***
My next visitor was one I had not seen for six years, and one I had not believed was alive. She came full of memories, all of which were appalling, except for those of Alice and Quinn. She was not there, not really, and perhaps she was not real at all. Perhaps I had created her. I constructed her image from fragments of old memories, and then I put dark recollections of what they must have done to her in her mind, and somehow, for some reason, Alice and Quinn were the sole source of light in those dark recollections. If she was my creation, it seemed random that Quinn and Alice should be there, but then, they were never far from my conscious thoughts. Perhaps in my creation of her, I had jumbled together all those I had lost.
In the dream, I could see her face, and I wondered how I ever could have forgotten it. She looked younger, less bloated; clearly, her imprisonment had done some good, because it had forced her to purge herself of alcohol. She was sitting beside me, holding my hand, and she was not talking, but coupled with the pain in her heart, there was a sense of peace. She had finally made contact with me. She had tried for so long, and she had done it once, when I had been under the influence of the trebestia venom. We had met in the hallway of my old apartment building, and changed a memory to our joint liking.
“I’m not going to remember you when I wake up.” I said.
“No.” She replied with a sad smile, “But I’m going to find you.”
“Why?”
She looked at me, slightly puzzled.
“Because you’re my daughter, Brynna.”
“So, because you should?”
She reached out and stroked my hair gently, the way that Adam had been stroking my hair.
“No.” She said firmly, “Because none of it matters anymore, baby.”
“I suppose I should just forget about all the years you ignored me? All the years you spoke to me only so you could insult me or insinuate that I had murdered Luc?”
“No. Baby, I…”
“Go away.”
“Brynna, sweetheart…”
“I just lost my daughter!” I shouted at her, and outside of my mind, my body jerked in my sleep, startling Adam and James, who were once again by my side. “She is gone, and I would give anything to have her back! I was there, I was still alive, even though Luc was gone. You had your chance to be my mother! You had your chance to be Penny’s mother! You don’t deserve another chance!”
“I know.” She told me, and tears started to fall from her eyes, which caused me to roll my own and turn my head away. My mind began to will her away from me. “But you don’t want me to go away, baby. Not really. You latch onto me when you’re scared, or when you’re sad, or when you don’t know what to do. You call out to me, and I answer you, honey. You’ve heard me answer you, haven’t you?”
“Yes, and I always tell you to go away! I am not latching onto you. You’re latching onto me! Go away, Lara. Just go away!”
But she didn’t. She climbed up onto the bed beside me and cuddled up against my back. I could feel her there, and because she felt so real, so present, I knew that the dream would haunt me long after I awoke. The physical contact, as well as the mental contact that had made the physical possible, would reside in me long after she was gone, when I was back in the land of the conscious.
“She’s still in there, baby.” She whispered to me, and she took my hand and rested it on my belly. “She’s so strong. Feel her. Close your eyes, and you’ll feel her.”
“She’s gone.”
“She’s not. She’s holding on. Just like you. She just needs somewhere to go. Somewhere safe. Somewhere…”
She stopped, not wanting to say the word that had crossed her mind, because it was a hurtful word, and she did not want to hurt me. But I could handle hearing it, because I had always known it. I said it for her. My daughter needed a place…
“Undamaged.” I said, and just then, I felt a faint flicker of Grace inside of me. I had believed so strongly that she was gone, because the doctors had said that there was no chance she had survived; the bullet had gone through whatever was left of me down there. Tyre had made sure of that. But she was there, clinging to life, not so much a tangible being anymore, but enough of a tangible being that, in an undamaged, healthy body, she would thrive, she would become tangible, she would be born.
“You know who should carry her for you and Adam, sweetheart. Who will raise her right. Call her.” Lara kissed my head, “And call me, when you need me. I love you.”
She stood up, and I turned around to face her, to watch her leave, so I could tell her she was quite good at leaving, but she was already gone, and I was already surfacing, saying Rachel’s name.