The talking seemed to have been a good idea. She didn't know how something that could be so devastatingly, horrendously bad in one situation could be at all good in another but she tried to roll with it even if every fiber of her being struggled and fought tooth and nail against it. In the factory any sound was rewarded with pain and suffering but here...here in Narnia, they seemed to relish even her very few spoken words. She could feel their eyes on her, not cruel but watchful - almost protective. It made no sense, none of it did, and she wished things would just begin to make some amount of sense again, even if it hurt.
"Ya ne ponimayu…" she muttered softly to herself. "Pochemu? Pochemu...nyet! Eto ne vazhno." She made sure to keep her voice very soft, just barely even at the level of a whisper, as she kept muttering while she slid further back into the couch and curled in on herself. Nothing had ever been quiet enough in the factory - she had always been heard and made to suffer the repercussions of her actions...even when she actually hadn't said anything but they decided she had been speaking all the same She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and tried to forget. "Prosto zabud' ob etom. Mne nuzhna pomoshch'. Pomogi mne...pomogite pozhaluysta mne. Da nyet navernoye..."
She could feel hands on her upper arms, gently pulling her forward and into more of a sitting position but she still would not open her eyes. She continued her quiet muttering despite the tears that slipped down her cheeks. She scrubbed at her face fiercely to dry the evidence of her weakness until more hands caught her wrists in a gentle but firm grip, tracing circles on the backs of her hands with soothing thumbs. She heard their voices then...and for a moment she allowed herself to listen to their words.
"Kenzi, it's okay. You're okay." She thought the woman speaking was the one called Bo but she didn't want to open her eyes to see for certain. "I'd tell you not to go full Russian on me...but seriously, pick any language you want if you'll just keep talking."
"Can you understand any of what she's saying?" That had to be the blonde.
"I get nyet and da...but nothing else. We didn't exactly devote a lot of time to studying modern languages during our girls' nights out."
"A shame, that."
"Yeah, tell me about it."
She continued to listen to their conversation with half an ear, her thoughts still swirling in their foggy, confused vortex but the edges seemed to be on the verge of clearing and she did not want to open her eyes for fear of losing that tiny grain of clarity. She started rocking again, gently swaying forward and back even as her hands remained in the cool, firm grip of one of the women. The repetitive motion was soothing.
A sudden flash of knowledge threw itself into sharp relief in her mind and her eyes flew open instinctively. She darted glances at both women - first toward the brunette because she was crouched directly in front of her, it was the brunette who held her hands, and then toward the blonde who perched on the edge of an armchair near the couch. She kept alternating her gaze between the two until she finally settled on studying the dark brown eyes of the woman Bo.
"Mackenzie Malikov," she murmured, feeling her eyes grow wide as she said it. "Myenya zuvoot Kenzi." She shook her head in frustration to push the words away - those were the wrong words, not wrong altogether but wrong for these people. The words she wanted to say were different. The words she had said meant nothing to these people. She didn't know exactly why she was so sure of that, but she was certain without a doubt. She paused and licked her lips with a dry tongue. The glass of water was placed in her hands before she could even think to ask for it. She took a sip of water and began very slowly and deliberately to speak. "My name is Macenzie Malikov." She couldn't keep the tone of surprise from seeping into her words even as quietly as she had uttered them. "I'm Kenzi…"
Bo nodded slowly, the eagerness in her face and eyes almost too much for her to handle. She had to look away but not before she saw the smile blossom in Bo's eyes.
"Shit," the blonde murmured without malice, her voice wavering slightly.
A gentle laugh escaped Bo and she glanced back into her eyes, she could tell the other woman was barely holding on to her excitement. Bo's smile grew wider. "You're doing super, Kenz. You are doing so great. Yes, you're Kenzi...Mackenzie Malikov."
She nodded slowly in response and acceptance.
"Kenzi," she murmured slightly louder, feeling it out as she said it. There was a familiarity as it rolled off her tongue, some amount of muscle memory that wasn't entirely squelched by her time in the factory.
She narrowed her eyes in concentration. She had not always been in the factory, she knew that in a strictly academic sense. It had seemed like she had always been there but that was nothing more than their scare tactics. The problem was that she just really didn't remember anything before her time there. She had a vague notion that the before time, as she thought of it, had existed but nothing to make it any more real than her daydreams.
Exhaustion made her head loll as she struggled to keep her eyes open despite their heaviness.
"Kenzi, why don't you get some sleep? Do you want to lay down? Take a nap maybe?"
She knew she must have drifted off for a few minutes because the blonde was crouched down on the floor in front of her and she couldn't see Bo. She tried to calm her sudden panic by taking a few deep breaths, ignoring the pain that flared in her chest as she did so. She reached out and snagged the blonde's hands with iron fingers.
"Bo?" she whispered. Her brain tried to rebel against all that had happened, spinning a web of thoughts that she was really still in the factory dreaming of having been rescued. Her brain tried to convince her that soon the guards would come and savagely rip her from her dream to begin their tortures anew. Really, it seemed much more likely than to have been finally saved after so very long.
The blonde met her gaze steadily. "She just went upstairs. She just needed to talk to the doc for a minute but she'll be right back." The woman squeezed her fingers. "I promise, she just didn't want to wake you up."
She nodded slowly. She kept her gaze on the blonde. There was something shoved way back in her memory about her and she tried to draw it closer to the surface.
"Val'kiriya."
The blonde woman tilted her head slightly as if she was listening but was waiting for more. The woman's forehead furrowed as she watched her.
A small smile twitched the corners of her lips. "Ty," she whispered with a barely existent nod at the blonde woman, "val'kiriya."
"I don't know Russian but that sure sounded like Kenzi just outed you as a valkyrie."
oOo
Tamsin ignored Dyson's comment.
"She's remembering." Bo had come to a standstill at the side of the couch. Everyone had filed back down the stairs and stood in quiet expectation, waiting to see what Kenzi would do or say next.
"She is," Tamsin agreed. "She asked for you when she woke up from that doze and you were gone." Tamsin, still reeling from Kenzi's quiet declaration, turned away from Bo and answered Kenzi. "Yeah, I'm a valkyrie."
Kenzi nodded wrinkling her brow in concentration. "Tam…" Her gaze had a distant quality to it and Tamsin stayed quiet so as not to disturb her. "Tam…" Suddenly, Kenzi's pale blue eyes locked onto Tamsin's. "Tamsin."
Lauren smothered a chuckle as Tamsin smiled at Kenzi. "Very good, goth girl. What's your next trick gonna be?"
Kenzi almost smiled back in response, almost. She huffed out a small breath and lifted her chin enough so that she was looking up as Lauren. Her gaze wavered a little and Lauren dropped down to sit next to her in response. Then she waited.
Kenzi cocked her head again, her lips pursing slightly into a moue. Her eyes seemed to study every aspect and feature of Lauren's face. Finally, she murmured, "Vrach."
Lauren waited but couldn't keep herself from saying, "I'm not surprised that it's Russian she's speaking. It's her first language, after all. Even with her full fluency in English, she would tend to revert to the first language she learned."
Kenzi wasn't finished. "Doc. Laur… Laura?" She shook her head. "Nyet...no. Lauren." She nodded her head firmly. "Lauren."
"Yes, I'm Lauren. I've missed you, Kenzi." She carefully took one of Kenzi's hands between her two. "We've all missed you and worried about you the whole time you were gone. I'm so glad we managed to find you and bring you back home." She reached out to brush a stray, limp lock of hair back from Kenzi's eyes.
Tamsin saw a nameless expression flitter across Kenzi's face. The younger woman was trying to work something out in her mind, Tamsin could see that much, but what it might be was still a mystery. They waited in silence until a rapping sound from upstairs drew everyone's attention and jolted Kenzi into sudden motion. She was standing and on the far side of the room before anyone could even begin to react.
"Kenzi, it's okay," Lauren tried to reassure her. "It's okay. It's probably just the psychiatrist I asked to stop by. She said she would try to come by today to meet you." Lauren held her hands up and out in a gesture of assurance. "I'll just go upstairs," she nodded toward the stairs, "and talk to her for a minute."
Tamsin watched Kenzi's face, noting the walls that had sprung back up behind her eyes. This whole healing process was going to be a series of three steps forward and two steps back, she knew, but damn it was a bitch to have to stand by and watch. She wouldn't say it aloud out of concern for how Kenzi would take it, but damn it all if she didn't miss the ballsy bitch the little goth girl used to be.
Bo made it to Kenzi's side and had her back on the couch before Lauren appeared at the top of the stairs with another woman Tamsin couldn't remember having seen before. Must be Lauren's head shrinking friend…
They descended the stairs together and Tamsin watched in eagle eyes to see how Kenzi would react to the introduction of a stranger into their midst...into her safe place. At the first twinge of panic in the girl's expression, the woman was going to have to go even if that meant Tamsin physically dragging her out of the building by the hair.
"Kenzi?" Lauren began, "This is a friend of mine. She works with people who have lived through traumatic ordeals. She helps them to regain some sense of themselves. I thought maybe she could try helping you too."
Kenzi's eyes slid across the people who were gathered in the room, finally flitting fleetingly on the newest member's face. There was no real interest in her reaction to the shrink, but there was no particular fear either so Tamsin held her tongue. If the woman could really help Kenzi, then she was all for letting her try. Kenzi needed all the help she could get to return to her old bad-ass self.
To be continued...