The Dark Flower (Azriel x OC)

21. Broken Minds, Broken Bodies (Persephone)

Percy jolted upright as the familiar sound of screams echoed down the hall. For one brief moment, she felt the coldness of stone walls, smelt the stench of rotting, infected flesh, clawed hands groping at her... Her fists clenched around silk sheets, and just like that, she was in her room again. 

It was hard sometimes, usually in the moments just after waking, to remember where and when she was. More often than not, she woke with an icy fear in her gut. It was worse when Feyre's screams dragged the entire house out of sleep - it made it harder to remember that she was safe now. 

Safe. Such a word was laughable. Some part of Percy recognized that there was no such thing as safety. Not anymore. It was a word tossed at her, as realistic as the mystical bedtime stories that Andras and Lucien used to regale her with.

In the two weeks since they'd returned to the manor, Percy had hardly left the confines of her bed. No false promises of safety had been able to stir her. She'd been unable to move much in those initial days, when her father had brought a healer in mend her body, so she'd had an excuse then, not so much now. 

During the months she'd spent Under the Mountain, she'd broken more bones than she could count. Most she had no recollection of breaking. Regardless, they'd all healed poorly and unevenly. A healer had cast her into a deep sleep for more than a week as her bones were re-broken and correctly healed. 

She could have gotten up since then, but she just didn't have the will. She couldn't bring herself to go about as if nothing had changed when she knew in her heart that she was never meant to survive what was done to her. 

Instead, she chose to let her mind wander, using whatever strange new magic she possessed. She found herself living very brief, different lives in the minds of others. And she let herself see, though she hardly understand half of what it was that she was glimpsing at through the eyes of these strangers. 

She understood the sun, understood the heat of it against the strangers skin as they stepped outside and had thought it interesting how its brightness had caused the stranger to wince momentarily. She understood the feeling of grass, though it appeared different that she ever would have imagined. Things like colors were more difficult, and she hadn't imagined that horses would look quite like... well, that. 

She longed to see and experience more, but eventually she had to give up the fantasy and return her mind to her own useless body and her own sightless eyes. 

"Alright, enough is enough! It's time for you to get out of this bed!" Moira chided as she pushed her way into the room. 

When Percy had first heard her voice upon waking, she'd burst into uncontrollable sobs. She'd clung to the female with all her might, terrified that if she let her go, she'd be gone for good. Moira had tolerated it, and Percy thought the female might have shed a few tears of her own - though she knew Moira would endlessly deny it. 

She'd never been captured to take Under the Mountain and had instead made it to shore where she'd then reached out to her sister for help. The same insufferable sister that was apparently a childhood friend of Percy's father. Ianthe. Percy loathed the female and the way she spoke of Percy as if she were an infant. Though... Percy supposed she wasn't exactly making a good case for herself by refusing to get out of bed.