Modest Oblivion - Book 6 (Larry Stylinson AU)

Chapter 31 - She had another lover who kept her in her cage

Okay I believe you, but my tommy gun don't - Brand New

Hands - A is for Alpine

She had another lover who kept her in her cage

Time was lost without Dakota even realising it was taken from her. She coughed and sputtered, her head whirring and her eyes heavy from a sleep she did not permit. It too her five long minutes to finally come to, the smog collected around her brain slowly subsided. Dakota looked around the unfamiliar room with a knot in her stomach and a substantial pressure on her chest, she recognised nothing. When her eyes met with the full length mirror to her left she flinched, the girl who stared back with her thin frame and frightened eyes was a complete stranger.

She couldn't pinpoint the exact moment it happened, but in that groggy silence as the wheels in her mind clicked and turned she discovered that her identity was an abyss. She realised that between one lost second and another passing minute the girl she once was had disappeared. Despite the fact she felt bile rise in her throat and her heart hammered like a rabid animal caged in her chest, she forced herself to stare. To greet the blank stranger with courage instead of fear, to stare down that frightened girl. It took a lot of concentration and even more strength to glare at the girl, at herself. Her hair was blonde, short and messy all polar opposites of her former self (or what she'd seen in photos anyway). Her bottom lip, pouted and trembled and her deep, green eyes squinted in the evening shadows. This girl, this she'll she lived in was so unfamiliar that it tore Dakota apart and an heaving son burst from her mouth.

Deep down she thought if she stared long enough, if she studied every freckle on her reflections skin like constellations blanketing the night sky that maybe, just maybe she would begin to remember. But her mind remained a blank slate and her heart trembled with utter devastation. She wasn't devastated at losing the bitter, lost girl who made many mistakes and saw revenge as the best option. Nor was she upset that her hair had been hacked and her curves were long gone, she was upset because from all her research and all her reading of those trashy tabloids she had discovered she loved people and those people loved her.

The worst sting was learning that her former boyfriend, Porter Vance, had died in a tragic car accident and she was there to witness it all. Though she witnessed the shocking death of a friend, she didn't even remember losing him. In honesty, she did not recognise his face or even his name. Dakota shuddered, I don't know who I am and it scares me.

Tears rolled like diamonds down her pale skin, dripping onto the white pillowcase and her sobs were stifled by the shaking hand that covered her mouth. She darted her head beyond her reflection and noted the shadows that passed the window to her room. She was filled with dread, the dread was so thick it dripped down her skin like tar slowly oozing over every inch of her tiny body. Dakota blinked back tears, eyed the flowers and cards all delivered by strangers, from strangers. She stared at the pile of magazines almost as tall as her bed, she hoped if she read enough her memory would begin to return.

But it didn't. I need to remember, I have to remember. Every time she woke up she was faced with the same realisation, it never got easier to realise she was a stranger to herself. To recall that her life was blank, her memories, her pain and her joy all obliterated.

Then another thought struck her, one so stark that her body stiffened. Sh e held her breath, squeezing her eyes tightly shut as the sound of Asher's voice haunted her. A voice that was familiar, a sound that was from days long gone and Dakota realised maybe not all of her memories were completely adrift. Slowly her thin arms guided her body into a sitting position. Her back ached, her head clouded with a thick haze of fog and she looked down at her hands.

That's why I lost time, why I slept without pause or recollection. She glared at the IV pierced into the thin skin on the back of her hand, Dakota counted to three and with one quick motion yanked it from her hand. She clenched her teeth, the pain stung and blood spotted in the small hole where the needle once was.

Dakota's mantra was short, 'trust no one.' She repeated it over and over, she couldn't trust the. Man with the long fingers and chocolate skin. His smile was menacing and his eyes studied her with a beady hunger that made her stomach turn. She couldn't trust Asher, his smile keen and his hands soft, his cheeks flushing red and his blue eyes as soft as a clear sky but as empty as her mind.

Asher wasn't her boyfriend, he wasn't anything to Dakota, he had no proof she knew him before she turned up in the hospital, he had no memories to share or stories, not even explanations as to why he was never in pictures with the boys from that Direction band. Asher was quick to lay blame on Dakota as an explanation for every nasty tabloid, every unflattering photo of her stumbling out of a club or causing havoc amidst her so called 'friends.' The most unsettling realisation was, that when Dakota was in hospital it was not the first time she had heard his silky voice.

Asher played a role in her demise, his voice lingered in her nightmares. The pitch black cage she called her home, with its rusted walls and the never ending drip, drip, drip of a leaking pipe her only company. Her madness stemmed from the never ending caliginous, stark of light or human contact, with little food and scarcely any hope.

Her brows furrowed together with fierce determination, they had her in their grasp. Her freedom was a farce, a joke, she was never free to begin with. She turned, swinging her legs off the bed and open on the floor a magazine with a large, glossy photo of those five smiling boys she wished she could remember. She didn't know their names, she didn't know their voices or their music but she did know that two of them had come to see her. Those two, who were shocked and disgusted at Asher's presence, who tried to defend her with swinging fists and a string of curse words.

Her hand shook, she lifted the magazine, without thought her fingers brushed over the blondes face. It was a muscle memory, her heart striking like a war drum. It's beat rhythmic and strong, she felt her eyes pool with another onset of tears. There was something deep within her that recognised that smiling blonde face, blue eyes staring out at her and she closed her own remembering the look on his face when he first saw her in the bed.

She noted the small one, smothered with tattoos and his hair a straight mess that darted across his eyes in jagged pieces. He was there too, he came for her and he was the one...Louis? To take the blonde away when Asher stepped into the room. "I have to find you, Louis," she whispered.

She stood up, the blood rushed to her head and Dakota swayed on her feet like a ship on rough seas. With a deep breath she decided she needed to leave. She ripped the picture of the five boys from the magazine and shoved it in her bra, with courage she stormed towards the door and her hand gripped the handle firmly. Then, she stopped... She wouldn't get within five feet of the exit if she were still dressed in this hideous hospital gown.

Voices were coming up the hall, the booking laugh of that bastard Jacob and she ran back to the bed. She needed a plan, she needed it fast because if the realised she remembered they would take her away again. If they did, if they took her back to that place she would never be given the chance to find out who she truly was and what those famous five boys meant to her. She shot back into the bed, panting she rolled over and stared at the mirror once more.

Only this time, as she studied her reflection the girl who stared back at her with a ferocity she didn't have before. The door opened, Jacobs voice filled the silence and her lips curled into a wicked smile. I have a plan.