Disclaimer: Repo doesn't belong to me. If it did, I'd hug it and squeeze it and call it Tim.
A/N: Ever just have something pop into your head in the middle of the night? I'm not sure if this will ever be more than a ficlet. The relationship between Gravedigger and Shio is meant to be vague and open-ended, so take it as you will.
Graverobber cheerfully hummed as he strolled through his preferred hunting grounds. Tonight had been a good draw; lots of bodies. He'd already managed to fill his pockets with vials of Z and morning was still hours away. He didn't even have to worry about the GEnforcers since he knew for a fact that there had been a fairly large group of Z dealers looking to raid the graveyard on tier D, and if someone just... happened to leave an anonymous tip, well...lucky for him.
His cheerful humming slowly died off when he came to the intersection at the statue of a woman with wings. He paused. The path on the right would lead him to his personal entrance/exit to the graveyard, the path on the left however...
He examined the statue, trying to convince himself that it was the real reason he stopped at the intersection, and not because the other path took him past a mausoleum he was becoming far too familiar with. The statue had once been beautiful, but now it was an ancient ugly-looking thing, half crumbled and mossy green. A relic from the days before polymer plastics took the place of stone and steel.
He should get out of there. Even if the GE's were busy, there were still the security systems, and the longer he lingered, the greater the chance of him being caught. If he hurried, he could probably catch a couple buyers lingering in some trash-filled alley who would be happy to see his product. He thought about the dusty amber bottle sitting on a shelf, waiting for him at his current crash pad. He wondered if the little sparrow had managed to drag herself home tonight.
Graverobber sighed and resisted the urge to drag his hands through his hair. He was too goddamned softhearted. There were thousands of little girls in the world who had it worse than she did. She had a goddamned house, her father probably left millions in creds stashed for her somewhere. He glared at the crumbled place where a face should have been on the statue. Why the fuck should he care?
The statue didn't bother to answer him. He absently pulled one of the full vials of Z out of a pocket and started twirling it with his fingers. He narrowed his eyes at the statue. It's seemingly innocent pose seemed to mock him. Standing with one broken off foot leading and both of its arm stubs leading forward. He could see it standing whole with its arms extended out in entreaty, maybe a sad look on its face. He wasn't a goddamned hero; the statue had no right asking him.
He shoved the small vial back into his pocket and forcefully started down the right hand path. There were no heroes anymore. HE wasn't a hero. He decided to put all thoughts about the little sparrow out of his mind. No more. He'd make some money, swing by Hallucinogen and see if Red was still working, and then he'd go home and spend some personal bonding time with Mr. Rum.
...It was just that she had so much POTENTIAL, so much more she could be.
Fuck! Fuckfuckfuckfuck! Graverobber snarled in frustration. What part of 'I don't want to think about the little Sparrow' did his traitorous mind not get?
All of it apparently.
There was something about her that pulled him in. He'd known it the first time he'd seen her, crouching behind a tombstone, taking such innocent delight in a moonbeetle. Who the hell likes moonbeetles? She was an enigma. He'd been curious about her. She didn't look like a junkie, wasn't robbing the dead, wasn't looking for a place to hide. What was she doing here? He'd grabbed her attention, just to see what she'd do. He'd never admit in a million years that he'd forgotten about the alarm systems. What kind of idiot robs graves for a living and forgets about the alarm system?
Graverobber blinked. The mausoleum was standing in front of him. Cold, dark, forbidding. He glared at his feet. Traitors.
But since he was here...
He crept up to the door of the mausoleum, plastering himself to one side of the door. Just a quick peek. Check and make sure she didn't fall asleep on her mum's tomb again, and then he'd leave. Maybe his conscience would leave him the fuck alone. He angled his head and used a corner of the glass to peek into the room.
...Empty.
He relaxed and eased himself off the wall and through the door, arguing with himself that this was not stalker behavior and that he was just checking. His eyes did a quick scan of the room. Empty sandwich wrappers, a couple of old apple cores, and a glass bottle halfway in the shadows. He zeroed in on the bottle. Sighed in relief when the label proclaimed it grape soda and he couldn't smell anything alcoholic.
A small sound from a dark corner of the room had him whipping around, his grip dropping to the neck of the bottle. One of the corners of the room was deep in shadows; a small noise came from that area again. It sounded like a small breath. Shit.
He crept forward, straining his eyes to see the small lump in the corner. Damn. He'd been hoping she had gone down her tunnel and back to the house to sleep. Instead, she was curled up in a drafty mausoleum on a cold stone floor with a thin black blanket wrapped around her. She made another small noise and Graverobber froze.
He crept forward again when she didn't move. When he was within an arm's length of her, he finally saw the tear tracts on her dusty face, and watched with morbid fascination as she made another little noise and a tear rolled from the corner of her eye. She was crying in her sleep. One arm was protectively wrapped around a small black book. She looked absolutely pitiful. He had the sudden urge to stroke her hair. His hand was almost touching her when the logical part of his brain finally decided to join the party. What the fuck was he thinking?
He quickly withdrew, as silent as velvet as he backed away from the girl. He barely remembered to set the soda bottle back where he found it before he silently let himself out. Once he was on the path, he bolted, running like the GE's were on his tail. His conscience wasn't eased. He didn't feel better by seeing her.
He wasn't sure what the hell he was going to do about his little sparrow. He thought about the statue at the intersection. Fucking bitch. He didn't need a goddamned conscience, he didn't need this complication. And that bottle of rum was sounding pretty damn good.
It was surprisingly easy to fall into a pattern of checking on his little sparrow. It helped that her mausoleum was smack dab in the middle of his preferred pilfering grounds. Rob some bodies, get some Z, check on his sparrow, sneak out. Of course, he started feeling anxious if he went more than three days without checking on her.
She was almost always in the mausoleum, made it easy for him to check on her, but it also worried him since he had already broken into her house and couldn't find a single sign that she ever spent any time there. He ignored the little voice in his head that chanted 'stalker-stalker-stalker' when he did things like that.
Since his rounds usually took place in the middle of the night, she was usually asleep. Sometimes there was evidence that she was eating, sometimes there wasn't. When she was asleep, she would cry. When she was awake, she'd sit at the foot of her mother's tomb and flip through her little black book. He didn't think she was reading it, mostly because her eyes would be staring into space, and not focused on the book. Her bug book. He knew that now. One of the few times she hadn't been in the mausoleum, he'd had a chance to sneak a peek.
He didn't let her see him. Ever. Didn't talk to her or confront her or wake her up. He just... watched.
Of course, SHE had to complicate things.
She'd stopped eating. He was still kicking himself because it had taken him a couple of days to figure it out.
First, the wrappers and other garbage disappeared. Not unusual. She didn't like being messy and usually cleaned up any garbage she had within a day or two. But it took him longer to realize that no new wrappers or apple cores were showing up. Things had become a little...busy. GEs were locking down harder with new management to impress. Small time amateurs were trying to weasel themselves into his areas. Still, one night, he realized that the mausoleum didn't look right. There were no wrappers or small piles of food anywhere.
He kept a closer eye on her after that. She grew thinner. Not a whole lot, but she was tiny to begin with and she was starting to look downright emaciated. She slept a lot more. He finally had to do something when he found her unconscious across her mother's tomb.
She barely woke up when he slapped her. His hands shook as he poured water down her throat and tried to keep from drowning her. The water woke her up. He was so relieved that he didn't even care later that he had broken his unspoken rule of not touching her. He made her sip the water. Came back with food.
When she was conscious enough to wonder what the hell he was doing there, he confused her with a cryptic remark and slipped away.
He had to be much more cautious about watching her after that.
About a week after that, Graverobber realized that he had stopped drinking himself into a stupor to sleep.
When the first frost hit the ground, he bought a thick black blanket before he even realized what it would be for. He had to wait for almost four hours for her to slip away so he could replace her blanket with the one he had bought. He didn't stick around to see her discover it, but for the first time in several years, he slept through the entire night.
Two days later, he was picking through some new arrivals at the graveyard and found an apple sitting on one of the tombstones.
The next time his little sparrow seemed to stop eating, he waited until she was asleep and placed a large pile of food next to her.
When he peeked in on her the next day, he was happy to see the food missing, and a couple of wrappers pinned down by a large rock where she had slept. An apple sitting on top. His little sparrow seemed much more nervous after that. It was very difficult to watch (-spy-) on her.
He started to only spy on her a couple of times a week. He made it a point to walk past her mausoleum where she could see him through the window if she were looking out of it. He wasn't stalking. Honest. She'd surprised him the first time she'd been seated on the front step, arms wrapped around her legs as she watched him walk by.
They never spoke. But if he nodded at her, she'd nod back before she slipped inside and closed the door.