The images playing out before them should not have been happening. The footage showing Claire's legs wrapped around L's waist, their sighs and quiet moans – God, had they actually moaned? – should not have ever come into existence, particularly from the blonde's point of view. Her eyes were fixated, wide and disbelieving, on the screen. Her throat closed up, too thick to permit her to form coherent words.
"I know you want to fuck me…"
She staggered back, a hand clapped over her mouth in shock as she shook her head fiercely. Elisabeth had turned in a snap movement to face her, facial muscles so tense they could have been rock-hard to touch. In terms of height, the American woman had a good few inches on Claire, and where strength was concerned, she of course had the upper hand, due to her opponent's formerly comatose state.
It was difficult to interpret the lines of L's expression; so many unspoken thoughts polluted it, from triumph at being correct to confusion at Claire's current innocence. Why, when she had been so ardent to separate him from Elisabeth in the first place, would she quail from the confrontation that resulted from her actions? Furthermore, to protest against something that had been proven by surveillance footage… was that not redundant? How could she still claim she had nothing to do with it?
"Well," Elisabeth said coldly, "look who's the liar now."
"I…" she choked out. "That… there's no way that could be me… I don't remember it, any of it. I never-"
Ben was quick to back up his sister. "Yet obviously what you're saying is far from the truth," he barked. "I mean, all you need to do is look at that film! You were all over him like a rash!"
Claire continued to shake her head, completely helpless. She hid her eyes hastily, not wanting them to see that she was so hurt by their accusations. One thing she had always hated was being branded as something she was not, labeled because of something she had not done. In the few minutes of film that had played, every person in the room had managed to turn against her.
"What the fuck are you looking like that for?" Elisabeth demanded. "It's pathetic. You aren't going to get sympathy. We've all seen what you did, Claire. We know who you are now – the type that plays on kindness and then takes advantage of it."
"No…" Claire protested.
"No?" the technopath snapped. "Why are you bothering to lie? We know the truth."
"You don't understand!" the blonde cried.
"No, you're the one who doesn't seem to get it," Ben said sharply. "You don't go around trying to steal other people's boyfriends, it's just not how things work."
As she endured the Reid siblings' latest attack, thoughts began to whirl thick and fast around Claire's skull. How on earth, if this was actually true, could she not recall any of the ordeal that had incurred their outrage? She frowned. The situation was not right. Everything about it was incredibly suspicious. In what circumstance could one be forced to do something that would bring on amnesia?
Her eyes flitted to Light sitting next to newest girlfriend Emilia, who had her arm around his waist. None of the others could fully comprehend, but Claire had extremely good reason not to trust him. She knew what he was capable of. She had seen it all play out in her mind. Still… it could happen here. The conditions were not correct. This time, it was not Light that was at fault.
She couldn't imagine that she had magically gained amnesia of her own accord halfway down a hallway, so there must have been another party to blame for her erratic behavior. She evidently had not been in her right mind at the time.
Hang on. Was it possible something else, a foreign entity, had in fact been in her mind at the time? Could it be that she had been… what, possessed? Controlled? But how could she have been, when none of the people she had spent all this time with had that kind of power, excepting Light, and she was sure it wasn't him – he looked as confused as the rest of them.
Fleetingly, her mind tenuously connected the story she had been told about Elisabeth's business inside Downing Street. The President had not really been the President, rather, the President's mind had not been in synch with his own being at all. Nothing had remained of the USA's elected leader. It was possible that it was a rogue Child doling out these cruelties, so how had Claire come into contact with them?
It would have to be someone she had physically come into contact with, surely. The transfer from one body to another would probably have been difficult to limit otherwise, and even more difficult to track for the one with the power. To willingly give a part of yourself to another's shell, to another person's physical being, would be dangerous and need boundaries.
Since the pleasant pacifist Drew was the only person who did not have a power, Claire briefly considered the fact he may be hiding it for his own gain. However, this still proved unlikely. He was much too nice a man, and Tom knew him far too well to be fooled by anything he could attempt to pull off psychologically. That would leave the last time she had touched a human being prior to seeing L that morning being at the courthouse.
She had to relive the moments that had sped by so quickly in great detail or else risk being unable to figure out the reality of the situation. Who had she touched, or who had touched her? She recounted the events chronologically.
Emilia's mother had snatched up her hand.
Light's father had patted her shoulder.
The lawyer, Mikami, had helped her up from the ground.
Tom shook her hand.
So which one was it? And how the hell was she supposed to determine the ones with and without power? Even more than that, she had to think of a way to explain it all to the Zapped without trying to seem desperate and defensive.
"I think you'd better leave this place and not come back," Elisabeth suggested icily, riling her.
This got Claire's back up. "Oh, will you just fuck off, Sparky?"
There was a collective intake of breath from all those present. Elisabeth froze, staring at the blonde, outraged. "What did you call me?"
"You heard me," she hissed. "I know that I didn't do anything wrong, and I am not taking this bullshit-"
"You still don't get it, do you? Your time here is up! You tried to sleep with my boyfriend, you were rejected and now it's time to handle the consequences," Elisabeth said. "There's a reason they locked you away. You're obviously not supposed to be around normal people."
"Oh, you call yourself normal now, do you?" Claire smirked. "That's a new one. Originally it was you guys versus the world. Now you want to be a part of it just so you can leave me out in the cold?"
"This isn't about the world, this is about you hitting on my boyfriend."
"To be fair, he didn't fully reject any of the advances that weren't my fault, did he?" Claire reminded her.
In response, Elisabeth took an angry step forward, electricity zipping through her veins. She looked pretty ready to rip Claire's head off at any time, however the blonde held her hands out as a gesture for her to pause.
"Everything I was told about the incident in Downing Street…" She spoke quickly, every word still concisely said. "You described the President as not being himself, and that someone else was controlling him; what if, by some coincidence, I happened to have undergone the same experience? Think about it. The person inside the mind of the President told you that his scope for destruction was limited to you, but what if he didn't mean you directly, what if he meant the Zapped as a whole? You in the plural form, meaning us?"
"You can stop trying to bullshit your way out of this. You're not fooling anybody."
"What if I was being controlled then?"
"We've known from the start there was something wrong with you," Ben said coldly. "That's why you were in an asylum and the rest of us were out walking freely."
"Will you stop being so fucking ignorant?" Claire demanded.
Elisabeth shoved her, sending light pulses of electricity through her shoulder. "I will not be criticized or insulted by the whore at the party. Sluts don't get license to bitch about the innocent."
"I told you, I don't remember doing anything," Claire insisted.
"Elisabeth," Mello piped up, "I think she's telling the truth."
"She got you fooled, Mello? Shame, I thought you were smarter," Elisabeth sneered. There was a slight smirk on her face. "You know who you remind me of, Claire? What you remind me of? You remind me of this person who pissed us off, the one who showed her power through her eyes too. Kiyomi Takada tried to kill us all. Maybe you were in league with her, and that's why you survived-"
"Whoa, hang on a second there-" Mello interrupted.
"Mello, please," Lara mumbled, touching his shoulder. "We don't really know anything about Claire, and, I mean, I've known Elisabeth nearly all my life… I don't think she'd lie to us…"
"Elisabeth doesn't know everything," Mello protested.
"You," Elisabeth told Claire, "are just a wasted, lying whore that would take advantage of us all in order to succeed in doing what that bitch Takada failed to do – you'd have us all dead if you could!"
"I didn't do anything, you're not listening to me!" Claire seethed. "Why won't you listen? I was being manipulated by the same person who was controlling the President, can't you see-?"
"Don't fucking lie to me!"
"C," L said loudly over the chaos. Everything seemed to stop.
"I'm sorry, what did you call her?" Elisabeth hissed.
Claire stared at him, breathless with relief. "Thank you."
"C – Claire – please explain the situation to us. I know I was the one to accuse you, but we are not savages. We are willing to listen to your side of the story. Or at least some of us are," L said, frowning.
"Oh, and Elisabeth," Tom added, "if you interrupt I'm gonna kick your head in, you're doing my nut."
"I have no memory of the incident on that film. I only remember, as I've said before, seeing L at breakfast, then going to hang out with Tom, then coming straight here," Claire recounted. "That was my entire day up to this point."
"But you didn't come straight here," Tom told her. "I asked if you wanted to come to the common room after we hung about a little bit, and you said no, you had some stuff to do, so there's a time gap there you have no memory of."
"The mind control must have taken place at some point there, with possible physical contact, so if it passes from person to person, I probably got it transferred to me by you," Claire figured out. "And it was a little after I got into the common room that memories come back really clearly, the rest is just assumption of how I got there, you know, like you don't remember a journey in a dream, you just remember the event."
"But if you're right…" B murmured. "That means whoever controlled your mind is still here. Still in this room. And you came into physical contact with someone else and passed the mind control on."
Claire looked like she was about to be sick. "I handed out drinks." She looked around pointedly. "I came into contact with everyone here."
"So who is it?" L mumbled, looking around.
Everybody glanced at one another suspiciously, not trusting what they saw. Couples moved apart and did not attempt to comfort each other, anxious as they were about their partner not actually being their partner. No one moved.
"It's Tom," Elisabeth said hurriedly. "I bet you anything. He passed it on the first time."
"Well, it could be you, just putting blame on others!" Tom countered.
"Drew!" Ben suggested. "Nobody would've suspected Drew!"
"What if it's still Claire?" Emilia asked.
"It could be L, we know for certain that he's touched her, and he started the argument!" Light put in.
"Rose has been awfully quiet," Misa commented.
The panic had erupted into an explosion of accusations, none daring to trust any of the others. The shouting seemed senseless, heated arguments bouncing off the walls with full force.
Claire stepped out of the circle of quarreling and stopped, catching sight of something that made everyone freeze. "Melody," she said carefully, "why are you wearing a gas mask?"
"Because of the gas."
"What gas?" Matt asked.
"This gas."
The next thing they knew, they were choking, then were swathed in escapable blackness.
'Haptophobia' is the fear of being touched, quite appropriate in this situation.
ARGH WHAT'S GOING ON?
C.