Justine couldn’t make out all of the sounds clashing in her ears.  The mask covering her face filled her nose with the scents of leather and rubber and the visor seems cloudy, but she was not coherent enough to know that it wasn’t dirt smeared along its face, but the smoke that coiled and flowed along the ceiling that she was seeing.  Something wrapped itself around her bare skin and she heard voices, one concerned the other calm, both comforting in their familiarity.<br/><br/>‘Charlotte…Prudence…’<br/><br/>The arms that had fought so ineffectually against Prue’s to keep the mask at bay released their tension and she became pliable to the two women letting them lead her and lower her into the basement of the good Doctor’s lab.  Something urged her mind to slip past that place of dreary half-sleep to mostly awake.  Questions…she was being asked something.  Mental gears moved haltingly at first, but her mind was already beginning to work.<br/><br/>A pale hand pushed the mask away from her face letting the weight of it carry them both away from her head.  Cornflower hair cascaded haphazardly about her delicate seeming face which hung wobbly as if her neck had yet to decide to hold up her head.  Hazy eyes slowly focused.  Sound first, soft lips next.  She concentrated on those lips, watched them move revealing pearl and shadowy pink as they made words.  Justine nodded. She saw, her vision tunneled, but focusing, the light touch of fingertips rousing her.<br/><br/>“Justine.” She answered wanting to say something, but the strange light in the cellar was confusing and suddenly terrifying. “Fire?!?” her voice croaked as the splintering of wood could be heard from above.  There were other sounds now.  The thud of footsteps too heavy to be a man’s, the clank and hiss of metal and steam.  She felt the presence of another in the room, but she couldn’t see the doctor yet.  Justine tried to stand and almost fell until hands wrapped around her waist to support her.  She let the two women lead her away from the flames and danger into the dark portal towards the gate.  Justine concentrated on what Prudence and Dr. DuPont where saying, the ache of her surgery heightened with her awareness.  Somewhere in her head she was wondering why it didn’t hurt more, but there were much more pressing matters at the moment.<br/><br/>“I do…trust you, you and Charlo…Dr. DuPont.” She heard herself correct her error.  Justine was unable to filter her thoughts at the moment and to call the good doctor Charlotte was much too familiar to be sure.<br/><br/>“Dr. DuPont?” She looked up to make sure Charlotte was near as well.<br/><br/>