Michael stared dumbfounded as his daughter confirmed what Pitch had given her. He took the box with carefulness and grabbed out the teddy bear, seeing that all the pieces of the stuffed animal were intact, and it was in perfect condition.

Like someone was making sure it didn’t get tossed aside. Well taken care of.

The Archangel put the teddy bear back in and tossed the box aside, “Sara, darling.” His soul wept for what he felt was coming. A threat to his daughter was danger three times as bad, “We need to have that memory. How did he get your teddy bear?” He swallowed down hate like he never felt before. Yes, he disliked his brother, but this...was so unjustly wrong.

“Sit down, Sara,” Gabriel motioned his hand to Michael’s office chair, “We are here because Michael wanted us to go inside your mind and recover the lost memory. He says that every time you try to remember a certain point, a headache always comes. That isn’t normal.”

Sara looked at her father for a second in a wistful way. Then she glided to the chair and sat down obediently in her unicorn cotton pajamas.

“Lean back your head and remember that specific day,” commended Uriel. “I know you have a headache when trying to think about what happened before you fell into the forest, but ignore the pain and look into that darkness. Try to remember, Sara. Try.”

Sara inhaled a deep breath and closed her eyes tightly, trying to recall what happened that day. Before she fell, where was she heading? She had a sneaking suspicion that she was going to the basement. But why?

To help Pitch escape…

Uriel pressed, “Sara, what do you remember?”

Sara gripped the arms of Michael’s chair as a headache erupted as she tried to remember what she was going before she went to the forest. No, if Pitch erased my memories, then maybe I didn’t physically go to the forest. He put me there.

An itch in her brain triggered the smallest voice echoing inside her mind: “So I don’t forget you. Don’t worry, Sara.”

Sara peeled her eyes open as a throbbing pain as she felt like needles were prickling in her brain. She screamed, “I can’t! It hurts too much!” Sara thrust her head around, her knuckles turning paler as she gripped harder on the steel armchair.

Michael hushed, “Sara, baby.” He gently put his hand over her eyes, closing them, “I know this hurts, sweetie, but try, please.”

Uriel replied sweetly, “Oh about this, you say it’s darkness every time you try to remember, look into the darkness. What do you feel?” His wooden eyes gazed over at Sara’s labor breathing.

Sara gritted down her teeth as she let her eyes close again, looking into the darkness, “I don’t feel anything.”

Uriel bit down his lips, “You need to try harder, Sara.”

Sara’s feet were planted hard against the ground as if someone was injecting something inside of her painfully. Try harder her mind whispered. All she could see were her closed eyes.

“Relax and concentrate on what happened,” said Samuel, pressing his hand over his heart concernedly.

Sara inhaled all the breath she could and exhaled. She let her muscles ease up and let her lungs expand. Her mind wandered into that darkness, never feeling so alone at that moment. How can I possibly know all the details? I was fucking five years old people. But, she continued, feeling like she was diving into the coldest depths of the ocean, searching for something out of her grasp, in the longing swallows of the memory that wanted to be forgotten...but she knew that piece of memory craved to be found like a lost puppy.

But there...something warm was holding her, a voice ringing around her: So I don’t forget you. Don’t worry, Sara.”

What happened before that, Sara? She felt her mind grasping something cold and all so wrong.

“What do you feel?” asked Uriel, his voice a distant calling.

“I feel,” Sara began, “Warm arms around me. I smell the forest.” She saw a glimpse of lavender eyes shining back at her. Then she felt her memory tearing inside her, like trying to rip away from that memory, to yank her conscious away from it. Sara let out a scream of agony and flew up in the chair, gasping as if that memory itself was choking her. “I saw him! I saw Pitch!”

“What did he say?” Uriel demanded, his eyes filled with amazement but some terror ripping through his very core.

“So I don’t forget you. Don’t worry Sara,” the assassin repeated those words, her coal eyes glistening at the look of those lavender eyes.

Uriel sighed and stood up, facing his brothers, “This isn’t enough. I know she said that she saw Pitch, but it’s not enough information. I know she was trying as hard as she could,” he shook his head in distrust, “We are going have to pry open her mind and it might kill her.” He turned to her sullen expression, “Do you understand that what you said is not enough?”

Sara stared wildly at him in fright, “I…”

Gabriel frowned and spoke to everyone in the room, “Pitch thought he could erase Sara’s memories...but what he doesn’t know and is wrong about, is you can never erase someone’s memories. Once they live that certain part of the life, they will always remember.” His eyes glanced at Sara, “The mind always remembers. Erasing someone’s memory is always temporary or you hope they don’t try to remember, just put as much pain and not wanting them to go to that place.” He placed his hand on Sara’s forehead, “We can retrieve your memories, but know the risks that could possibly happen.”

Sara gulped down but snapped, “Yeah, I know, Uncle Gabriel, you told me before. I could lose all my memories or my mind could be permanently damaged.” She cast her eyes to the floor, her hair sliding off her shoulders, “But we need to find Pitch.”

Samuel said, “Mainly we are doing this because we want to know what happened, and I expect that this memory won’t help us where Pitch is.”

Sara sneered at them, “Just do it. Get this over with. Any information is better than none.” She jerked her head back, seeing her father staring down at her with some love but fear of what could be the outcome.

But he knew that there was no other choice, “You are a true hero, Sara.” He nodded at his brothers, “Let’s do this.”

Uriel chewed on his lips, “The last we did this, the person had killed himself from what we uncovered. There are reasons why the memory lets the mind forget,” responded the archangel.

Michael looked at Uriel tentatively and turned around, looking at a picture of the bright sea with the sunset going down as the rays of the sunlight hit across the sea painting, “She can handle it.”

Uriel sat down on the desk, right in front of Sara, “Close your eyes again and relax your mind. Try to grab the darkness that surrounds that empty memory and take hold of it. Don’t let go, no matter how painful it is.”

Sara looked up at Michael, “Father, can you hold my hand?” Her heart pounded inside of her as if it wasn’t getting enough blood and oxygen pumping through it.

Michael grasped his daughter's delicate but strong hands, “Try to break my hand,” he smiled, trying not to falter his bright eyes to tearful ones.

Sara laughed that had some broken pieces, “I’m ready.”

Uriel leaned Sara’s head against the chair and put his hand on her forehand, “I’m going to count to three, and you need to have your mind wrapped around that core of darkness.”

Sara nodded.

“One.”

Sara dove once more into the darkness that was wanting to hide from her prying mind.

“Two.”

Michael’s daughter felt magic jaunt inside her like a shock of electricity and she knew this wasn’t her powers, but Pitch’s magic. She chased after it, trying to take hold of the magic, keeping that memory away from her. She felt herself go deeper in her body and mind, further away from reality.

“Three…”

Pain shredded through like someone turned all on her pain nerves all at once. Sara jolted in her seat, trying to not lose the magic trying to blend back into her mind. She let herself race to catch up with the darkness fleeing from her.

Uriel said, “I will be helping you to recover this. You will be trying to break a golden eggshell, but you will mostly do the work, I will just guide you.”

“Sara…” her father’s voice rang out somewhere out there, “Use your powers. It’s okay.”

Sara froze in the darkness that immediately seemed to go in the opposite direction and start enclosing her, to make this all nonsense away and let her forget and be content with the memory like a lost memory. To swallow her once more in the darkness.

She heard Sal’s laughter echo in her body like a tunnel.

Sara’s grimaced. She wouldn’t let anyone take away her memories and let her be...used like that. Where are you? Let me in! Her mind screamed at the darkness that seemed to have no face but float silently as if it was thinking.

Sara would not let that magic think as she took control of her mind and her memory. She didn’t know what she was doing, but she had to try to take that piece that was stolen away from her. She let her powers rush inside her like an oncoming flood and circle that darkness. If magic and darkness could scream at her, it would’ve. Instead, it stung her body like a paralyzing disease and seized her body in torment.

Fight it...her voice hissed. Sara let her powers wrap around this darkness as it lurched away from her but this time she had it...and would never let it go again.

The darkness fought every once in her, but knew she was seeing something. Something different. Her memory which was supposedly erased, froze for the briefest second in the last fighting stance, the magic rippling at her nerves in pain and trying to stop her powers, but she let her powers push further, and the darkness and magic dissipate.

The memory burst into her core and it hit her like a flash. She remembered being in the prison room, having a conversation with Pitch about him escaping and giving him a second chance. Going through the magical glass barrier and letting him out. Giving him a butterfly necklace and then the next moment, he put her unconscious. She felt her tiny body swaying in his arms as he placed her delicately down as if she was a China doll.

Pitch took her teddy bear from her clutched arms and gave her one last look before he left in the whirling portal.

How was she seeing this even though she was unconscious—asleep? She didn’t have eyes elsewhere besides her own face, so how?

A voice soothingly said: Your powers, Sara.

Sara’s lung exploded as if she was breathing in the fresh air as if someone was drowning her in a rough, unforgiving manner. She felt herself somewhere in her mind start slowly falling into different darkness that longed to claim her...something Sara tried so hard to lock up and throw the key forever...but her powers hungered to belong with her. Sara hungered to have them back, but she was always afraid to let go. To have that certain part of her be unleashed.

To be hurt again or hurt.

Just as she cracked open that memory that wanted so desperately to be forgotten and the magic to be hidden, something else cracked which was in the deepest part of her soul that she didn’t allow to be revealed; but it emerged like a sly snake from the darkness that she hid for so long.

Then, all of a sudden, like a rush of adrenaline, everything crashed back at her. For a split second, Sara thought she saw something she didn’t recognize inside her. Her own face grinned back with thick, oozing blood, and somehow she knew this, but it wasn’t her blood that ran down her face as Sara’s fingers seductively clawed her face in a peal of laughter.

Sara’s eyes flung open in an unbearable gasp.

Michael, Raphael, Uriel, Samuel, and Gabriel stared down at her with complete shock, frozen in their place. Sara’s beautiful coals eyes were turned into something different as she opened them...but not foreign. One of her eyes blazed red like hellfire and the other brightened wonderfully in a golden shine like heavenly light.

The Archangel was afraid this would happen. “Oh Sara,” gasped Michael with fearful eyes as dread crept inside him like an uninvited visitor.