Amber/Thirteen is such an underrated pairing. I must warn you, this fic gets a little M; I just don't feel it warrants that rating on the whole. Call it a T+?
Claimer: I own everything, it is all my intellectual property, I hold full rights to it etc.
MRI machines are loud and claustrophobic, but today Thirteen's headache doesn't need the help. It's set in over the past few days like a constant buzz of white noise, with the occasional burst of static that makes her screw her eyes shut with pain.
Coming back from the dead is a dangerous game.
Developing a brain tumor somehow doesn't seem like a fair trade for a possible minor improvement in her disease—or at least less degeneration—years down the road. Thirteen doesn't kid herself about the Huntington's, but this, this is a lot of risk for a small chance of not enough cure. And drug aside, now she's stuck in one of these oversized washing machines every other week.
Maybe Thirteen would like to kid herself about the Huntington's, maybe pretend her hand shudders will get worse but that's all, no mental effects. But that's not an option, apparently, because what's really been on Thirteen's mind isn't the headaches or the MRIs or even her disease. It's a ghost of a memory of a dead girl, here to haunt her and lull her softly to the grave. Amber.
To listen to the bitch, you'd think Thirteen was going to drop dead the next week.
You'd think Thirteen had been haunted enough by the memory of the Amber when the woman died in the first place. Thirteen imagined that moment countless times, that moment when metal met bone and metal won; though she knew full well the accident hadn't been the cause of Amber's death, she could not shake her vivid nightmares of it. It became the event symbolizing the loss of her lover all the same. But no, apparently that wasn't enough for the dead girl, so now she's back to torture Thirteen in person. To tell her she's going insane, dying, and no one cares.
Yes, well, Thirteen already knew she was dying.
Amber says it's about making sure Thirteen accepts what's happening to her, that she doesn't try to escape from it, but really it's about making sure Thirteen is suffocated by it. Destroyed by it. She wishes for nothing less than for Thirteen to be completely consumed by the mere thought of her disease. Die simply from the thought of the inevitability of dying.
Why? Thirteen thinks maybe it's a simple as Amber wants to drag her to the grave early, to be with her, and she's just trying to speed up the process as much as she can. Or, maybe she's just consumingly bitter and is lashing out at...well, the only person who really remembers her. All Thirteen knows for sure is that whenever she wakes up or steps out of the shower or sits down to lunch or gets into her car or goes to a club or lies down to sleep or dreams, Amber is there. She is drowning in the pale, golden hair that looks like it's been burnished when it's in the sun; the sharp blue eyes, impossibly bright; the bloodred lips parted in a dangerously curved smirk; the moonlit skin; and that oh-so-haunting laugh. But then, Thirteen could imagine worse fates.
Worse than having a dead girl watch her in the shower, even if she does so with a skeletal smile, saying nothing.
Worse than having a dead girl whisper in her ear as she lies in bed, even if oftentimes she whispers bloody and wicked things.
Worse than having a dead girl wrap her ephemeral arms around her when she's alone on the couch, reading, even if sometimes those arms clench around her neck.
It's all kind of detached for Thirteen anyway.
Back then, Amber could be on top when they had sex, and she could laugh at Thirteen for these clothes or those décor choices, and publicly criticize her medical decisions in blatant and rather vindictive attempts to damage her self-esteem that were only slightly playful, but for all her games she'd never owned Thirteen—and now, in her new possessive and greedy ghostly form, she still can't. Those fingertips can trace a knife's path along her jaw and those hands can grip her chest as if about to pull her heart from her ribcage, and those eyes can laugh and say you're dead, girl, but Thirteen is alive and she plans on staying that way as long as she can.
All that said, Thirteen can't ignore her old girlfriend. It's impossible.
So one night she plays a game with the dead girl. She returns Amber's piercing gaze and, deciding the hell with it, slides the straps of her silver dress from her shoulders. There's no measurable response from the woman, so Thirteen stands, the folds of the dress tumbling further down as she moves to stand before the undead image that's all that remains of her lover. She turns—time to see just how real Amber is. Can a ghost undo a bra hook?
Apparently yes.
The cold memory of a hand places itself flat against Thirteen's back and then slides, arcing over the sharp ridge of the doctor's shoulder and then down once again, coming to rest casually cupping Thirteen's left breast. A murmur: Remy, what are you trying to prove?
It I take you, it's because you're mine. Because we're the same.
Two dead girls.
Thirteen whirls, intending to pin Amber against the wall, but the room plays a trick on her and she turns to find herself still facing away from the wall, as if she hadn't moved at all, and her ghost-hallucination-memory-girlfriend is still behind her, hand still on her chest. She turns again—she is sure of it—but to no avail. She feels dizzy and her legs almost give, but those slender arms close around her, one over the left shoulder and down to the right hip, and the other around her waist from the right, almost sinking into her gut as it supports the majority of her weight. A possessive, enveloping hug. So I'll take you.
It'll be like you're dead.
Are you okay with that?
Her resistance crumbles and Thirteen says yes and it's a word and a moan and a last breath all at once. Immediately the hot breath on her ear is replaced by a nip from unnaturally pointy incisors, then a very wet kiss finds its way clumsily from the side of Thirteen's head to her mouth, and then Amber's arm disappears and Thirteen collapses as completely as her feeble front of indifference had. Yes, this is what she wanted. Now Amber is over her, on her, hands clutching indiscriminately at Thirteen's shoulders and/or neck and/or chest as she moves her head up and down the other woman's body, labored breaths of desire filling the air from both their lips. Thirteen suddenly finds that Amber has removed her dress and underwear, and all she can do is grasp Amber's golden hair tightly and cling to the last remnants of sanity and hold on desperately to a desire to imagine the ghost of a memory of a dead girl.
The MRI ends, and with a whirr the gurney slides out from the machine's innards and Thirteen is free of her daydreams. She knows it was silly to kid herself into believing she saw Amber. She will not feel hands at her throat, or hear whispers in her ear, or see eyes traveling over her exposed body. She has not been hallucinating, only wishing she was. Silly fantasy, all of it.
Thirteen would never throw away her life like that.
She's in her car, about to turn the key in the ignition, and her heart just about shuts down because there is Amber the dead girl in the passenger seat, and she smiles and says, "You wish you were only pretending," and then she parts Thirteen's lips with her index finger so the doctor can taste herself on it, and she says, "You think you're imagining that?" and Thirteen is rendered mute by the sensuality of what Amber is doing to her, and then she looks out the window and sees that the surroundings are nothing, nowhere; she turns to Amber with terror in her eyes and Amber leans forward, her gaze caustically burning its way into Thirteen's soul, and then says, "You're dead, girl," and then she throws back her head and laughs.