Rating: M
Words: 2000
Spoilers: Non-specific. Set some time between Nightlife and Moonshine.
Warnings: References to real life themes some readers might find disturbing. Language of the Cal Leandros kind.
Summary: Some things could not be changed. And some people could not, either.
Disclaimer: Everything is owned by someone else.
A/N: So I'm a little late to the Leandros brothers stories, having read Nightlife about a hundred years ago, then getting the next two in the wrong order some time later. So forgive any lapses in accuracy and anything that has been "Thurmanned" later on in the series (consider this AU if so!) as I've only read books 1 and 3!
UNCHANGEABLE
Honestly, I'm not sure whether it's a memory or a nightmare.
I think it's a nightmare.
But then I think maybe it's a memory, and it stops me dead in my tracks.
Niko carries on running for maybe half a block before he realizes I've stopped. He turns back and looks at me, his blond head tilted quizzically to one side.
"Am I running too fast for you, little brother?" he asks, as he retraces his steps at a slow jog.
Even if he ran barefoot across broken glass he could outpace my lazy ass.
I just look at him for a second, a long second, and I think about the thought – nightmare – memory – that just popped into my head.
I don't know where it came from.
It was an ordinary training run. Niko likes to make me run a few million blocks every day. It's the masochist in him.
There was a guy.
I passed a guy and his face was…familiar somehow, but I wasn't sure from where.
The way he turned his head.
Sipped his coffee.
Smiled at the little kid tripping down the street at his side.
Probably his son. Little blond thing. Gray eyes. Couldn't have been more than eight.
Reminded me of…
"Did she ever make you…?" I stopped and couldn't finish the question.
Nik's standing right in front of me now, brows drawn slightly. "Did who ever make me what, Cal?" he asks, and honestly? I'm not sure I can answer.
"When she…when we were…" I glance over my shoulder and the guy is crossing the street, his hand on the little kid's shoulder.
I shudder. And it's not from the cold.
I don't want him touching the kid.
Probably his son. Probably puts his hand on his shoulder all the time. Just making sure he doesn't get squished by a homicidal yellow cab driver pulling a right when he should be yielding.
"Come on, kid. It'll be okay."
His hand is on Niko's shoulder and I don't like it.
I don't like it at all.
She turns up the volume on the TV and looks down at me.
She always looks down at me.
Glances once at the guy disappearing into her bedroom and shrugs.
"I'm going out," she announces.
And then she's gone, a wad of money in her hand he gave to her, and I'm on my own and I'm scared to turn down the TV in case I hear…
"Cal?"
Niko's right in my face, and I feel his hands on my biceps and I want to shake him. Want to make him tell me.
Don't want him to tell me.
"There was a guy," I say, and I'm stammering and it's not like me because I'm usually all up with the wiseass remarks and the attitude. "I just remember…" And I can't say it. I can't say it.
Nik's looking at me and I can see a single bead of sweat running down his temple.
"You're real pretty, kid. Don't exactly take after your mom, huh?"
And I want to scream and tear the memory out of my head like all the memories of Tumulus.
"Cuz I know – I know that – that –"
And I still can't say it. Can't put the nightmare into words because if I do it'll be a memory and it will really, really have happened.
The guy ruffles Niko's hair and he looks really scared and I want to run and get someone, but there's no one to run and get.
The only adult in our lives just left us.
And I'm four. I think I'm four, and I don't know what's going on or what to do because Niko's the one who always knows what to do.
"C'mon, kid. Your mom says it's okay. So it must be okay, right?"
I want Nik to bite the guy's hand where it's gripping his shoulder.
I don't want him to be touching my brother's shoulder.
Niko's eyes drift to the door of the trailer, where Sophia just left, and then he looks at me.
"Watch some cartoons, kiddo," he says to me. He smiles, but I can tell he doesn't really mean it. "Don't be scared."
But I'm scared.
I'm scared.
"Cal?" Niko's bark is a little more insistent, and there's worry in his gray eyes. He's shaking me like I want to be shaking him.
"The guy…" I stammer. "I remember the guy." I'm looking at him, but he's not twenty-two anymore, he's eight and he's scared and I don't want the guy to be touching him.
Niko doesn't say anything. He can see something in my eyes, I know he can.
He always could read me like a goddamn book.
"Did she – I mean, Sophia. When she was really…strung out and needed money and tricks dried up because, y'know, she kinda didn't look like someone you'd even pay for it with, and she needed booze and she needed a hit and she looked…she looked…and you…you… Did she? Did you?"
And I don't know what I'm saying anymore.
But Niko does.
He glances over his shoulder, as if checking who's around, listening.
There's no one listening.
There's just a sidewalk full of people too busy to give a shit what may or may not have happened to my big brother when he was eight.
He was eight.
He takes a breath. It could be a sigh but I'm not sure.
"We should go home," he says.
He pulls at my arm, but I don't move.
"Cal? We should go home. Somewhere more –" He stops, shrugging.
"Private?" I ask. "Is that what he said too?"
And suddenly I'm angry. I'm angry at everything. At Sophia. At the guy.
At Nik.
"We should go," he says again.
"C'mon, kid. Don't have all day. We should go."
He pushes Niko into Sophia's room and Niko goes.
He just goes with him.
And I think I want to cry, but Niko says that's what babies do.
I'm not a baby.
The door closes, and I think I hear the bolt slide home.
She always bolts the door when she brings home one of her "friends."
"Cal?" Nik says. "Let's go home. Please."
"How could you let him do that?" I ask. And I sound mad. I am mad. But I'm not mad. Not at him.
But I am mad at him.
Niko sighs again and shrugs. "I was a kid," he says. As if that's any kind of answer.
"You were never a kid," I tell him, and I'm gripping his shoulders so hard I must be hurting him.
"You're hurting me," I hear Nik say, even over the sound of Scooby Doo and my hammering heart. "Please. Don't."
It's like a nightmare.
Like the nightmare of the Grendels.
Only worse.
Because I think it's real, and I think I'm awake, and I think this is really happening.
Holy crap.
It really happened.
Didn't dream it. Didn't imagine it.
Remembered it.
Think I remember it more than once.
I'm scared and I'm in his face and I'm four fucking years old again.
And he's eight.
He's eight.
I don't say anything else. Can't say anything else.
She had a wad of money in her hand and he had Nik by the shoulder.
Niko sighs again, and he's looking across the street, at the sky, at the sidewalk, anywhere but at me.
"We should go home," he says again, and I want to. I want to.
But I'm not sure I can be in the same room with him.
"Why didn't you say no? You said no to everything else the bitch tried to make you do."
He's not looking at me when he says it.
"Because if it hadn't been me it would have been you."
I blink at him.
I know about monsters. Hell, I am one.
But there are monsters and there are sick fucks who buy little kids like they're candy bars.
He's looking right at me now, but he doesn't say anything else and I feel like a bug under a magnifying glass and the sunlight is so bright I think I'm going to burst into flames.
"You could have said no," I say again, and I don't know why I'm saying it because I know it's not true. If Niko ever had to choose between himself and me? He'd choose me every goddamn time.
He shrugs and I don't know what that means.
There's a woman with a dog in her purse, little yappy thing in a diamanté-studded pink collar, and she glances at us as she passes.
I wonder if she has any fucking clue what we're talking about.
And it makes me sick.
It makes me sick and I don't want to think about it anymore.
I turn away from him and he says to my back, "When I was big enough to know that saying no would mean no, I said no."
It's the most Cal-like fucking sentence he's ever said and I can't understand a word of it.
I turn back towards him and there's an apology in his eyes.
I don't know why he's apologizing.
He was eight years old.
Eight fucking years old.
And she sold him.
Our mother sold him.
Just like she sold me before I was even born.
"I always wondered why she kept me around," my big brother is saying. "Whenever she'd try and involve me in one of her cons she always knew I'd say no."
I can't listen. I can't.
"I suppose I was the only babysitter she could afford," he adds. "But she kept telling me I needed to earn my keep. And when the men she brought home stopped looking at her, she noticed a couple of them looking at me."
Somehow I manage to look him in the eye when I ask, "Was it more than one time?"
He shrugs again but doesn't answer.
"When were you big enough to say no and have it mean no?"
"When my hands got big enough to hold a butcher knife."
He's looking at me, and he's ashamed. He's ashamed of what he had to do to stop it happening to me.
"You were a kid," I tell him again, and he smiles crookedly.
"With annoyingly small hands," he adds.
He's making a joke of it but neither one of us thinks it's funny.
I look at him and he answers my next question before I even ask it.
"Twelve," he says. "He looked at you the way he was looking at me and I stabbed him."
Eight. I'd have been eight. The age he was when it started.
"He didn't die," he added. "Although I think I wanted him to. He told Sophia he was going to the cops and that CPS would take us and she'd never see us again."
"And that bothered her?"
He shrugged again. "Not really. But she was scared of the Auphe. Scared of losing her other meal ticket. So she packed us up and we left and the next time she brought someone home they came for her, not for me."
"Sick freak."
He snorted, and not for the first time I was amazed at how different he looked when he smiled.
"So."
"So."
"Can we go home now?"
I still wanted to kill someone.
But it wasn't Niko.
And Sophia was already dead.
"Yes," I told him. "We can go home. As long as we don't have to run. And I can have a big greasy cheeseburger when we get there."
He shook his head at me. "Some things never change."
I watched him as he turned and began to walk away down the sidewalk.
My big brother.
The one who'd always had my back.
Who'd protect me to his dying breath.
"Some things never do," I agreed, and followed him home.
The End
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