Kierra

Replaying events from mine and Faline's first known encounter with the supernatural, it takes place right in the parking lot of the mall less than a couple miles away. I start first with meeting the large black wolf though.

From there I jump to the parking lot and the bizarre conversation that went on. The moment when I was taken down by my first glimpse of a Werewolf in 'Garou' form. My fear not for myself so much as for my sister.

I keep a lid on Faline's memories, those are not ones to be shared. Not with Xavier and definitely not a young boy who had to go through the same. I have to pull back on the emotions as I go over my attack, they're both feeling the pain I went through. Keep forgetting that I can project any emotion I'm feeling or have felt. Bastion's already in tears and Xavier's hands are clenching. Can just imagine what his attack was like, so I try fading things out, but my arm is grabbed and he looks at me.

"Don't. Let it play out."

I nod, but I pull back as much emotion as I can. The pain I had gone through would have been enough to tip a normal person into insanity. Only reason I got through it was and is my high pain tolerance, having been through several different kinds already.

He keeps hold of my arm but loosens his grip as my attack is played through. My long semi-numb trek back home in mud that was quickly forming. Almost forgot it had started raining, could really go all out and say even the sky cried for us. My own brush with losing mind over events that went on, my brain wanting to deny everything it'd just seen and went through, the walk up the porch step to the propped open screen door. Hadn't even realized it at that point. Only thing I had really noticed was the front door being unlocked and open. Getting just inside where I fell to my knees and passed out.

I stop there to give them a break. Even with my pulling back as much as I could, I couldn't hide all of it. I look to Bastion, asking in whispers if he wants me to skip over how I found him. Opening his swimming blue eyes, he shakes his head. Inclining mine, I continue.

Continue to waking in a room not my own, the harsh scent of having been in my own waste for what turned out to be three days. Xavier's hand, that's still on my arm, clenches again. Don't think he's aware of doing it though, his eyes cloudy with watching my ordeal.

Also show them the changes I had noticed in myself. The lack of needing the glasses I had lost in the parking lot, enhanced sounds and smells, and the absence of pain that I should have been swimming in. The change had been delayed with all the drugs that had been pumped into me, it didn't stop everything, but enough. The cramping my body had started to go through.

I skip over the nightmare I had just before waking, not wanting to share that at all. My eyes close as a hot tear escapes me at those memories wanting to override the more recent ones. I pull back from them both, even taking a step back as my breathing quickens. The looks on their faces lets me know I didn't pull out in time. I look out the window, trying to hide my shame.

"You weren't lying...when you said you had a past almost like mine."

I don't acknowledge his statement since it's full of shock and disbelief. If after all this time he thought I'd been lying, then I'm doing something wrong here. My eyes close as a pang of guilt hits me, knowing that I should have expected it since I'd been the same way when people tried to 'identify' with me.

Can feel the air temperature dropping around me, so that answers one question. Emotion seems to be the spark for many things. I analyze how I seem to be doing it, and pull it back, the action actually working as it starts to warm back up.

Xavier's large hand slides down my arm to take mine, not demanding anything, just holding. Giving me that small lifeline if needed. It takes a bit, but once I have a tighter rein on memories, I ask if they wish for me to continue.

Eyes are closed and pointed towards the window, but I feel their response. I start back up just before the door had opened to show Fred and James, Fred was Bastion's stepfather, just like once upon a time, James had almost been mine.

The disbelief I felt when told I'd been there for three days, my attempt to escape before I was grabbed and drugged again. Luckily by that time I had been awake long enough with a quickened heartbeat that adrenaline and metabolism were kicked into high gear which quickened my body reforming on the inside. The drug was a paralytic that affected me for just a short time before my blood went through it like acid. The degradation as I was carried and undressed, the pain that was starting deep within me.

I pull back hard on the feelings I went through so Bastion doesn't feel it. Bad enough he had been there and heard everything.

The fires of hell that had gone through me as I writhed in a rotting room, but upon standing, the feeling of being renewed, revitalized in my new form. Knowledge of what I was, was pretty clear, and it hadn't really frightened me in the least. Not even my rage and instant lust to kill now that I could.

Bastion had seen the bodies, but not how I did it. Turning my head and opening my eyes, I watch him closely as it plays out. My first strike at James to put him down before going after Fred.

The first strike made to eviscerate the giant of a man, his innards falling into a steaming heap in front of him, my turning to the other man who pissed himself and the claw rake that cost him his eyes, then leaving him to go back to the man who'd dominated my childhood with shame, fear, confusion, and pain.

I had stalked him, followed his terribly slow crawl to get away from me while pulling his guts back into himself. Blood poured from his belly, making the cement floor slippery. Kicking him over onto his back, his words lost in translation as I knelt down. Having had to fight back the urge to eat him from the blood smelling sweet, I’d grabbed the exposed slippery mass and pulled, yanking the soft insides of his body out and dropped them to the ground like garbage.

Bastion wobbles, but hangs on stubbornly. I really shouldn't be showing him this, the high probability of making his nightmares worse very high. A movie would have been different since with me, he's riding my senses as I go through them. Looking at Xavier, I continue.

The screams coming from both humans starting to hurt my ears, I show them how crouching over one led to my shoving my arm up into his body, under the ribs, and between squishy lungs. The sounds that were made when I told the man that he would no longer haunt me, then ripping out his heart.

I stop immediately when Bastion’s already pale face turns green, his hand going over his mouth hurriedly as he bolts for the bathroom.

"I shouldn't have gone into specific details, what I'm showing him will haunt him."

"He'll be alright, he's stronger than you think. You persist in seeing him as an innocent child that you need to protect from everything. He may look like a child, but his mind is that of an adult."

I wince, knowing he does. My shamed worry of him being alone too long with Lily rides me each time we're over there. Knowing just from my own past that things get real confused when you're so young and introduced to sex. How warped things can become.

"Don't have to worry about him doing anything that adult, from what I've gathered from talking with him, he wants nothing to do with intercourse."

I nod, but I know better. My Imp comes back out, his face wet from water splashing. Still looks a little green around the edges, but not too bad.

"Just tell me when you need me to stop, and I will. Since I doubt you'll let me get away with not showing you anymore."

Instead of going back to where he had been sitting, he moves closer to Xavier. Seeing him do so warms my insides, the show of his ability to even want to go near an adult male is tremendous.

The maned wolf scoots more towards me so the boy can sit next to him. Feeling awkward with the hand holding, I move back over to play in his hair. He releases, but just like before, he keeps his head turned just enough so he can see me.

When he motions he's ready, I pick back up. I skip over a little bit so he doesn't have to go back to the bathroom quite so fast. The parts of feeling my claws slicing through other organs and the bloodlust riding me hard getting left out.

Instead, I pick up again with me walking towards Fred who's cradling his face as he mewls pitifully. Playing with him before snapping his spinal cord so my brain’s wish to feast isn't tempted anymore. The walk up the stairs of what turned out to be the basement and stopping at the top where I started weeping...was more a relieved cry I think.

From there it goes to me inspecting what little of myself I could see, not getting very far as that's when Asher showed up. The conversation we had of not being able to go to anyone and that he was sorry it had to happen that way, a little about what was going on, and my shifting times.

I skip over some details of the pictures I had found, not hiding the fact though that I took the camera's memory chip. My original thought was to make sure it was disposed of properly and couldn't be recovered, having found it in a setup around a bed that was surrounded by things you'd see at a photoshoot.

The memories of Asher then and now seem so different, yet in a way still the same. Our talk of needing to burn the place down when sudden insight had me listening hard, the sound of scratching I had heard before faint, but still there, following it back downstairs and into the area where a dog cage had been, with a small boy huddled inside.

"So that's how you found me. I had heard most of what went on and started smelling it. I didn't know what was going to happen to me."

Considering it could have been any number of other hostiles, I can imagine. Turning up my smile, I share the part where a scared and starving child stood up to a monster and asked defiantly if it was going to hurt him too. Xavier's whole body had stiffened when seeing the boy in those conditions, but he's slowly relaxing.

I help by rubbing at his scalp with my nails, sharing with them both my pride in the young man at how far he's come since then. He still has the scars, and always will, but as of right now, he's not letting them rule him. He blushes, the action bringing a more normal pallor to his face.

Bastion knows what happens from then on, but I still go through it with Xavier, who's still intent on the images. The burning down of the house and long trek home, my thinking we remained unseen aside from the homeless man under the bridge. Then leaving him be after a confusing conversation about 'Night People' and continuing home, I let the images slowly fade once we do so.

I do believe the original question that started all this was to do with Asher, but for the life of me, I can't recall what it was. Fingers once more slip down to the marking on the neck under me, the heat coming off his skin making me want to bury my face into it. Can feel his gaze on me as I look over the small dreamcatcher-snowflake-like mark.

"You're sure this doesn't hurt?"