachel person would just answer whoever that was, if only so she'd shut up and stop distracting me. Didn't I have enough to deal with, already?
I shifted position, accidentally jarring my left arm in the process. I couldn't quite choke down the resulting cry of pain entirely, and I could feel something wet sliding down my cheeks.
Because of that, I almost missed what happened next. That voice cried out "Rachel!" again, only this time it was a lot more excited. Evidently she'd found her. Well great, whoop-de-freaking-doo. Huzzah for Rachel. It wasn't like I couldn't use some help myself.
Then there was... someone there.
I didn't have a clue where she'd come from. It was like she just... appeared. I flinched at the sudden movement out of the corner of my eye, and made a pained noise as my body informed me that it hated me.
"Sorry," the woman apologized, which was nice of her, I guess. She sounded like she meant it, anyway. Actually looking at her to find out, though, was out of the question. That would require far too many movements. I grunted out something unintelligible, which she seemed to take as an acceptance. "Rachel, what happened?"
Wait a minute... "Are you talking to me?" I was stunned at how quiet and raspy my voice was.
Judging by her reaction, so was she. After an uncertain silence - and don't ask me how silence can sound uncertain, but it did - she replied, "Yes. Are you feeling all right?"
That made me want to sit up, if only so I could swat her. "Are you... kidding?"
"I don't mean physically," she 'clarified'.
"I don't know." I coughed harshly, which my throat did not appreciate. "Shouldn't you be trying to help that Rachel person you were looking for?"
I seemed to surprise her again, though I couldn't figure out why. "I am," she said, which was just ridiculous. My name wasn't Rachel. It was... It was...
Hmm. New Problem.
Suddenly she was in front of me, kneeling down. I couldn't quite pinpoint just what the name of the brown material she was wearing was, but it looked good on her. I got the feeling, though, that just about anything would look good on this woman. "Do you recognize me?" she asked, sounding worried.
I frowned. "Why would I?" The pain in my head had become a dull throbbing, and it was getting hard to keep my eyes open.
"Rachel, look at me!" the woman begged, sounding well and truly panicked now.
I still didn't get why, and couldn't quite manage to care. I was just so tired, and hurt, and confused, and all I wanted to do was go to sleep.
"Rachel!"
So tired...
The woman was talking to someone else, still upset, but her voice had become incomprehensible to me, and darkness fell over me like a blanket.
beep, beep, beep
Voices. They were the first thing I noticed upon waking up. The second was a gratifying lack of pain. I wasn't awake enough to feel like moving around yet, but I appreciated having the option.
Gradually, the voices became clearer. "...telling you, she didn't even recognize her own name, let alone me." Oh, hey, it was... that woman, again.
"She took a pretty good blow to the head," another voice replied. Male, this time. "Concussions can be nasty, Ivy." Ah ha! The mystery woman finally had a name. I felt vaguely smug for all of one second, until I realized I hadn't actually done anything.
"Tell me something I don't know," Ivy shot back harshly. There was something in her voice, an old pain of some kind, that I didn't like, and I felt the strangest impulse to go to her and give her a hug.
Fortunately, my brain chose that moment to remind me that I had not been in good shape before blacking out, and that even trying to go anywhere would be a spectacularly bad idea.
"This is different, Glenn," Ivy continued, giving me a name for the other person in the room. Wherever the room itself was. "She's-"
"She's awake," a new, higher-pitched voice broke in. No one asked how he could tell, which was annoying since I wanted to know. It wasn't like I'd moved at all. Only one way to find out, then. With some effort, I opened my eyes, wincing at the glare of the lights in the room.
Nope, still couldn't tell where I was now.
Whatever I was laying on wasn't terribly comfortable, but it wasn't exactly uncomfortable, either. It just... was.
I was distracted from my perusal of he room by the figures clustered at the side of the... thing. There was Mystery Woman Ivy, all right, along with Some Guy Named Glenn. Then something buzzed in front of my face, and I reflexively reached up to swat at it with a squawk of surprise.
It darted back, giving me a good look at it. Was that... Was that really a tiny little man with wings? Some kind of mutant bug, maybe? "Geez, Rache, nice to see you, too," the bug told me.
Holy crap, the bug talked!
I tried to reply, but my throat felt drier then... then... Well, then something really dry. (What was wrong with my head, anyway?) Apparently aware of this somehow, Ivy reached over and picked up a paper cup with ice chips in it, gingerly feeding me a few.
Once the blessedly cool water soothed my throat, I managed to summon up a weak smile. "Um, thanks," I told her softly.
"Not a problem," she assured me. There was a pause as she tried to figure out what to say next. Before she could, though, a brown-haired man in a white coat walked in.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Miss Morgan," White Coat said. "My name is Doctor Bartlett. How are you feeling?"
There was another, longer pause, and I frowned at him. "Are you talking to me?" I didn't like how uncertain my voice sounded, but there wasn't anything I could do about it.
"Yes." And didn't he look serious, all of a sudden? "What do you remember?"
"...about what?"
"How about what happened in that parking lot before we found you?" Glenn broke in from where he'd moved to the end of the... thing I was on.
"...parking lot?" What was he talking about?
"Yes, the parking lot. Damn it to the Turn, Morgan, do you know how worried people have been about you?"
"What's a turn?"
For some reason, that simple - well, I thought it was, anyway - question brought the conversation to a screeching halt. The mutant bug-man was so surprised that his wings actually stopped, sending him dropping down onto the... thing... next to my right leg with a tiny squeak. Everyone else just stared at me.
Geez, what had I said?
"I think I'd better bring in a neurologist," Doctor Bartlett muttered to himself, writing something on the square thing he was holding. "I'll be back shortly, Miss Morgan, don't go anywhere," he told me, then left the room.
"Where would I go?" I wondered aloud.
"With you, one can never tell," Ivy replied, giving me something that had probably supposed to have been a smile, but hadn't quite made it. "Glenn, you might want to go tell Edden about this."
By this point, I wasn't exactly surprised that I had no idea who she was talking about.
He nodded, looking worried. "Feel better soon, Rache," he said, patting my foot before following the doctor.
I honestly wasn't sure what to think. Either there was something very wrong with me... or I'd been kidnapped and these people were trying to get me to believe that they were my friends for... some unknown reason. And now that I'd thought of that, the idea wouldn't go away, no matter how ridiculous I told myself it was.
The bug-man was up in the air again, and since I didn't know how long we'd be left alone, I had to ask now. "Who are you people? What are you?"
"You really don't remember me- us at all, do you?" Ivy murmured, sounding like her heart was breaking. I didn't understand it.
"I don't remember... anything," I replied, and it was slowly starting to sink in just what that meant. I could feel the fear rising within me, even as something told me this was not a good time to allow that to happen. I couldn't quite stop it, though, and some reflex I didn't recognize made me look warily at Ivy.
Unlike me, she seemed to understand. "Don't worry, Rachel. Vampires take care of the sick and injured, we don't hunt them."
"Vam-" My voice choked off. She was a... Holy crap!
"My name is Ivy Tamwood," she continued, looking pained for some reason. "This is Jenks," she added, gesturing to the bug-man. "He's a pixie."
That meant nothing to me, but I nodded anyway. I didn't enjoy being the only one who had no idea what anyone was talking about.
Jenks landed on my shoulder. "Don't worry, Rache, we'll find out who did this to you," he said comfortingly. And despite how weird it was, I actually did feel a little better with him there. There wasn't any real reason for it, but I did kind of trust him. Them.
Kind of.
Naturally, Jenks picked that moment to take to the air again. "I'm going to go see what's keeping that doctor," he informed us before zooming out of the room.
Leaving me alone with the vampire. Common sense told me I'd be all right, that the door was still open, so even if she wanted to try something, it wouldn't be there and then. I'd be just fine as long as I didn't do anything to set her off.
So, naturally, once I realized it was just the two of us, I instantly panicked.