A/N: The sequel will make very little sense to those who haven't read the first fic - Facilis Descensus Averno. I recommend the version at AO3 over the one I have posted here.
Enjoy! :)
"Awakening is not a thing. It is not a goal, not a concept. It is not something to be attained. It is a metamorphosis. If the caterpillar thinks about the butterfly it is to become, saying 'And then I shall have wings and antennae,' there will never be a butterfly. The caterpillar must accept its own disappearance in its transformation. When the marvelous butterfly takes wing, nothing of the caterpillar remains."
~ Alejandro Jodorowsky -
The woman's eyes slitted open to close again as light stabbed her through the lids. She groaned quietly. Taking a deep slow breath she released it willing herself up. The disinfectant smell of the room around her threatened to overwhelm her. She pulled at her arms to find them pinioned. Panic began to surge in her and she yanked at her limbs.
"Easy, easy," she heard as a hand laid itself gently on her shoulder.
Turning her head, she opened her eyes to see a woman with striking blue eyes smiling down at her. Her mouth was ashes and she growled quietly.
"Now Alexandra. I can see that your experience with electro convulsive therapy is clearly on the more painful side of the spectrum. I am going to give you another mild sedative and then we will speak again after you've had some time to rest and reflect." The woman smiled as she filled a hypodermic.
The younger woman on the table desperately yanked at her arm again and again, trying to escape the descending needle. It was to no avail. Her last conscious thought was "My name is Alexandra?"
When she next opened her eyes she found herself in a room in deep gloom. She had a mild headache and still no frame of reference for where she was or even who she was. Her fingers traveled over slightly rough cotton sheets until she could push herself up. Looking down she saw she was wearing something that looked like white scrubs. Plucking at the front she found an imprint that read... Warrensville Sanitarium.
The woman gulped dryly. She was crazy? She didn't feel crazy. A bit hung over but... She pressed herself up slowly from the bed to her feet. She looked down at legs, shaking as she stood. The linoleum was biting cold under her feet and so she slid them into a pair of cheap hospital slippers nearby and moving along the wall for support, found her way to the window.
The asylum showed elegant signs of being a former hospital for the well heeled tuberculosis cases, but soon found its career housing the most chronic cases of mental illness, including a few notorious serial killers, as well as scarred Veterans suffering shell shock from subsequent wars since it's opening in 1907. Lack of funding had turned the old decaying buildings into the last stop for the underinsured and the criminally insane lifers.
She looked out past glass and chicken wire and bars to see gray skies over a dirty snow covered field edged by a handful of skeletal trees and surrounded by a fence. The woman watched distractedly while a man in an orange ski jacket walked out into the snow and alternated between deep drags and swinging a baton in dizzying circles. She turned from the cold window and looked around.
It was like a cell. There was a layer of something like foam on the walls and floor, a small mattress mounted on a pair of drawers, and a one piece metal toilet and sink set up in the corner. A shelf desk hung glumly over a chair. "Ain't the Ritz," she croaked out.
There was a soft knock. She turned slowly to see the woman from earlier slide into the room. Blue eyes searched for her and opened wider momentarily as she found her. The woman brushed her brown hair back from her face and pulled out the chair to sit on it facing the bed.
"Please have a seat Alexandra." The woman crossed her legs and moved a clipboard and folder into her lap.
Alexandra (though she was still not sure about the name) moved across the room slowly to sit on the bed across from the woman. "Who are you?"
The woman's head tilted a moment before she smiled winningly. "Of course, some memory loss is certainly not outside the realm of possibility after ECT."
"Are you my doctor?" Alex asked, her brow furrowed. She couldn't explain why but she felt her stomach tumble at the thought.
"No. I am integrally involved in your placement and treatment, but I'm not officially your doctor." She opened the folder with a sly smile. "More a concerned co-worker." She looked up with an upraised brow. "Now, how are you feeling Alexandra?"
"How am I feeling?" Alex frowned. "I'm feeling hostile. What the hell is all this?"
The other woman watched her with a raised brow. "I take it you don't remember why you were incarcerated in this facility?" She took out a pen and made some notes.
"NO."
A sigh escaped her. "Alexandra, you are a dangerous woman. You were out of control. You hurt the people that you were never meant to. What we are trying to do here, is to make you fit to go back to your previous life, or something approximating it."
"Who are you?"
The woman smiled. "I'm Amanda. You can consider me a facilitator. I want to bring you back from the strange... dangerous place you were in, to the world you knew. Today, you were given ECT. In theory, it will help you... reset. At least, that is the hope." She closed the folder. "You should rest. I will be back tomorrow." Standing up she headed for the door. She looked back, her face pained with concern. "We only want to see you back to the things that make you happy dear Alexandra. To your proper place in the world." Amanda left and the lock tumbled.
Alex scrambled to the tiny window in the door and watched until Amanda was out of sight.
Amanda turned to the burly guard accompanying her as her heels clicked away from the hospital room. "Jason, tonight you will proceed with the plan we discussed. Any questions?"
He smiled. "None, Ma'am. I know exactly what to do. I'll leave the girl in pieces."
"Excellent." Amanda smiled and looked down the hall toward the door she had just left. "The best part about a picture in pieces, is reconstructing it any way you want." Her brow went up at the eager young man as she turned back and walked back toward the parking lot.
Percy walked slowly beside her as they moved along the snow crusted path. "How is are princess today?"
Amanda smiled. "Her memory resembles Swiss cheese... and she is feeling angry and vulnerable. She is almost ready for molding."
"I ordinarily wouldn't authorize going to such lengths to prepare an assassin, but Alexandra, well, she is something special." Percy offered Amanda popcorn from his small paper sack as he looked up into the gray sky. "Young, strong, and dependent on us for identity and purpose. It's going to be a fine day."