Everything was white, and then everything wasn't. When she wakes, everything is dark, and she doesn't know where she is. It's not her apartment, but a - sitting room? Not her home, and not the Academy, and though at first she sits dumb and mute, panic starts to creep into her consciousness. Her fingers claw at her pockets almost via muscle memory, looking for a bottle of pills that doesn't exist anymore. There's no fix for this, no reprieve to bring her back to an even, if muted, keel. It makes taking stock difficult, makes it feel impossible.

Somehow, she pushes out of the chair, starts down a hall she doesn't recognize, all to the rhythm of her heart hammering blood through her body and questions through her brain.

Where am I? Ba-bum.

Where's my violin? Ba-bum.

Am I bleeding? Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum.

She is bleeding, and that's the one question she can answer: why is just outside her grasp, and she holds the white cuff of her suit jacket to her right ear. Breathe, she tells herself, just breathe, just focus--

--Find one sound, Leonard said, but no, she doesn't want to think about that--

--her heartbeat pounding in her head, no, no, she doesn't want to focus on that either--

It's an effort, but she hums Pachelbel's Canon in D to herself, one of the most common melodies in the musical world at this point. It's choked and offbeat whenever she has to suck in a sharp breath, but it lets her put one foot in front of the other as she climbs stairs, moving through one hallway after the next. She says nothing to the people she passes, shying away from them: not because she doesn't want answers, God, she does, but she can feel her heartbeat pounding in her throat, making the promise of conversation just about unbearable.

She might have continued that way a while, too, if a familiar face didn't bring her up short. The hum dies in her mouth, and she stares, wide eyes still sunken and dark rimmed, and she chokes out his name.

"Diego?" © tessisamess