One Batch Two Batch Heaven and Hell

Untitled Part 9

Stepping into Matts apartment, she watched as everyone shrugged out of their jackets and made their way into the living area, a sense of familiarity amongst the group as they made themselves comfortable in Matt's home.

"Please, make yourself at home." Matt said turning his attention to her, she nodded, cringing to herself when she remembered he couldn't see the action.

"Right, yeah thanks" she replied quickly, moving to take a seat in one of his leather arm chairs.

"Who wants drinks?" Foggy asked the room from the kitchen, a bottle of something dark in his hand. "I have a feeling it's gonna be necessary."

"Please, if you don't mind." Layla called, watching karen join him in the kitchen to help while Matt took a seat on the couch across the coffee table from her.

Once everyone was settled with their drinks, she couldn't help but feel a little self conscious, every eye in the room on her waiting for her to get on with her story. Taking a long drink of her drink, that she quickly realized was mostly whisky with a hint of some sort of soda, she swallowed and followed that action with a heavy sigh. "So, where should I begin?"

"How about we start with who you are, and what you're doing in my city?" Matt responded, taking a sip of his drink, a bite in his voice and tension visible in his neck.

"Alright, the beginning it is I suppose. First things first my name is not Mia Castiglione. It's Layla, Layla James, but that can not get out under any circumstances, or things will get very bad around here very quickly."

"Fair enough, why is that exactly?" Matt asked as she took another drink of her drink, she wasn't sure who's idea it was to make it so strong but whoever it was she was thankful for them in that moment.

"I'll get there," she continued, "First you need to know how I ended up here but to get there we have to go back, about six months ago to be a little more specific. A little over six months ago, I woke up in a house in a small village in Germany with absolutely no recollection of the past well eight or so years of my life as far as I can tell."

"Woah!" Foggy interrupted, looking from Karen to Matt then back to Layla.

"Yeah, " taking nother large drink of her drink she sat the glass down and got a little more comfortable, glancing to Matt briefly but not getting any sort of gauge on his reaction to her story.

"Now when I say no memory I do mean tangible memories. I have what I would call almost blips, or hints of moments, maybe even feelings towards things but nothing to grasp onto, some things feel almost dejavu like or familiar in a way but I don't remember names, faces, dates nothing like that. I couldn't tell you what I've done on my last 8 birthdays, but I could tell you I've been to New York before because things feel familiar but i don't know why. The last real hard memories I have are the first two and a half years I spent with the Army."

"Where do your memories stop?" Matt finally spoke up, sitting his own nearly empty glass down.

"My last stable memory was being called into a meeting with my co's. They said something about needing to talk to me about an opportunity, my first thought was promotion but I had only just made corporal there's no way I was moving up again, and I didn't think they were shipping me out already. There were rumors some big wig was on base, but I didn't really feed into rumors much. After that everything gets fuzzy, blurry even, literally, and trying to force myself to remember anything is fucking painful." she finished downing the rest of her drink and closing her eyes, rubbing circles over her temples, feeling the beginning of a headache coming on.

"What do you mean painful?" Karen asked, getting up on her spot from the couch to collect her laptop from the kitchen table.

"I mean just that, I'm talking the worst headaches of my life, random things trigger it sometimes it's me trying to force it and sometimes it's other things like, shit the smell of Jagermeister did it once, the city of London nearly killed me with nosebleeds and dizzy spells, I almost passed out." Picking up the glass she had forgotten was empty she couldn't help the small pout she made and set it back down, Foggy quickly stood and took the glass moving to refill it for her.