It took almost two weeks for the upheaval to end in Wodenton, but by the time Irene and Lee felt comfortable enough to come back home, the chaos had settled and they were largely left to themselves in the home over the tea shop. Lee spent several hours buried in her blanket pile after tossing everything around again the way she wanted it. Irene cleaned her shop, dusting up and reorganizing and dealing with expired product on her shelves, before settling down and opening for part of an afternoon. She was only open for a few hours before Lee came downstairs, wrapped in the thickest and heaviest blanket of the pile.

"Irene, can... After dinner, I need you to look at my head. Please. I have to face it but it keeps hiding from me. I'm hearing them in my sleep," Lee said, biting her lip. "I know I said I was sleeping fine, but... I-I'm not."

Irene stood up and brushed some of Lee's hair out of her face. "Of course I can. I didn't want to push it; you didn't seem ready."

Lee smiled halfheartedly. "I thought I could work through it but I think there's still some of her magic sticking to the corners. I'll be in the basement."

"If you preferred, we could do the spell in your room. You'll want to be somewhere comfortable." Irene stepped from behind her counter to close up the shop. Lee considered this for a few minutes - she'd been more relaxed when horizontal and buried under her blankets, anyway. She nodded and went back upstairs.

Irene ordered take-out from the Chinese place Lee liked the most and settled down next to her in Lee's room, a hand on her back over the blankets and rubbing gently. "Do you want to talk about any of it?" she asked.

Lee shrugged, lifting her head from her knees. "I remember their names now. Most of them, ten of them. I managed to become the leader." She took a deep breath, exhaling shakily and leaning against Irene. "There was Rocky - he was older than me, an older werewolf I mean, but he's also the one who taught me everything I knew about being what I am. Isaiah too, but his face is blurry..." She rested her chin on her knees. "There's a gorgeous woman whose name I don't remember, I... I think I loved her. I see her face and my heart starts feeling like it's going to tear itself to shreds. She-She died first, she was protecting me." She swallowed hard and rubbed her forehead, sitting up straight. "And this- Sage thing, was it my name before or was it just a name she forced on me? I don't remember me anymore, like I don't remember where I grew up or where I was born. Hell, I don't remember my own birthday. I remember all of theirs though. We... We really liked planning birthday parties for each other." Lee sniffed a bit, trying not to start crying again. "It-It was...  it was fun. Six birthdays were in November, two were in July, three were in May."

Irene tilted her head. "Three?"

"Yeah, Rocky and Logan and... and..." Lee's eyes widened as the realization dawned on her. "... me."

"That's progress!" Irene hugged her tight and Lee giggled weakly, planting a kiss on her forehead. "Even if you can't remember the specific day you can always just choose one and we'll use that."

"Just make it the first of May. Very easy to remember." Lee smiled at her and wiped her face a bit with the corner of a blanket as she calmed down a bit.

The witch kissed her once, sweetly, and leaned back on a hand, smiling at her. "When we go to town tomorrow to pick up groceries, we can pick you up some journals, see if it helps any if you write down what you can remember off-hand?"

"I like the sound of that. Let's see if I remember how to write," Lee joked, wrapping her arms around Irene and tugging her close. Irene settled in comfortably against her werewolf, her head against her shoulder as they listened to the evening birds sing outside the bedroom window. "If I have the journals as a starting point, that might make the spell more effective. Right?"

"That's the idea." Irene sat up when she heard the doorbell ring. "Food!"

"What kind of food?" Lee joked, knowing exactly what Irene had ordered, and she stood up to join her in the kitchen. Irene paid the delivery guy for their food and shut the door, setting the bags on the table and rummaging in a drawer for a fork - even after two weeks, her hands still hurt and using chopsticks felt like an insurmountable task.

During dinner, Lee kept quiet for the most part, though she did attempt to answer Irene's questions - mostly she wanted to just focus on her food and nothing else, but she understood why Irene was pressing so hard. She hadn't been sleeping well, had woken Irene up every night since the farm house had gone up in flames. Despite Eugenia going over her and the other werewolves' heads with every ounce of care to make sure all of Zoe's taint was gone, something still felt fuzzy.

The few dishes were washed and put away, and Lee curled up in her pile of blankets again, her head resting against Irene's side as they sat together in her room. "You can start now if you want, Irene. I just might fall asleep, food coma and all."

"If you're sure." Lee nodded and handed her the napkin she'd written on - the list of names wasn't as long as she'd wanted but it would suffice. Irene ran her fingers through Lee's hair, soothing her further and she closed her own eyes to focus.

-----

When Irene opened her eyes again, she squinted a bit in the early morning sunlight that peeked through the trees. "... where on earth..?" She sat up, seeing herself surrounded by a handful of tents and near her feet were the cold remains of a camp fire. One of the tents moved a bit and the door unzipped, and Lee peered out in Irene's direction with a yawn, rubbing her eyes.

"What's the matter?" a sleepy voice asked.

"It's nothing, thought I heard something rummaging in the fire pit. Go back to sleep." Lee started giggling and was yanked back down into the tent and Irene smiled sadly, turning to look at another tent as it opened. A rather large, burly black man with salt-and-pepper hair stretched as he climbed out of his tent, scratching the back of his neck as he yawned widely.

"Morning, you two, you only kept us up half the night," he teased the two, stepping behind his tent to grab something out of a cooler.

"Oh, shut it, Rocky." Lee laughed as she climbed out of the tent, stretching her arms over her head with a happy grumbling noise. The woman who climbed out behind her and wrapped her arms around her waist had short black hair, green eyes, and olive skin peppered with dark freckles. "What, Alyx?"

"Ten more minutes, is what I want." She chuckled but straightened up, standing on her toes to kiss Lee on the cheek. "But I know we have to get going since we're almost to the new hide-out."

"And then you'll have me all to yourself almost whenever you'd like," Lee teased her back, tapping her on the nose and kissing her forehead.

A younger man, barely out of his twenties by the look of him (though, to be fair, they were all much older than they looked at this point), with pale skin and red-orange hair crawled out of his tent with an annoyed grunt when Rocky called his name. "Logan, behave." Rocky sighed and crouched down, patting the boy on the shoulder. "Where do these feral kids keep coming from-?" The question was directed at Lee, but there was a weird clip of noise where her name should have been.

"I don't know, but hopefully the further south we get, the better our chances of finding out." Lee packed up her and Alyx's tent, rolling it up and hoisting it over her shoulder. "After all, whatever's doing that to him won't come near those woods. You know those stories about the monsters."

"Of the twin beasts." Rocky looked up at her solemnly. "You'd be wise not to cast that aside as just a myth, kiddo."

Lee scoffed. "I know magic exists, Rocky. Hurry up, everybody!" she called to the others, turning to start walking as the others started pulling their gear together.

The scenery blurred and soon the witch could make out a massive mansion in the distance between the trees. She glanced around, realizing she didn't see any of the pack. "... this is why I don't like doing this while people sleep, Lee," she sighed with an affectionate chuckle, picking up her pace and running to the house. But as she cleared the trees, her steps slowed and she swallowed a stubborn lump in her throat.

It was the old, abandoned plantation manor from the last memory she'd looked at for Lee.

Irene ran around the front, pushing the front door open and stopping inside. All of the furniture was still in one piece - hell, the mansion looked as though it had been recently renovated. Her heart still pounded in her chest as she went up the large staircase, feeling the wood creak underfoot as though it were real, tangible.

The sound of footsteps on the upper landing made her turn around, seeing Lee looking down at her. Lee as she knew her, not the past her. "Irene, I- I'm really scared and I don't know if I can live this again." She walked down the stairs to meet the witch halfway, and Irene took her hands and squeezed them gently.

"I won't make you do it, Lee. This is far enough."

"I thought- I thought I tracked their killers here, not that this was our new home." Lee looked up at the mansion's ceiling, mixed nostalgia and regret in her eyes as tears ran down her cheeks. "Alyx died first. Downstairs. He threw her down the steps and she snapped her neck. She died the fastest."

"Lee, don't push-"

"I have to think about it for the rest of my life, that the first woman that ever really loved me died trying to save the others while I was out on a patrol." Lee cupped Irene's face in her hands. "God, Irene, I adore you so much, but you can't save me from myself."

"I can at least soften the blow." Irene lifted a hand to Lee's head, gently pulling her down until their foreheads touched. "What happened next?" The noises of the memory played around them but nothing visually changed as Lee slowly recounted the disastrous day that tore her little family apart. 

Rocky died last - crushed under a book case in the library. Logan, the strange feral boy, tried to make a run for it after Alyx's fall and had his head torn from his shoulders. All of the others met similar fates... except for Lee. Lee had shredded the attacker when she'd come home and seen the carnage - she vividly remembered that much. Then, as she'd struggled to her feet, Zoe had come and obliterated her sense of self... and all of her memories. "There was someone with her," Lee insisted as the mansion faded around them, leaving them in a dreamy replica of the warm room full of blankets. "I just don't remember who they are."

"It's probably whoever was controlling Zoe. You heard her. Someone was manipulating her." Irene paced a bit across the blankets in the dream. "... I can't think of who. The Brooks clan didn't start having issues with us until about fifty years ago, when Papa allegedly killed their old man." Irene snorted. "The world will never understand how that business deal went sour, but back to the point," she looked at Lee, who was peering out the window at an endless sea of stars.

"It's pretty." Lee sounded distracted. "Sorry, I... I couldn't lucid dream before. This is... this is really beautiful is all, all the stars outside."

"I've never been able to dream. I can go into other people's dreams, but I can't do it myself. If a witch like me could dream, well, the magic imbalance would upset the natural state of the realm of dreams." Irene leaned against the window with Lee, watching the stars twinkle softly in the void.

"When we're cleared to go, I want to go back. I... I know their bodies aren't there, I can feel it in my chest that they're gone, but... I need to go. I need to say goodbye."

Irene nodded understandingly and pushed away from the window. "I'll bother Mother and get her car when we're free to leave." She was quiet a moment. "I'm so sorry you lost your girlfriend, Lee. It- It feels strange saying so, because there's a separation between my feelings and yours, but when I'm in your memories - I can feel what you felt for her. You have a huge, beautiful heart, Lee." She smiled up at her.

"I'd say yours is bigger, Irene, helping me with all this and still liking me as much as you do." Lee bent over a bit and kissed her gently. "I'm not leaving you, you know that, right?"

Irene blinked. "Why would I...?"

"Because I felt your worry when you were more in my head, that... remembering Alyx might make me feel uneasy with how we are. She wouldn't want me flailing and miserable, she'd want me to remember her alive and happy. So I will. And.... I can make new memories, better ones, with the second woman I've ever met who's cared about me so much." Lee smiled at Irene and picked her up in a bone-crunching hug, holding her close. 

-----

Morning came and Irene opened her eyes, feeling Lee's arms wrapped tightly around her with her own  head tucked under Lee's chin. She smiled despite herself and nuzzled into her more, relaxing in her embrace as she wrapped her arms up around her neck.

"Morning, sleepyhead," Lee mumbled, still not quite awake herself.

"Morning to you, too." Irene smiled at her, brushing some of her pale hair out of her face.

"... I think I'm always going to miss her. That's normal, isn't it?" Lee asked faintly. Irene nodded and Lee looked vaguely relieved. "Okay. I wanted to make sure."

"I still miss the first boy I ever kissed." Irene chuckled a bit. "But he's been gone for about a hundred years. Every year, I go to his grave and leave his favorite flowers and a tin of his favorite tea. It helps me feel like I'm still talking to him in a way, because I do what I can to remember him. Do... do you want us to make a memorial stone or several for your pack here in Wodenton?" Irene asked.

Lee considered this in silence for a time before nodding. "That... that would be very nice."

Irene smiled at her and hugged Lee close, kissing her softly and relaxing with her in the faint pink rays of the dawning sun through the window.