Disclaimer: Repo! is the wonderful brainchild of Darren Lynn Bousman and Terrance Zdunich, though, technically, they probably own it as much as I do (which is to say, not at all) because film studios love to steal your rights and walk all over you. Anyway.
First Grilo fic. First fic I've written/finished in years, actually. Here's hoping I haven't forgotten how to do this! (T rating for zydrate use and implications of sex, by the way.)
Delirium Fading
"Graverobber, what's your real name?"
"Real name, kid? No such thing as a real name these days."
A hoarse cough. "You're avoiding the question."
"And you're a pain in the ass. Here, have a little more Z."
After her father's death, Shilo lived alone in the empty mansion. The days when anyone would have fought her claim to it were long gone—more than enough abandoned buildings lay scattered throughout the city for the taking. Nobody noticed one lonely teenager living on her own anymore, especially one who never left her house.
The poison was taking its sweet time exiting her blood and, in the process, her body was breaking down, rejecting its own natural biology as abnormal, forcing her to remain trapped in the over-cushioned canopy bed as she waited for her cells to realize their mistake and rebuild rather than demolish. She had thought her cure would be simple—stop ingesting toxins, then get better, right?–but seventeen years of tainted medication didn't want to let her go. She longed to travel, to explore the outdoors she had only just discovered, but she was too exhausted to step outside her front door. Utter frustration settled in her soul.
The Graverobber was her only solace. He was like a phantom, flitting in and out of her life with such grace as only the spectral can achieve. Not quite a friend, nor a father, nor a lover, he was nonetheless her only visitor—everyone else who knew she was alive had died the night of the opera. She was never quite sure how he got in—through her mother's tomb, probably, or perhaps a hidden door she had forgotten to lock before she was too weak to move about the house easily. She wondered often where he went while she slept, though she never bothered to ask. His riddle tongue did not reveal secrets lightly. It was only practical to assume he was still selling zydrate on the streets, stalking the night for corpses from which to extract the precious serum.
She spent most of her time dreaming, nightmares infecting her sleep. Sometimes she wasn't even sure he existed outside her dreams, but while the world around her shifted between darkness and light, strangers and almost-familiar faces appearing only to disappear as they turned grotesque and terrifying, he remained constant, his pale face and dark eyes never betraying her fever-muddled senses. He came to watch over her, to bring her food and, more importantly, the zydrate that eased her pain in the brief moments when she was awake and conscious.
"Don't think you're getting all this Z for nothing, kid. I'm putting it on your tab," he told her as he put the gun to her shoulder and the needle flew into her skin with a shnnk.
Zydrate was like magic to her sick-blurred eyes, halfway between gas and liquid, the luminous green-blue of a dying firefly. She spent her alone hours staring at the little glass vials that lined her bedside table, the zydrate inside swirling and bubbling into patterns like a row of chemical kaleidoscopes.
On the days when she was well enough to sit or even stand, he helped her to the kitchen table and ate with her. He made her laugh, when he could, and she was grateful that he never once treated her like the invalid she was, the way her father had. He never mentioned how she gagged and gasped, how she clawed at his arm during the feverish nights, how she shook too hard inside her cold and clammy skin.
Slowly, ever so slowly, her skin began to regain the color it had never held, and hair began to prickle from her scalp. He teased her for it when she stopped wearing her wig, saying that scratching her head was like sandpaper on his delicate fingers, but she caught him looking at her in admiration more than once.
His visits grew less frequent as she healed and no longer needed him to hold her sanity. "Things to do, people to see, zydrate to sell," he quipped one night as he hopped out her window, his newly-preferred exit method. "Can't put my whole life on hold for you, you know."
She couldn't argue; he had already done more than she could ever ask for. Living in a constant world of hallucinations had been agony—but at least her brain had been too numb to notice his absence. Now that she spent her days realizing she was alone, she missed his company.
The first day she decided to walk outside, he held her arm and supported most of her weight. They made it to the front door and she sighed in bliss as the rare sunlight fell through the grimy dust clouds and onto her face. After a moment of rest, she wriggled from his arms, her craving for independence suddenly overwhelming. He applauded dryly as she propped herself up against the hinges of the doorframe. She turned to glare at him and met with his wide, toothy grin, like a jack-o-lantern in the dark.
"Run away with me," he said.
Her feigned annoyance became a laugh as she shook her head. It wasn't the first time he had asked, but she knew better. His throne was here, where the bodies and zydrate collected like trampled leaves in the gutters. He liked being king of the tombs, roosting at the top of the underworld, with Z addicts fawning over his every move and begging him for relief. He was nothing without his status.
She, on the other hand, was used to being alone, blending into crowds and preserving the invisibility that let her wander unnoticed—a ghost in the world of men. She was an observer; he, an actor. She would leave and he would stay. It was inevitable.
Two months later, her hair had grown out enough to tickle her ears, and her blood no longer stung as it ran through her veins. The Graverobber had all but abandoned her now, coming only once every few weeks—less, sometimes—and then usually when she was sleeping, leaving only traces of himself behind—a vial of zydrate, a few strands of long black hair, a piece or two of the ginger candy that colored his breath. He was busy with his drug dealing duties, she supposed. No matter—she had gotten used to missing him, become accustomed to the dull ache of loneliness. It was better that way. All her time and energy now were focused on her nearing travels, and she didn't have the patience for turbulent emotion.
Maps covered the floors and tables, crinkling and curling under the textbooks she used to hold down their corners. She read constantly, studying everything she would need to survive in the world on her own. She memorized diagrams and definitions, preparing to carry the information in her head; the books were too heavy to pack and she didn't plan on returning to this prison-home.
But as much as she learned, she always found herself believing that she had to learn more before she could leave—one more chapter, a few more charts. She was stalling, she realized, waiting for a chance to say goodbye. She dawdled over route planning and checked and re-checked her list of supplies. She practiced tying knots and identifying plants until she could do it in her sleep. It only took her two days to master the forgotten art of throwing knives.
And then, suddenly, he appeared beside her bed one night as she was falling to her dreams. He held her in his arms like he had when she was sick and stroked her soft new hair, his low gravelly voice telling her exaggerated stories of his grand adventures in the heart of the city. His lips moved across her cheeks and ears, whispering truths and untruths and everything in-between while his hands slid down the skin of her back and offered her one last hit of zydrate—for pleasure, this time, not for pain.
He was gone when she woke in the middle of the night.
The next morning, she carefully folded her maps and stacked them neatly inside her tattered satchel. As the tall iron gate clanged shut behind her, she turned to look back up at her bedroom window where the wispy snow-white curtains blew free in the morning breeze. Of everything in the giant house, she would miss only that window—the window that had once terrified and thrilled her with its opening to the outdoors, the window where she had daydreamed her childhood away until her father had died, the window where her Graverobber continually escaped from her life.
She would miss him the same way she missed that window, she decided—more than everything else she was leaving behind, but gently, not painfully. She would remember him in vague flashes of scent and conversation, give in to nostalgia and the occasional wondering dream, but never pine or yearn for him the way she longed to feel the wind in her hair or the sun on her face. She would miss him the way the ocean missed the sand and the clouds missed the rain.
She would miss him the only way she could miss a zydrate-hawking graverobber who had never told her his real name.