A/N: For Tina - wishing you a very happy birthday!
A/N: As always, thank you Ro for the support and the beta!
A/N: Set post-canon
Warnings: angst, language, violence, smut, death, gore, vampires, drug use, character death
Pairings: past 1x3x5, past 1x5, past 3x5, past 1x3, 3x?, 1x3x5, 1x3, 1x5, 3x5
Tenebris
"Yer a needy lil' thing, ain't ya?" The words were growled in the slurring drawl peculiar to the L2 colonies, and Trowa shivered at the words, and the hot, wet breath puffing against his cheek as the spacer leaned closer.
Trowa held his ground, standing tall and using his Terran genes, his height and broad shoulders, to his advantage. He was a full head taller than the grizzled spacer - but the spacer easily had thirty or more pounds on him. In addition to the paunch, the spacer had rage, had decades of being worn down by wars and famine.
"Do you have it or not?" Trowa asked, dropping his voice low, narrowing his eyes and doing his best to project the air of a man who could not be intimidated.
The spacer took a step back, putting a hand's breadth of space between them, but as he moved, he reached up and ran the rough, calloused pads of his fingers over Trowa's cheek and neck.
"Ya wouldn' have ta pay me, if ya'd give me ten minutes with that ass o' yers."
Trowa held the other man's gaze.
"That is payment, but it's not what we negotiated. We agreed on fifty creds for six grams. Do you have it or not?" Trowa repeated.
The spacer shoved his hands into the pockets of his well-worn leather coat. The move put Trowa on guard - he hoped the spacer was reaching for the U-477K, but there was every chance he was instead going for a weapon.
Trowa kept his own hands at his sides, open, fingers ready to curl into fists or reach for a weapon.
"Ah, well'n I figured ya might wanna try som'n else - mebbe some tetra er some guan-"
"We already agreed on the U-477K." Trowa kept his voice mild, but he could feel the bitter taste of anxiety begin to churn in his gut.
"Ya, but-"
Trowa stepped forward, and the spacer's eyes widened as he seemed to realize, for the first time, that Trowa could be a threat.
Staying silent, Trowa looked into the man's eyes, daring him to speak.
The spacer licked his lips and his eyes darted left, and then he looked down for a moment before meeting Trowa's gaze again.
He didn't have it.
Everything about the spacer's body language spoke of defeat, and Trowa snarled in irritation.
The spacer took a step back.
"You said you could get it," Trowa reminded the spacer.
"Well, I didn' really figger on you goin' through fifteen grams 'n three days. Ain't like this stuff is jus' handed out at ta commissary."
"Obviously. If it was, I wouldn't have to bother with you," Trowa pointed out, and the spacer's mouth worked for a moment. "Who is your supplier?" Trowa asked before the spacer could speak up.
"I don' jus' go round givin' out-"
Trowa stepped forward again, and the spacer stepped away. Trowa stalked forward until he had backed the spacer up against the opposite wall of the alley.
Eyes wide, the spacer looked up at Trowa as he leaned in close.
"Yer a frightened lil' thing, aren't ya?" Trowa imitated the man's accent perfectly, then mocked his earlier interest by dragging his lips across the scarred, stubbled cheeks of the man.
The spacer whimpered and tried to squirm away, but Trowa grabbed his shoulders and held him in place.
"We had a deal," Trowa reminded him. "And you reneged. Now tell me what I need to know."
"Ya know that ta K is bad fer ya, right? Ya should really try tetra -fer half ta price! An' I'll even give ya one gram fer free just to-"
Trowa sighed in frustration.
If he wasn't so pressed for time, he would have simply let the spacer off the hook and gone in search of another dealer, but the Circus had an evening show starting in just over an hour, and Trowa did not have the time to just go wander the underground of M235 in search of a more reliable dealer.
He needed the K, and he needed it now.
"This is the last time I'll ask nicely. Who is your supplier?"
"Ya really don' wanna go messin' bout wit him when-"
Trowa reached out and wrapped his hand around the man's neck, tightening his grip steadily, ignoring the man's attempts to break free. The spacer never should have let Trowa back him up against the wall - against the wall, the spacer's extra weight didn't help him. It just made it easier for Trowa to block him in.
"Urgh- fekkin' Terran shitbag, lemme- lemme go!" The spacer struggled to speak, sputtering for air, his face going red in the dim light and his eyes bulging. "I'll tell ya - I'll fekkin' tell ya!"
Trowa released him, and the spacer struggled to breathe for a moment.
"Who?" Trowa repeated.
"Magnus - Magnus Grayson."
"Where will I find him?"
The spacer hesitated, and Trowa shifted his hand back towards the man's neck.
"Ta south hemi intake center."
Trowa arched an eyebrow.
"Take me."
The spacer shook his head, hands coming up defensively, as if he could fend Trowa off.
"Nah, nah, nah. Ya can find yer own way ta-"
"What happens if I just stroll into - Magnus? Magnus' hub asking for K? He really just lets anyone walk up?"
The spacer licked his lips, and his eyes darted away from Trowa's again.
"Take me to him, and then we're done," Trowa assured him.
He reached into his trouser pocket, lips twitching when the spacer tensed up and then relaxed at the sight of Trowa pulling a cred chip out.
"Here. Ten creds. So that your time isn't wasted."
The spacer looked at the chip, the holographic stamp of Relena Peacecraft's face catching the faint light and glowing.
After a few seconds of hesitation, he reached out and swiped the chip, ferreting it away in his jacket.
"Fine. I'll take ya. Jus'- jus' don' say I didn' try ta stop ya."
Trowa snorted a laugh, but he stepped back to allow the man to step away from the alley wall. As soon as the spacer had relaxed, however, Trowa draped an arm over his shoulders.
"Shall we?"
The spacer tensed again, but he didn't try to shrug Trowa off. Instead, he grumbled something low and no doubt derogatory under his breath as he started to walk.
Trowa kept pace with him, estimating that the walk to the intake center would take fifteen to twenty minutes. Add in whatever time it would take to get the K and- and Trowa was cutting this very close.
"Yer a lil' young ta be so heavy inta K," the spacer grumbled as they walked.
Trowa had to snort again.
"How do you figure that?"
"Mostly it's ta soldiers who go fer that - all ta kids like tetra an' the lighter shit. There's a difference be'twen gettin' high and gettin' as close to dead as ya can."
"I'm aware," Trowa murmured.
He had, of course, tried tetra - it was cheaper, considerably safer, and while it was addictive, it didn't leave its users curled into anxious, sweaty, vomiting messes when they were sober. But, as the spacer had said, all tetra did was get you high - give you a buzz and a kind of tingling sense of peace with the world that only exacerbated all of Trowa's problems.
The K was the only thing that worked - had been the only thing he had found in three years that gave him the ability to stay steady, to stay numb and to keep everything at bay.
"I mean, yer what, twenty? Twenty-two?"
"Twenty-five."
"Twenty-five an' addicted to K? Ya know ya ain't gonna live a long life on that shit."
Trowa had already lived twenty-five years longer than he should have, all things considered. He should have died so many times over the years - he seriously doubted the K was going to put him into an early grave. But if it did, well, then it did.
"I'm jus' sayin', the tetra won' fek ya up so much. It's easy-like, yanno?"
Yanno.
Said the same way Duo Maxwell had said the word - the same way, Trowa reminded himself, every L2 spacer said it.
He pushed thoughts of his former comrade, of his former life, away. He needed to focus, and he sure as hell didn't need to add any extra ballast to the sinking ship that was his sanity.
"If I wanted tetra, I would ask for it."
Again, the spacer muttered something under his breath, but he didn't try to engage Trowa again - didn't offer any more lectures about the dangers of K or the benefits of tetra.
Trowa was mildly grateful, but the distraction of the spacer's words was sorely missed.
Instead, he found himself focusing more on the neon lights that got progressively more garish and more infrequent as they moved towards the intake.
On most colonies, the intake centers - where refuse was taken to be recycled or repurposed - were considered the least desirable areas for housing and industry, due to the extra radiation they generated. As such, the intake areas had almost uniformly become the home for any nefarious-minded businesses and colonists.
Which meant that it was the best place to get your hands on anything illegal - from drugs to weapons, and every banned good in between.
As they walked through the dark, slightly damp streets, Trowa felt his adrenaline spike.
It wasn't just the fact that they were getting closer to the K that he desperately needed - it was being carried along in the sea of the forgotten - or the willfully ignored.
Grizzled men and women who had to be veterans of the wars brushed past with the haunted, vacant looks of those who had lost pieces of themselves on a distant battlefield.
Low-end prostitutes cajoled potential clients, raucous and demanding, intimidating with their blatant sexuality and volatility.
Bedraggled street urchins darted in and out, clinging to shadows, digging into pockets and trash heaps.
Trowa knew these people. He was one of these people - only, he had managed to scramble up a few rungs. Had pulled himself out of the gutter and into the cockpit of a mobile suit, and he had helped to change the world before finding himself in an uncontrolled free fall, headed back to that same gutter he had climbed out of years ago.
It was depressing, but there was a kind of circular finality to everything in life - to everything Trowa had ever done or failed to do - and this reality only continued the pattern.
"There," the spacer muttered, coming to a stop and jerking his head towards a dark alley and a blue, flickering neon light that was so intense it burned into Trowa's retinas - illuminated the space even when it flickered out.
"Get me through the guards," Trowa said, tightening his grip on the spacer's shoulders when he tried to move away.
"Yer fekkin insane fer wantin' K this fekkin much," the spacer growled, trying to fight Trowa off.
But Trowa shoved him forward, into the alley ahead of him, deciding to keep his hands free.
There was something about the spacer's hesitation that spoke of more than belligerence - the man genuinely did not want to be here.
Perhaps he was behind on selling? Perhaps he owed Magnus Grayson money? Perhaps-
The spacer took off at a dead run, sprinting through puddles and piles of trash recklessly.
Trowa took off after him, his longer legs eating into the spacer's lead, but the blue light flickered out again and when it came back up, the spacer was gone - disappeared into one of the half-dozen side alleys.
Leaving Trowa alone, breathing hard, and a few dozen feet from the flickering light.
He could see now that it wasn't flickering from faulty wiring, but that it was a chase sequence, a blue bolt of lightning flashing over and over again, striking the rusted awning over an equally rusted door.
Slowly, Trowa approached the door, his instincts for survival at war with his need for the K.
As he neared it, the door opened, and Trowa froze.
"Trowa Barton."
He stared into the darkness beyond the door, looking for the source of the deep voice that had spoken his name.
A heartbeat later, and a tall, pale man stepped out into the alley, eyebrows raised.
"Coming or going?"
Trowa looked around the alley, searching for signs of surveillance - but even if there had been a camera to pick up his face, his identity was buried under so many blacked-out passages and classified stamps that it was almost inconceivable that his face would be in a database.
Which meant that someone here knew him.
"Coming," he decided, convinced it was the wrong choice but stepping forward, into the darkness, even so.
The door closed behind him immediately, the resounding clang of it making him actually jump.
The tall, pale man chuckled, and Trowa swallowed hard, fighting against his fear, against the nausea roiling through his belly.
The man started to walk down an almost pitch-black hallway, and Trowa followed him, keeping his hands loose by his sides, ready - he hoped - for whatever was going to happen next.
They walked past dozens of closed doors, up two flights of stairs and down another hallway, before going down three flights of stairs and down yet another hallway until, at last, the man opened a door and stood aside.
Trowa looked between him and the door.
"You wanted to see Magnus, didn't you?" the man prompted. His words, unlike the spacer's before, were clipped and precise and not those of an L2 spacer.
Trowa stepped into the dark room and the door closed behind him, leaving him in pitch-black surroundings.
It was cold, dark, and silent except for the insistent, terrified thud of Trowa's heartbeat.
Fuck fuck fuck.
He turned around, hands scrambling for the doorknob, but instead his hands tangled in fabric. In clothing.
A laugh, low and cold and familiar, echoed throughout the dark room.
"I had such high hopes for you."
Trowa struggled to place the voice. Who was it? Cold and aristocratic, a baritone that had only the slightest of accents.
"You seemed so adept at infiltration, at remaking yourself. And yet… what are you masquerading as these days?"
A cold hand, the skin chillingly soft, traced over Trowa's cheek..
"Back to being a clown?" The voice made a tsk of disappointment. "You should have stayed with Preventers, should have made your career as Une's underling until you were primed to take over and-"
Trowa jerked away from the touch, stumbling back and losing his balance.
He fell, his ass hitting the hard floor and sending a shock of pain up his spine.
"Ah. I see. Couldn't handle getting your hands quite so dirty? Didn't want to keep doing all of those back room murders that needed to be done so that everyone else could stay clean and perfect?"
There was a rustle of fabric and the voice moved closer, lower to the floor - as if the man was crouching directly in front of Trowa.
Again, the frigid hand on his cheek, tracing down to his jaw and then to his neck, fingers gliding over the erratic pulsing vein.
"Oh. No. I was wrong." Another cold chuckle. "You could handle it. In fact-" The voice moved even closer, and the next words came out against the shell of Trowa's ear. "In fact, you loved it. You craved those sinners begging for your forgiveness; you ached for the feel of the flesh parting under your knife; you yearned for the warm, bright spill of their blood. You loved every second of it."
Trowa swallowed hard, the words, the touch, the truth overwhelming him.
He tried to move, but suddenly there were two strong arms wrapped around him from behind, two icy hands digging into his arms and another cold chuckle against the curve of his neck.
"Oh, no, Trowa Barton. You came here for something that only I can give you - and I'm not going to let you leave empty-handed."
Trowa knew, with absolute certainty, that whoever this was - Magnus Grayson or not - he was not going to sell Trowa any K.
"You want eternal emptiness. You wish to feel absolutely nothing and to forget everything." Another cold chuckle, and then the cold, hard press of lips against Trowa's neck.
He shivered, from the cold, from the pressure on such sensitive skin, from the man's omnipotence.
"Shall I give you what you so desperately want? Shall I take away all of the things that you love? Shall I end this life that you have so little regard for?"
Trowa swallowed hard, his heart still racing, his palms tingling with anticipation, with fear, with-
"Or shall I give you something more? Something that will allow you to live without fear and regret and self-recrimination? Shall I make you something more than Trowa Barton could have ever dreamed of being?"
Trowa drew in a shaky breath.
He was trapped - trapped by the man's strength, by the allure of both his offers, by his own indecisiveness and fear and self-loathing.
Everything the man had said - pulling Trowa's memories and fears and dreams from his mind as if he shared them - echoed through Trowa.
He had spent his entire life running from his past - running from nothing into nothing - and here was a cold shadow offering Trowa two impossible choices.
"Life or death, Trowa. You finally have to choose."
Trowa swallowed again, his mouth almost painfully dry.
"Life," he breathed, thinking of all the lives he had ended, thinking of all the death he had drowned in. Maybe- maybe now it was time to put all of that behind him.
The man gave a full-throated laugh.
"Oh, Trowa. You can never put death behind you - especially not now."
The cold lips pressed another kiss to Trowa's neck, parting for an almost scalding-hot tongue to lick at his flesh, and then-
The instant, blinding pain of something sharp and hard tearing through his skin.
Teeth.
Biting into his neck, ripping into his skin while the hot tongue probed the open wound and the lips worked at the skin, caressing and sucking and-
Trowa felt a dizzying rush of sensation, of pain and pleasure and fear and everything, and then he felt absolutely nothing.
-o-