Arch 1 - The Lost And The Damned

Chapter 2 - Blood Ties

It took some time for her eyes to adjust to the light and take in the true shape of the silhouettes around. She noticed random people milling around. Some of them were dressed in white garments quite similar to the doctor's own, but what caught her attention was the lone female sitting behind a wooden desk right beside a set of double doors.

Thoughts of the doctor's words crossed through her mind as her feet took her closer to the woman. Was her mother there? Was her one of the persons she walked by on her way to the desk? If she was there, had she spotted her already? And if she did, would she recognize her? What would happen if she didn't? What would happen if she did?

"Good to see you, Kiara!" The young woman smiled at her from behind a pair of glasses. She found herself smiling back, if only not to make her feel bad. "Your mother is waiting for you in the reception room."

"Thanks, Bells" she nodded and walked off through the doors. It was only when she heard the clank of the metal behind her that she realized what she had said. She somehow knew of the woman's name, even thought she had no memories of her. She forced herself not to stop her walk, fully aware she also knew where the reception room was located, too. It was all just too confusing and alien for her to make sense of, and her head made damn sure to throb in agreement with her thoughts.

It did not surprised her how soon she found the room. She saw strange people sitting in large green benches that reminded her of the ones she had laying around seen at the few schools she studied in.

She shook her head to clean it from the unwanted observations and surveyed the room. Other than the few people on the benches, only one man caught her attention, but only for his dark blue attire. He had a broom in one of his hands and plugs in his ears. His head bobbed to a song no one else heard as he cleaned the far corners of the room.

Her eyes moved around some more, and she spotted another person behind a desk that could had been a twin to Bella's own. This one was a male, though, and she was instantly annoyed by the look in his old face. Something about him made her nervous and uncomfortable enough to consider turning around and marching right back to her room. Before she could do so, though, her eyes locked with the ones that adorned a beautiful brunette's face. There was no doubt: it was her mother.

She offered the woman an awkward smile and approached her with reluctant steps. If the old man behind the desk made her unnerved, her mother made her completely terrified. It was like her legs had a vibrating function of their own and refused to turn it off. When she finally arrived in front of the woman, she didn't even knew anymore if her heart screamed out loud to the other people around, too, or if it reserved it's prowess to herself.

"Hi, mum" she offered as she tuck a stray hair behind her ear. She swiftly averted her eyes when all she received in response was a raspy grunt. It utterly shattered her ability to maintain eye contact with the older woman, and she had to abuse from a source of strength she didn't knew to possess for her body not to tremble to the floor.

She felt the pressure of her mother's hand on her right shoulder and forced herself not to wince. She had not squeezed her hard or harmed her in any way - quite the opposite, actually. Yet, even though her fingers moved slow circles on her shoulder, Kiara felt like they were starving beats ready to rip her flesh and bone for it's primal delight.

"You got me worried, kid." The brunette's voice was raspy and rough, but not overly so. And, even though there was something different in her mother's voice - something quite more mature and experienced - it still reminded her of her own. Or at least of the way her new voice happened to sound.

"I'm sorry" She mumbled with her head down low. She didn't knew why she had the urge to apologize, but there were no reasons for her not to trust her own self. There was something in her mother that made her want to please her - to befriend her. She wondered if that was the way everyone else felt when interacting with their parents.

"I already took care of all the papers" The woman dismissed her and turned around to face another set of doors. A big sign sparkled the word 'exit' just above it. "Let's go home. We have a long way ahead of us."

Her head nodded as she followed her mother outside, even though she could not see it. She was only slightly aware of the phone call the woman made, much more captivated by the sights around her. She could recognize the exact spot she had seen from the hospital window upstairs, and allowed her eyes to bathe in the foreignness that expanded from it in a burst of branches, leaves and unique architecture. Those were the last sights she saw before she was urged into a cab she hadn't noticed there before.

##

The ride from the hospital to their house was almost two hours long. She eyed the city with apprehensive curiosity, hoping to remember some of it's buildings and maybe the countless meanings beyond them, too. Unfortunately, though, she found nothing but the same sense of familiarity that overflowed her mind in the first place.

Flashing lights showed names she recognized and could not place. Her mind told her what kind of building would be the next after a corner she had never seen before. Her thoughts got tangled with blurry memories she could not comprehend, and for a second she feared her headache would show it's ugly head again. Thankfully, all it did was throb her head a little bit - nothing compared to the nightmare she had felt back in the hospital room.

Her mother had been as untalkative during the ride as she had been in the hospital. Maybe even more so, for she had refused to utter more than a few selected words about her father's excuses as to not be present at the hospital. Whatever she had said about him met it's demise by her brain's sudden inability to focus, though. It was amazing how interesting a bunch of kids playing on the streets could prove to be.

They had but arrived when the brunette complained about the excessive heat she suffered from her clothes and left to her room upstairs. It was no wonder, really, for she was dressed in a black jacket that looked like it was made with the fur of some overly hairy animal. A giant gorilla, mayhaps.

She was instructed to wait in the living room, but decided to take the chance to explore her "not really new" house. She took her time to visit every room downstairs, and when she found nothing but the most ordinary, boring and uninteresting furnitures, she felt disappointment far bigger than her original thirst for knowledge.

The whole place feed her a deep sense of incompatibility that refused to leave her alone. It brought up feelings of dread and fear she believed should had been alien, yet felt like a second skin. It seemed like the house itself had a maniac desire to make her feel as unwelcome and unwanted as it possibly could. In the end, though, it did not mattered how far and deeply she looked at it or how delirious her thoughts could prove themselves to be - that house was not her home.

She was about to sit down on one of the sofas in the living room when her mother's footsteps penetrated her ears. Her eyes slid up along the wooden staircase in the far corner, and she didn't had to wonder exactly how many steps it had, for she somehow knew they were twenty two. She controlled herself not to wince when she broke an eye contact she had not noticed to create.

"Look, kid" the woman descended the stairs, and, even though her hair was a horrible mess that her hands desperately tried to fix, Kiara couldn't deny how perfectly gracious her whole stance were. "Your father will probably be joining us later tonight, and we will be entertaining some guests in the morrow." she stopped moving but inches from her position, and waited for their eyes to meet before she continued. There was something different in her gaze, though. Something almost soft. "I suggest you go to your room upstairs. It has been an exhausting week for all of us, and I believe you could use the some rest."

"You do remember where your room is, right?" Her mother asked her before she could respond. There was clear trepidation in her voice, as if she dared not to voice the question, yet forced herself too, anyway.

"Yes, mother" she bowed her head and unlocked their eyes. She started towards the stairs, but her mother's voice halted her steps.

"Are you-" she coughed. "Are you keen on this new...ascent of yours?"

"I don't really know what you mean, mother." She made sure to pronounce every word carefully. She paid utmost attention to their sounds, yet found nothing wrong with them. Was it another side effect of her memory loss? If so...why?

"Just..." the brunette let out a long breath and ruffled her hair some more. "Just make sure not to push yourself too hard." She nodded at her mother and started her ascending. "And kid..." her mother interrupted her again, and she looked back at her. "It's good to know that you're okay." She smiled at her and climbed the remaining steps. The smile did not leave her face until hours later, when she was already laying down beneath the covers of her own bed.

##

She had thought the first hours after waking up would be the worst - that the headache, the dizziness, the completely lack of any sense of reality and the hollow inside her chest couldn't ever find a worthy enough rival to battle against. Reality itself took maniacal glee in proving her wrong, though, and was all too pleased to send her mind into a dangerous downward spiral she feared not to able to recover from. At least not while portraying such extreme lack of strength, that is.

Thoughts swarmed through her head like bees in a flower field. They made the world around her blur away from her eyes and the one inside her cease to exist. So many were her misfortunes that she did not even noticed the fluffiness of the pillow she crushed with her head, nor the cold breeze that swept through he window she had not bothered to close before.

Her heavy eyes closed and a deep breath escaped from the confines of her mouth. An overload of memories banged incessantly against her brain, but it remained resolute in his decision not to relent to their pleas. She had to bit back a groan when pain speared the side of her head and crawled through her veins like snakes on humid ground. The feeling made her wince and roll around beneath the sheets. It must had been the thousand time she did so in the past couple of hours, too.

As her mind fought against the pain, the dread and the fear, Kiara couldn't help but wonder what exactly tired her the most: the merciless pounding in her head, or the weakness that slowly claimed her bones. It did not mattered much in the end, of course, but all she had to entertain herself with were the pointless distractions her damaged imagination could muster, and they were not creative enough for her to take pride in, that's for sure.

What she did cared about was to rest her mind, body and soul. She had spent so many hours moving around the bed, hoping and fearing her father would arrive soon or that sleep would devour her whole at long last. The toll it all placed on her shoulders was almost too heavy for her to bear.

There was a sudden knock on her bedroom door, and she found herself inviting whoever it was inside. She breathed out a sigh of relief when the head that poked from the doorway was her mother's. Her relief was laid down to waste with the woman's words, though.

"Your father has recently arrived" she would rethink her mother's words later and find herself unable to shake off her doubt: was there bitterness disguised in the depths of her voice? The lack of 'sudden familiarity' that seemed to be an alter effect of her 'non memories' was quite the surprise, but her mother wasn't finished with her speech. "The table is all set and he wishes for you to come and dine with us."

They stared at each other's eyes for a while and it took her the whole time to realize an answer was expected from her. "I-" She sat up on the bed with a small cough, completely uncaring for the mess she just made of the covers. "I'll be downstairs in a moment, mother."

"Just don't go and keep him waiting." Her mother averted her eyes and prepared herself to leave. Her voice sounded weak...mayhaps even defeated. "You know how he gets when he's annoyed." She left before she could question her about what she meant. Was she a relative of the doctor from before? They sure as hell looked like twins in anything but looks...and maybe personality, too.

She promptly got herself up off the bed and began the journey to make herself presentable. Her mother had shown her to a pair of jeans and a white tank top she had thankfully not stripped herself from before she went to sleep. It was really complicated for her not to look at the mirror on her bedroom's wall, but she made it anyway. She only hoped not to leave her room with a bad case of bed hair when she didn't even had the chance to fall asleep in the first place.

A soft breath escaped her lungs when she finally pushed open the door. It's wooden frame cracked out loud and her feet took a hasty step backwards into the room. Her shoulders bore the weight of her inner turmoil and her throat the dryness of Sahara. Yet all she could do was to swallow down her trepidation and leave her "safe place" for the hallways, and from the hallways to the stairs and from the stairs to the kitchen. Her heart bounced inside her chest with every step she took, but her will to get it all done and over with screamed far louder than it's suffocated pleas.

She spotted her mother first. She sat on the left side of the square table and cast her a quick glance as soon as she entered the room. The dimmed lights seemed to cast her hair into a deep shadow that made them look far darker than she remembered them to be. This new vision reminded her of the ones she had seen reflected on the hospital window barely after waking up. Her mother's hair did seem healthier, though.

There was a plate of food on top of the table. It was filled with rice, beans and salad and it rested inches from her mother's place. She could spot a few small pieces of meat in there, though, so she probably wasn't undergoing some of her weird diets.

"It is good to see you in one piece." She heard a man's voice - her father's, no doubt - echo from another seat. His words sounded hollow to her ears and denounced his utter lack of enthusiasm. He did an amazing job of masquerading it underneath a caring tone of voice, thus she was sure her 'non memories' were the ones she should thank for such avid perception. "Come!" He gestured the table with his right hand. "Sit and dine with us!"

She eyed all the three vacant seats by the table side. There was one to his left and another to her mother's right. There was also a lone chair right across the table from his own, which would put her in his direct line of sight. His presence alone was enough to uneasy her to the core, though, and so she sat down by her mother's side. No one seemed to complain about her desired seat out loud. Maybe it was a normal occurrence from back when her memories were intact, or maybe they were just giving her space to recover and pretending not to notice any weirdness she might end up to perform. Whatever answer was the right one, she was thankful the diner had began with moderated success.

A long and intense silence stretched itself across the table. Her father was the only one oblivious to it's threatening presence, and was all too happy to chew away at his meat. Her mother was a different story, though, and, much like herself, she was completely unable to hide her discomfort. The way she moved her fork around the plate was just too obvious for one not to notice.

She took advantage of the atmosphere to observe her father's features, and couldn't help but be surprised by how older than her mother he seemed to be. He was not more than five years her elder, she knew, but time hadn't been his greatest ally. His hair was grey and his skin drier than her throat. It was a wonder how the thing had not peeled itself from his flesh, anyway. All considered, he did not looked like her at all.

"This tastes great, Caren." She heard him say from behind his chunk of meat. Her mother's vocabulary was rich and her words were spoken with elegance beyond the clutches of many, and, even though their house wasn't particularly big or filled with expensive furniture, it was already enough to raise some yellow flags in her head. But it was ratter clear how much of a moronic glutton her father could prove himself to be, and the fact her mother tolerated him was enough to tell she was not the one with money in their relationship. The possibility of the man being rich was as absurd as a child's fairy tale, and thus she gave it but a single thought. She had absolutely no idea about how the hell she was even able to deduce half of it, but complains were universes away from leaving her mouth.

"So..." He had the decency of dropping the chicken leg before addressing her. "What are you waiting for, brat? Dig right in, I say! This food is really awesome, you know?" Her mother's food wasn't five stars, sure, but it was definitively far from being bad. "It would seem your mother isn't completely hopeless in the kitchen, after all!" She forced herself not to narrow her eyes, even thought she was sure the man wouldn't had been able to see it, anyway. It was completely impossible for someone to make such delicious dish out of the blue. Not to mention someone 'completely hopeless in the kitchen'. Besides, what was the point of complimenting someone just to insult them right after it? That was a waste of time at best.

The rest of the diner was spent uneventfully if compared to it's roots. Her father's remarks were still present and her mother was just as quiet, but those things were growing familiar far faster than she hoped they would. It would seem that, unlike the way he looked, her father's words and tones were familiar to her ears - probably a side effect of her "non memories".

What startled her was their utter lack of questions regarding her hospitalization and subsequent amnesia. Her father had "jested" about what he called her "new accent", but that was hardly a questioning. Her mother had said something earlier, but had dropped the matter with nothing but a half-assed thought. She knew the doctor had informed them of her entire diagnosis, so why did they pretended like nothing was out of ordinary?

That night she slept without the decency of an answer.

##

Something woke her up in the middle of the night. She wasn't sure if it was the wind outside or her parent's footsteps in the hallway, but did not care either way. It was just too troublesome to open her eyelids and get up from the bed. In fact, it was frustrating how easily it was to wake her up after so many long hours of trashing around in the sheets.

She feared her nights were forever cursed to be her personal sleepless prisons - that she would not be able to rest as her body begged her to. It would be a dangerous thing to happen to her in her fragile state of mind, that's for sure. The doctor had warned her to rest both mentally and physically if she didn't wanted to meet up with him far sooner than both of them wished her to. It was far easier said than done, though. Maybe she should ask him for some kind of sleeping pills or something...

"They will be here before midday tomorrow..." She heard her mother say from the hallway outside. The woman had told her about guests joining them the next day - the present day, if her maths was correct -, and thus couldn't help but to listen to whatever else she had to say. Maybe it would help her to understand something more about what was happening to herself, even. If not, though, the at least she'd be gifted with some extra knowledge, at least. She wasn't about to turn a deaf ear to free information, that's for sure.

"Great. That's exactly what I need." It wasn't her hard for her to notice the sarcasm dripping from her father's words. She thought to had heard some sort of rage in it, too, but it was hard for her foggy brain to separate reality from dream. "A bunch of cops sticking their noses inside my own house."

There was a pause in their steps and she feared they had noticed that she was awake. She could not bring herself to understand why, but the thought of being caught sent terrifying shivers all over her spine. It was like she was the chosen prey of a pack of starving vultures, somehow, and the feeling was enough to raise alarm bells in her head.

She hoped it was all her mental fragility's fault. It wouldn't be so hard to explain why and how amnesia would be able to influence her perceptions and feelings, but it just felt like too easy of an answer for her to consider. Real life had a knack for being boring, she knew, but something about her situation did not bode well with her at all. Something was being kept from her, and she yearned to know what.

"Look" her mother's voice was almost soothing. Her chosen hurt sent a painful current directly to her brain. She felt like she should remember that word - like it had a meaning far beyond it's simple letters. Maybe it's pronunciation? Was it a favourite word of her mother? It would explain why it feel utterly foreign, yet extremely familiar at the same time. "There will be only two officers and they won't bother us, anyway." She heard a single set of footsteps regain it's life. It was hard and lacked the finesse she had come to know her mother for. "This is not about you, Joel!" Her mother hissed and she heard the footsteps halt. Was that her father's name? If so, then why didn't it sound familiar to her in the slightest? Another thing to blame her screwed up mind for, no doubt. "This is about her."

A tense silence spread through the hallway and she felt cold sweat drip down her forehead. What did she meant by that? Was her father a criminal? Was he one of those bastards who held nothing but disregard towards the law? Their conversation kept raising more and more red flags in her head that she feared the lack of sleep wasn't going to be her biggest worry when they were done.

"It better not be." His tone portrayed a warning she couldn't fully comprehend. She waited for his further words with bated breath, but they never came. All she heard afterwards was the soft cracking of wood as they retreated into their room across the hall. It made her sigh in relief for far more reasons than her tired brain was willing to process.

The winds picked up their speed outside as she rolled around in the sheets and cuddled into herself. She could hear the slamming of her parent's door but paid it no mind. Her head was already too full of questions for her own good, after all, and there was really no need to add anything else to her worry list.

What was it all about? Why was it that the police believed their presence was needed into their home so early in the morning? Was it because of her - of what happened to her? So many important questions, yet so little insufficient answers...

She sighed and rearranged her head on the pillow. Her bed wasn't the most comfortable of places to sleep and the cold and the anxiety weren't friends of hers, but she knew to have slept in far worse places, and was not about to complain. The endless possibilities of what such a fact could entail were not lost to her, but they were a matter for another time. Preferably one in which she did not feared her own parents and had her memories intact.

The bigger question of all was one she could never hope to run from, though. It was a dark, ominous cloud perpetually attached to the insides of her head. It's mere presence alone was enough to spike her anxiety and shake her limbs as if they were made of paper and sand. She was not so sure if she wanted that particular question to be answered at all, though...But what the hell had happened to her?