[color=FFFF00]B e l l e  D ' V o i r e[/color]
[hr]
Winter was saying...something. She had seized Belle's hands between hers, and Belle could faintly recognize a look of honest and sorrowed pleading on the girl's face...but it was like she was perceiving everything through misted glass. Winter's words were muffled and echoed around Belle, and the woods around them quietly sunk away as Belle withdrew, images plaguing her mind and demanding all of her attention.

She slipped backwards. The sky went from dull blue to tiled white, fluorescent lights glowing harshly and filling the space with a low buzz. There were voices coming from behind Belle - not Winter's, but a lower, male voice. Her...father? She tried to crane her neck to see, but although she could feel her movement, her view didn't change. More tiles. More lights. More voices. 

There was a flash, and she was in another room, sat on the side of a bed, her legs dangling over the edge. Small black shoes with small silver buckles, striped socks beneath. She wasn't alone - she felt her vision move without her command and now she looked at three, four more faces, all young like her, all pale with withered hair and the smell of death. Across the room a door opened, and a lady clad in more white entered with a tray. Everything so sterile, and the children so sick.

Belle blinked, and now she was in the same room, but alone. She knew her parents were on the other side of the door, but they were not with her, and neither were the children from before - only a man in a shirt, sleeves rolled up and an ID Badge clipped to his breast pocket. Beside them on a table lay another tray, a few vials and a syringe resting on it. The man filled the syringe from one of the vials, and gently placed a hand on Belle's shoulder. He was talking gently, crooning calm and warm words of comfort and congratulations. The cold metal pierced her arm, and she felt the serum invade her bloodstream. That's what it felt like - an invasion. A foreign force. It did not belong.
But she was forced to accept it, and soon, it would [i]make[/i] itself belong.

There was no flash, this time, just immediate, blinding pain. An intense fire that burned from Belle's very core, radiating outwards in waves of lashing heat that crippled her, bent her in two until she had nothing to think of but clawing out her insides, stripping the very fiber off her bones and laying herself bare. The pain was the all and the only.

Years flew by in a most literal sense - the time seemed to be physical, fixed in a shape both incomprehensible and instinctively understandable in equal measure - and Belle was an outside observer to her own growth. The experiments and the pain ceased, leaving only her to survive them or the illness they treated; she felt the strange weight of her treatment rest anew within her, like an old ache she had learned to ignore brought back to her attention. There was a deeper curve to it now, though, and she felt the changes it had caused within her. Her mind focused on those changes, and her memories seemed to respond. The night of the dance. The fire.

There was...fear. Fear had always been there, but it had been bloated to cover the truth of the evening - of the mystic and impossible brought to reality. Wolves, beasts of wild nightmare, a new invasion. Belle had slunk through an unguarded escape, collapsed in her own terror and helplessness. The weight within her had...tilted. She understood, now. She had to protect her hive, and she had risen to that end. And then [i]He[/i] appeared. Wreathed in malevolence and dark magicks, it was [i]him[/i] that had set the fire and taken his prize...and wiped their memories. Everyone's except for...

[color=f08080][i]"Would you be open to the idea of me trying it again? Seeing if I can see memories? I won't do it if you aren't comfortable with it, but I need some closure. Some understanding that I am not slowly losing my mind. Please?"[/i][/color]
Winter was in front of her again, that look of sad desperation now sharply focused, her words coming through like bullets through ice. Belle felt the crunch of gravel and twigs beneath her shoes and heard birds chirping from the trees around her. She was back in the woods.

[color=FFFF00]"I think you already have."[/color] Belle said quickly, wrenching her hands away from Winter's grasp, a look of outrage accusation piercing through Winter. Belle knew Winter had forced those memories out of her, knew she had seen it all as well. She had seen more than Belle had ever chosen to share with [i]anyone[/i]. And Belle didn't even have a [i]say[/i].
[color=FFFF00]"I believe you, Winter."[/color] Belle said, taking a careful step backwards and talking low enough that only Winter could hear her. [color=FFFF00]"But now you have to stay [i]away from me.[/i]"[/color]
Belle turned up the path.

-

Belle was quiet with her own thoughts as the group set a campfire and began to cook their dinner for the evening. She sat alone as Aiden and Sebastian left on their tasks, and didn't notice either of their returns until Aiden sat down next to her, passing her a plate. She looked at the food with a distinct lack of appetite that she had not experienced in any of her years since childhood; and then she lifted her head, turning to look at Aiden as he ate, paying no attention to her.

She sidled closer, careful not to draw notice from the group, getting close enough to whisper into Aiden's ear.
[color=FFFF00]"The dance wasn't Elroy and Louis,"[/color] she hissed, Aiden's ear pricking up, [color=FFFF00]"[i]and it wasn't you either.[/i]"[/color]