Purified by Fire

Chapter 4: Adrift (I)

Victoria is watching the mansion a few meters away from her when suddenly a wave of dizziness hits her and she reaches out her hands to steady herself. The world starts spinning, the house fading in front of her eyes and the greenery blends in her peripheral vision. She closes her eyes, hoping the small reprieve will allow her equilibrium to realign itself, but it doesn't work and she sways harder on her feet, her head beginning to pound. Her right knee sends jabs of pain, one after another, as she presses into her legs to keep upright, digging the heels of her feet harder into the grassy terrain, the boots she wears slipping in the wetness of the earth. Eventually, Victoria admits defeat and slowly lowers herself onto the grass.

Her head falls into the plush carpet of grass; her hair sprawled out around it, with her hands at her side, spread open. Then she moves, holding the sides of her face with her palms, pressing in to give herself a point of reference and focuses on her breathing. The slow drag of air, inhale hold exhale repeat, doesn't help. In fact she thinks it is making things worse as her heart stutters in her chest and she closes her eyes again, the pulsing pain in her temples increasing violently.

The darkness that engulfs her is nauseating and all Victoria has to hold onto is the rushing of water as the river snakes near her feet and the rustling of leaves further away. There are no animals she can hear, no other sound but the nature around her. Her head is beginning to hurt in unison with the aching of her eyes, stinging even as she rests them, and there is a soft breeze brushing over her. Her vertigo doesn't fade even then and she slaps a hand over her forehead in exasperation. The sharpness of her palm over her skin offers Victoria a reprieve, however brief.

"Come on, come on, come on!" she mumbles, through gritted teeth, frowning. She allows her hand to slide down, bent at the elbow above her as the other remains at her side. She keeps trying to calm herself, but when she tries opening her eyes the vision is blurry and it sends stabbing pain at the front of her skull. She is about to just ignore all of it and drag herself to the house regardless of how she is feeling when, she thinks, she falls asleep.

Victoria finds herself inside a bedroom, the light bearing down on her comes from a chandelier – an old one that uses actual candles – as the source and the walls are wooden and decorative. She looks around, first behind her at the fireplace, crackling with logs and flames and wooden sculptured wind-like design, and then she turns and sees the bed. She can't seem to be able to hear anything else but the fire behind and the wind outside, and yet laying on the large mattress is a young woman. She is crying – sobbing even, from the heavy shakes that make her body tremble – and holding onto herself tight. Victoria tries to speak, but again no sound breaks through the silence and she has to force herself to be silent when her throat protests.

The woman on the bed curls up, drawing her legs to her chest and warping her arms around her head, as if shielding herself from the world. She continues to shake, tears seeping into the blanket no doubt and Victoria's heart yearns to help. If she could do it, the woman would lay behind the other and hold her in her arms as she calms down. As it is, Victoria can do nothing for the distraught blonde on the bed. She is wondering what had happened to her, what she lost that has broken her as such, when the door opens and inside slips a man. He looks about the blonde's age and is dressed in an old fashioned suit, complete with one of those ruffled ...things at his neck. He speaks, and she can't hear it at all, but she does realize it must be the woman's name. Victoria sees an "a" and a "d" on his lips as he repeats it, walking slowly towards the bed. He is careful, like one would be around a wounded animal. The woman looks up eventually and jumps, startled. She sits up, the blanket falling to her waist and her red rimmed eyes look to him unfocused. She whispers something. Victoria desperately wants to hear them, to know what it is she's seeing unfold here. The man answers, takes the blonde's hands in his own and must ask her something because he waits for a response which does not come. At last he repeats and the woman speaks. He seems startled by what she said, his eyes saddened. Victoria has yet to see her eyes, she's never lifted them off of her hands which lie limp in her lap, her hair an impenetrable curtain meant to shield her from the outside world.

Victoria walks closer, studying the man's expression, her eyes mapping his face, but it is as if there is a veil over her. She can only vaguely see the darkness that are his eyes and the yellow of his hair, but she doesn't know if his eyes are slanted or large, can't see if his cheeks are sharp or rounded, if his nose is crooked. He has no expression on his face because of it and all Victoria can think about as she watches him is how much she wishes she could comfort the crying woman. The thought of others suffering fills her up with rage. More than that, it is driving her mad, having to watch this without being able to properly see it. The man tells the woman another thing in the time Victoria stares at him and whatever response he gets makes him sits on the bed as well. He gathers the woman in his arms, holds her for a long while, his head bent, his own eyes closed, tightly shut as he breathes deeply. Is he struggling against tears as well? The red eyed woman gasps suddenly at the thought, sniffles and realizes there are tears running down her face as well. She wipes them away quickly, as if Anthony could sense them somehow and hurt her while she's vulnerable, despite knowing he isn't anywhere close to here.

"Thomas?"

Victoria flinches, the name too loud in the silence of the scene around her. She doesn't know the voice, but she somehow knows it belongs to the woman on the bed. It trembles and stutters over the two syllables. There is so much anguish in the man that Victoria isn't sure whether it is the name of the man or someone else's. She wants to speak again, her mouth opening to utter words that not even she can pinpoint, but there is a pressure around the middle of her waist and then a sharp pull. She screams, her ribs crackling in her mind and her chest collapsing as she is forcefully removed from the scene. When she falls, her head smacking against the concrete floor below her, she groans, but again there is no sound to be heard. The floor crushes her chest, constricting her breathing and she imagines her hands have scratches on them from how she fell.

What the hell is going on here? she thinks, pushing onto her arms as she attempts to stand up. Her chest rises from the floor, her knees bent beneath her and then she is standing on shaky limbs. There is no more pain. She swivels on her heels at the loud bang of a door and doesn't even acknowledge that she has no wounds from the collision. A gust of air rushes towards her, past her and then disappears. She turns back in time to see a police car leaving. It is now that the woman realizes that before she had been in another era, at least two hundred years in the past based on the clothes she had seen the man wear.