The muffled thud from across the room sent Lupe sprinting for the bathroom door, her body in motion almost before she consciously realized what she'd heard. She crossed the small suite in record time, cursing herself with every step--of course it was going to happen in a hotel, Elizabeth didn't have any of the familiarities of home to ground her, she was in an environment that was custom-tailored for pleasantly bland anonymity, Lupe should have thought of this, she should have brought a few things along to remind Elizabeth of her identity and keep her centered--and burst into the en suite bathroom already knowing what she was going to find. Damn it. Maybe they shouldn't have taken this trip at all.
But it was getting better. This was the first episode in... what, five months? And another three months before that, and another two months before that, and it wasn't like Elizabeth should have to put her whole life on hold waiting for the next time it happened. There was never going to be a neon sign that came up one day saying 'YOU'VE PUT THIS ALL BEHIND YOU'. She needed to be the person she was and live for herself. That was the whole point, right? If she hid from it and let it crush her down into a tiny little ball of anxiety, she might as well just unpack Lizzie and leave her out for good.
All those thoughts flashed through Lupe's mind in an instant as she looked down and found her girlfriend naked and kneeling on the bathmat, her light pink skin still flushed bright red from the heat of the still-running shower and her long dark hair clinging to her back. Elizabeth--no, not Elizabeth, Lizzie for now--had one hand down between her legs and the other pinching and twisting her long brown nipples until they stood up stiff and swollen under her fingers; her eyelids were perhaps a quarter of the way open, revealing only a fluttering slit of pure white where her eyes had rolled up into the back of her head. She was mumbling something under her breath and drooling onto her chest. Lupe couldn't make it out, but she didn't have to. This looked like a bad one.
Lupe squatted on the floor next to her on one knee--they'd learned the hard way that it wasn't a good idea for Lizzie to find another woman kneeling alongside her--and very gently took the dazed and drooling slave's head into her hands. "Come on, Elizabeth," she murmured, lightly patting her girlfriend's cheek. "Come on back to me, sweetie, come on back, Elizabeth. It's okay. I know you're in there. Come back." She didn't really think it would be that easy, not this time; whatever triggered this particular episode, it must have hit her pretty hard. She looked--and smelled--like she must have been standing in front of the bathroom mirror with her hand between her legs for a while before her legs finally gave out and she collapsed to the floor.
But the first step in their recovery protocol was always to try to wake her from the trance and hope that she came back as Elizabeth, not as Lizzie. And the steps helped to keep Lupe grounded, allowing her to push her frustration and anger at the man who did this to her girlfriend to the back of her head. That way it didn't distract her from her important task of bringing Elizabeth out of these episodes of disassociation that swallowed up her mind and left a bubbly, compliant slave girl named Lizzie behind. Lupe could bring her feelings up in therapy later. Right now she needed to focus on Elizabeth. "Come on back to me," she murmured again, hoping against hope that this was all it would take.
The eyes opened. The face lit up in a cheerful smile that had all the intelligence behind it of a particularly bright golden retriever. Lizzie didn't stop masturbating even for a second as she burbled, "Hi! Did Master send you? I'm Lizzie, and I'm a good girl. Would you like to fuck me now?" And Lupe's heart sank, tears welling up as she tried so hard not to think about how much it hurt to look at her beautiful lover and not see a trace of recognition looking back at her. She pushed it all away, forcing herself to focus on the recovery protocol. Elizabeth needed her to keep her shit together more than ever right now, and so that's what she was going to do.
But she couldn't completely stop the seething hatred from boiling up and overflowing from the little cracks between one step and the next. When Lupe said, "Yes, Lizzie. Your Master gave you to me for a little while, and he told you to listen to me like a good girl," she couldn't stop the self-loathing that she felt--she could only hide it behind syrupy sweet tones so dumb little Lizzie didn't pick it up. While her hand reached out automatically for a towel to dry off the glistening moisture from the obedient woman's body, she couldn't make herself not wish death on some anonymous stranger hiding behind a computer and a bullshit username in a location Lupe couldn't trace despite her best efforts. She was as human as the next person, even if the next person wasn't thinking of herself as human at all right now.
She didn't blame Elizabeth. They'd had that conversation more than once, especially during those first few months when the episodes came almost daily and Lupe had to take away her phone and prescreen all her emails and basically become the controlling asshole that her 'Master' wished he was. Elizabeth wasn't at fault here, she was only eighteen when she first met him and as far as she was concerned, she was exploring a few kinky fantasies with some fun and sexy roleplay with an older man who flattered her for her maturity and praised her for pushing past the discomfort she was still too young to realize was her boundaries staring her right in the face. Elizabeth didn't know what the consequences were.