Artificial Sweetener
for Crimson Dragon, by request.
Riese is dead, or so she fancies. Her joints and muscles no longer cry in pain as she lies on the unforgiving stone, and her fingers are numb to the cold surface beneath them. She doesn't notice her breath anymore, whether it is normal or shallow or there at all.
The only thing that fails to convince her is the pain that hasn't yet shed blood. Her heart aches with a raw misery that threatens to swallow her whole. It pulses through her veins to the beat of a monotonous whisper: Gone. Gone. Gone.
Sounds surface then, and she resists the urge to cry. Alive after all. She can't, doesn't want to distinguish words, but feels thundering footsteps echoing against her bones, and the voices come closer. As they take on a note of surprise, then alarm, Riese has a sudden, rare moment of clarity, and she makes a decision.
She pulls herself from the land of dead with great difficulty, gritting her teeth and tasting blood. She lashes out and grabs what feels suspiciously like hair, and its owner yelps.
"Raven," she whispers fiercely, the very effort of forcing her voice from her lips making her weak. "I need Raven."
And then all is mercifully black.
.
.
The Genobreaker is out of place in the base's hangar. It is a blaze of flame, of blood. Raven hunches his shoulders and follows the lieutenant's sure strides down the hallway. He is nervous. Every shadow looks suspicious. He holds himself stiffly and wishes he did not answer their call. He does not know why he is here.
Because they said she asked for Raven, Shadow reminds helpfully from her place behind him.
"Shut up," Raven hisses.
"What?" The soldier's steps falter to a stop, and he glances back in surprise. He tries to make it look cold, but Raven can tell he's never had much practice with the concept. It's the blond one, Shubaltz's little brother. Raven vaguely remembers almost killing him once.
"I wasn't talking to you," he snaps.
There is an awkward silence. Then, "Okay." Shubaltz turns and keeps walking. "Anyway. We found her half-dead by what looked like her organoid. It had been blown apart."
"Specula is dead?"
"So it would seem."
Raven tries to convince himself that he doesn't care, but the steady clanking of Shadow's footsteps ruins his concentration. No matter how he may try to forget, there is always the memory of losing his organoid, and the heartbreak it brought. It explains nothing.
Shadow is suspiciously silent.
She remains silent even as they round the next corner and come to a stop in front of a large window. Inside, the sterile atmosphere of a hospital reins supreme, and in its center lies Riese. She is hooked up to more machines than seems possible, and their respective beeps are audible even behind the glass. She hardly seems human, her skin obscured by bandages and hospital garb. Half her face is covered by an oxygen mask.
Raven raises his eyebrows at the glint of metal that draws his gaze. "Handcuffs?"
Shubaltz hesitates, then says bleakly, "She's a criminal. We tried to stop them, but the higher-ups refused to support us."
Raven's face goes dark. "And me?"
"You're...a guest. A guest protected by the Guardian Force."
Raven doesn't answer, but his mouth twists into a grimace. He should have known. The Guardian Force hasn't told anyone that he was called, or that he stands in this small hallway, right this minute. If something goes wrong, he will either be declared a friend of the people or arrested. Neither appeals to him.
He looks up to the window again in time to see a nurse step over the many trailing cords and cables from the bed. The woman leans over Riese and taps at a few screens, her face all honest concern. As she draws back, she reaches to brush Riese's bangs back, tender. She doesn't look as though she considers Riese to be criminal.
She also doesn't look as though she considers Riese to be in a coma. Raven blinks as she smiles and gestures at the window. At him. And that's when he realizes that Riese is awake and she's looking at him and something has blossomed in her eyes and he suddenly knows with absolute certainty that he shouldn't have come.
.
.
Shubaltz shows Raven to a temporary supply-turned-living room on the western side of the base, and then leaves. Presumably to deny that Raven was there at all to the representatives from the press. New Helic is only a hundred miles or so away, after all. Out of old habit, Raven hopes that the Genobreaker is particularly difficult to hide. It would serve them right for dragging him out here.
The rest of the GF is, supposedly, trying to calm public relations—hence their absence. It's just as well; Raven has no particular desire to play absolved maverick for Flyheight. He goes to the doors that lead to the small outside balcony, and wearily turns up a rusted metal buckets to use as a chair. He sinks down and sighs, staring at the Annade Desert, bathed in cool moonlight. He props his chin in his palms. "Shadow, I shouldn't be here."
Why? His organoid noses at his arm.
"They don't need me. They act like they do—like they think they do—but they're lying to everyone. This is just a bureaucratic move meant to show the public that peace is here to stay." This last comes as a growl.
Untruth. He raises an eyebrow at his organoid, but doesn't answer. After a moment, Shadow gives a small sound, like organoid laughter. They called Raven because she asked for Raven.
He shrugs, and swallows away a bitter taste. "Did you see her face? Did you see her eyes? She wants me to save her." He shakes his head. "She wants to come with me. She wants me to heal her. And I can't. She'll get in the way."
Yes. Yes. Yes. No. Yes. No.
He looks at Shadow. "What?"
Her optic lenses betray nothing behind the cryptic reply, and the organoid cocks her head to the side. Raven just doesn't want to hurt her.
His face tenses into a frown again, and he turns to watch the listless desert shine under the moons' light. After a long pause, he mutters, "Well, no, not particularly."
Shadow turns away and curls under the eaves, as though the conversation has come to a definite close. Raven watches her go, feeling like something has just slipped over his head. Finally, he gives a troubled shrug and leans against his arms and stares at the pinpricks of stars that are so close, he feels as though he can touch them.
.
.
Raven doesn't care. This really isn't any of his business, and he would be much happier if he just went home. He slouches against the wall in Riese's room, his arms tightly crossed and his teeth gritted, thinking about the wide-open swathe of desert and how it would feel to leave this all behind. The whiteness of the room threatens to blind him, and he uncomfortably eyes the empty window.
A muffled clank tells him that Shadow faithfully guards the door. He has privacy, at the very least. Not that it's useful: Riese is asleep. They took out the respirator the night before, amazed that her lungs had finally decided to breathe on their own again. Now, she rests, looking smaller, more human.
Raven feels as though he should be doing something. Speaking, or tapping, anything to fill the silence that presses against his ears. He is tempted to hum, but he knows no songs. He decides that in five minutes, if she isn't awake, he will leave. Have Shadow create a distraction so that he can find the Genobreaker and blast out of the base. The thought makes his lips tilt up in what could be called a smile, and he turns his gaze back to Riese's face, halfheartedly praying that she would sleep just a little longer, but she's staring wordlessly back at him.
Raven blinks and silently curses his luck. Her eyes are locked on his, and they're still filled with that same emotion: hope. It makes Raven want to snap, or break something, or just leave. She's looking at him like that. Him, of all people. He takes a steadying breath and prepares himself to speak...but his mind is blank. There is nothing comforting to say to her. It would be a lie. Raven despises liars.
"R-raven." Riese's voice is a croak after having a respirator shoved down her throat. She coughs weakly, as though the effort of saying his name has exhausted her.
As she catches her breath, Raven takes his chance. "I can't."
She blinks her eyes wide and stares at him. "I haven't a-asked you yet."
"You don't have to. I know what you want." Even as he says it, a pang of doubt hits him.
"Do you?" Riese echoes his thoughts, her rasping voice a little stronger, and sat up to lean against the headboard of the bed.
He watches her warily from the corner of his eye, his face expressionless. "You...you want to come with me, so that you won't be alone." He shakes his head a little. "I know what it feels like to lose your organoid, and I'm sorry." He has the distinct feeling that he isn't making sense, and repeats helplessly, "I'm...sorry."
Riese has turned her eyes to her lap, her eyes heavy-lidded. She looks as though she may begin to weep, but when she speaks, her voice is hoarse from the respirator, not choked. "Yes...and no." Raven is strongly reminded of his conversation with Shadow the night before, but declines to mention it. Softly, she continues, "You know how it feels?"
Raven doesn't answer. She doesn't seem as if she is expecting him to. She stares at her lap for so long that he wonders if she is falling back asleep, but then she shifts her hands a little. The metallic click of the handcuffs' links seems to break her reverie, and she blinks.
"You know how it feels." This time, it isn't a question. She brings her eyes up to stare at him again. "Raven."
He raises his eyebrows at her and wonders how much morphine she had been given. "What?"
She takes a deep breath, and her slight shoulders sag a little. "Kill me," she whispers. "Please."
.
.
Raven keeps his gaze on his feet as he walks, though his eyes are unfocused. Kill me. Please. Nothing penetrates the fog in his mind but the look in Riese's eyes as she spoke. Hope and trust. Hope and trust. He wants to laugh, but cannot.
He retreats to his room and collapses onto the bed and watches the play of dim shadows across the ceiling. The shadows dim further, and then disappear altogether. Still he lay on the unmade bed, staring at the ceiling.
Kill me. Please.
He agreed, nodding before he was even aware of it. And, deep down, he isn't surprised. Killing is what he has done best since he was thirteen. His reputation isn't for nothing. There are very good reasons why the lesser soldiers of both the Republic and the Empire are terrified of him. But, even so. Even so.
"I don't really want to kill her," he says aloud, faintly surprised.
But Raven promised he would.
"Shadow, you are the least helpful creature I have ever met."
Even if Raven doesn't kill her, she will die. Shadow's snout appeared over the side of the bed. Her heart is too sick.
"I know." Suddenly, that bitter taste is back. He grimaces and rolls onto his side, then pushes himself up. He stares at his hands on the cheap sheets. "I have to. And I can. I'm not weak," he adds, curling his lip.
Of course not. Shadow nudges his shoulder. Of course not.
.
.
When Raven appears again at her beside, Riese says nothing. She smiles.
Raven, on the other hand, again wonders what he is doing. He clenches the chain of the handcuffs in the grip of a small set of wire cutters, and lifts Riese's too-light body from the hospital bed. He wonders until he is heading down the dark hallway. There, he realizes that he is taking the girl in his arms to her death, and he decides that he asks himself the wrong questions.
Because otherwise, the army will arrest her and lock her up and do tests on her until either her spirit or her body dies. The Genobreaker is stashed in the southeastern-most hangar, as far from the main entrance of the base as it can get. Because her organoid is dead. Shadow fuses with the zoid and lowers the cockpit. Because she trusts me. This last makes him glower darkly, but he doesn't stop.
Minutes later, as he's warming the charged particle cannon and aiming it at the hangar's fortified wall, he starts to wonder again. But then he hears Riese's feeble cough from behind him, and the point is no longer up for discussion. He fires.
The Genobreaker flies from the blazing base amid wailing sirens and flashing red and speeds into the early, early morning. The faintest light of dawn is visible on the horizon, and the desert is empty. Raven turns the zoid south, and makes as if he were heading home.
It is as the horizon turns a flushed rose that he finally stops the zoid. Time jerks: one moment, he's easing off the brakes, and another, he's on the sand, Reese before him, facing away. She turns, the sunrise behind her, and it gives her a halo of gilded blush.
As he raises his pistol and levels it at her forehead, she meets his eyes. He has made his eyes cold and hard in self-protection, but hers are brimming with tears.
"Thank you, Raven," she whispers. "You're the only one—"
"Stop," he says, harshly. "Just stop."
She does. They both close their eyes, and Raven breathes, "I'm sorry," and pulls the trigger.
The crack of the gun is louder than he remembers. As its echo fades against the dunes, he slowly opens his eyes. There is blood on the sand, a freshly painted swathe turning dark under the morning light. He takes a long breath, and looks at Riese's body with little expression.
His eyes rest on the dead girl's face for a moment, taking in her smile, and he mutters, "Shadow, help me." He fetches a shovel from his supplies and Shadow helps him push the sand away to make a grave. The sun climbs and the sky is a boundless blue when they finish.
Raven wipes his hands on his pants, though there is no blood there, and he feels Shadow's familiar touch on his mind. Where now?
He turns his face to the empty horizon. "I don't care. Not home. Nowhere near here."
As he starts to trudge back to the Genobreaker, he decides that he was right.
He should not have come.
.
Hi, old fandom. I wrote this five years ago, and god help me, it still gets hits and reviews. I'm neurotic. I could fix this [at least a little], and so I did. It's still schmoopy and still depressing, but hopefully it's less bad. I do still write, just not on this account. If you need me, I'm off frolicking in other sandboxes.
I still feel weird about Raven romance, by the way. He's such a closed-off person who's known no acceptance and little purpose. I can't help but think he's just happier alone.