by Stevie Barry
Duncan was settled soon enough, and when he had Donovan properly laid out, he inspected her own finger. It was perfectly fine; the pain she'd felt from Duncan had been entirely empathetic. Interesting.
He fetched a hairbrush and went to work on her hair -- a task that was much easier performed when she was unconscious. She was right in thinking he'd first done it to unnerve her, but there was something pleasant about brushing it even when she wasn't awake enough to not appreciate it. True, it was in need of a good conditioner, but it was fine and very soft, the threads of grey among the black almost like silver.
When he was finally through he touched her forehead, determined to find the source of her stubborn protectiveness. Contact shouldn't be needed, but a lot of things that shouldn't be necessary turned out to be so where Donovan was concerned.
Her mind at first seemed to be a mess, but it didn't take long for him to discover there was in fact a method to it. She'd repressed and compartmentalized quite a bit, and he dove deep to find the oldest of her mental prisons. He was careful to avoid the block that had so confounded him; working around that would take a lot of careful thought and effort.
It didn't take long for him to find something that looked promising. A thread of memory led to a place very early in her childhood.
Given how hard she's worked to repress it, it is surprisingly clear. It's of her house, a tiny, run-down thing in a poor area of Dublin. The paint in the living-room is peeling, worn grey sheetrock showing through in places, and it smells strongly of whiskey and cigarettes. The carpet beneath her small bare feet is ancient and scratchy and threadbare in places, so stained its original color could not be guessed. She's eight years old on this hot summer evening, her soft child-hair stuck to her forehead with half-dried sweat. Though all the windows were open the house is stifling, the stench of stale smoke all but overpowering. How could anyone live like this?
Little Lorna doesn't find it odd. She doesn't mind the heat or mess or smell -- what she minds is her father, who is currently beating her older brother with his belt.
The man looks remarkably like her, Von Ratched thinks. The same olive skin, sharp features, and shaggy black hair, but his eyes are hazel rather than her alarming green. Not a tall man, nor heavily built, and very obviously drunk.
And here is tiny Lorna, launching herself across the fetid room and sinking her teeth into his hand. Her sense of taste is unfortunately acute, and within the memory Von Ratched grimaces at the sour tang of sweat and blood that filled his mouth. This is not, he realized, the first time she's done this; her father has small bite-scars all over his hand and forearm. Apparently she'd always been a small savage.
The violent sting when the belt hit her head reminds him unpleasantly of his mother, but it doesn't bother Lorna much. It hurts, but she is used to pain, and therein lay Von Ratched's answer: her protectiveness and her odd pride. She does indeed take things like this because she believes others aren't strong enough, and in her own warped way she is pleased by that. What a peculiar thing to take pride in. What a peculiar woman, to think of such a thing. Her unconscious defense against this appalling childhood is to secretly believe those who hadn't shared it were somehow weak.
Another memory now, post-fight. Little Lorna sitting on the filthy linoleum of the tiny bathroom, washing her brother's face. He's older than her, Von Ratched knows, and quite a bit bigger, but this is why he so often incurs their father's wrath.
"Will y'hold still, y'eejit?" she asks, and even as a child her voice is peculiarly lovely. Were he not in her memory, he wouldn't have been able to understand her -- surprisingly, her adult accent is actually muted by comparison.
"I don't need your help," her brother growls, as she dabs his split lip with a dirty cloth. His voice trembles, though, and unshed tears glitter at the corners of his blue eyes. His bravado is false, and Lorna knows it.
"Oh, shut it," she says, standing up to wet the cloth at the rusty spigot over the sink. Terribly unsanitary, Von Ratched knows, even if she doesn't. "You do and you'll get it."
She dabs her brother's lip again, and Von Ratched is startled to find she's thinking out ways for her father to die. She fears him, but she also hates him -- a level of loathing no small child should be capable of. This is not the first time she's patched up one of her siblings, or her mother. They all fear her father, but she is the only one who has inherited even more than his temper, who will throw it back at him with all the violence her tiny strength is capable of. No wonder her adult self is so prone to rage, to violence -- from her earliest memories, it is the only way she knows how to protect the ones she loves.
From there Von Ratched finds another memory, this one of her mother. The woman looks nothing like Lorna -- her hair is curly and carrot-red, her eyes a haunted, faded blue. One of them is surrounded by a deep purple bruise, and her nose is swollen.
It's cold in this memory, a damp, dreary Irish winter day. Her mother is wrapped in a stained, threadbare quilt, sitting on the broken-down couch. She holds a brush in one white, skeletal hand, and she's telling Lorna to sit. Her voice is much like Lorna's, strangely beautiful, but it sounds tired, defeated.
Sit Lorna does, and her mother patiently combs the snarls from her long hair. The action gives her a small amount of peace, and now Von Ratched understands why she so hates having him brush her hair -- for as long as she can remember, that has been her mother's job, one of the few positive memories in her small life.
Her mother will die in two years' time, of a cancer only discovered because her father beat her badly enough to put her in hospital. Lorna watches as day after day her mother's life fades away, until finally she finds rest and freedom from her husband's fists.
Lorna's father winds up in prison, and she, her brothers, and sister are sent to foster homes. She can't stand her foster parents, who insist she go to school and church and expect her to adopt a kind of life totally foreign to her. Having spent her childhood running wild, she doesn't know how to handle adults who expect her to do as she's told, and she's too lost in her own grief and rage to understand why she should. She doesn't belong here, she knows, just as she knows her foster parents are no happier with her than she is with them.
She runs away before they can send her back, figuring she's doing both them and herself a favor. It's another warm summer night when she goes, sneaking out the window with her few possessions. She might not like her foster-parents, but she's not about to steal from them.
It's very late and very dark, the air chilling rapidly once full night has fallen. She's cold, but that's nothing new to her, and it doesn't occur to her that she ought to be afraid to roam Dublin at night. She did it often enough when her mother was alive, slipping out her bedroom window to wander. There is a freedom to it that nothing else has ever provided to her, and it offers her something close to peace. In the dark, unseen by anyone, she can weep, can grieve for her mother with no one to think her weak for her tears. For the first time in her life, she begins to know what catharsis is, even if she doesn't know the word for it.
It's not long before she finds a gang, of a sort. Mostly made up of other young teenagers, they sleep rough in warehouses and do as they please. With them she learns how to laugh, how to be free and even often happy, but her temper remains, simmering at the bottom of her mind, given vent to when they get in skirmishes with other gangs. The adult criminal element might ignore them, but they're not the only band of runaways in the seedy part of Dublin.
She secretly loves the infrequent fights, the chance to protect her adopted family and bleed off some of her aggression at the same time. Protecting them makes her feel strong, feel useful -- and she is strong, abnormally so for her size, and sometimes very vicious. It is a viciousness born of love, somehow, and when everything is over and her temper has run its course, she's almost maternal in the care she gives the other members of her gang. She hides her heart well, but it is there.
And that, to Von Ratched, is the most difficult thing to fathom. H
aving never loved anyone or anything in his life, he can't understand the warmth she feels for these people. It's like nothing he's ever known -- fierce and violent, like Lorna herself, but it is more than that. It's the care with which she cleans and bandages wounds, the little songs she sings to distract her patients. And it really is warm, like the sun on a spring day, an unreserved, unconditional feeling so alien to him that he doesn't know what to do with it. It's a pure thing, something Lorna carefully hoards within her mind and heart, rarely fully showing it to anyone. She feels it, but she does not know how to express it, not really. It comes out in her protectiveness, somehow infuses both her temper and her violence. She protects with violence because it is all she knows how to do, all she has ever known.
Lorna knows, in her heart, that she is not a good person. She knows that she could turn into her father if she is not careful. The people she loves, though, make her want to be a better person -- to harness her innate temper into something good, not something destructive. To her mind, someone has to be willing to fight the fights, to deal with the ugliness of the world so others will not have to. This is how she shows her love, the only way she can show it.
And it confounds him. No matter how many of her memories he traverses, Von Ratched gains no more understanding. Love is weakness, of that he is sure. Lorna is sparing with it, so much so that only a handful of people have ever received it, but she keeps it because to her it is very strong. She loses a fiancé, he sees, and with it a pregnancy -- a thing that nearly destroys her -- but she loves the sister she lives with until she flees. She fears letting anyone else in, now, but it remains, a candle in the darkness of her mind. Yes, she is violent and angry and very dangerous to most people, but she attacks in defense of others because she cares.
No wonder she is filled with so much rage. And now that he knows this…oh, the things he can do with it.
She was still dead asleep when Von Ratched left her mind, and he watched her a minute, thoughtful. Donovan barely knew Duncan, and she certainly had no strong attachment to him, yet she defended him as though he belonged to her. Would she do that for others, if she were allowed to? She was a stubborn creature, and a proud one, but after seeing so many of her memories, Von Ratched intended to watch her. To see how much of her full self she would reveal, by accident or by design. Strange, that one who shared his Gift could be so thoroughly his polar opposite.
What he really needed now was a third telepath. It was patently obvious that Donovan was likely never going to cooperate with him -- oh, she was fascinating, yes, but nowhere near an ideal subject. He probably couldn’t break her if he wanted to, but he didn't want to. Pushing her buttons, seeing what she would do under different kinds of stress, could be vastly entertaining, provided he could keep her from destroying everything in the process.
And he had to get behind that wall of hers. Had to. There was nothing in her memory that could explain how it had come to be there, who had built it or what it hid. It was definitely not of her own construction -- had she somehow met up with another telepath, at some point in the past? There had to be a way around the damn thing. He would enjoy finding out how, even if she probably wouldn't. It was going to be a battle of wills, and Von Ratched thought that he'd finally found someone who could give him a run for his money.
This was going to be fun.
----
Not surprisingly, Lorna woke up feeling like absolute shit.
At least she wasn't in pain, but she was still unpleasantly drugged, and would have sold her left kidney for a cigarette. Now she remembered why she'd quit doing hard drugs years ago.
She heard the soft sound of another person's breathing, and when she looked over she found Ratiri lying on a cot not far from hers. His face was ashy, one finger on his left hand splinted, but otherwise he looked okay. It was blessedly dim in here, and she let her eyes adjust before rolling to face him.
He was still asleep, and she'd let him stay that way as long as he could. If she'd had any idea latching onto his mind would land him like this…but then, she hadn't done it on purpose, and she still couldn't undo it. And now that Von Ratched knew about it…hell. Any time she pissed him off, he'd be able to use Ratiri as a threat. She had to get rid of this thing, for both their safety. God knew what Von Ratched would make her do, if he thought he had the ammunition.
"Don't turn it off," Ratiri mumbled, and she jumped.
"What?"
He opened his eyes, still somewhat glazed. "Don't turn it off. Don't break it. As long as he's studying it, he won't do worse to us."
"I'm not sure I want to know what he'll do with it," she sighed. "I'm sorry I dragged you into this."
He coughed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's not your fault. Better your mind latched onto me than him."
Lorna shuddered. "I think it would've let me go barking before it'd do that. Still not fair to you."
"This place isn't fair to anyone. But he's done…surgery…to people, and as long as we've got this, I don't think he'll do it to us. It's not like this thing is terribly invasive."
He sounded incredibly weary, and she knew he was right about one thing, at least: it wasn't invasive. She hadn't known it was there until Von Ratched pushed on it, and it seemed Ratiri hadn't, either. Being stuck with it wasn't actually a hardship -- the only bad thing was Von Ratched's testing methods.
She and Ratiri were both in relatively rotten shape, so hopefully he'd hold off on more tests until they were less bolloxed-up. Wouldn't want to screw with the results, she thought, bitter. Lorna's knowledge of science was shaky at best, but she did know scientists like to control as much as possible in an experiment. No wonder Von Arsehole was one. He was even more controlling than her father, and that was downright disturbing.
"I wonder when he'll let us out," she said, half to herself.
"Hopefully soon. I thought the normal wings were bad, but this place is a nightmare."
Lorna shivered. "I haven't actually seen much'v it. He keeps me knocked out most'v the time."
They both lay quiet for a long while after that, just listening to one another breathe. Ordinarily she wasn't much of a chatterbox, and thankfully it seemed Ratiri wasn't, either. And quiet with company was infinitely better than solitary silence.
She didn't know how much time passed before Von Ratched came to them, but it was long enough for her head to clear a little.
"I am going to let you two go to the common room," he said. "And Donovan, you are going to behave yourself, or I will sedate you again. You are to tell no one of what went on here -- and rest assured, I will know if you do."
Lorna believed him. He'd probably be watching them both like a hawk, and wasn't that an uncomfortable thought. "Got it," she said. "Are you not going to feed us?"
"You will eat there, and will continue to do so until the cafeteria is repaired."
It still wasn't? She couldn't have been in here very long, then. "Right." She just wanted out of here, and away from him.
It was all she could do not to scurry down the hallway once they were released. It was morning, still relatively early, if the height of the sun was any indication. Not knowing precisely where they were, she didn't know just when sunrise was. It lit the hallways into something almost pleasant, and she felt herself relax a little. "I really hate to say this, but I hope he works on someone else a while," she sighed, fiddling with her hair, and froze. "That son'v a bitch, he brushed my hair again."
Ratiri paused with her, giving her a confused look. "What?"
Lorna shook her head. "Nothing. It's just that he brushed my hair that first day in his office to creep me out, and now he's gone and done it again. It's a bit silly, but I really don't like strangers touching my hair." She started off down the hallway again, hoping he wouldn't think her entirely mental.
"In his case, I definitely don't blame you. Are you going to be all right, keeping your telekinesis under control?"
"I should be. It only shows up when I'm right scared, and the only
thing that's scared me so far in here is him."
"You're probably going to get stared at," he warned, and she gave him a dry smile. His eyes, she noticed, were light for his complexion, a warm honey-brown, and they were looking at her with genuine concern. If he could worry so over someone who was near a stranger to him, there was probably a reason her mind latched onto his like a remora.
"That I can deal with. Come on, I'm starving."
People did stare, but she ignored it in favor of the buffet line. Pancakes this morning, along with fruit and orange juice and, wonder of wonders, tea. She pounced on that, and followed Ratiri to a couch. It contained Katje the hooker and, to her surprise, the old man from Pike Place Market. "You're alive?" Lorna asked, almost unspeakably relieved. "Did they lock you up for a bit, or were you just in hospital?"
"Hospital," he said, with a crooked, tired grin. "You been having fun here?"
"Let's go ahead and call it that," she snorted.
Katje gave her a full-blown smile, and that too was somehow relaxing. The woman seemed truly pleased to see her. "You know each other? Why am I not surprise."
"Got caught at the same time. I was hoping I wasn't the only one with a hard head."
"'Course not. Just don't go blowin' anythin' else up for a while, you hear me?"
Lorna groaned. "I'm never going to live that down, am I?"
"Probably not," Ratiri said, trying not to spill his tea as he sat. "It was the best thing any of us have yet seen in here."
"Brilliant," she sighed, and guzzled her own tea. It was ginger, hot and sweet, and it fortified her as nothing else could have. Her horror lingered, but it was bearable now, forced downward into a place she could try to contain it. The previous two days seemed like a nightmare, and she was trying desperately to deal with it as though they truly had been. It was that or go mad. Falling apart could wait until she had more privacy.
"Where were you two?" Katje asked. "What happen?"
"Happened," the old man corrected.
