tallycraven · 4 years ago
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brainwashed!raelle pt.4
(pt. 1) (pt. 2) (pt. 3)
Consciousness finds her in a curious state. Scylla’s sure she’s not supposed to be… well, alive. But she’s vaguely aware of sensations that aren’t just nothingness. Stimuli like rough fabric against her forearms, stale air that smells like rubbing alcohol, and the quiet hum of a ceiling fan.
If she is dead (and therefore in hell), then she wonders if she’s done enough bad things in her life to actually have gained some sort of captaincy in the hierarchy of hell.
That thought leaves as quickly as it came.
Scylla keeps her eyes closed, but starts running diagnostics on her condition. Small wiggles of her toes, gentle clenching of her fingers. All the tiny movements correspond to the feeling of fabric moving against her, so she ticks paralysis off the list.
After deciding that, yes she’s alive and yes she’s somewhere tentatively safe, she discovers an uncomfortable dryness to her mouth and throat.
As well as an invasive distress over the thought of Raelle.
In the end, the latter thought is what gets Scylla to open her eyes.
Thankfully, she spots a glass of water on the bed stand as well as a sticky note with large, rounded handwriting that says, ‘YOU’RE SAFE, FOUGHT SPREE, WON, RAELLE’S OKAY, FOOD DOWNSTAIRS (probably), XO TALLY ☺︎’
Scylla finds herself staring at the page with squinted eyes and furrowed brows, frowning at it for only a second before the use of her face muscles send a dull throb of pain across her cheeks.
Why does Tally write like that?
A small examination of herself afterwards tells her that she’s been tended to by a decent fixer; the gash in her abdomen has been healed into an ugly scar, her lips have been mended, and the worst of most bruises have been lightened into a yellowing purple.
She’s most thankful that her eye’s not swollen anymore; bloodshot and bruised, yes, but she can see and that’s really all she could ask for.
xx
The house is decently large, she discovers, as she peaks out the window to see that they’re somewhere along the coast, on some sort of private property with trimmed hedges and a beautiful paved driveway leading down a private road.
She finds her way downstairs, taking small breaks to look out the windows at the clouded red-blue skies and steady waves washing onto the shore. It looks beautiful out.
Maybe she is dead and somehow scammed her way into heaven.
She kicks that back into the corner it came from as she descends the stairs (easier than she thought—good job, legs) and rounds the corner to find Tally Craven and Abigail Bellweather seated at a kitchen countertop, eating cereal.
Tally’s face blooms into a delighted smile, even Abigail gives her a small smile and nod of her head.
They explain what happened.
After Scylla went missing, Tally and Abigail went into high gear, tracing tracks that led out of the room that Scylla was stolen from back to a Spree hideout that then opened up an entire avenue of clues.
It took them a while to find the right thread, but when they did, they coordinated a small strike team with Anacostia’s approval and found Scylla and Raelle at a small house on the outskirts of Boston.
They successfully cleared the house and captured everyone inside, including one Willa Collar.
That was four days ago; now they’re staying low in one of the several Bellweather vacation homes, tucked safe for a little while until Petra and Anacostia can ensure no one else is after Raelle or Scylla.
Tally apologizes for taking so long.
Scylla shrugs and thanks her for even showing up at all.
The silence that stretches between the three of them awkwardly and Scylla opens her mouth to say, “So Raelle—“ at the same time Abigail says, “She’s not okay.”
Scylla can’t help but jump into full panic mode.
“Not okay? But the note said she was, have you found a fixer that can help? What’s wrong? Where is she?”
“Whoa, whoa, hey. Slow down.”
Scylla’s not sure how Abigail expects her to slow down when she just told her that Raelle’s not okay.
“She’s fine physically,” Abigail clarifies, “but mentally—emotionally, she’s not doing the best.”
xx
Raelle spends every day spaced out, existing for brief moments with Abigail and Tally only when they force her to sit down for meals.
Otherwise, she’s either locked in her room at the house or sitting out on the private beach, barefoot in the sand and staring out at the Atlantic Ocean.
Sometimes nothing feels real; it takes her a second to remember which thread of memory actually happened.
Sometimes she sees Tally and Abigail alive and unexplainable relief and joy flood her body.
Sometimes a flash of light causes her to jump, the phantom memory of a mind-shattering windstrike crashing into her.
Other times, she remembers the feeling of her fist colliding with Scylla’s face. Her hands shake uncontrollably when her brain insists that yes, that’s this existence. That yes, that actually happened.
Time flows like tar and water all at once; everything blends and fractures. There have been moments where she thinks she’s finally lost the thread.
Raelle doesn’t know how to handle the oppressive guilt in her core. The way her stomach turns with disgust at herself.
So she spends her time away from her friends, away from mirrors, away from having to hear her own voice.
She digs her fingers into the sand and brings handfuls of it up at a time, feels the way each grain slips through her grasp— tries to imagine the sand like her thoughts, slipping and collapsing into piles of nothing.
It helps, sometimes.
At least the violent headaches have simmered down into insignificantly annoying ones that press against her temples whenever she overthinks the past.
She tries her hardest to remember the feeling of Tally’s arms wrapping around her, pulling her back from Scylla’s broken body and trapping her beneath her weight as she thrashed for freedom.
Pushes a cold hand to her forehead where Tally had pressed two thumbs and undone whatever had been done to her in one haphazard go.
Izadora had shown surprise that Raelle hadn’t been lobotomized.
Tally had looked appropriately horrified at that prospect.
Raelle kind of wishes she had been lobotomized.
Then she wouldn’t have panic attacks every time she tried to approach the door of the room that she knows Scylla is recovering in.
But every time she tries to open the door, the sight of a dead Scylla flashes before her. Bloodied, beaten, cold, dead Scylla lying in that cadaver locker.
The memory of driving a knife into Scylla, the way she’d screamed. The resulting sense of vengeance and satisfaction that had come from it.
So she can’t. She can’t open that door. She can’t bare to look at Scylla. Worries about when Scylla will wake up not only because she really wants Scylla to wake up and be okay but also because she has no idea how she’ll ever be able to be in the same room as Scylla ever again without feeling like the worst piece of shit on Earth.
Raelle presses the heels of her palms against her eyes, wishing that the pressure could push the images away from her despite them being burnt into her eyelids.
She collapses back into the sand and stares up at the darkening sky, dreading going back up to the house. Dreading having to look Tally and Abigail in the face because she still feels like she failed them somehow.
But the sun is setting and if she doesn’t go back, they’ll come looking for her. There’s nothing that would make her feel worse than them worrying any more than they already do, so she drags herself back up, prepares for Abigail’s concerned looks and Tally’s warm hugs.
xx
What she finds instead is Scylla, standing in the kitchen with Tally and Abigail.
Time freezes and Raelle forgets how to be.
She doesn’t know if she should turn around and walk back into the dark or fall to her knees and beg for forgiveness or just go upstairs to let herself lose it in the silence of her own room.
So she kinda just… stands there, in the archway leading to the kitchen, staring with her mouth slightly open.
Scylla’s painted in bruises, but she looks considerably better than when they first got here. There’s purple flowering across her left cheek, bruises dotting her arms, a red smudge in the corner of her eye where blood vessels had been broken.
It’s stupid that she wishes she was the one who helped heal Scylla.
Abigail and Tally share this look that Raelle only passingly notices before they start cleaning up.
She’s not sure how long she stands there for, but Abigail gives her a supportive smile and shoulder pat as she brushes past her to leave the room, quickly followed by Tally who gives Scylla a kind nod before hugging Raelle and leaving the room as well.
Abandoning Raelle to stand in silence with Scylla, who’s watching her quietly.
She hates that she can’t read what Scylla’s feeling.
It’s enough to make Raelle start to turn and leave the room, choosing flight over fight.
But then Scylla’s voice, hoarse from disuse, cuts through the silence.
“Please stay.”
Who is Raelle to say no after all she’s done?
She stands, awkwardly, rooted to the ground. Feels like her feet are glued to the floor so that she can’t move forwards or backwards. Stuck in a limbo that she’s made herself.
It feels like there are a million miles that stretch between them, cavernous and dangerous— too full of hazards and history to tread.
But then Scylla smiles.
Smiles like Raelle hadn’t tortured her until she was an inch away from death.
Smiles like her face doesn’t ache from the bruises that Raelle put there.
Smiles like forgiveness comes easy and love comes easier.
And Raelle breaks.
She covers a million miles in two large steps and falls into Scylla’s waiting arms.
It feels like a dam has burst inside her chest and she can’t stop the tears or sobs that wrack her body. It’s the first time she’s let herself cry since Tally and Abigail pulled them from the Spree safehouse.
Scylla feels solid against her. Solid, warm, and safe. The resulting flood of pure relief in Raelle only makes her sob harder.
Her hands are shaking too bad to even hold onto Scylla properly, so she settles for pressing her palms into Scylla’s back. For a moment she thinks Scylla might slip through her fingers like sand, but she doesn’t.
She clings onto Raelle just as hard, one hand threaded into her hair and the other stroking down her back in calming passes, pressing kisses to the side of Raelle’s head.
They stay like that for a long time— long enough that Tally eventually slips back into the kitchen with a bag of newly-attained groceries and a sheepish smile.
Abigail is less apologetic with her intrusion when she delivers a heavy pat on Raelle back and announces, “Okay, enough of this. Help us make dinner.”
xx
Progress is slow. It turns out recovery’s not easy; healing’s not easy.
Raelle’s hands shake more often than not and when she finally does sleep, her dreams are often nightmares.
Nightmares of being stuck in her own body while she does dreadful things against her own will and control. Nightmares where reality isn’t real and her friends are dead and Scylla is her enemy.
She wakes up with the memory of a headache pushing against her skull.
A couple days later, she sees Scylla flinch when Abigail quickly raises her arm to throw something towards the trashcan from across the kitchen. The resulting wave of remorse is enough to crush her.
They don’t speak about what happened; Raelle doesn’t know where to start.
She’s getting ready to go down to the beach when Tally breezes past her with nothing more than a, “baby steps are better than standing still.”
It’s said without judgement, just a kind smile.
But Raelle still feels slighted because how could Tally possibly know where to begin when she’s not the one who has to live with the shaking hands and nightmares and the horrible pain of remembering?
The idea seems less difficult when Scylla sits by her in the sand, though.
Raelle had been sitting there on her own when Scylla wandered up and plopped down neatly beside her without a word.
Now the other girl is just laying down in the warm sand, staring up at the cloudy sky, fingers burying themselves in the sand and staying there.
It takes Raelle a laughable amount of time and digging her fingers into the sand to finally break through the mental wall to stay still and turn to look at Scylla.
“I’m sorry.”
She’s staring straight ahead at the ocean, avoiding looking at Scylla when she hears a small laugh.
“I forgive you.”
Raelle only turns because she can tell Scylla is smiling. She looks down at Scylla and the other girl just smiles back, soft and tender and honest.
“We all have things we regret doing.” Her shrug is awkward, pushing sand up by he neck like little dunes. “You don’t have to carry yours around like the weight of the world.”
“But I hurt you. I almost killed…” How pathetic is it that she can’t finish that thought.
Scylla’s hand unearths itself from the sand to inch towards Raelle’s, gently brushes her pinky against Raelle’s wrist.
“But you didn’t. And it wasn’t you. Not the real you, anyway.”
“I hurt you.” She’s a broken record, but she can’t get it out of her head.
“Do you regret it?”
Raelle looks at Scylla like she has two heads, says nothing because of course she does.
Scylla sits up, brushing sand from her loose-fitting white shirt and just smiles again.
“Then I forgive you.” Scylla says, easy as pie. “Because I love you.”
There’s silence between them, but the crashing of the waves is heavy on the shore and Raelle pulls her eyes away from Scylla’s just to see the water smooth the sand over.
When she looks back to Scylla, her eyes are gentle and bluer than the sky and the ocean combined. Tinged with honesty, hope, and affection.
Raelle feels herself take the first step when her hand reaches for Scylla’s on its own—threads their fingers together despite the grains of sand stuck their skin.
“I love you too.”
Scylla smile blossoms into a wide grin and Raelle feels her heart ache for a completely different reason.
“Thank you.” Raelle says, letting herself breathe for the first time in weeks. 
They stay in the sand until the heat fades, the sun sets, and Abigail comes to drag them back indoors for dinner.
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