Disclaimer: This story is just a work of fanfiction that purpose is for me to expand on my writing skills, and to share with others who might enjoy giving it a read. I do not own NCIS or MI5 Spooks, or any related characters to those shows. All I own are my imagination and the original characters that I come up with on occasion.
Pairing: Lucas/Evelyn, Gibbs/Shepard
Warnings and Tags: Drama, Family Drama, Romance, Hurt and Comfort, Crimes and Criminals, Implied Past Abuse, Torture, Canon Typical Violence, Mentions of Non-Con
Author's Note: This is a complete rewrite of "The Girl in Memory: Spooks Edition". I had hit a whole brick wall with that story, so I am hoping a rewrite will bring back the love that I feel for it and help me finish it. Author's Note 2: I only post my stories on AO3 and FFnet. I do not have a Wattapad, DeviantArt or a GoodReads account.
A Memory of the Stolen
by ThroughtheMirrorDarkly
prologue
it is not yet day
8th May 2011
Huntington, Virginia
Something hummed deep within her blood—an electric current that ran from the roots of her hair down to the tips of her toes while Evelyn Carter stared out the windshield, unblinkingly as the sheets of rain crashed down from the darken sky. The city lights dwindled out of existence the further down the highway she drove, but the knot in her throat did not ease in the slightest. There was this chill that permeated deep into her soul, old fears and new fears that threatened to strangle the fragile roots that she wished to grow. A weight rested upon her spine, crushing in its intensity, and made it hard to breathe.
Her life came to a crossroads where the margin for error outweighed the slightest glimmer of compromise. A battle with her heart versus her head that had no end in sight. She raked her tongue against the back of her teeth, aggravation building up in the base of her neck like static. Maybe she should have started somewhere new, somewhere so far away from her past that the ghosts and phantoms were just a flash out of the corner of her eye and not staring her so boldly in the face but—but she longed for the halcyon days. There were scattered visions of a blue house caught in the buttery beams light on a summer afternoon, with the smell of honeysuckles and daffodils in the air. Her mother was a hazy recollection of red hair and a warm smile, while her father was a shadowy figure haloed by a work light and standing over oak timber being carefully crafted into a boat.
Her dreams had been simple then. She had dreamed of being a ballerina, a zookeeper, and an astronaut. But those dreams had belonged to a different girl with a different name—a girl that was twenty years dead in the ground. Two decades saturated in bloodshed, indoctrinate at young age into a world of shadows and deception, in order to survive impossible circumstances. There had been an ugly price to be paid for freedom, especially when all the secrets you knew could shake the foundation of governments, but that is why she gathered connections—horded them like a child hording snowballs until the very last possible moment. How long she spent untangling the web of lies and deception, piecing together a broken memory from scratch.
It was reckless to be here. It was selfish to think that she could go home. The past wasn't a door, waiting for her to waltz right on through, and she knew this in her heart of hearts. Her backpack was full of passports, IDs, and all manners of papers for a quick escape should she needed it. There were several weapons hidden on her person, and a gun that rested in the empty passenger seat, locked, and loaded. Even with her new-found freedom, there would always been the possibility of tigers at her back and she should just live her life off the grid, far away from anything that could be used against her.
And then against better judgment, she went searching for answers. The old photo from the early nineties, if the fashion sense was any indication, of her father had been easy to obtain. It had meant more to her than she thought it would. For years, her parents had become a backdrop in her mind. Mostly names without faces, with the occasional flicker of a memory. But now she had an image, a crystal-clear picture of a real person. It was a tangible thread to her past and—
And Evelyn wanted to meet him so desperately.
"Let's forget that, shall we? The past is dead, dear heart."
Evelyn felt her heart lurch up into her throat. A red-hot prickling sensation washed over in a tidal wave, and her teeth sank into the side of her cheek so hard that she tasted blood. Her memories made her want to vomit and let a jackhammer of headache in her skull; it was a battle to wipe away the grim and stains to reach her childhood memories. It was a battle she fought all her life to hold onto pieces that monsters tried to chip away. Her scars ran deep, too deep that she did not think she could ever dare to speak of it.
Tears prickled at the corner of her eyes, she tried to stop the oncoming panic attack with several deep breaths because having a panic attack while driving on a busy highway. It was a recipe for disaster.
Reprieve was granted in the form of a red stop light, and she took a moment to sink back into her seat, eyes flickering up to her reflection in the rearview mirror. She had large eyes which were cautious and so painfully blue, sat neatly above dark circles bruised into her skin from many restless nights lost to nightmares. Her dark brown hair bound in a careless mess of a ponytail, and the cold air blasting from the vents toyed with the loose strands like a lover would. Her cheekbones were made more prominent by the lingering gauntness haunted her features from months of starvation and worse, and her recovery was a slow-going process even two years later. Her skin had always been on the paler side, but there was a sickly ashen hue seemed ever present nowadays.
When was the last time I looked human? When was the last time I felt human? she thought quietly to herself.
Her life was unsteady as the ocean, ever changing and unpredictable. There was no home, no place to call her own. Just brief ports in the storm where she could only appreciate a moment's splendor of the great many places she had travelled, often too engrossed in work. It was startling now to be given a chance to build a lasting home after so many years, and she chosen the last place on earth that she should be.
The exit that led to the small hamlet—a place that was only a hazy imprint in her brain like a faded, water-colored dream—was only a couple mile up ahead. The exit that would lead to where her father lived…where she had once lived and called home. It should be so easy to go home, but indecision stabbed into her gut without mercy.
She wanted to go home…
She wanted to find home again…
But she didn't think she had a place there anymore. Not as who she was now.
The light turned green, and the car rolled down the highway, and her palms grew clammy. Her pulse was a roar, pounding against her eardrum and her vision grew dark and choppy until the very second the exit came and went. Emotions and thoughts that had been chained up came unbound, and she was that scared seven-year-old girl again. Lost and alone in the woods, covered in the blood of her mother, befriending one wolf to escape another. Kelly Gibbs was two decades gone, but she cast a long shadow on Evelyn's entire existence.
Please review! :D