Chapter 01: Numb

A part of her understood why Katherine worked with Finn to get the girl out of her contract with the Cullens and why the girl was at that party. Katherine hated the Mikaelsons and the Salvatores and for all of them to have sex with the girl would most definitely drive a wedge between them.

It always did.

On the other hand, after hearing that the girl would never be completely free of the Cullens, she figured it would be better to go back than run and she had tried to throw herself out of the car a handful of times until Katherine subdued her with the calming compound that handlers were required to carry.

When the girl came to; she was alone in a large space on a bed and slightly panicky when Katherine wasn’t present. She knew that if Katherine was present, everything was going to be alright, but she was completely alone now. Getting off the bed, she decided to explore, as quietly as she could because for all she knew was that they weren’t in New Orleans, and they weren’t at the friend of the Mikaelsons.

She didn’t know if wherever she was was safe. She was going off on Katherine’s experience with the men and her own findings when she was with them, but still, it didn’t feel safe. She had this nagging feeling that soon enough, the Cullens would come for her.

The girl walked towards the big windows that seemed to be facing a street and, sure enough, it looked as if she was in New Orleans. They had made it. She let out a breath of relief and smiled. They had made it! But again, simply because they made it to New Orleans didn’t mean that they were safe.

She wanted to open the windows to hear the sounds on the street, of the cars and the people walking passed the building she was in but found the windows locked. She didn’t like closed places, mainly for her own safety when she wasn’t home. When she was home, she knew that she was in a locked area and that it was alright, it was her place, but this wasn’t home. This was some place they had gone to for safety, and she didn’t feel safe.

Running to the door, she found it unlocked and let out a sigh of relief before putting it ajar and resumed watching people from the window. It didn’t take long until she felt Katherine arrive and when she turned to greet her, she noticed another woman with her. Another vampire. Likely Klaus’ friend. A quick read told the girl that the woman didn’t like Katherine very much, and she immediately took a dislike to the woman as she walked to Katherine to feel safe.

“Chickpea, this is Myriam Jenkins,” Katherine said, introducing the other woman. “She’s the owner of this place.”

“Nice to meet you, Ms. Jenkins,” the girl replied with a slight curtsey. She tried to read her again, but now her mind was closed off to her, and she didn’t understand why, nothing had changed, had it?

“What did you get on your first read, girl?” Myriam asked kindly. “My dislike towards your companion is my guess. Let me tell you that it’s only her that I don’t like but that I’m accepting her presence here because you came with her and you both need my help.”

The girl slowly nodded and tried to relax as she stood next to Katherine. Maybe if she’d approach this as a work thing, she’d do better.

“And you can’t read me now because I have something that protects my mind from intrusions. I’ve had a few girls like you across my threshold, and some are still here, but I’m also dealing with other vampires, werewolves, witches… it’ll get messy, you see. But ask me anything and I’ll answer truthfully, or as much as I can. Now, what’s your name?” Klaus had been right; the girl had honed into what Myriam would think she would have looked like. Without her amulet, the girl had been a redhead, with it, she could clearly see that the girl was young. Blonde. Blue eyes. It was fascinating, but it also broke her heart.

“What would you like it to be, Ms. Jenkins?”

“As I said, she won’t give you her real name. If she does before her contract expires, they’ll be able to find her,” Katherine explained. “She hasn’t used her real name ever since they got their hands on her.”

“Which is?”

“A hundred and fifty years, give or take. I’ve been her handler for the last thirty.”

“She must have been one of Carlisle’s first, then,” Myriam sighed and smiled at the girl. “I’m not going to call you ‘the girl’ all the time. In fact, I’ve told this to the other girls from the place you’re from, and I named them all. You look like a… Calypso. You know what it means, right? The deceiver. She influenced Odysseus to come with her and held him prisoner for seven years on an island. Seems fitting, don’t you think?”

She seemed to think for a moment and then shrugged. It was perhaps a little bit too close to the truth, but Ms. Jenkins didn’t need to know that. “Calypso will do, Ms. Jenkins. From now on I’ll answer to that name and will refer to myself as Calypso. Thank you.”

“Come, let me show you around.”

Looking over her shoulder as she was being pulled away from Katherine, Calypso hoped that she would follow as her shadow. She always had, why would it have to stop now? “It’s alright, Chickpea, I’ll be here when you return,” Katherine smiled encouragingly.

“Katherine’s room is next to yours,” Myriam started once they were in the hallway. “I know that you’ve been constant companions and that you’re lovers, but my experience is that it’s best if you learned to be on your own again. Do what you want without having to rely on someone else. It’s going to be difficult, but we’re all here to help you.”

“But what if I want to sleep with Katherine?”

“Then, by all means, do so, but Klaus has instructed me not to allow you to have intercourse until he’s figured things out for you.”

“But she hasn’t paid for me, so the contract doesn’t count. I can have sex with people who don’t pay for me.”

“Don’t get me wrong, sweetheart, but perhaps a break from all that sex is a good thing.” The girl was smart; Myriam had to give her that. It would be nice to find out who the girl was underneath all that manipulation.

Calypso looked at the woman for a moment before looking back to her feet and nodded. “Of course.”

Myriam sighed as she gently rubbed the girl’s back. “As I said, it’s going to be difficult for a while for you, but trust that all we want for you is to be able to lead a normal life outside of what you know, and what you know is very limited.” She gently nudged the girl further down the hallway. “Here’s the kitchen. While we do employ a cook to prepare meals, eventually you’ll have to do it yourself. If you ask nicely, the cook is likely going to be willing to teach you how to cook.”

“I know how to cook,” Calypso replied quickly. “They taught me. Sometimes clients like home cooked meals or watch a person cook, and I can provide that.”

“And to cook to feed yourself?”

“It wouldn’t be too much of a leap to do that, Ms. Jenkins, especially if that’s what you request.”

Calypso could feel the tension in the woman’s body radiate towards her. She was frustrated, and she didn’t even have to use her influence to figure that out. “What I request is that you start living your life as it should be lived. Have fun, go crazy. Smash things. Be angry. Feel. Cry. Scream. You’re an immortal, Calypso; you have a long life ahead of you, and if you leave here, I want to make sure that you can take care of yourself without having to rely on others.”

“Like Katherine?”

“Katherine is a crafty little vamp, but she’s not immortal. She can die and then what? What will you do?”

Calypso was quiet for a moment as she considered it. “I’d go back to-”

“No, that is not an option.”

“I would find myself a husband to please.”

“Good luck, honey, you know as well as I do that times have changed and that it’s not that easy anymore to find someone like that. If you do find one, it’s likely that they’ll take advantage of you.”

“And what’s the issue with that?”

Myriam let out a frustrated grunt. “Damn, you’re good. The other girls were easier to convince but you?”

“I take that as a compliment, thank you, Ms. Jenkins.”

“Oh fuck me,” she sighed.

Calypso smiled up at her, interest peaked. “Where would you like me to do that?”

Even though this was just an assessment of the new girl, Myriam already knew enough. She had to buy the services of an out of town witch to at least attempt to unlock parts of Calypso’s brain to jolt her into realizing that she was going to be on her own, she was going to have to take care of herself, and that life wasn’t just about pleasing others. Calypso hadn’t broken character, and Myriam sincerely doubted that she ever would.

Although, she could temporarily place Katherine somewhere else; in another safe house, for example, and see what the girl would do in her absence.

“Next up is the showers, now, you’re fortunate to have one in your room, but you may run into others here.”

“Would you like me to fuck you here?”

“Stop it,” Myriam growled at her as she pushed her towards the gym. “This is the gym where you can let off some steam. Punch against the punching bags to release your anger or whatever.” Myriam then showed her the laundry room and then returned her back to her room. “I’m going to send one of my girls up with some food and books for you, is that alright, Calypso? I’m going to have to borrow Katherine for a little longer.”

Myriam pulled Katherine with her and pushed her into her room before closing the door. “You have some explaining to do, missy,” she shot at her. “This girl doesn’t look anywhere near ready to leave the Cullens! Hell, I doubt she even wants to!”

“She loved the idea of her contract being up, what are you talking about?”

“Does she truly or only because you told her that it was a good thing so you could both leave?”

“She wants to be free, Myriam.”

“Again, does she truly or only because you told her that being free was the best thing for her?”

Katherine looked as if she had swallowed a bug and ran her hand through her hair. “Perhaps I’ve been so caught up in what I wanted that I failed to realize that the girl hasn’t had an original thought for so long…” she muttered. “Fuck! I’m not better than them!”

“And now you’ve made all of us your accomplice,” Myriam snarled. “You do know that I will have to inform Klaus, right? And you do know that I have to let her go, don’t you? I can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.”

“Myriam, please.”

“Holding her here against her will is not an option, Katherine. We’re better than that.”

“She’s brainwashed! She doesn’t know what she wants because she’s not capable of thinking for herself!” Katherine pointed to the wall that was attached to Calypso’s room. “At least do something!” Her voice thick with emotion. “Like… I know you and Klaus have connections, find someone who can return her free will to her. If she still wants to go back, I won’t stop her, but please, Myriam,” she begged. “Please.”

Myriam was surprised by Katherine’s kindness towards the girl. She genuinely seemed to be wanting to help her and sighed. “Very well,” she replied softly. “But only because you genuinely seem to want to help this girl. I’ll have someone fly in as fast as they’re able to.”

“Thank you.”

~o.O.o~

Katherine hadn’t been with her for days, and Calypso felt that it was likely that she had done something wrong. No one had come to give her something to eat, either. Or at least remind her that she needed to eat.

Immortal or not, she couldn’t survive on water alone, her stomach still grumbled and after a few days, she went outside of her room, counting the doors as she walked towards the kitchen. The cook wasn’t there, but that wouldn’t stop her from cooking for everyone. She multiplied the doors by two; she was going to cook for 20 people. No big deal.

Looking around, she quickly made herself at home in the well-organized kitchen; everything was where you’d expect it to be in a kitchen, and she was happy that despite the cook’s absence, it was well stocked.

She started with dessert first, seeing as it needed time to bake in the oven and needed time to cool down. Hot Lemon Pie wasn’t nice, and people often burned their mouths on it because they couldn’t wait. Three pies were enough.

By the time the pies were in the oven and she was cleaning up so she could start on dinner or whatever the time was, she began to feel faint and stole a piece of chocolate from the fridge to continue her work and finally figured out what she’d cook for everyone. Her spaghetti with meatballs. Granted, making enough meatballs to serve twenty quite generously was quite the task, but that was part of cooking. She’d make them while the sauce bubbled away.

People passed the kitchen while she was cooking, occasionally getting something out of the fridge, but no one she recognized. Didn’t Ms. Jenkins say that there were more girls from the service in this building? It wasn’t her place to be that curious about it, though. She wouldn’t know how she’d react to them, but she was pretty certain that nobody would like her.

With the Cullens, there were only a handful of good girls, like Calypso, who did everything she was told. Who loved to please everyone and not taking herself into account. It was something that she was taught to do over a long sixty years where Dr. Cullen had her in a laboratory to fiddle with her body.

Ms. Jenkins was wrong. She wasn’t one of the first of the girls he created so beautifully; Calypso was the first. The first success story of the brilliant mind of Dr. Cullen. Calypso hadn’t even minded the pain and torture she’d gone through for so long because it meant that the girls after her wouldn’t have to endure it. Perhaps that’s why most of the girls were still imperfect.

She should tell Dr. Cullen that. Most of the girls wouldn’t be able to get the same treatment because they were created on a whim, but surely his most prized girls would do much better with the same treatment that she had had.

What would happen if she snuck out? Would they hold her against her will? Katherine would certainly hate her for leaving, but Calypso wasn’t Katherine. Katherine was getting paid to be her handler, to be everything in Calypso’s world and she was currently not doing a good job of it.

Calypso was proud of the food she had produced. Everything tasted brilliant, and she had put effort into making it all look right on the kitchen island. She knew she wasn’t supposed to eat first, but she couldn’t help herself and put a little bit on a plate and hid behind the counter to eat. Her stomach loved her for it.

As she was scraping her plate to make sure there’d be no waste, she got startled by Ms. Jenkins, who was standing over her like an Amazon, arms crossed over her chest, a stern look on her face. Calypso was in trouble.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

She quickly scrambled to her feet and held up her empty plate. “You requested that I’d cook for myself, Miss,” Calypso replied impishly. “But that’s a selfish act, so I decided to cook enough to feed a few people. I’m sorry if I ate before anyone else, my stomach was growling.”

Myriam narrowed her eyes on the immortal girl. While charity was a good trait to have, feeling selfish for cooking something for yourself wasn’t. She wasn’t surprised that it had taken the girl this long to leave her room. It was a good thing that Myriam told Katherine to hide out in one of the rooms in the basement to see what their girl was going to do. At least the girl had come out of her own accord.

It was a good thing that Circe was willing to come back to New Orleans to work with this girl. Circe had been one of Carlisle Cullen’s failures but had retained the ‘gift’ he had given her on top of her being a witch. Fortunately for her, her gift and her magic worked perfectly together, and Myriam was confident that Circe would be able to break down a wall inside Calypso’s mind.

When Myriam didn’t say anything, Calypso sweetly smiled and gestured over to the lemon pie. “Please, have some,” she urged her. “It’s delicious.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me where Katherine is?”

“It’s not my place to know,” Calypso replied as she rinsed off her plate and put it in the dishwasher. “But if something has happened to her I’ll be sad.”

“Why is that?”

“She takes care of me and she has nice hands,” Calypso slightly giggled as she thought of the feeling of Katherine’s hands on her. “To know that I’m appreciated makes me feel good, but in all honesty, I’d rather work so I feel normal.”

“This isn’t normal for you? Just hanging around?”

She shook her head. “It is good to get inside someone’s mind, feel what they’re feeling, act the way they want you to; it’s difficult not to have that right now.”

“Do you do it with Katherine?”

“Of course, she’s my handler; I need to know where she is when I’m working.”

Myriam sighed as she sliced off a piece of lemon pie and started to eat it, the girl had gone through all the trouble to make it, so why the hell not? She was talking which was a good thing, but again, the answers didn’t hold much substance. No soul. No personality. It made sense that Carlisle Cullen had given her the ability to get inside people’s minds and act the way they saw her as her own personality had been locked away for a very long time, and she didn’t even know what it was like to live. “This is magnificent, Calypso!” Myriam hated Lemon Pie.

The girl beamed with pride. “It’s one of the recipes my grandmother had taught me before I was courted by Edward. The plan had always been that I would run my grandmother’s establishment after her passing, but I suppose fate had something else in mind for me.”

It was the first thing that she had said that was personal, and Myriam was impressed. But was that even true? Wasn’t Edward one of the most recent vampires of the Cullen clan compared to how long Bella had been with them? “Where are you from, originally?”

Calypso shrugged then. “Where do you want me to be from?”

“What was your grandmother’s name?”

She shrugged again.

Sighing, Myriam put the pie aside. The little shimmer of hope she felt for the girl’s recovery without any intervention was now gone. They really needed Circe.

“I have a friend who’s coming over tomorrow, and she wishes to see you, is that alright with you?”

“Of course,” Calypso smiled. “If that’s what you wish.”

Frustrated, Myriam ran a hand through her hair. Oh, she wished she could slap this girl hard enough to unscramble her brains, but she couldn’t. She was supposed to save and support girls like this, not hurt them. Calypso was the most heavily programmed girl she’d ever come across, and while she had faith in Circe, she also doubted that even she could do something to help this girl.

Myriam could, of course, tell the girl that she wished that she behaved normally, that she’d fit in or even open up about her feelings, but she knew that the girl would only be telling her what she wished to hear. Unable to influence her or not, the girl did know how to figure that out.

“Have some more food and enjoy yourself, Calypso,” she eventually said. “I must take my leave; I have some business to attend to.”

“Will Katherine be back tonight?”

“I’m sorry, Cherie, you’ll have to do without her for a while longer.”

Calypso nodded as she plated up again. “Am I allowed to eat this in my room?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you,” she replied and hurried to her room. Myriam could hear the door close and let out a breath she wasn’t aware of that she was holding. She was going to feed and then talk to Klaus. No, not talk, curse him. Call him names, yell at him. He was a fucking asshole to send this girl to her, it was something she was making abundantly clear over the last few days, but it wouldn’t hurt for him to hear it again.

nextalph

7 Comments:

  1. I am so looking forward to the day the good doctor and his family goes up in smoke.

  2. Poor Bella is pretty screwed up. I sure hope this Circe who’s coming will be able t help her.

  3. Maybe! Let’s hope Circe can help! Thanks for reading and commenting <3

  4. Wow, Bella sure is a mess…sigh…Damn Carlisle and the rest of the Cullen’s for hurting her like this…I just hope that this Circe person can help her…I’m loving this so far and can’t wait to read more…thanks hon…huggs.

  5. Nah it’s just a name, Circe. Circe’s a witch. Head messing is fun 🙂

  6. wow you weren’t kidding when you said that they messed with her head.. she is the perfect little puppet. they are going to need alot of help for her and i bet Circe can do it ifs it the Circe i am thinking of… Update again soon would like to see Circes reaction to the her and what the cullens have done to her

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