Katey Willow
February 07, 2021 12:20 PM
Desperately seeking Selina by Katey Willow
Katey knew without checking that her memory had been stolen. She hadn’t known exactly what it was at the time, but having witnessed her own, it was pretty easy to identify. Her past had been breached in a way she was not okay with, but nothing could be done to restore the past.Her main fear now was who had seen it. She knew that Killian had, obviously, but what about the rest of the populous? It was sensitive and, truth be told, more than a little unsettling to have an angry, silver man throwing things and screaming.
She knocked somewhat frantically on Selina’s door, knowing full well that she was probably not the first but most likely the oldest to do so over this whole ordeal. Fortunately, she had picked a time when Selina was present, and when invited in, she moved quickly.
“Selina,” she started breathlessly, getting right down to it, her bubbly exterior walls all crumbled down like rubble around her feet. “The memories. I need to know more. Do we know if they were able to move around the school? Or was each instance centralized in one room? One of them was mine, and it was.. It wasn’t…. I just don’t want any of the students to have seen it,” Katey decided finally. Her shoulders slumped, the energy falling as she poured everything out. “I have some relatively traumatic experiences, and I know for a fact that one of my memories was out there. I need to make sure I didn’t hurt anyone else.”
12
Katey Willow
Desperately seeking Selina
1505
1
5
Selina Skies
February 08, 2021 5:58 AM
Being found by Selina Skies
There was a knock. There had been one summons already, and there was another she had yet to make. The two of them were possibly more than she could cope with, and between and around them, there were bound to be knocks. She did not know how many. She wished she could have known just that. How many people had she hurt badly enough for them to come seeking answers? How many times was she going to need to have the energy for terrible conversations? Maybe if she knew she could spread it out evenly. Maybe that was why they didn’t let you know. That way, you just had to pour as much of yourself as you could into each one rather than holding back…“Come in,” she called, once she had taken a deep enough breath to verify that she wasn’t literally falling apart at the seams right now.
“Katey,” she greeted her. Katey seemed very sad and serios and unKateyish, and Selina tried not to sink yet again into the self-pity of feeling of thinking she was a horrible person, because these conversations were not about her. The word ‘traumatic’ made Selina internally flinch, until she remembered who she was talking to – or rather what she did for a living. She tended to think of Katey as ‘Katey’ not ‘Healer Willow,’ especially right now. Even with Leo being better, she had had far too much of healers not for them to hurt just a little. Speaking of hurt that had been caused…
“I’m sorry, she stated, both for the situation and for the non-answer she was about to give, “I don’t know. We can add ‘location’ to the poster in the hall, to try to get a general idea about that.” It was a weak and time-consuming way of getting their question half-answered, which was not going to be of that much comfort to Katey. “But please rest assured, any hurt, any damage caused, lies with me and not you.” Traumatic… It was a heck of a word. And it was entirely possible that some of the things Katey had seen in her career would make most people faint, especially if they lacked context. But there were chances it had been personal not professional. It was odd that Katey was worried about hurting others when, if she had witnessed or been part of something traumatic, she was the one who’d been hurt herself. “Do you want to talk about it?” Selina asked gently.
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Selina Skies
Being found
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Katey Willow
February 08, 2021 5:16 PM
Then why do I feel like I'm still searching? by Katey Willow
OOC: CW: Negative portrayal/mention of mental illness BIC:
She hated it. The violation, the lack of answers, the everything. Katey wasn’t mad at Selina for not knowing, but she was mad at the world for not giving her the answers. Mad for the universe letting this whole thing happen.
Did she want to talk about it? Well, no, not really. But even in her frustration, the young medic felt connected to her boss. Selina was always kind to her and had made her feel welcome since the very start. “I dated this guy who was bipolar, and he frequently went off his medications without warning,” Katey sighed, her arms crossing in front of her belly protectively. It was not an unusual habit for anyone feeling vulnerable, but her thumb traced a spot below her rib. It remembered something, too. “The memory of mine was him in one of his rages. And he shouted my name, so if anyone else saw it… Well, it’s just very... personal.”
“I have one more question about the memories,” Katey said, pulling back to the more useful topic, the one where things were real and present and could change. “You said you were destroying them, but has that happened yet? If not, can I… can I keep it? He’s gone now and I just can’t stand the thought of it being destroyed.”
12
Katey Willow
Then why do I feel like I'm still searching?
1505
0
5
Selina Skies
February 09, 2021 2:43 AM
Maybe you were looking for something more by Selina Skies
It was not the answer Selina had been expecting. Of course, by now, she was very used to people walking into her office and saying utterly unexpected things and she was quite good at keeping up a calm professional face whilst internally screaming. She allowed a little of the mixture of shock and sympathy to show in her eyes, as it would be heartless to meet this kind of news with absolutely no reaction, but it was nowhere close to what she was feeling inside. Why did everyone have so much hurt? Why did it always have to be of the messy and complicated kind that she had no idea how to fix?“I’ll do my best to look into it. I can see if we can do any sort of tracing to find out,” she offered. She was sure that, if necessary, they could find out who a memory belonged to. Could they find out who had seen it? That was probably trickier.
“No, not yet,” she confirmed, when she was asked if the memories had been destroyed. “We thought we’d give people time to talk to us, just in case…” In case of anything like this, in case anyone wanted a cool souvenir of their weird school year, in case anyone had seen something they were disturbed by and they had to trade privacy for safety… She was surprised by Katey’s request, given the way this person had treated her. He didn’t sound like one who was worth hanging onto, in any sense. But it was Katey’s memory and it was up to her.
“Certainly, come through,” she gestured the way into her living quarters where she’d been sorting through the penseive. The vessel itself sat empty. On the desk behind it, divided into two groups, a clear gap in the middle, were dozens of glass vials. Those on the left were labelled with names or initials – ‘Leo’ came up the most often, starting from ‘Leo (6)’ and skipping through various non-sequential numbers or occasionally descriptors ‘Leo (wedding)’ ‘S+J (wedding)’ ‘Leo (hospital)’ ‘K+E (10, 7).’ She hesitated, looking to see whether Katey had questions she wanted answering about that – about what Selina had been doing, and why she had put them all through this. Katey had opened up a very vulnerable part of her past, and Selina was willing to offer more explanation but she didn’t want to sound like she was making excuses.
“What number was it?” she asked, assuming that Katey had had a chance to reference the poster in the hall by now.
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Selina Skies
Maybe you were looking for something more
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Katey Willow
February 12, 2021 6:23 PM
Dang, that's deep. by Katey Willow
Katey followed Selina through the office and into her personal quarters. She tried not to be nosey, but her eyes were drawn across all of the bottles of memories on the wall. Her gaze strolled casually across the mostly innocuous labelings until one made her heart drop. K+E? How did Selina know?But then she was asking if Katey knew the number from the poster, and it took her a moment to realize that her memory was one of the ones on the right side of the gap, the ones labeled by number. “Um, 12,” she answered. She knew the answer immediately - she had practically memorized the list, she had stared at it so long - but it took her a moment to transfer the data from her brain to her lips.
It was only then that she realized the vials on the left with slightly more specific labels were probably Selina’s own, which meant that the K and E referenced were a very difficult pair and definitely did not refer to Katey and Ethan. They were just letters on a bottle, but seeing them written together like that sent her mind back, flashing graffiti and tree carvings before her that she had not thought about in forever. She smiled, a little wistfully. Those were the better memories of Ethan. Still reckless, especially in the case of the graffiti, but sweet, too, and genuine. She missed that Ethan, but he had died a long time ago. Longer ago than even the other one.
“Thank you for this,” Katey said humbly, forcing herself to be present again. “It means a lot to me.”
12
Katey Willow
Dang, that's deep.
1505
0
5
Selina Skies
February 13, 2021 6:04 AM
Yes, things often turn out to be unpleasantly complicated by Selina Skies
OOC: CW - illness/memory loss BIC:
Thank you. Selina almost choked on Katey’s unfaltering politeness, at first assuming that was all it was. Thank you for taking five minutes for me, even though cleaning up this whole mess should be your responsibility. Thank you for giving back the thing you wrongfully took from me in the first place. But ‘it means a lot to me’ didn’t really go with that. Selina looked at the little piece of Katey’s life she’d picked up off the table. She couldn’t understand why she wanted the memory of someone who had hurt her, but she understood that it could be a gift to get back something that had been lost, even though it hurt.
“I don’t think you should be thanking me,” she shook it off in spite of that. It was not just a polite reply, but really feeling like it was something she didn’t deserve.
“It's my brother's,” she gestured to the broken pensieve. This was an explanation she perhaps owed everyone, though not everyone had been hurt, and not everyone had come inside and seen the neat little rows that were obviously family memories. She didn’t want Katey to form the wrong conclusions. “He has trouble with his memory. It’s been going on for a long time. He had an accident, and everything from before it is fine but everything since… Anyway, he spends a lot of time in the past, so we like to go there with him sometimes. And for the things that matter in the present… He’s still smart as anything, he can reason out a puzzle if you put it in front of him,” he still beat her husband slightly more than half the time on the cryptic crossword, “The Auror Office, his old work, they still sometimes get him to chew over tough cases from time to time, as a consultant,” she added, a trace of pride in her voice. The last thing she wanted was for anyone to think of Leo as poor, sad, or incapable. “He just has trouble holding onto things. And he trusts us, he knows we’d never make decisions for him without consulting him, or leave him out of family events but he can’t remember making them, and he can’t remember being there, and that's hard for him to accept.” Writing things down, going back to notes and photographs helped but it wasn't the same as being there. He did better with photographs than with notes, better with notes than words alone, and he did best of all when he could go over things again properly. They kept life well-organised around Leo, and then Leo managed. And when he had a bad day, they could just go some place where that didn't matter. But then it had broken. It had been on hard on him without it. That was logical, it was something he used a lot. And he was clearly frustrated, whether with them or himself or just the whole damn situation she was never sure. Sometimes, he seemed almost apologetic ‘I’m sure you told me, but…’ or ‘I know I must have written it down…’ She hadn’t seen him like that for a long time, not since the first few weeks after the accident. She wasn't sure where the cause and effect lay... Had the penseive broken down because he was getting worse, or had he gotten worse without it? Were they just two events that had happened at the same time and neither had been caused by the other. They tended to put their own memories in it rather than his because, even outside of his head, the quality of his always degraded quickly. Maybe he had seemed so much worse without it just because he was getting worse. But it was very easy to think that if she had just sent it away to a professional, none of this would have happened. Not to Sonora, not to Leo... Stupidly, it had felt like something that was in her control. Something she could make better...
“I’m not trying to make excuses,” she added hastily, aware that was how it could sound, “I just wanted you to know why it happened – that it wasn’t for the sake of some trivial family album or…” she trailed off. “I just thought you deserved to know,” she said softly.
13
Selina Skies
Yes, things often turn out to be unpleasantly complicated
26
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Katey Willow
February 13, 2021 6:18 PM
I hear ya by Katey Willow
“Oh, Selina…” She didn’t have to tell Katey any of that. It felt intrusive, and almost like the Deputy Headmistress thought she owed it to her. But she didn’t owe Katey anything. The medic harbored no resentment or anger toward her boss for this unfortunate event. Truthfully, she didn’t care why it had happened. It wasn’t like medicine. Katey wasn’t looking for the disease to cure. She was just trying to isolate a single symptom, the one that originated with her own past, and her own failings.“It sounds like you’re a really good sister,” Katey said, her voice gentle. Her arms slid down in front of her, her hands finding one another for modest comfort, clutching loosely but clutching nonetheless. “I mean, to go all through all of that for your brother must be really difficult. And I’m sure he’s got top medical professionals on his team already, but if there’s anything I can do for him, I’m always willing to try.”
“I don’t have any brothers,” she shared in return, “but I have sisters. I haven’t spoken to them in quite some time, but I know I’d be a mess if that happened to one of them.” Obviously, she and her sisters were quite a bit younger than Selina and, presumably, her brother, but they had also thus far been blessed with relatively good health. Her youngest sister had undergone some surgeries, she knew, but those were not the same type of thing as this. Those were surgeries mostly outside of Katey’s purview, less medically necessary and more life transitional.
12
Katey Willow
I hear ya
1505
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