Fall Into Me

..XII..

"I don't know who you are!"

The sentence smacked into the forefront of Minerva's brain when she woke up groaning. Everything felt fuzzy and dull, a feeling she recognised with a sickening lurch of her stomach, making her dry heave in a panic over the edge of her bed. A snuffling noise came up beside her, Cricket shoving his cold, wet nose into her neck. With a shaking hand, Minerva stroked his neck, taking deep shuddering breaths to calm down, reminding herself it was over, she wasn't trapped anymore. She was home.

When the panic receded, it was replaced with anger. The bastards had sedated her. They'd sedated them both after she'd explicitly told them not to. Grabbing for her phone, she saw it was well into the next day.

"Fuck, sake," she growled out, pushing out of bed and stumbling, woozy from the sedative still in her system. Stumbling into her closet, she threw on the nearest set of clothes and left the bedroom, grabbing some water from her fridge to drink down in quick gulps. The wing was quiet in a way it hadn't been for weeks, Mona's return giving a certain level of security. A door somewhere in the wing closed and Minerva locked onto the sound, waiting for some unsavoury figure to crawl out of a corridor. Esme appeared, looking a little woozy herself, rubbing at her temples.

"My mouth feels like cotton," she said, her tongue seeming too thick in her mouth. Minerva studied her for a few minutes, wondering if she'd also been sedated, then offered her a water bottle. "I don't...," she frowned as she took the water.

"You've been sedated," Minerva said, "that's why you're talking like a moron."

"Deep apologies for not being used to sedation," Esme bit back, drinking down some water.

"Why did you leave us alone?" Minerva demanded, uncaring if Esme had a mind fog from the drug. "You and my mother. You weren't supposed to leave."

"I went to the bathroom," Esme pushed her fingers between her eyes, rubbing the bridge of her nose, "Moira was still there when I left. I don't remember how...," she shook her head, "give me a minute."

"Do you really think we have time for a minute? Esme, if I go back to that room and Mona is gone," she laughed a little manically, "I'll kill you, I'll kill my mother, I'll kill everyone." Esme stayed silent for a few more seconds, then a light bulb went off and she looked up.

"I went to the bathroom, when I came out, Moira was on the floor in the hallway and you were shouting in the medic room. By the time I got there, you were on the floor and the doctor came out of nowhere and stabbed me with a syringe."

"Wow," Minerva dragged the word out, hissing it through her teeth as she crumple the bottle in her hand.

"Moira told me she wouldn't leave, I'm not sure how she ended up in the hallway."

"That's just brilliant, isn't it? Just, fucking, brilliant!" She threw the crumpled bottle across the room. "Sedating me I could understand; I wasn't going to let the doctor near Mona after he sedated her. But you two? They did that because they wanted to separate us, again. Which is why they wouldn't let me have her in my wing. He told me, he doesn't work for me," she started to laugh, "of course he doesn't. I'm going back to Mona and I'm bringing her here," Minerva said as Esme finished her own bottle.

"I'll come with you, but do you think here is the best option?" she asked, following Minerva to the wing doors.

"Here I can lock us in, or put us in the vault, and no one can get there, so here is the-," Minerva trailed off when she turned the handle, it didn't move. "No," Minerva half laughed, yanking on them both. "No, they haven't, because that would be beyond stupid." No matter how hard she yanked on the doors, they wouldn't budge. She tried shaking them, she tried twisting them, she put her full weight behind one handle and pushed it so hard it snapped off.