a/n: I wish this was my epic comeback, but it probably isn't. Times are hard, lovelies, and I have no time for anything except this nice slice of continuity. It may not fit in perfectly with whatever twisted time line I may have created, but as you know I've never paid too much attention to detail. Although not what I consider to be tasteless, it is quite graphic femslash, so read at your own risk. Don't own shit.
~o~
Lark readied the syringe in one hand, careful as she once was when her health was at its peak. With the other, her fingers shakily held a wooden corncob pipe that softly heaved one steaming cloud of blue aromatic smoke after another. Her good hand remained steady though, still, with a deadly accuracy and precision that she had not known in years, and along with immense focus was pride coursing through her thoughts. If she were to ever see anyone, or rather her ever again, she could brag that even whilst on the threshold of death's call itself, she was able to medicate herself like a pro. The thin bony contours of Lark's face pursed slightly in a small but evident smile as the needle, prepped with a glowing liquid that seemed like it belonged with the rest of the radioactive sludge on Kiros, sunk into her tenuous skin. Her complexion had receded from it's once ashen tone to a sallow yellow, the very trademark of a cancerous sufferer without many days left in the world of the living.
Without moving the sinew in her palm, she lifted her thumb, and pressed on the top of the instrument, releasing a torrent of pulsating fluid that she could vaguely see in her bloodstream through the translucent sickly tint of her arm. Evening's fall upon the terra sent a hushed creeper of silence to every living creature, as if nature itself held its breath for her. The entire morning and afternoon was spent crushing and liquifying one of the crystals Piper had left for her so many weeks ago, and her arms hurt terribly, expending what was probably the last bit of their strength. She left the syringe precariously on the edge of the table next to her burnt pipe, after injecting herself with the elixir, and sat for a moment, paying close attention to the changes in her dying body. It didn't take long for the treatment to take effect. Her organs, her dead and shriveled organs, thrived in her gut with a new fervor she had not experienced in years. Satisfied, feeling deliciously selfish and a strange mix of saddened pride for the accomplishments of her unequaled apprentice, Lark closed her eyes, semitransparent lids falling like graceful flesh sheets over violet stones.
Fuck I love cheating death.
Glancing over at the other remaining crystals, she knew that it was not a magic pill, so to speak. She could not just take it once and all of her problems would disappear like a bad dream (heaven forbid, she rather liked having an excuse for being crotchety). The process would have to presume for another few weeks. In that time her muscles would strengthen, her chronic fatigue would disappear, she would stop bleeding from each orifice, and maybe, just maybe, her hair would eventually grow back. The notion of the latter made Lark consciously run a hand over the baldness of her head, trying to remember what it was like to even have hair, how it felt to wash it, clean it, let it go weeks without moisture until it got black and oily like octopus tendrils. Trying to remember what it was like to run or jump...to fight. To her dismay, the memories had nearly slipped away. Life before the disease, before the treatment pod.
Before Piper.
And that is what broke the camel's deadpanned back. Haughtily, Lark stood, letting the syringe and leather strap she had around the bicep of her arm fall to the floor in a clatter. She couldn't think about her, couldn't miss her, couldn't imagine her presence anywhere but thousands of miles in a direction she did not wish to know. Her mind was once again polluted such a way that she could not marvel at the fact that she could stand without a cane or walking stick. She strode...strode, out of that laboratory, and met face to face with what had been her biggest enemy since she had lived there. Gazing for but an instant at the abominable staircase, she clenched the rejuvenated muscles in her legs and went for the first step. Her bare feet made a gratifying sound against the mahogany wood. The first step came quite easily...
Then the second...
"I wont allow you go on like this"
The third...
"It's like you enjoy wasting away."
The...fourth...
"You fancy yourself all knowing. Well I still have a thing or two left to teach you, insufferable brat." I spat.
By the fifth, Lark had stopped in her tracks, gently gripping the railing as the sound of echoing timber brought back a memory that seemed so far away, yet close enough that she could still smell the musky sandalwood shampoo her apprentice would always use in her hair.
If she wanted to treat me like a baby, I would act like one, and make her suffer through my tyrannical fits until she grew hard and polished like a cold black stone. I glared at her, hating her for being right, hating her for being wrong, hating her so much. Her audacity rivaled mine, and it was absolutely disgusting.
"Look at yourself, Lark. You smell like shit, you look like shit, you feel like shit. Let me help you, LET ME HELP YOU!"
She quickly reached for my hand but by some stroke of luck I was faster, and I wrenched it out of her reach. I backed away from her slightly until I was against the shaded window, taped and covered so the UV rays wouldn't harm me.
"You want to help, mom? Is that what you want, mom? To help me? Wake up and look around you; not only am I dying, YOU'RE dying!" I growled savagely, saliva flying from my gnashing teeth and a fuchsia fire of death and destruction ablaze in my eyes.
Only she could ever make me act like this, ever make me break my collected exterior of ice and bloodied bricks. Beneath her stare, her care, and her wretched touch I was reduced to a feral uncivilized version of myself. I was fine with dying when no one gave a damn, when they worked for my survival to preserve their own. The fact that she actually cared about me...it broke me. It clashed irons with what I always knew. I was a queen, an icon, an entity of evil, a spirit of darkness that had no soul. Not a person, no, never a person.
"...Lark, please-"
"NO! FUCKING NO!"
And then I made the mistake. Reflexes are like that; they fly, and in a piece of a single second everything falls apart.
I slapped her. The sound of skin against skin reverberated off the walls of my bedroom and I watched in what seemed like slow motion how her head flew back slightly, dark chocolate cheekbone already tinged with scarlet bruising. At that moment I realized how horrible it would be when she next looked at me. I was counting the instances for when she would finally coil back and look at me.
Shock...
Hurt...
What else, betrayal...
The thought of apologizing did cross my mind, but I was far too apprehensive as well as fascinated by her reaction to let the words flow from my mouth. Something had drastically changed. I had turned on a switch in her brain. I had opened her Pandora's box. I did not know what this would mean for me, but calculatedly I already began going through ways of escape, factoring in my strength and the twists and turns of the mansion, the vehicles in the basement hanger, and my lack of agility. She glared at me with fervor, with passion, with an anger mixed with the cursed perplexing downpour of adoration. Piper was a genius, both intellectually and emotionally, and in the ways of the heart I was permanently retarded. Perhaps she was all knowing. And here I was bestowing my abusive slime upon the next person to change the entire planet.
Her expression was beginning to unnerve me. And hardly anything was able to phase my jaded depths.
"Piper." I said, not knowing what else to say.
She said nothing, just took a step towards me. I thought perhaps she was going to hit me back, try and inflict the same pain on me, only to be far from satiated, because I could never display such feeling in a simple stare. I wouldn't feel the betrayal, the anger, anything. I threw tantrums, but there was nothing but a ballistic childish fear behind it, the only emotion I was familiar with, and even then it was minimal. Piper was so close, and I squinted an eye and prepared myself for a beating. I'd be fine with that; I deserved it. Not that I was feeling sentimental regretful about it, but in my mind it was fair exchange.
When one expects a strike and instead gets kiss, the dimensions shift.
Lark slid down until she sat at the bottom of the stairs, one hand gripping the bars of the case, the other hovering lightly over her mouth as she ran a finger over her pale chaffed lips. Memories were so cruel. They replicated the feeling of what once was, but it was never the same, and most certainly never good enough.
Reality fractured, nearly split into halves as she planted her thick pair of lips upon mine. I balled my hands up into fists at my sides, keeping my mouth pursed shut, for my entire body had tensed up at the contact. Her motives were insane. Completely irrational. So far in the ether that I could not even begin to follow her twisted sense of brainsick logic. Piper drew away only to take my petrified body and lay me on my bed with tussled sheets and a comforter lightly stained with blood that was cleaned months ago, laying her legs and pelvis next to me while she bracketed her arms on either side of my torso, leaning down and once again pressing her lips to mine, those cursed bumps of flesh that were so soft and smooth and warm, unlike my cold dead strips that were covered in dry scabbed cracks. She was slow, yet so quick in her ministrations, and the more I realized that she was not going to let up unless on her own terms, the more I analytically noticed something about her technique. Occasionally, she would move from my lips to my cheek, from there to my forehead, my earlobe, my jaw line, and then the thinned skin of my neck. There was nothing savoring about her touches, nothing seductive. She was searching for something, her lips and taut deft fingertips the instruments which she used to unravel me, her subject.
Was she trying to break me more than I already was? Was this her chosen form of torture? Was this her revenge for my physical violence against her?
Before I had the answer wriggling like a trapped fish in my hand, she gripped my neck so gently, fingers massaging the skin and running over my fleeting pulse again and again. I hated being at the mercy of someone else, but with her I had no choice, a common theme that came with the dealings of our relationship. She came back to my lips eventually, nuzzling me like a filthy animal and I felt something wet sweep out and moisten the dry barren wasteland of my closed mouth. Her tongue wanted permission to enter, and I felt the cloud of luxuria, familiar although rare, setting over my common sense and I opened my mouth slightly, letting her tongue caress me like a destined eel. I had never once closed my eyes. I stared into her own pair of gleaming mandarin hued optics, watched as they swirled in an inquisitive and fiery complexity, watched as they switched back and forth between the desire to cause me harm or the drive to give me great pleasure. Perhaps she wished to do both.
Needed a breath, so I separated us. Laborious air inflated my lungs and she took the opportunity to slip a hand inside my loosely tied black robe, running a fingertip over the center of my sternum and down an inch above my navel. Shivers infected my nerves, but I did not move an inch, only gazed at her with a plastered look of disbelief and fearful arousal as she played with my body like a child did a doll. She parted my robe a bit, separating the V that lead down to what once could have been cleavage and letting it fall to the sides, revealing my practically nonexistent breasts and an emaciated stomach. My face grimaced; I feigned purposeful negligence when it came to my body, but deep down I disdainfully lamented the loss of my muscle, my lack of slender beauty I once had when I was a wee teen. When I became ill, my body would no longer function. I lost weight, so much that my bones stuck out of my skin and my breasts, never large but could supply a palm with at least a handful, deflated and became one with my chest, like when I was first born. She had bathed me and seen me completely bare before, but never like this, and I wasn't sure I liked it. In my mind she should not have subjected herself to such gruesome sights. It was heinous. Don't look at me, Piper, don't look at me when you can look at yourself, filled out and gorgeous and disgustingly flawless. I was once the very definition of perfection, and it slipped past the binds of time and circumstance turned me into a living skeleton.
Just when I foolishly thought the sight of my ungainly body would change her mind, she lowered her neck and planted the seed of rushing air and trace of heated skin on my jutting collar bone. I squirmed, writhed gently under her noxious touches and viper kisses. It felt as though she were sucking what little life I had out through those skillful lips and dextrous hands, finally abandoning their finger pad travels in favor for full palm grasps, gripping my bones through a thin layer of skin as if pretending they were voluptuous. Piper's face hovered next to me, her hot shallow breaths hitting the hollow concave of my cheekbone in soft sultry gusts. I almost basked in that feeling of her closeness, her stifling heat sighing curious relief from the darkness of her skin, but her hand slipped lower than I preferred. Down my stomach, over the black crescent shape of my navel, over both of my protrusive pelvic bones that were like twin peaks on each side of an enormous gaunt valley of flesh. She had a destination, and it didn't take long to figure out where.
"No." I said promptly, voice still laced with strained discomfort.
Unsurprisingly, she ignored me, simply blinking softly as her hand slid further down, hovering over the thinning dark mauve curls on my pubic bone. Without noticing I shook my head slightly, resembling someone with a nervous tick. I couldn't explain why I initially didn't want her to touch me there. Perhaps it was because it bled constantly and I didn't want to get my mess on her. Perhaps it was my last sanctuary that hadn't been contaminated in some way by the scientific prodding of human hands. Perhaps I was afraid I would enjoy it.
It barely registered at first. My core was so molten and burning I couldn't feel her touch at first. It was light, feathery, even tentative, and still had the speculating detective edge to it, always searching for answers. Even at the brink of my expiration my center was still able to produce the dewy evidence of a rising libido. She suddenly pressed hard against the bloom of my swollen petals, and I gripped her idle upper arm for support. I bowed my head until my chin touched the perspiring surface of my chest, pieces of my thinning hair falling into my face. The possibility of whether or not I could take this made the instinct to flee stronger than ever. I was in no position to fight her off; she was stronger than me and had been for quite some time now. I had nothing to hit her with, no strength to inflict upon her another strike, nothing. My self control was dwindling, and the walls unforgivably crumbled around me as she worked something akin to magic down there. Or perhaps only in my eyes it was magic, something unnatural and otherworldly when it was completely natural for everyone else to partake. I never followed the crowd much; so whatever the human populace did, I was usually far away in my distant land of demolition and assimilation. I knew nothing of sex, other than it made people craz, and so far the lesson was being proved correct. It was as if the teacher had become the student, and vice versa. She had parted my labia, sliding a finger up and down their wetness and occasionally sinking a knuckle down into the heat. Leaning my head against her while she worked gently yet diligently, and I felt a drop of tepid sweat roll down my forehead. While most of my judgment was blurred I still wondered why she was doing this, why she didn't lay me into bed and lock me in my room for my insubordination. She didn't seem worried that this might harm me in any way, she just gazed at me, glancing down at her busy hands before looking back up, and kissing me like it's what we've always done.
It wasn't.
My soul and the atrophied shell that housed it rejected this in every way, and I felt a weird form of shame creep up on me along with each mild shock of pleasure that she administered. I hated feeling helpless, let alone being helpless, even more so when someone I had secretly grown to trust had invaded my sacred space and made me understand just what these barricades I had put up against the world had done to me. I was able to look her in the eye after bleeding on her, after hitting her, after rolling on the floor drooling and screaming like a denied child, after having to be forced into a bathtub because I smelled like a carcass. Without warning she slid a long skillful finger into my depths as far as it could go, and the abyss of my throat birthed a grotesquely thick and strangled moan as my walls pulsed hotly around her single digit. She moved it in a circular motion once before withdrawing completely, and slowly slipping inside once again. And she did that several times, slowly retreating before plunging back inside of me. I hated the languid speed at which she went, for it was painful and agonizing, not enough to fill the spring that she had cruelly wound up at my center. I spread my legs for her, ignored the lewdness, and moved my hips against her hand, my exhales mingling with low guttural moans so miniscule that I hardly heard them escape from my lips. Surely she had heard them though, because she became more forceful, almost combative, spurred by my subtle cries and aching to hear more. I hated that she seemed intent on conquering me in some way, but I could not help but melt in her arms as she opened the door inch by inch to a state of mind I wasn't sure I was ready for.
But whether or not I was prepared, it fawned all over me like a sighing infant, sweet and innocent yet selfish and greedy. Drops of dew seeped from my entrance down onto the bedsheets as Piper hastened her movements between my legs. Reaching delicately behind me to grasp the nape of my neck, she softly coerced me to raise my lowered head so she could see my face, so I could see hers, beautiful and radiant and doing this not out of some hidden agenda, not out of amusement from seeing me squirm, but for something desperate, something imperative that she needed before moving on with her life. We gazed at each other for a few seconds that seemed like light years, time and space melding out of knowledge completely we panted together, in tune, mouths ajar and brows soaked with a lingering film of sweat. I was close to the edge, gripping the sheets below me with my fingers and toes alike, my lower body consumed by a blazing azure flame just begging to be released. And the entire time, as my brusk grunts grew into sonorous mews, she held me, not as a doctor and their patient, and far beyond the boundaries of a mere friend. There was so much more, something I would never be able to voice into human speech but in my mind I finally understood that this girl loved something inside of me, as disgusting and wrong as I found it. She was the rawest person I had ever known, and she was tired of living with someone whose intuition was buried so deep below the surface it had no hope of using its own voice. It hurt to know that someone cared for me that way, and to this day I'm not sure why. Maybe I'm not worthy. Maybe she's inferior. Maybe it was too powerful for a stone cold ex ruler like me to handle.
It came. So meandering like a trickling brook, but once the dam broke, so did the echoic chamber of the room as my vocal chords let slip a shriek. It almost caused me pain, and it pounded my weak abused body with a force that made me want to die in order to preserve such a moment. This wasn't the first time I had wished for death to come and take me to the other side, but as Piper made love to me I languished for a scythe to end my life.
For ten whole seconds everything was white hot, fervent zeal making the skinny hills of my backbone arch perfectly in the air. I was blinded, saw everything yet nothing, and in some uncanny way things became illuminated, so crystal clear. The ecstatic ripples trembled through me like a rushing tide pulled by a cannibal moon's fervent peach glow. And she just held me. Piper drew her digit from within me, and I watched in a slight repugnant captivation as a viscous cord of fluid connected the tip of her finger to my throbbing core. I don't know where she put it, whether she wiped it on the already soiled bed covers or let it marinate her skin, I didn't care, I could only heave one breath after another.
Finally, I turned to look at her, and she seemed strangely quenched. She reached over and tucked a bit of my hair behind my ear, to which I narrowed my eyes at such a romanticized gesture. It hardly seemed appropriate, but I didn't mention it vocally. As usual she caught on quickly to my nonverbal cues, smirking slightly.
"So you do feel. I saw it in your eyes."
I bit my tongue so hard I almost tasted blood. I resisted biting her jugular. I wanted to scream at her. But...I suppose I could see her amusement, her curiosity when it came to the heavier and more unreachable regions of my personality. I exhaled one last time, upper lip curling into a delicate and deadly sneer. My post orgasmic bliss had long since dissipated, and I was back to the coldly poised master she grew to know best.
"Sometimes I wonder who's really the sick one around here." I murmured lowly.
She smiled a bit, but I didn't return it as I hoisted myself away from her, gathering up my robe which was damp from my own moisture and brusquely wrapped it around my body. The blood wasn't running anymore, and so I was as cold as I once was, before any of that even began to conspire. Her urges and primal nature baffled me, made me furious in its lack of rationality, but part of me had to admire it, even yearned to understand and experience it. But that's how geniuses are; they're inquisitive, digging their noses into things they shouldn't, and I wondered just how far down the rabbit hole could go from there. This breed of darkness that compelled me, however, it held something within its clutches, a treasure of sorts. It enveloped me in arms of russet brown, and nothing like that existed in the blackened poker-faced chasm of the chamber. I wanted to learn about this. I would probably never feel it as profoundly as Piper, for we were simply much too different regarding her and my (or lack thereof) emotions, ovules of great danger and rapture that were inside of her from the beginning and that she had implanted within my gullet. My lower regions still writhed with taunting aftershocks, as though haling me to do it again, again, again. Lucky for me I was a master at self control. I could indulge, yes. But learning about Piper and her vast peculiarities seemed more important, tickled my depleted basin of drive more than corporeal pleasures. In a way I supposed that's how I displayed my blessing for the girl; to learn more about her and cherish the grooves in her persona that made her decadently abnormal. It was through her, after all, that I learned people aren't just composite piles of blood and bone, feelings to take advantage of and abuse. This epiphany was made without any real feeling behind it, of course, so the thought of me turning over a new leaf was next to impossible. I know for a fact that a person can't grow a soul. They can't nurture what they never had in the first place. But she did teach me that I indeed had one, however rotten and skewed it was. Strangely comforting.
Her eyes fluttered open. The recollection had taken a lot out of her, but she turned her head to the side, looking out through a stained glass window at the sky, distorted by the tar pits and sulfurous geysers. The sun had long since set, and she was wasting the energy the first crystal treatment had given her sitting on the stairs sweating out a memory long since passed. She needed rest. Perhaps when she was better she could find her successor, watch her from afar and never interfere with what had blossomed. Taking a deep breath, Lark rose, and climbed the rest of the steps, not before taking one last glance at the horizon, knowing that somewhere out there, the young bird who left her perch had become more than a hawk, more than former woman king's own buzzard-like attribution, but an eagle.
Free as can be.