7DS – Repo! (How fitting) – also: someone else has done it with the Largos – it's good, you should go read it ^_^ Unbetaed, because I don't have one yet…any errors are mine, and I'm sorry. I don't own Repo, I stand in awe of those who do.
He jokingly calls her greedy. She's always so damn eager. He meets her, for the first few months, in the cemetery, outside the crypt that now houses both her parents. She always beats him there, and waits, impatiently, bouncing, in her black assistant-graverobber clothing, her short and surprisingly naturally light brown hair curling adorably around her ears and her zydrate-collecting tools in a utility belt around her small waist. She's learned a lot in seven months, has it really been seven months? and can sneak around behind tombstones nearly as well as he – though she occasionally stumbles, unused to her growing body and too excited.
He always laughs, but quietly, and – yep, there it is, her little pink tongue, poking out at him.
She is greedy, greedy for purpose, for the freedom that comes with adulthood and a 'job', illegal as it may be. She's greedy for knowledge and a friend, and direction. He can provide some of these things and the best part is, since she's working for him, she doesn't owe him a thing. He benefits too.
When she first asked him, begged him, to come along collecting he flat-out refused. The last thing Graverobber needed was some clumsy kid ("I have a name you know!") mucking up his livelihood.
Graverobber soon learned a lesson Nathan had learned some 15 years earlier, she was a persistent little bug. Not even quite so little after a while off the medicine which had been stunting her hair growth and development into an adult.
He had never seen her happier then the day, several weeks after the first time she asked, when he finally relented.
"Oh God, thank you! I can pay you, you know, for teaching me…" She's looking a little adoringly up into his face and he's suddenly a bit squeamish under his white powder and black lipstick.
"Nah, that won't be necessary, but, from today onward I am your Zydrate pimp." He grins, that teasing, omniscient grin of his and winks.
"Um…" She looks nervous now, and he wonders if it had ever occurred to her to offer her body in exchange for this apprenticeship. He banishes the thought just as quickly, of course it wouldn't have occurred to a sheltered little thing like her.
"I mean," he clarifies teasingly "that 75% of your Zydrate comes straight to me; you can sell the rest yourself."
She looks relieved and he can't quite hold back a barking laugh.
"Don't you mean that I can do whatever I want with my percentage?" She asks, looking proud, defiant, foolish.
"No," he answers, suddenly stern "You can sell it. A true dealer doesn't use their own drug." And he can't help the little look of concern that crosses his pale face.
"Shilo," (and he's used her real name, no 'kid' so she knows he means it) "if I EVER find out you've been sampling Zydrate you are out of a job before you can say 'scalpel-slut', got it?"
She nods. Looking….guilty? No – maybe a little sad that he thinks so little of her.
But soon her greed wins out, and she's asking when they can begin harvesting.
"Tomorrow." He answers, about to leave the alley when he suddenly remembers something and stops, turning.
"Where've you been staying, anyway? You need anything?"
She grins, his own confidence mirrored eerily on her small white face "Worried about me?" She taunts him.
"Just trying to be a good….boss." He's gruff now and she's a little sorry she teased him.
"I'm fine, staying at my dad's; I'll see you tomorrow, 11?"
"That's fine." And he's gone, in a twirl of that ratty coat.