Little purple,.."
"Hm~"
"Promise me, promise to tell me if... If you feel different, say, you feel you're overthinking or perhaps just seeing things differently...or... anything, anything at all. Okay.? "
Lara knew what they were concerned about. They'd made it clear several times already.
"Are you concerned about my faded memories? "
"Uh... What... Ah yes, your memories, those memories. Your memories of your time with us."
It took Dan a while to realize, she wasn't at all talking about the memories they'd wiped away with the drug, her real memories. She was referring to the memories the drugs had created, and although they were scattered and confusing, they were grateful for it. It's presence took her mind of her shadowed past.
Dan knew he was threading on a dangerous path and he could feel Don's concerned and confused eyes on him, however he just wanted to test out a theory he'd long since planned for. He should've told Don earlier. But he knew if he didn't gather the courage to do this now, he'll probably miss the chance to do so another time. And there could be no better time to do this than now. In their entanglement, their Purple keeping them company, her presence a healing. Her caressing was his courage vault, he wasn't going to run out of that today.
"I've been catching glimpses of them, my lost memories, I remember mother, your mom, she must've been very kind, the memories of her surfaced first. We used to sit on her lap, and she'd read to us. Bed time stories, stories about princesses and princes and a magical place, a place so different from the hellish Kantama we live in. She wished we'd leave and settle somewhere else in the world. I wonder what made Kantama this way? Dan, Don, is this how all your trade sites are?"
"No, the answer to that question was a no. They had made Kantama this way to accommodate their presence, this was supposed to be their home, their safe land and stronghold, and what better way to make it safe than to surround it with the most vile of people and fill them to the brim with the fear of ever wronging their masters and lords. It was a protection, a shield and their sword. They didn't have to surround themselves with security and guards or fumble around for machinery and human resources if ever they were under attack. Also the chaos was enough to hide their acts of enhancing the forbidden drug. And maybe, they just liked to be surrounded by the chaos and mayhem. But they were never going to tell her that.
However that wasn't the words that had brought such distress to his mind. Their mother had never read them stories. She had never been in Kantama, they had only been dispatched down here after their training, they chose this place as a home and later Eugene had joined them. This place was never their home. It was the place they built to keep their chosen, she had made a home of it and a family of them. The mother they remembered was always hiding somewhere in the gigantic estate that belonged to their father. The few times they saw her, they had to sneak up the attic or down the basement, and the little affections she showed them could never be forgotten by them. So they knew, reading them bed time stories was never a part of her affectios. They were aware the drug had messed with their Purple's mind, however it seems it was not at all in the way they had imagined. The drug hadn't created new foreign memories, it had taken her past memories and torn and pieced them together with the memories they'd made together, to make it seem as though they had always been there, with her. He didn't know how to feel about that. Did that make the situation worse or better?
If she had no recollection at all, it would've been trouble, and so they were glad to find that the drug had created memories and depicted them as hers. However, now, they realized the memories were not at all just made up as they had thought it was, and that they were her own memories. Pieces of her past molded with her present.
"I remember the day you put that ring on my finger too, Don had caressed the tattoo on my tummy and you had stared at it with such affection. That's why I wanted to know. I wanted to know how I got it, how you'd felt, and how I had felt too. I hate that I couldn't quite remember them, however I was glad that we made new memories for my keeping. I'm glad I got new memories to hold on to."
She doesn't remember, she doesn't remember the room, how they'd hurt her, how they hadn't stopped even when she begged them to. She had hated them for that. They could tell in her silent eyes. Keeping her here away from home hadn't been enough for her to hate them.
Before they had taken her to that room she merely looked at them with spite and begrudging confusion. Although she hadn't made it obvious the days after she had been forced into that room with them, she still couldn't hide the hateful and fear glazed eyes when she subtly glanced their way. Maybe it was because they had made her understand she had no hope of leaving, of returning.
Maybe she hated them for getting rid of the silly staff that watched her escape again. Back then their desperation and desire to make her stay at all cost had made them do things that only made her hate them more.
"Little Purple, tell me, what will you do with us, if ... you wake up one day, and realize this was all a dream, that we were never us, that this was never a home, and that we weren't in the future you imagined, and you wake up to a reality where we are not at all what you now see us as and instead we are the bad guys. "
Tense silence captured the breathing space in their love nest. The two men awaited the little woman's response. What she said now, was going to decide their fate.
"How bad?"
" Bad enough that you hate us."
"Real bad then. It's hard to dislike a pretty face you know, especially when you both look like Adonis incarnates."
" That's not an answer Purple."
" I know, I just, I don't know how many times I should say this. I'll always find my way back to you, I'll always love you even if i wake up and you're the demons that hunt my reality I'll still love you."
" Purple, you don't get it, it's different, it will be different then."
"How different ? Wat difference could possibly let me give away my paradise? You don't get it, sometimes I find myself wondering and thinking about different realities, different possibilities, a life without you and Don in them, a life where I lived somewhere outside of this safe haven, somewhere out there in Kantama, and I see myself in those streets, in the hell I imagine myself in, just like everyone out there, struggling and fighting, and...and it hunts me. I hate that, I hate the idea of you both not being with me, not being there for me, not spreading your arms for me to welcome you back home, not being mine. And so if I wake up and find all this to be a dream, it would be fine too, sometimes I think my life is too good to be true, but if I wake up and I'm lucky enough to find that you both weren't just a figment of my imagination and that you exist out there in my reality, in a reality where I can still touch you, have you and love you, I wouldn't care even if you were my slave masters, I'd still try to make you mine, if you still want me back. Because I know a life without you both is far worse than death. You should promise me though, that you'd find me, should I awake and miss the chance to meet you both in my reality, then find me. Try as hard as you possibly can, because I'll be out there waiting for you, wishing a life out of this hell, an escape from my predicament."
So,to answer your questions; will I find you when I awake to a reality where you're the bad guys? Yes. Will I love you when I awake to a reality where you hunt me? Definitely yes and will I want to have you when you do extend a hand to bring me home? That's not even a question. Do you know why, because you're my paradise, and no one let's go of such beautiful paradise down here in Kantama. So, I might have hated you before, but that would be because I didn't know you, didn't know what it was to be loved, how it felt to be in love, how it feels to be cherished and longed for.
Now it's your time to tell me Dan and you too Don, are you guys hiding something from me? I know I lost most of my memories and I keep loosing more, did you perhaps wrong me in the past? A past I unfortunately don't remember? It would be nice to actually have a one up on you guys. You never do something wrong, for a while there I thought I lived with saints."