and the best part about it is I'm the only who can do somethin' about it

[bye_felicia]

It hits her out of nowhere. One minute, she's berating a waitress for serving someone else before her, the next she's sitting there, staring open-mouthed at a girl near tears, the words still buzzing around in her head, sitting on her tongue, with surprise the only thing keeping them at bay.

The girl doesn't deserve this, she realizes suddenly. This is just the way that things are.

They're not home anymore. She can't treat people like this.

The girl runs away, escapes, and Victra doesn't see her again until she delivers her plate of food, so hot and fresh it's ready to burn her tongue.

But Victra can't pay any attention to her now. She has more important people in her life that she needs to apologize to. Her phone's already out and she's sending a mass text message with her location to everyone in her neatly cultivated contacts list.

I'm back to normal. Sorry.

And to Lincoln, an added:

Please forgive me.

Comments

[nocost]

"Of course." As far as he can tell, there's no other way to see it. As hurt as he'd been, as much as he had wanted to stay at her apartment and work to convince her she knew him, it had been fairly obvious right from the start that something had been done to her. If she had just decided she no longer wanted to be with him, she wouldn't have pretended not to know him. Victra is far too sure of herself to bother playing any games like that.

He notices her discomfort and he doesn't think it has anything to do with him, but maybe with where they are. There are people around, some of them looking at the two of them, and Lincoln smiles softly and drops his hand to Victra's.

"Let's go," he suggests. Right now, he's just so grateful to have her back. Anything else feels absolutely secondary in light of that.

[bye_felicia]

Victra nods silently, moving her hand under his to push up from her seat and away from the table. She throws down some cash, not paying attention and for once probably giving a good tip, then heads towards the door of the diner, assuming Lincoln will be right there beside her. She doesn't hesitate.

Once they're outdoors, she steers them in the direction of her apartment. It feels safer to her there, even though it's the place of her last interaction with Lincoln, when she cut him and forced him mout.

"Have you ever had something like this happen?" she asks. "Have the city take over your mind like that?"

[nocost]

As they walk, he thinks about Victra's question, then shakes his head. What had happened to Raven was different, something from home, not Darrow in the same sense this had been. She had taken something to let that monster into her head and he doesn't blame her in the slightest, but it's also not at all what had happened to Victra.

"No," he says finally, reaching for her hand. She's back, she's the woman he loves, and the relief he feels is palpable. He wants to keep touching her, wants to not have to let go. "Not like that. I've seen some very odd things, but nothing that made it feel like this place was changing someone. Changing their memories or-"

He stops abruptly, then looks at Victra. "People have talked about gaining memories. Remembering things that happened after they've come here."

[bye_felicia]

She takes her hand. She's not one for public displays of affection, really. She doesn't give a damn what other people think and would make out with Lincoln, under normal circumstances, in front of anyone and everyone if she wanted. But tenderness is another story. It happens, but less frequently. So now when she squeezes Lincoln's hand in hers, it means something.

"It's not that," she says, shaking her head. "It was forgetting. I didn't remember--" Her lips purse and, hinting where she can't say the words, she reaches a hand to rub lightly at the chemical burns on her body. "It was all gone, in my head."

[nocost]

It's not the same, but it's the closest he can think of, even if it doesn't quite fit, so he nods and squeezes her hand in return.

"I know," he says. "I thought telling you the private things you'd shared with me would help, but I didn't even realize those memories were gone, too. I thought you'd just forgotten me. This city."

But he'd brought up her sister and Victra simply hadn't known that. He almost would have felt guilty, except for the fact that her surety in herself had been so strong that she didn't seem all that bothered by the things he'd said. Just annoyed by his presence.

[bye_felicia]

"Even when they had me captured, even when they were torturing me, I never let them take my mind like that," she says, her voice a rough, hushed sound as she leans in to Lincoln. Taking comfort from his proximity and keeping some semblance of privacy between them.

"The city or whatever can do what it likes with my body. But my mind, my thoughts and my feelings... It turns my stomach to think about it again."

[nocost]

"I'm sorry," he says. It doesn't seem fair, that a place can violate someone in this way, especially someone he cares for as much as he does Victra. It seems so wrong, one of the many things about Darrow he can't fix for anyone, no matter how badly he might want to. All he can do is be here in the aftermath, be the man he's supposed to be.

He doesn't know how to prevent it from happening again. It seems like once should be enough, more than enough, she shouldn't have to experience it even that single time, but now he's worried it might happen to her again. Or to someone else.

"I wish there was some way to protect ourselves against these things," he says.