009. Waking Up

[katzepaw]

This memory takes place somewhere that looks like a hospital ward. The memory is very strange, fuzzy. It almost has the feeling of being drugged; Caleb is awake in the hospital room. Orderlies come in, bring him food and water, talk to him occasionally. But he seems unfocused, sick, unable to concentrate. It gradually becomes apparent that this is not a hospital but a sanatorium; the other patients all seem to have varying degrees of madness to them.

A woman, another patient, happens to see Caleb while they are at a meal. She looks at him, strangely, and something seems to occur to her as she watches him, though it's not apparent what it is, exactly. A little later, a moment the guards aren't watching, she approaches him. She pulls out something she has been keeping hidden, tucked away - a small, very simple and plain holy symbol of the Arch Heart.

"I want to help you," she says softly. He flinches when she tries to take his arm, but she lays her hand on his brow, and there's the glow of magic from her symbol that flows through her palm.

Just like that, the odd fog over this memory clears. Caleb blinks, startled, sick at the sudden lucidity he has; brings his hand to his cheek and touches his face, as though in disbelief that this is him. He feels lost, out of place, out of time. There's a deep ache in his body, in his arms. But then something else comes over him. She didn't only lift the fog. She also. . .

He can remember what he thought he had seen. A boy home from school, proud of his accomplishments and his service to the Empire, excited to share with his mother and father what he had achieved. But that night, on the staircase up to his attic room, he overheard them talking. Plotting as part of a rebellion, plotting to overthrow the king and destroy the Empire. And he felt such terrible disgrace, shame and anger all together, that his own parents would be the type of traitors he loathed.

This is gone now, in an instant. Gone. He can remember thinking he had seen this, but now he can also remember watching as his teacher cast the spell, implanted the false memories by describing them to him. None of it had ever happened. And that means. . . that means. . .

The flash of a memory of a house, simple, poor, barely two stories. A cart blocking off the door, as flames lick up the sides of it. And the screaming inside is. . .

He's rocked by a wave of despair, crushing, incomprehensible. He can't thank the woman, he can only flee to his room, lie there facing the ceiling, as the despair curdles into hatred and fury. He tries to put the pieces together, remember what happened. The house, he remembers the house, he remembers the screams, he remembers sinking to his knees - Astrid and Wulf, their faces? Their voices? He thinks he remembers. But how did he get here, this asylum? Why? And how long has he been here, anyway? Long enough that he can no longer recognize his face in the reflection of the metal bedframe; the handsome and confident boy he was back then has given way to a haggard and gloomy faced man. He looks for the woman who helped him again later, but whatever lucidity she had, whatever led her to recognize the spell he was under, is gone, and she is mad again and looks at him with incomprehension.

But by himself, he goes about forming a plan. He acts as though nothing has changed; he pretends he is still clouded, drugged, completely senseless and near catatonic. And he waits for his chance, until he spots a particular visitor at the sanatorium one day, a young man with a black maze of tattoos on his arms. He waits, and waits, and then, when the man visits his cell, looks in on him, perhaps intending to carry a report on his status back or perhaps meaning to use him as a lesson, he concentrates, and a moment later he has a bedsheet around the man's throat, choking, just as flames begin to lick up his body.

Once the man is a charred corpse, Caleb takes a golden amulet he wears around his neck, puts it on himself, and shoves the corpse under his bed. He flees, escaping out of one of the windows and running into the woods outside. He has nothing, he has nowhere to go, but what he has is his anger, and his grief, and that's enough for now to keep him from ending his life while he figures out what comes next.