"--ngle GSW through and through, upper abdomen. Shallow breathing so possible pneumotho--"

Noel couldn't make out a word, they were going so fast. They'd poked her in the ambulance, but mostly just started pushing on her chest. They didn't understand that it was already hard to breathe. She'd tried to remove them, more instinct than actual effort, but her hands were still tethered and she had no power.

Her face scrunched as she was floating through space, moved from vehicle to hospital, but even worse her head was floating somewhere just a little too detached from her body. She was keeping her eyes firmly shut and she was concentrating on doing exactly nothing. Not passing out and not opening her eyes.

"--she could just be panicking. Ma'am?"
"Rapid eye movement appears involuntary."
"I need you to relax your grip."

She tried again to move whoever was pushing on her chest. She just couldn't breathe. Someone held her hands up and she found that she could not reclaim them.

"--litre of saline under pressure as we're waiting for the blood. 100 of etomidate please."
"100 of etomidate given."
"Get ready for intubation and get me 50 of roc--"

---

When Noel opened her eyes again they were buzzing back and forth in her skull and something was stuck in her throat. She pawed clumsily to get it out and a nurse came.

"You've been hooked up to a machine that helps you brea-"

The helpful comment ended when the nurse made eye contact...

When Noel opened her eyes again they were buzzing back and forth in her skull and something was stuck in her throat. She pawed clumsily to get it out while a nurse helped another disoriented nurse to a chair. She demanded something from Noel, and the memorymancer could guess her sense of deja vu was real. She would have loved to say, but there was something in her throat and she couldn't get the world to sit still for half a second. They made eye contact and...

When Noel tried to open her eyes again there was someone winding a wrap around her head to hold her traitorous power off. Noel lifted her hands to impede the person's progress, but she felt as if she was gagging on the medical equipment shoved into her throat. She tugged at that instead, panic giving her some strength. There was shouting from both sides, nurses and an attempt at shouting from Noel, but in the end she just wasn't strong enough.

---

The next time she woke up, the ace bandage wrapped around her head didn't surprise her. Neither did the single restraint that tethered one arm to the hospital bed. It was the bubble of panic that threatened to close up her sore throat caught her off guard. She lay for a long time just listening for clues and trying to master her fear and pain.

"I-is alguien siellä?" She moved to tug the wrap from her eyes. Noel was pretty sure that she had a handle on her power again. Almost sure. Maybe a little sure.

The room was private, but stripped bare which seemed excessive considering that just removing her make-shift blindfold had winded her. There was not even a pole to hang her IV on. The bag lay next to her in bed.

That's when she heard a knock.

The firm needed more mutant charity cases.

Well, at least, that was the excuse that Natalie's least favourite partner had used when he'd delegated a lost cause to her. A woman, mid-thirties, who was shot by a police officer for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, grand theft auto, and who knew what else.

Oh, and Natalie's favourite part? She didn't understand language.

How on earth she was supposed to act as a defense attorney for a woman that she couldn't even communicate with, Natalie had no idea. All she knew was that it was something that she had to try and that despite her efforts, it was probably going to end up being a large black mark on her otherwise impeccable history. 

Dammit, she knew that Harvey had known what he was doing when he'd given her that case.

She knocked on the door that she'd been directed to and opened it a second later. She wasn't about to wait for some insane woman to tell her to wait until she'd conversed with the fairies or something. No, Natalie was taking any and all charge that she could.

"You must be Noel," Natalie mused as she entered the room, looking down at her files. That was the one thing that the idiot officer had been able to get out of her, according to what little she had on the case. A statement from Office Cervantes would undoubtedly be the next thing on her list. 

She stopped just short of the bed that the woman was lying on and frowned. The room, while private, was lacking any sort of amenity or item of comfort. The television had been removed, the dressers were pushed far away, and the pole had even been removed from her I.V. drip. It was just a woman lying pitifully in a bed with a sack of fluid next to her. 

Natalie tutted her tongue and pivoted on her heels, headed straight back out from where she came. If she was going to represent a crazy woman, then she would, in the very least, be representing a comfortable crazy woman. She stuck her head out of her door and motioned for a nurse to come. A brown-skinned woman followed her hand signal, and she motioned to the room around her. She looked at her phone while doing so, trying not to seem too invested.

"Fix whatever the hell this is," she told the woman as she gestured to the bare room. "My client's weak right now. She's not going to harm someone with an I.V. pole, for god's sake. If you want, you can handcuff her to the bed, for all I care. Just make this a little better." God, she hoped that she was right about her.

While the nurse went to go get the things that had been removed from Noel's room, Natalie pulled the only chair in the room up next to the bed. She sat down, crossed her legs, and then set her files in her lap. She had a pen in her hand, and her laptop on standby if she needed it. From there, she decided to dive right in. There was no use beating around the bush, especially when she still wasn't sure how much the woman could understand.

"Now, Noel. Do you have a last name? Where were you before your ordeal? What exactly can you give me?"

She heard her name. She was pretty sure that it was her name, anyway.

Noel pushed herself upward until she was sitting which was no small feat considering how she felt and that there was only one free arm to work with. She sat and breathed with her eyes down until they settled down from their hypnotic sway.

This woman was different. She didn't bother trying to be nice with her tone and the people around her listened anyway. That meant she was in some kind of position of authority. The memorymancer had no clue what to expect. Was this an interview for the crime? Or a job? Or was this someone else from the CIA? She inspected the woman, her clothes, and her belongings closely while the woman settled herself.

No matter what she said, her actions and choices would speak louder.

Confident. In charge. Not associated with the hospital, she guessed, based on the quality of her handbag. Files meant she was informed to some degree: working with police, law, or a private benefactor. Crossed legs could mean she was defensive or it could mean she was just in a skirt. She got herself entirely ready first, then spoke. She was organized.

Noel watched her blandly the entire time until she spoke. She said several things at once and Noel closed her eyes to scrub through the memories she had in order to do her best at deciphering the questions.

Do you know what a last name is, mijo? You and me both, we get our surname from your papa. Sure. She could tell the woman Jorge Cervantes' last name in the same tone his mother had, but she didn't know her own.

"No surname." Noel's r's made it sound as if Spanish might be her native language as she echoed Jorge's mother's words. Her eyebrows drew down over closed eyes. No tattoo. No last name. She could almost picture the letters on her skin... they were black letters about an inch big... but a scalding migraine loomed on the horizon of that remembrance so she left it alone.

The next question had been something about before. Before the hospital? Before the arrest? Before what, exactly? "Before?" She echoed the word, but in a questioning way. Before what? Her time in the hospital was one blank punctuated at best with small moments of discomfort.

Geez. At this point it might be easier to draw a picture... Noel pointed to her pen hoping to do just that.

If nothing else, the woman was understanding what she was saying. That was just about all that could be said for their encounter up to that point. There was something about the blank look in her eyes that made Natalie wonder if she’d suffered from some sort of brain damage. She scribbled down a note to ask if the hospital had ordered any sort of scans for her. If the cop had caused some sort of brain injury, then, well… that could be the breakthrough that they needed for her case.

The rest of the conversation, if you could call it that, was all but useless. She claimed that she didn’t have a surname, but it was likely that it was either a lie or she simply couldn’t remember. Either way, she was essentially dealing with a Jane Doe. Perhaps, she realized, she would be able to spin that for a jury.

She shifted in her chair, leaning forward a bit to be able to make eye contact with the woman. Yes, she could definitely appeal to any bleeding hearts. Woman with minimal memories sent to the hospital with brain injuries by a bloodthirsty cop? She barely even needed a last name. In fact, she was almost better off without one.

Before continuing, she took out her phone and set it to record so that she would be able to listen to the conversation later.

”Before the alleged car chase,” Natalie elaborated, careful not to give the woman any reason to confess something to her. She wanted details to help her case, not to make it more difficult for her. ”Do you remember where you were before that? Were there perhaps any witnesses?”

She looked down as the woman pointed to her lap. Or… it wasn’t her lap, actually. It was what she had in her lap.

Natalie handed over her pen and tore off the first page of paper from her pad before passing it to the woman. Maybe she found it easier to communicate through writing? That would be ideal, especially since it seemed like they were getting nowhere with the whole talking thing.

A phone. Noel turned her body more fully toward the woman and watched the device with more than a little interest. That little piece of equipment was not hers. She knew that it wouldn't help, but she still wished her own phone hadn't been ruined. Maybe there was a back up... somewhere.

She spoke again with no regard to the level of vocabulary she was using. Little child policeman Georgie hadn't known what alleged meant. He had, at least, learned 'car' and 'where' by whatever age she'd gotten through absorbing from him.

Noel puzzled this through as she watched the woman fearlessly meet her eyes. The woman didn't know what Noel could do, then. She seemed too together to be using eye contact as bravado. Or, maybe she had some resistance. She also held out her pen and some paper to Noel.

The memorymancer could draw what little she knew about the facility where Noel had been before the car. That was probably what the woman was expecting. Instead, Noel reached past the offered items to grab the well dressed woman's wrist and she pulled. Hard.

Noel still had one arm connected to the bed, but her legs weren't tied down and she was desperate enough to not care that she was in a hospital smock and little else.

She pulled the woman forward and Noel wrapped her legs around her, one leg over her shoulder and the other beneath her incoming hostage arm so that Noel could lock her legs behind the other brunette's back. The woman's wrist, Noel drew up to her mouth and then bit down. That stretched the woman's arm out. In order to keep it there, Noel pressed against the elbow joint in the opposite direction from how it should bend.

It was the best she could do for a submission hold.

It would be a natural reflex for the woman to struggle and Noel didn't want either of them to get hurt. She just needed access to her mind in order to get some new words. For that she needed to taste this woman and she needed to be able to take her time.

A soft knock at the door indicated that the nurse was back with the non-essential items.

”Can you tell me any-”

Natalie’s plea for the woman to keep talking was interrupted by a sudden movement. Before she knew it, there were legs wrapped around one of her arm, and she was being forced to hold her arm out for the woman, whose everything she could suddenly see through the breezy hospital gown.

She let out a scream as the woman bit down on her wrist. Bit down. Like a child.

The pain was intense, and accompanied by the bending of her elbow in a direction that it wasn’t supposed to bend and the incredibly uncomfortable hold that the woman had her in.

Instinctively, Natalie panicked. She did several things at once. She used her free arm to smash the call button beside the woman’s bed, then to slap at her wildly and uncoordinatedly. Meanwhile, her mutation was going haywire. She’d made herself disappear, although the woman would still be able to very clearly feel the fact that she was biting down on her, and there were different illusions appearing and disappearing all throughout the room. She wasn’t actually sure what she was sending out anymore. It was anything to distract the woman.

She was most definitely freaking out. Her notepad had been strewn across the floor in all the panic, and her eyes were wild. Clients did not touch Natalie. Clients most certainly did not bite Natalie.

The door to the room opened, revealing the same nurse that Natalie had sent away earlier walking backwards, wheeling a trolley with some of the things that she was bringing back to the room. As soon as she saw the scene, she let out a scream to match Natalie’s. There was a struggle going on, but she could only see the one woman. It was a frightening scene, to say the least.

Upon seeing the nurse come in, Natalie dropped the illusion that she’d placed on herself. She wasn’t concentrating enough to keep it up for only Noel.

The nurse had already moved on. She was phoning someone on the phone by the door, very clearly calling for backup.

The woman screamed, but that didn't matter. Noel had her like an anaconda. She just had to close her eyes to see...

"What the f*ck is this?" Maryanne asked incredulously and let the file fall from her open hands onto the desk. "It's late and not what I asked for."

Natalie paused, her hands clasped behind her back. "Actually, it's not late at all. It's-"

"Three minutes late. Three minutes where you were off doing god knows what. I'm done dealing with you. I want someone else. Go... pack up whatever you have lying around." Her tone was cold and uncaring. Natalie would not be the first assistant that she had fired.

Natalie felt her chest tighten and she found herself sucking in air to account for her sudden inability to breathe normally. "Please, Mrs. Watson-"

"Go, please. Now. I have a lot on my mind."

What!?

There were arms pulling at Noel and the world had gone absolutely crazy while she'd been dipping into Natalie's memories. Things were popping into and out of existence and no one seemed to bat an eye.

Was she... was she going insane?

Noel shoved her hand through where Natalie's elbow should have been with every intent to shatter the joint, but their positions had changed in the time Noel had not been watching and more than one orderly was on hand to pry her legs from around the lawyer and help free her.

Lawyer! She was a lawyer!

"Please, Mrs. Watson—" Noel felt an echo of that despair. No. Mrs. Watson had been the other one in the memory. "NATALIE!" Noel shouted the woman's name as she thrashed against the hands that were pressing her against the bed. She was starting to have trouble breathing again. Her lips were turning blue and her breath shallow with her eyes shaking in her skull like they were having their own seizure.

They tossed a sheet over her face which really did nothing to help the breathing situation.

Shoot! Was Natalie supposed to be on Noel's side? Or the states?

Only after she was properly secured to the bed did they attend to the fluttervalve that had gotten a crimp in the tubing. Once it was unobstructed again, Noel was left dizzy and panting on the bed, but at least the pressure lessened with every breath.

The nurse motioned to the small cart of extras. "Still want this?"

Two male nurses pulled Noel away from Natalie just in time for her to narrowly avoid having her elbow shattered. She wrenched her arm away, inspecting the new marks that had been formed on it. Teeth marks lined her wrist where the woman had chomped down. Around the little indents left, the skin was red and irritated. She let out a huff, recognizing that she would have a nasty, discoloured bruise in a few hours. Natalie was just glad that she was in a place where she could get it disinfected quickly.

She had gotten off lucky, though - she did recognize that. Her elbow joint felt stiff and uncomfortable as she bent it back the correct way. It had very nearly been stopped from being able to bend that way completely.

Since she had pulled her arm back, the illusions had stopped. She concentrating far harder on her free arm.

Then, something snapped her attention back. Noel was yelling something - a name. A name that Natalie hadn’t heard in nearly two years. That name followed by her own.

The woman stood up, watching with a scrutinizing gaze as her client was tied down to her bed. She waved off the nurse with a grimace, not wanting to face the fact that she had been oh so very wrong.

”You can leave now. I’m fine,” she told the nurses gruffly, still holding her wrist.

“Are you sure? You didn’t seem to be fine a minute ago.”

”Go,” Natalie said sharply. She watched the three of them leave, fully aware that one of them was standing just outside of the door. She kept her voice in a rather hushed tone as she sat back down, banking on them not being able to hear her.

”How did you know that name?”

Ugh. She lied to them. That would normally be a black mark in Noel's book except that whatever she, Natalie, said made the hospital staff go away.

Noel panted shallow breaths while the pressure in her chest eased and Natalie came close again. This was absolutely infuriating. She closed her eyes and rolled her lips together and watched through the useless memory she'd gotten.

"What the f*ck is this?" Noel recited in near monotone, despite the memory not sounding that way. Maryanne's words had hurt. She could feel Natalie's hurt about the whole situation now. "It's late and not what I asked for."

A brief pause and Noel continued exactly as the memory had, but without inflection. Would Natalie remember?

"Actually, it's not late at all. It's-"
"Three minutes late. Three minutes where you were off doing god knows what. I'm done dealing with you. I want someone else. Go... pack up whatever you have lying around."

And that had taken a surprising amount of effort. Noel tried to move to touch her side where it hurt and her hands were caught short by the tether of her restraints. Anger welled hot and fast in her chest and she flexed briefly against the restraints until she realized that, too, hurt.

All she could do was use her words.

And she had none except the ones she'd stolen from Natalie.

"Natalie." She began piecing the few words she had into something that she hoped made sense. "I'm lying around. I'm done. I want go... pack up. I have a lot on my mind."

Natalie's heart stopped beating for a brief moment. She knew the words that were being spewed at her. She knew all of them. They were stolen from a moment when she had been standing in her former boss's office.

There was absolutely no way that the woman could have been there; that could have heard the conversation. There was no way that she could have repeated it verbatim to Natalie after being hopped up on painkillers. So how on earth was she doing it?

Natalie's lips rolled inward and she stared at Noel with utter hatred. What was it, some kind of cruel joke enacted by Mrs Watson as a revenge plot? Something put on by one of the partners, trying to bring her down? Her powers going haywire? A strange mutation of some kind?

Whatever it was, she refused to let it put her off her stride.

Natalie sat straight in her chair, brushed her hair behind her shoulders, and then looked the woman dead in the eyes, paying not attention to the strung together sentence that she'd just uttered.

"I don't know what kind of sick joke this is, but I refuse to let it go on. Tell me how you just did that, or so help me god, I will leave you without representation. You can go to the fucking state, for all I care." 

There was no way that she was going to get away with whatever long-term thing she was pulling. Clearly she did speak English, and clearly, she did have some idea of what was going on. Natalie had just been bitten and had one of her worst memories dredged out of the depths, so she was in no mood for games. 

Natalie tried to get control of the situation again. Spine straight. Hair adjustment. Intense eye contact. Noel would have given it to her gladly except that SHE BRUSHED NOEL OFF. Noel'd tried so hard to use what she had to get her message across and it only managed to infuriate the woman. Natalie was so stupid to let her emotions cloud her judgement. Noel was torn between the crush of disappointment and the still burning ember of her ire.

Her restraints were tested again as the memorymancer narrowed her eyes. Natalie spewed something too complex for her to follow, but her tone and intent were clear. A threat.

That. Was. It.

Noel told her in no uncertain terms what a self-absorbed and insecure monster she was. The delivery of those terms was less than stellar as an amalgamation of Spanish, English, and Finnish, but the words tasted true. She believed every one of them and they were her words and she would not let Natalie brush her aside because she was uncomfortable.

If this memory, this dumb moment of humiliation, was such a stumbling block for her, well... Noel was doing them both a favor by removing it, right?

Her eyes started to shake and her focus narrowed down to a tunnel with only Natalie's eyes at the end of them.

Forget Maryanne.
Forget why you're mad.
Forget your shame.

Noel blinked dizzily as her vision opened up again. Natalie's vision would do the same and that left the memorymancer drenched with sudden terror. She knew she'd just used her power, but she could never know exactly how.

So what did she just do?

The room blurred suddenly and then came back into focus, leaving Natalie with just the slightest hint of a headache. She sat back and blinked it away quickly, feeling the muscles around her eyes go back to normal.

What had-

She cocked her head at the woman. What had they been talking about? She couldn’t quite remember…

There was a pain in her wrist, but it didn’t bother her much, for some reason. She couldn’t remember where it came from, or why it seemed to be coming from a bite mark. When was she bitten? Ah, it didn’t matter. She was doing…

What was she doing again? Oh, yes. She was talking to her client.

”Can you tell me anything more about what happened, Noel? Anything you might remember? You can write it down, if you’d like,” she said, her voice slightly more airy than usual.

Natalie bent down to retrieve her notepad and pen from the floor where they seemed to have fallen. She didn’t remember them falling, but she brushed it off, figuring she may have knocked it when she turned around, or something.

”Sorry, I think I’m just a little out of it,” Natalie admitted with an anxious smile, ”do you ever get like that? Like the world is sort of spinning and you’re not going fast enough? That doesn’t make any sense.”

The attorney set the notepad and pen down on the bed next to Noel and then rubbed her temples. What was she doing? She never talked that much to clients. She shook her head, trying to snap out of whatever funk she was in and get her head back in the game. She was supposed to be working with a client, after all, not having a mental breakdown in front of her.

Oh Geez. Oh God. What had she done?

Noel flinched when Natalie reached down except... she was just picking something up? Noel tried to garble through some kind of panicked and pleading explanation, but the woman was just picking up some paper and a pen. The pad was empty, even, from what Noel could see.

"Uh. Manos." She flexed her hands in their restraints, unable to hold both pen and paper close enough to put one to the other, but Natalie had placed them both close enough so that if the lawyer held the paper, Noel could at least draw something.

And she did her best to map out the directions that she had driven, but she had been driving in unfamiliar territory under duress and while trying to escape a police officer.

Noel scratched that out and drew, as best as she was able to recall, the badges she had seen on the people she had mowed through.

Employee number, status, ID-class, part of a name- if those were letters, and a security clearance. She did her best to draw a circle seal with a crummy eagle and a shield that sported a nautical star— or maybe it had more points?

By the end, Noel had, without spelling out any actual names or numbers, perfectly replicated the representation of a Department of Defence area access badge with the CIA's seal, barcode and all. She may not have been excellent at drawing and she might not have known if all those squiggles were letters, but the representation was clear.

Exhausted, Noel let the pen drop. What more could she do?

Natalie held the pad of paper upright so that Noel could sketch something on it. The pad shook a little under the pressure of her drawing but was otherwise steady.

As soon as she was finished, Noel dropped the pen. Natalie turned the paper around and looked at everything the woman had drawn. There was actually quite a bit more information on the pad of paper than she had expected to see.

A map of where she had drawn, I.D. badges, barcodes, and other things cluttered up the space. Natalie didn't really know what to make of it all, but she was sure that a paralegal would be able to scrounge something up to make a case. They were on the right track.

"This is great, Noel," Natalie said as she continued to scan the page. It was more than she had hoped for, actually. Especially with how uncommunicative she had been. Natalie actually couldn't even remember telling her anything...

"Thank you," the woman nodded and then stood from her chair. It seemed like that was probably all she was going to get from Noel, and she wasn't going to push it. Judging from the pen drop, she probably wouldn't even be awake for very long. "I'll let you get some rest."

On the table next to her, Natalie placed a business card, and then smoothed her shirt. "If you think of anything else, call that number."