An Old Friend

chapter 19

        "Evelyn!" Steve ran into her room trying not to trip over anything in the dark.  He nearly knocked the door down after hearing her scream at two in the morning.

        Evelyn had her knees brought up to her chest and her hands on her head, hair knotted around her fingers, and nails digging into her scalp as she was trying to calm herself down, but tears were streaming down her face.

        He sat on her bed beside her and put an arm around her, pulling her into his lap, mainly because she seemed to want to get closer to him.  She started crying into his chest while her arms were draped around him.

        One arm was up towards her head and another around her waist.  He was lightly stroking her hair hoping it helped calm her down.

        She wasn't calming down at all.  He need to know what was wrong if he had any intentions of helping her settle down.

        "Evelyn, you have to tell me what happened," she sniffled as she slowly started to stop crying.  "I can help you if you tell me what happened.  Was it was dream?"  she nodded.  "What happened?"

        She kept her arms around him, but moved her head so that it wasn't buried in his chest.  She sniffled again.  "I-I was over in  Slovakia," she wiped the tears from her eyes as she continued speaking.  "Selmo Mattica was there.  He-he was the one in charge of Hyde at the time, and, scientists were doing stuff to me.  Putting needles in me," she began to shake.  "Lock me in a dark room for a few days.  When I didn't listed to them first I got slapped, when I got whipped on the back," she seemed to jump, remembering the pain.  She has a bunch of scars from it, a few could still reopen.

        "Then-then," she realizes something and holds him closer to her bursting into tears again.

        "You're safe here," he assured her rubbing his hand up and down her back.  "I won't let anyone hurt you, Evelyn, you mean too much to me."

        She tried to stop crying so she could speak.  "Even after all that I've done?" she looked up at him, tear eyed.

        He nodded smiling.  "If you don't want to tell me the rest then you don't have to," any other time he would try to get her to say everything she could, but with how much she was crying he didn't want to force any of it.

        She shook her head and wiped her face once again with her sleeve.  She had made Steve's shirt wet from all the tears.  She shook her head as she dried her face.  "After months, maybe even years of doing that to me, nearly daily, Selmo came over to me one day, and told me that as long as they could do one more test to me, they'd told me I could leave, and it would be like none of it even happened," she sniffled.  "Least to me it never happened, and I did leave, I left everything behind, I was a new person, I wasn't even a person.  I'm-I'm still not a person."

        "Of course you are, Ev!  You're getting your memories back, might be slowly, but hey, you still are," she began to calm down once he softly kissed the top of her head.

        "Steve, can I sleep with you tonight?" she spoke softly, then looking up at him.  She was afraid that her voice would crack again.

        He smiled.  "Of course you can," even if he didn't like her as much as he did, he would have let her sleep with him, he's way to shy to do anything.

        Evelyn got up and made her way into the bathroom to get herself cleaned up from all the crying that she was doing while Steve went back into his room and got comfortable in his bed.

        A few minutes later Evelyn comes in and gets on the empty side of the bed and close to Steve.  She felt safe beside him, she actually trusted him.  Steve put an arm around her, which made her just get closer to him.

        He felt funny.  Warm was one of them, anxious was another.  He couldn't tell if another thing was love or what, but he sure was enjoying this.

        "Thank you, Steve," she sets a hand on his cheek, looking at his bright blue eyes, that were easy to see in the dark room, she even showed off a smile.

        He gave her one back.  "Its no problem, Ev.  I care about you," he moved a piece of her hair out of her face so he was able to see her golden eyes.

        She cuddled in closely to him, wanting to become warm just from his body heat.