Chapter Text
Juliette Ferrars has I have been locked up for 264 days.
I have nothing but a small notebook and a broken pen and the numbers and the memories I’ve slowly been recovering in my head to keep me company.
I use the ink in the pen sparingly, rationing it out every day.
I count everything I can. The number of bricks that form my cell. The seconds it takes me to cross the room. The hairs on my head, the scars on my skin. The number of days that I’ve been locked in here.
I count everything until there’s nothing left to count.
The world thinks I’m insane. That I’m a dangerous monster. It’s why The Reestablishment locked Juliette me in here.
But in recent days weeks months years, I’ve come to realise that that’s not the only reason they want me hidden.
Juliette Ferrars may have been locked up for 264 days, but Ella Sommers has been locked up much longer, in the depths of her my own mind.
The memories come randomly, and they’re never consistent.
Sometimes I’ll get a blurry picture that vanishes within very very short minutes.
Sometimes I’ll feel like what I’m watching is a movie of Ella’s my own life.
I remember my real parents.
I remember the lake.
I remember playing hide and seek with Nazeera and Emmaline Emmaline Emmaline Emmaline.
And I remember him.
Aaron.
I remember meeting him as Ella.
I remember meeting him over and over and over again as Juliette.
I remember him with his green eyes and blonde hair and the scars down his back and I remember how he was my best friend when I was Ella, how he was the first person I saw when Juliette’s my parents adopted me, how he was one of the only people I knew before the asylum.
Every time we met, we forgot each other soon after.
But I remember him now.
And I sometimes wonder if he remembers Ella Juliette me.
I got a cellmate roommate today.
He asked me my name, why I was in the asylum, if I was a psychopath.
I didn’t answer and fell off my bed.
He stole my blanket that night and fell asleep. I stayed awake.
My roommate woke up, and asked me my name again.
I still didn’t want to tell him. He still thought I was insane. Dangerous. A psychopath.
He told me his name was Adam.
He burned his hand on the food when it came in. I warned him too late.
I had to show him where the showers were. He was surprised when I told him how little time we were allowed in here.
He asked me if the screaming ever stopped.
I didn’t need to say anything to answer him.
He asked me my name again, and I finally told him.
I said it was Juliette, but knowing what I know now, it felt like a lie.
But having been Juliette all my life, telling him my name was Ella also would have felt like a lie.
Besides, the whole world knew me as Juliette, A danger psychotic a murderer. So that’s what I told him.
No one knew Ella Sommers.
No one except Evie Sommers, Max Sommers, Aaron Warner Anderson and Emmaline Sommers. And I didn’t even know if the last person was still alive.
Adam was in the asylum with me for two weeks.
In those two weeks he asked too many questions and I gave him too few answers.
He insisted that he wasn’t insane. I said, “That’s what we all say.”
He told me that The Reestablishment wanted to get rid of all the books and languages and holidays, and build a world where we all spoke and thought the same. That almost scared me as much as the things the doctors did to me before they threw me in here.
We stopped talking when he tried to touch my arm. I didn’t want to hurt him, so I told him to never try to touch me again. He asked why and I said “You can’t. You just can’t.” over and over and over again.
He was in the asylum for 2 weeks, when 5 soldiers burst in and pointed guns at us, told us to put our hands up and keep our mouths shut.
When I fell over, one of them kicked me over and over in the ribs, telling me to get back on my feet.
I thought that they were finally going to kill me.
I was finally going to die.
I would never get out of the asylum.
I would never find Emmaline.
I would never see Aaron again
And with a final kick, the world went dark. And I was sure that I was finally dead dead dead.
I am alive.
I wake up 2 days after the soldiers came in, and Adam isn’t there anymore.
Why?
The door opens, and a soldier walks in.
He tells me to follow him, so I do. I get up, but then he walks in.
Adam.
His face is blank, and he’s pointing a gun at me.
They push me through the dark dark corridors and through a door where the room is too bright bright bright.
And then I see him.
His hair is the same, and his eyes are the same, but the rest of him is all wrong.
He looks at me like I’m some sort of bug under a microscope, and I panic.
He doesn’t remember you.
He tells the soldier that isn’t Adam, “Weston, turn the lights down. I want to look at her properly.” And the fear sinks deeper into the depths of my empty stomach.
He calls me stubborn, saying that I wouldn’t even play nice with my roommate.
This isn’t the boy Ella Juliette I knew.
But then, “Weston, Kent. Wait outside. I’d like to speak to our friend privately.”
Weston and Adam leave the room without questioning him, shutting the door behind them.
He waits exactly seventeen seconds, and in that time his face is still harsh, his eyes are still cold, his grin is still evil.
But at second number eighteen, he drops the smile, and his eyes widen, almost like he’s expecting me to do or say something that I couldn’t whilst Adam and the other soldiers were here.
So I do.
“Aaron?”
His features soften instantly, and his mouth moves to form a smile again. Only this one was kind, empathetic, and full of relief.
He holds out a gloved hand, and I take it as his beautiful green eyes look into mine.
“Ella?”
I nod.
“You remember? Everything? You have your memories back too?”
I nod again.
He moves hesitantly at first, as if he’s not sure what to do now that we’re both here. Now that we both see and know and recognise each other.
But then he hugs me, and I understand why he asked the soldiers to step outside.
I hug him back and say, “We both forgot. We forgot Ella. and We forgot each other when I was Juliette. And I don’t know if I’m Ella or Juliette or someone else entirely, Aaron. I-”
He cuts me off, saying, “Don’t, love. Not now. We have things to do but I promise when I get you on base, we will have all the time in the world to figure things out.”
I don’t know or acknowledge what he means by “get you on base,”. All I know is that right now, I’m truly smiling for the first time in 280 days.