Damon, or the Four, as he was called, was in a brooding mood. It had taken them a long time to get to this point, to the point where Mimi was in the equation and properly. Four knew that he'd been essentially a fucking machine, fucking everything to bits and then again, the enormous pressure, the desperation that had been inside him for years, had taken time to start to release. He had been hidden in a pen, decades ago, an original witch had done it because their magic, their Salvatore magic, was so great that one could not handle it. It took ten and how the original witch had solved this, she had taken Damon, just Damon, and hidden him in a book, in a pen, in jewelry, in crystals and then they had been found.
Number one was the strongest of them, they were sort of like a beehive, they almost had a common mind, but then again each Damon was different. Just for the very reason of how and when they'd been recovered, where the thing they'd been captured in had been. He had been in the pen. He remembered how Bridgette put him in the pen, then gave the pen to Mimi and she put the pen away. It hadn't been bad there in the safe, and Damon had been able to almost put himself in hibernation, biding his time.
But then when Mimi had taken him to the European gig, and even then, how he could sense Mimi, hear her thoughts, be her protector, and yet he was powerless. He'd realized that there was another inside him, ever since he'd been put in pen, but there was no way he could express it. Mimi. He remembered how bad condition Mimi had been in, and he'd had a protector radar even then. And that meant he could see Mimi's physical condition as if from some control panel. You could see everything.
And Mimi had been in a hell of a state. And fight club after fight club, he'd seen the damage, hoped the baby would get better, and then when he himself, or number one, had come in and divorced Mimi. He'd felt it all; it had caused a pressure inside him, a pain when he was helpless to help, unable to comfort.
How since then Mimi had been like a robot, trying to endure and slowly Damon had had to watch Mimi's strength diminish, how she weakened and used everything she had to get the job done. And Damon had actually been relieved when Adam and Charles had grabbed Mimi, started treating her, and he'd still had to watch on his radar as she wouldn't get any better. Damon felt his teeth almost clenching, how he wanted to get out of that pen. To help the baby.
But then he'd been put away again, in the safe, and he'd gone to wait. He didn't even know if Mimi would ever be all right. and if she'd ever be in his life again. Then, when he'd been pulled out, he'd punched number one as hard as he could. The fucking idiot. But when the memories of number one flooded his head and Mariella was his world, everything was different. He didn't even register Mimi, the baby.
Damon remembered how incredibly offended Mimi had been when he'd called her baby, and that nickname had stuck. How much Mimi had been through and how he had betrayed her over and over again. He'd just gone off to fuck his demons away when he could have been starting to put his relationship with Mimi in order. But now he had the time and the will.
Mariella was number ones, she always had been, and even if at first she was the most with the Azores so 10 men and one woman so it didn't get the kind of time one wanted. And as the years passed, Four had come to realize more and more clearly that his feelings for Mariella were in fact feelings of One. And although Mariella was beautiful, charming, lovely; he had never been in the rainbow islands, and Damien had never been taken away from him. It was number one.
He had been himself even then. There was no Damien in him for years and he had also learned that eternity is a long time. But he had that eternity, and incredible as it seemed, he too was growing, evolving as a man and as a multi-shape-shifter. Four sat in his armchair for a moment longer, remembering the first time he'd seen Mimi awake. He had been treating her for a few weeks but he had been a doctor, Mimi was a patient and he hadn't paid that much attention to her appearance.
They had been sitting in the living room when this slender creature, something like 155 cm, dressed in children's jeans, and a pink fluffy shirt, had arrived. Mimi's hair had been blond, just above her shoulders, and at a quick glance she would have looked like a child. But when he looked into Mimi's eyes, he saw her experiences, the horrors she'd already been through.
Mimi was not a classic beauty in the sense that Mariella was. Mimi had big dark blue eyes and facial features like a fairy's. Delicate, but Mimi's expression spoke so clearly of the fire that burned inside this woman. He was determined to test and when he introduced himself and shook Mimi's hand, her grip had been very strong and then he had seen into the soul of this fighter, there was a fire burning like no other he had ever met.
He knew how unique Mimi was already physically but also her spark, her soul, was something he, a thousand-year-old, strong telepath and vampire, had never met. And they had fought, more times than the four of them could even count. Well, Mimi and Number One.
He remembered how Mimi's eyes had flashed as he'd called her baby, but still, the nickname had stuck. Damon awoke from his reminiscences as the scent of strawberries floated up his nose. Mimi was on the move and he decided to go see what she was up to. It was hard being a telepath, even though he was in complete control of his abilities, but he wanted to help and he had learned to do more than just fuck recently, as said before, some knot inside him had opened up and he was starting to want to do more.
He had helped Mimi give birth once but that had gone wrong too and Mimi's life, well it was wild. Mimi sacrificed herself for the pack more than once, didn't tell number one all the facts, she just went and did it. And Number Four laughed in his mind that this war between Mimi and Number One was going to go on for a long, long time. He was actually glad he wasn't the leader of the pack.
He got to be a husband, a confidant, who knows what. Number one, well he was the leader of the pack and that's why he sometimes played tricks on Mimi and reacted all wrong. But now number four got up and lazily went off to see what the young lady was up to.
Mimi was walking towards the hall.
Four stepped up to Mimi and said " What are you up to, baby?"
Mimi looked at the four of them in surprise, then frowned slightly and said,
"I'm going to the gym, I need to get myself in a bit more shape."
Four looked clinically over Mimi's body. This one weighed 46 kilos, like top condition, so really the ideal weight would be something around 70 kilos but Mimi being Mimi and having her own rage so gym training was one way the lady curbed her rage. Except it didn't help per se, at least not completely because Mimi had always had to restrain herself and that was the lady's way, it resulted in an emotional force inside Mimi, and a huge one at that.
But he knew it was the number one job and when he could never tell from the weather vane.
Damon said,
" Fine, I'll come and have a look, baby, and then I can tell you where there's room for improvement. Right?"
Mimi looked at him and sighed and said,
"I can't stop you but I don't need a trainer, I'm just going to flex a bit and get fit unless you want to fight?"
Four watched through Mimi. This one had curves, not as much as usual, but with Mimi's tight, firm body and her unbridled passion in bed, she was a must. And he hadn't had much to do with Mimi, he understood that he had been a fucking machine almost all the time but shortly before their longest separation, they had begun to grow closer and the seven years had been painful for him too. And now Mimi was back and they would start a new life.
Four said lowly,
"I can fight baby, but then it'll probably lead to us sanctifying the whole gym and possibly more."
Mimi glanced at him and snorted, continuing on her way. Then they arrived at the gym and Mimi went straight into action. Damon leaned against the wall and watched.
Mimi was fast, strong, and untamed. Like a force of nature and when Mimi started to get going Damon sensed Mimi's rage which she picked up and then came the mistakes. They weren't that big or of any great significance but Damon's keen eyes did pick them up. In a rage, Mimi was fast and strong, but sloppy, and often the punch or kick didn't go quite where it was supposed to, even when it did its job. And the more the rage came out the more noticeable the mistakes were.
Damon realized there was more to it than that. Mimi has another bad memory, experience, or something unpleasant and is literally trying to beat it out of herself. But when it doesn't always work, not even close. After an hour of beating, kicking, and almost raging, Mimi stopped for a moment and dried her face and chest with a towel and sat next to the wall for a moment, and sighed.
Damon straightened up and walked over to Mimi, sat down next to her, and said softly,
" What are you trying to banish baby, what is it now? Something to remember. How about you tell me that story, that memory so I can finally and finally help you? I am no longer powerless and unable to do anything for you."
Mimi looked at him, sighed, and said,
"It's nothing, Damon, just leave it."
Damon put his arm around Mimi's shoulders, pulling his sweaty wife against him, and said,
" Come on baby, start talking. Number one and Mariella's not here. But I am. Do you know how fucking much I suffered during that whole European game? How did I see you, I already had a protector radar, you know? And I knew about Damien, I could feel him gone. It was part of the magic. How I was powerless and watched you weaken, hurt, and then number one divorced you. Please, baby, let me help, just this once."
Mimi turned to look and looked Damon straight in the eye.
"When I don't know, if we get closer then Mariella will come between us, and I can't, I mean I can't take it anymore. That seven years was enough. It was enough and I don't want it anymore."
Damon said,
" Hey, don't worry, I'm a fucking machine in Mariella's eyes, she's not watching me. Come on baby, tell me what you got? A memory, come on little lady, tell me. I'll help you. It's all right and it's gonna be all right. "
Mimi sighed again and said,
" It was one gig, back in the day, during those seven years. You probably didn't know that I was a prisoner in a pharmaceutical facility 16 times. Well, we had one place, one big facility that we were guarding and we'd drawn up plans for it, and everybody, I mean there were 25 of us and Dexter and Murdock, Magnum, Alaric and we'd gone through everything so damn carefully. I and these 25 would go there, the others had their own jobs to do. We had to go into that facility through the woods so we could get to the back of the facility where the drain cover was, we were supposed to go in the drains and everything had to be in order.
We left at 6:00 in the evening and drove for four hours. Then we got to the site and there on the other side of the woods, it would take us about an hour to go through the woods and there was a talk that I would go ahead in cat form and I would smell if there was a problem. We started walking and I was almost there when I stepped on the trap, I mean the snare and my hind leg. I couldn't do anything in cat form and I assumed, being a crazy, foolish person, that it was just a coincidence and waited for my team to arrive.
And when they arrived, several darts were fired at me, the lights came up from the roof and there were so many people. And I was pinned by my leg and I was about to eat my leg off but then they threw a net over me and started hitting me with taser sticks so that the drug that had been shot into me started to take effect.
You see my rage, can't withstand electricity, and if somebody electrocutes me while I'm trying to use my rage to keep the medicine from working, the rage doesn't work, so I started to waver and all I could hear was my group being chased and I didn't know who was going to get caught or killed. "
Mimi sighed and Damon squeezed her against him; Mimi's memory was rotten, and he was unraveling it and it was going to leave another big cavity and Damon could already feel his teeth wanting to velvet Mimi. But first, the whole memory would have to come out.
Four was calming Mimi down and Mariella asked him in his head,
" What are you doing, I thought we could spend some time together, number one went to make dinner."
Four sighed, Mimi had been right and Mariella was jealous of him already. He said in a firm voice.
"I'm with Mimi now and I'm erasing a fucking bad memory. Did you know that this unique creature, this one of my own, had been held prisoner in a medical facility 16 times over the seven years? "
Mariella was silent and said,
" Maybe me and number one should come there then. It requires anesthesia if the memory is rotten and Number One needs to know."
Four said,
" Never mind, you'll find out, I'll help Mimi now. Because I want to, make food, fuck all you want, but give me a break, I've already got the memory and it's really rotten. "
Mariella said, " Fine, but I'll tell number one, he might listen."
Four snorted in his mind. Mimi sighed, and almost shuddered and Damon said,
" Go on, it's fine."
Mimi went on, her voice quiet, but there was a pain in it, self-loathing so clear, and Damon had to restrain himself from starting to convince her that it wasn't always Mimi's fault.
"I woke up in bed, tied up, a thousand different things dripping down on me and I was really medicated, weak and sore. And I felt all this metal. I tried to get myself untied but I had metal spiked shackles and my arms were still tied up, a strap went over my waist, and there were spiked shackles on my legs. And I was so fucking weak.
I could feel the spikes biting deeper into my wrists and I tried to wrench my arms free. I couldn't connect with my rage and it was so damn hard to think of anything clear, anything other than panic and despair, the fucking drugs and metals that were being dripped into me. I didn't even think about what was happening to my group, what had already been done to me.
Then people came into the room and no Sark, these were completely different people. They started examining me, they didn't ask me any questions, they just took some readings with some fucking thing and one guy said
" This is done, now is the time."
And then they left and people kept coming in to bring more drugs and I started to feel pretty bad again, it hurt, I felt so fucking weak and powerless, I couldn't get away and I could see all the drugs they were dripping into me.
Then I was moved to another room and they put a cannula in my carotid artery, my jugular vein and I knew I'd had to clean people's blood in my time and it was hard work. I was now strapped down on my side and I still couldn't get out, but I was starting to clear up a bit, but you see that was the name of the game.
Then they brought the first one in. A member of my team and he had cannulas around his neck as well. This main researcher came into the room and said,
" Come on flea, now we're going to do experiments like this. So you've got some metals, some experimental drugs stuck in you and you're going to digest them in a special way. So you've got a hell of a lot of new compounds in you. Let's see you kill your friend. We'll connect your bloodstream and you won't stop your heart, but how long can your friend take all that stuff in your blood? You've got 65 liters of blood, give or take, and your friend's got 5 liters, so pretty much he's going to get your blood and whatever else is in there. And as people are fragile, but it can take time so we put you two face to face like this so you can talk about it before you kill your friend .as you can see, he's perfectly fine, very healthy, and well, not for a while."
They connected the cannulas and the blood started flowing and it became apparent pretty quickly that I was indeed killing my friend. And I wasn't strong enough to finish him off painlessly with poison. I tried to struggle to get the cannulas out, to do anything I could while watching my friend poisoned, how he suffered, slowly dying, slowly struggling, and knowing all the fucking time he was going to die.
His breathing, was frantic at first and then it became gasping, desperate, he couldn't breathe and then he started bleeding, his nose, his ears, even his eyes and I could see in his eyes the regret of why he had joined the fleas.
He only realized that he shouldn't have, I'll kill them all. It took eight hours. Slowly and he was conscious the whole time. And I was suffering because human blood was a cleansing treatment for me and all the shit started coming through my skin or I threw up. I was sweating and running a fever.
The fucking scientist came in several times to see where we were going and they were fascinated by how the human blood was affecting me. Then my friend was dead, and they disconnected us, and took him to the autopsy, right in the same room, so I could see and hear everything, his body was then burned.
They probably stuffed me with more drugs and shit, I was pretty unconscious, and then when I started to come to, there was the next member of my group. And we were already hooked up.
This time it took 24 hours, they had changed the substances they put in my blood. We talked, we tried and she tried to convince me it was ok, she didn't mind and she knew what she was doing.
Every time my friends died, when I murdered them, they opened the body in the same room and told me in such fucking detail how I had killed them. I still remember every statement, word for word and I'd know they weren't lying, I'd seen the symptoms, I'd know. Do you know what a bergamot does to my blood? "
Four was silent, he wanted to destroy the scientist and he realized that the scientist was still alive. He felt Mimi's desire for revenge and realized why she had come to the gym.
He said, "I've never come across a bergamot before, so what did it do?"
Mimi looked at him for a moment and said,
"Let me show you. Don't worry, it will fade in a couple of hours."
Mimi teleported out a one-milliliter syringe with just a hint of the stuff in it, Mimi looked at him and said,
" Now you can't drink from me until this is gone, or shall we say you really shouldn't drink from me. This is a bergamot extract, 1% strength and there is very little of it here."
Mimi inserted the needle into her vein and pressed the plunger. The protector's Radar began to alert immediately as Mimi's blood pH began to drip and drip. Eventually, it corresponded to battery acid. Mimi was now taking deep breaths and Damon could see that this was not good.
"Why on earth baby, you just poisoned yourself. Now young lady, no more of your tricks and no more bergamot, your blood is now battery acid."
Mimi nodded and said "They put a dose of bergamot in me once about 100 times what this was and then they connect us again. Do you know how much it hurt my friend when my blood burned her from the inside out? How she screamed in pain and I hoped she would die quickly, but I had been given something to keep my pulse slow, and my heart wasn't beating as hard as normal, so the acid would flow slowly.
It took a while and I'll never forget the scream, the smell of slowly acid eating away at someone's insides, blood vessels and all, and the autopsy, all the damage, and how long he lasted. Then they fed me tomatoes, herbs, and all the harmful stuff and so I poisoned the next member of my group. Everyone was caught and I killed them all, I apologized to everyone and some of them understood, but I did hear the truth so many times, how with me when you get under my charisma how I pull everyone in and kill them all?
How many regretted that they were with me, and I had considered them my friends, some even forbade me to go to the relatives, because I had no right, but that's why I had to go. When I escaped from that institution after three months, I was nothing but skin and bones, nothing but rage and despair.
No one could get me to sleep, no matter what Colin did. I didn't sleep because my friends would have come into my dreams again and I would have had to relive the horror, to look them straight in the eye and find the moment when they discovered that I wasn't as strong, as invincible as I had let on, that I couldn't protect them, not at all. A year and I was fine, it took me a whole year and my rage was so high it was never on."
Mimi sighed and fell silent. Damon managed to pull the whole rotten memory away, Mimi was still panting, and even though the protector's radar showed that Mimi's blood pH was slowly rising, that plant would be really poisonous and he would have to find where Mimi was hiding, where she grabbed that syringe from.
"Mimi, my love, you should sleep for a while so I can get that cave that memory had caused out of your head, I'll fill it with all the good stuff. "
Damon said, still holding Mimi close to him.
"I have a cocktail ready if you want one."
Number one said from the doorway. His expression was full of regret, he hadn't caught Mimi's stress, Mimi's distress and now fucking machine made Mimi open up and tell him one horrible memory. Damon had looked into the past, just a glimpse, and it had been too much.
He walked over to the other side of Mimi and said,
" Baby, that was a horrible experience and now you need to rest like number four said, but I know you're better now, or I understand why you're having trouble with your meds, and maybe you do need to take it easy, but baby, I'm still so fucking sorry for the whole seven years, and everything I put you through. "
Mimi was clinging to number four now and he was stroking and soothing, number one was sighing and putting on a numbing energy and pushing the needle into Mimi's upper arm and pressing the base of the plunger.
He stood up, and said, " Then bring her to medbay, let's see the blood tests again."
Four nodded, barely even visibly, he was now completely focused on Mimi and stroked her, purring softly.
Number one walked out of the hall, wondering in his mind how jealous he was. That's him and then it's not. He would have so wanted that in that number four's place, he would have been. Helping Mimi, listening to that awful story, supporting her, but at the same time he realized that Mariella would have come when she sensed his distress and he would probably have taken her in his arms, not Mimi. And that would have been wrong to Mimi.
He understood the 4 too, he had listened to all of this in his mind; he understood how this pack was mutating, how all versions of him were finding themselves, and how they were then more the Damon that Mimi was with.
He was the core, the flank type, the darling type but when these versions were taken they had been Mimi's Damon on them, not him. Therefore, this pack life would become more and more interesting and different.
And Mariella had noticed the same thing. Two five and seven were the closest to the core Damon, but then all the others, they were completely different types and she would have to start getting to know them, but what if they wanted Mimi and not her? Then Mariella sighed in her mind and decided to go help in the medbay where four had just carried Mimi when she had finally fallen asleep, holding onto four the whole time.