Title: AFTER THE FALL
Author: Lechery
Category: Flight (Fang/Light Romance, Angst)
Rating: T (for coarse language and sexual themes)
Summary: POST-GAME! A fascist government has seized control of Grand Pulse and displaced the former L'Cie. One has a plan to escape, the other is helplessly trapped. One night, their worlds are turned upside-down.
Disclaimer: I own nothing and stuff, Square Enix owns everything. I'm keeping the fandom alive, Square. Cut me slack and don't sue me plz.
OOO
Sweat rolled from her shoulders and trickled down her spine, stuck to the fine angel dust of hair on her back and chilled her flesh. Darkness swallowed the room and drowned her vision. The usual humdrum rhythm of the fans filled her consciousness and disturbed her sleep. A headache threatened at her forehead; stuffy air struggled through her chest and streamed back out her nostrils. A lightheaded dizziness, a slight cramp in her gut - the usual dysfunction of an ordinary night.
She threw the covers from her naked legs into a heap at the end of the bed and hauled herself from the mattress. Plastic shutters let stripes of light through the window, illuminated the wall in a parallel pattern. The light-shapes rolled over her as she walked to the window and loosened the shutter, just enough to peek through them. There were eyes everywhere, from the floating surveillance tanks to the perverted neighbours. She was met with the mundane landscape of her apartment: the sprawling towers of scrap metal and cables and trash that formed the foundation of the buildings and filled the cracks in between the shady motels and squatter buildings. The spotlight suspended from a floating tank flicked back and forth, wandered over the streets and the trash in search of looters or prostitutes or child vagrants. The Sentinels – as the floating tanks were known – cleared the streets for the tourists: army folk and businessmen that came to enjoy the local culture: neon lights, drugs and alcohol complete with cheap bordellos that sold everyone from toddlers to geriatrics. There weren't many geriatrics – one rarely made it that far these days.
She sealed the shutter, pressed her palm over it to be sure that no one could see her. If the fans weren't blaring into her ears, she might have heard the people upstairs fighting, the couple below her fucking or the mice squealing in the pantry and scurrying in and out of the breadbox. It had started with one measly runt with a grey coat, big black eyes and a tiny body shuddering from fear. She had picked it up by its scrawny pink tail and watched it struggle – had it really just wanted a piece of food? She plucked a bit of bread from the loaf and placed it on the counter, set the mouse down next to it. He landed, haltingly and reached with minute claws for hands to stuff the bread into its mouth. She couldn't kill it. It was just trying to survive.
Her arm reached mechanically for the dimmer light and a soft glow invaded the room, just enough for her to see what she was doing. She approached the dresser and threw it open, rifled through the drawers and snatched an elastic piece of cloth from the pile. She fastened it around her breasts, pressing them flat. In another drawer, in a locked wooden box, she retrieved a harness and member she attached over her underwear. Her facade was nearly complete. Next came the thick socks and baggy trousers, the white undershirt, the black army-issue boots, the shirt and finely pressed jacket. She pressed a tiny voice-changer beneath her tongue and adjusted it until she was confident it wouldn't slip. She ran a smoothing hand over her fine cropped hair - not an inch long above her head – and snuffed it beneath her lieutenant's cap.
Each time she dressed, every put-on, she yearned for her life before the fall, before the chaos of Gran Pulse. Her hair had been long then - beautiful, as alluring as she remembered herself to be. She missed being a woman, being herself, using her sexuality as a lure for potential lovers that she wanted - that she deisred, using her intelligence and strength to persevere through the military. But that woman was dead. After the fall and the election of the theocratic PSICOM government, the fascist grip of Dysley's doctrine took over her world.
She couldn't live under the new rules for women – commodities under the law, subject to men and without personhood. They were required to cover themselves in public and could not travel without a male escort. They could not hold any job other than in the sex slave trade. And if they were caught in public or kidnapped from their home, they became the property of their new owners, subject to their will. To reclaim a lost woman was to start a small war, especially in the Gomorrah district. Unwilling to live under terrorism, her former self had to die.
She realised with futility that she should have died outright. There was little left for her and each day was a new potential threat – an outing, the threat of a devastating reveal. She had no money to relocate if she was discovered, and she had no motivation to scrape together a new trap for herself. It was only a matter of time, in this town or the next, before she was unveiled.
She thumbed through the cash in her wallet and decided she had enough, placed the object on the inside of her breast pocket and buttoned up to the collar. She reached the door and felt suddenly odd. Her hand swooped to her belt upon reflex and pawed at the empty space. She returned to her bed and grabbed the gun in the holster beneath her pillow, clipped the holster to her belt and she headed back to the door.
Out in the decaying, stale hallway she hurried for the elevator. Her hand slammed on the button and it did not light. She hit it again. No response. In a fit of frustration, she hit it over and over in quick succession, and paced back and forth for a moment. Nothing. She darted down the hall to the staircase and dashed down the stairs. The soldier burst from the stairwell doorway into the abandoned lobby and stepped gingerly over the homeless squatters lying on the ground in blankets. Most of them did not move. She wasn't sure if they were alive.
As she walked into the night, the cool air hit her face and filled her nostrils, mixing with the smells of the sewer congealing with the aromas of the fast food carts, the open-window Asian restaurants and the smoke from the industrial machines. Bright neon lights lit the asphalt street as steam rose up from the sewer grates. Police tanks and velocycles soared past over the third tier, fast enough to decapitate people if they flew too low. Club music roared through the buildings on the second tier, between the layer of scrap and garbage and the cheap food street-level. Balconies were choked with patrons and prostitutes, drinks spilling onto the ground below. Above the third tier was the low income apartments and abandoned buildings. Above that was a dark cloud of smog and dust. The garbage and the scrap seemed to tower to infinity beyond the smoke.
The sight of the drunk bargoers made her walk with a desperate pace. People at the seedy street bars turned to eye her with mild suspicion and then abandoned her for their drink. A velocycle zoomed overhead. She made it to the corner and turned, almost jogged to the descending staircase in front of her and knocked on the door. A willowy, greying man appeared in the doorway, rubbing his bristly beard. A thin screen door frayed at the corners separated them.
"Whaddya want?" He crowed.
"Hear you deal with certain... medications?" She hesitated.
His eyes widened a bit, then became lucid again. "Your heard wrong."
He moved to close the door and she pulled at the screen, wedged her boot between the door frame and the wood to keep it from shutting.
"I really, really need something." Her voice wavered.
He regarded her for a moment, searched her eyes for any hints of deceit. Finding none, he finally turned and gestured into his apartment.
She was careful not to turn her back on him and she watched as he locked the door and wandered to a long mahogany cabinet.
"Who told you about me?" He asked.
"A friend at a party," she replied.
He shook his head as he dragged open the drawer. "You army boys are so fucked on this shit, I dunno how you fight the damn war."
He retrieved a small morphine packet.
"I need more than that – " She said in a rush.
He chuckled mirthlessly. "How much you need?"
She rubbed her shoulder uncomfortably and chewed at her bottom lip. "Maybe... a handful?"
He shook his head, "You got the cash for that?"
She searched in her breast pocket for her wallet and took out a wad of cash. The man stared at it, then back at her with amusement.
"Shit... " He chuckled again and took the money, gave the soldier the drugs.
The old man closed and locked up the drawer, wandered over to another locked cabinet and began to unlock a safe.
The soldier stuffed the morphine packets into her jacket and smoothed the creases in her uniform. She watched him with some curiosity and winced when his back stiffened.
"Why you still here?" He barked without looking at her.
She nodded and uttered a quick thank you before she ducked for the door.
"Whole country's going to shit, you know," he mused.
She bobbed her head, "Yessir."
"We won the war yet?"
"I don't think so, sir."
"What you mean you don't think so?" He shouted, turning to her full of fury.
She pursed her lips and suppressed her irritation. "Never been deployed."
He cursed and shook his head, "Is it true our boys killed a whole bunch of people last week? I heard they did..."
"I dunno, sir."
His lips thinned as he bit them, "My brother... he was a writer, made his own newspaper... ya know those little ones printed on the blue paper? He went missing a few weeks ago..."
She stood straight, stone-faced and silent, eyes on the wall. He mumbled and went back to opening the safe. She let herself out of the apartment and jogged up the steps.
Back on the street, she headed briskly back to her apartment, boots hitting the ground at a marked pace. A Sentinel hovered overhead, descended through the dark cloud above to the third tier. Its spotlight swung in pendulum fashion from the clubs to the street and back. She could feel the heat of it creep across her back as it flashed overhead. Her pace quickened. It swooped down again, the heat cutting through the fabric of her uniform. As she hurried forward, she realised that a circle of light had settled over her, that the heat at her back was constant. Her eyes widened, breath became short. She was caught – surely they'd seen her. They were scanning her and found the morphine in her pocket and were ready to arrest her.
"Yamada!"
A disembodied voice sounded from behind her. The light was too bright for her eyes to focus. A monstrous black shadow formed in the distance behind her, carrying with it the sound of the voice.
In a flash the Sentinel's spotlight dipped away.
"Yamada!" Came the young man's voice again, "Why the hell don't you pick up your phone?"
She stared dumbfounded at the group of soldiers, a collection of hard liquor and beer wafting from their slurring and chuckling mouths.
"Yamada, you little prick," one of the men said, "You're impossible to get a hold of."
They swarmed her and two men in their gathering broke apart to absorb her into the group, placing their arms over her shoulders and using her as a support. They were sweating and struggling to stand, bouncing off each other as they walked.
"Where have you been all night, huh?"
When she offered him a scowl, he swatted her shoulder in good spirits.
"Fuck it," he slurred. "Come drink with us."
"Naw, I gotta get back home... " she whined.
"Why?" Another man shouted, spinning shakily on his heel as he turned to walk backwards. "You don't have a wife!"
"C'mon," the other man that flanked her said, squeezing her shoulder in reassurance. "I know just the place."
Her stomach turned as they wound down the dank and narrow streets and settled at the staircase to LOT'S, one of the most expensive bordellos on the second tier. They catered exclusively to army clientele. Her feeble paycheck had kept her from most of Gomorrah's overpriced clubs and she hated the look of the women wherever she went, knowing that she was a joke - a lie - and a traitor. In an instant, she could be discovered and would be on the other side of it, joining the ranks of the chattel. And what ally would she have then? The men would beat and use her because she was a woman, the women would beat her for living as a man. The clubs always made her anxious.
The large red sign flickered in the darkness, the thump of the music seeping through the front door. As the bouncer checked their papers and ranks, the opening door unleashed a crescendo of music on them, red rays cloaking them as they walked the narrow hall to the main room. Above the large cylindrical bar, a handful of pole dancers squirmed naked for the visual pleasure of the patrons who entered the club. A flashing but grubby dance floor was filled with scantily clad women and drunk nude soldiers. A man was on the bar countertop, having his way with one of the girls. The main chamber was scattered with private booths, where all the women on the floor would perform private dances and favours. An elevator at the back lead up to the cheap midlevel rooms and expensive top-level penthouses that wrapped up through the third and fourth tier. Some claimed the club went beyond the fourth tier, into the oblivion beyond the dark cloud. All the women on the floor were between the ages of thirteen and fifty while the rest were kept in private rooms, available to order from a catalogue at the bar. The club's policy stipulated as much, hanging on a plaque framed on the wall above the shelves of drinks behind the counter.
Nausea rose to the back of her throat. She choked on the musk of sweat, sex and cheap cologne. The group of men hauled her up to the bar and collapsed onto the plastic stools. They shouted a litany of orders – whiskey, vodka, beer. They waited in the pregnant silence, eyed her with expectation. Rum, came her quick response and they cheered and hammered their fists on the counter in approval. A glass of amber liquid slid toward her, caught up in the red light of the club. The men gripped their drinks and proposed a toast, the essence of which she missed, and they clinked their glasses together. Each soldier downed the drink in a gulp, and she followed, grimacing at the taste.
The alcohol burned a path down her throat and flamed in her stomach. It was pleasant, but it was an unwelcome distraction. She had to get home. She had business to take care of. Seeing no immediate escape, she ordered another and presented the bartender with her ID. He struck the card through the machines and her information soared through the wires:bank accounts, her permitted credit and all of her personal information. As she carefully sipped her next drink, her eyes wandered around the room.
There were the dancers, the strippers, the booths, the drinkers, the tables of men gambling and others watching it all, playing voyeur to the theatre before them. In one of the corners a group of women gathered, some old but most young, fending off the advances of the men around them. Some girls had drug-slackened faces that stared dispassionately at the walls. Something caught her eye and she craned her neck, narrowed her focus on the corner of the club. Her hand dropped absently, drink settling back onto the counter with it as her eyes widened and the shock hit her. The bartender neared her, casting stealthy glances in her direction as she ran a cloth over the counter. The girl watched her with fascination.
"See something you like?" She asked, trying to follow the soldier's line of sight.
The soldier 's mouth hung agape. Her eyes flicked toward the bartender - a young, shirtless blonde with an angelic smile and ruby lipstick. The soldier's tongue darted out to wet her lips before she responded, "What'd she used to be?"
The bartender's expression soured. She'd heard that question before. The women that used to be something – doctors, lawyers, scientists, teachers – they were the most common targets in the bar. Some guys got off on giving it to women that used to be successful, knowing that they hated their plight more than the young girls who knew no other living. A client told her once that he could see it in their eyes, the hope that died just before they were taken, when the women realised that they couldn't escape, that their struggle was futile.
The bartender glowered at her but the soldier didn't seem to notice. Before the woman could answer, the soldier rose from her seat. The young woman burned with curiosity as she watched her disappear into the crowd. She uttered under her breath,
"A Dragoon."
OOO
TBC...