I was just introduced to "Repo! The Genetic Opera" a few days ago and immediately fell in love with the movie and, of course, Graverobber. I began reading a lot of fanfictions involving Grilo (Graverobber and Shilo) that begin directly after the Opera ends, which didn't seem very realistic to me. Though I think Graverobber's character is inherently good, he does not seem like the sort of person who would want to put Shilo back together when she's a crying catatonic mess, nor do I think he would feel obligated to. If a relationship developed between these two, I think it would have to happen after Shilo has toughened up a little and seen more of the world than what's outside her window. Therefore, this story begins almost a year after the Opera.

Hope you enjoy it! Please review!

Chapter 1 – Not a Kid Anymore

It was early, very early in the morning, when Shilo Wallace returned to her mother's grave. It'd been almost a year since she'd visited, almost a year since the Opera that ended her father's and godmother's lives, almost a year since the Opera that ended her life. For the innocent, naïve Shilo who had been locked away in her room all her life, wondering about the world outside, died with her father. She was no longer a weak child, believing the lies her father told her and obediently taking her poisoned pills. She was hard and cold now, a partial reflection of Nathan Wallace's alter ego, the Repoman. You have to be hard and cold when you're on the run, when you're hiding in dumpsters and fighting off scum in dark street corners. Shilo may not have repossessed organs, killed for the company, but she'd jabbed her little knife into a rapist's throat when he jumped her in an alley. She'd killed the GENcops the Largo sibling's had sent after her, without hesitation, without remorse. It had been almost a year since the hunt began; Amber, Luigi, and Pavi had been angry that their father wanted to give their company over to the daughter of a past affection. They were threatened by the name on the will he had never had the chance to sign.

They had bribed the limo driver who took her away from the Opera House that day to take her to a safe house, where they would be waiting. Shilo had only discovered this because, as soon as she was a few miles from the Opera House, she'd knocked out the driver, searched his pockets for credits, and fled. He had still been carrying the envelope containing the bribe and Amber Sweet's detailed instructions.

But the woman, for she had seen too many things to continue being called a girl, had been running for too long. She'd read in the Evening Slice a week ago that Luigi had finally lost his temper with his twisted brother and murdered him, and Amber had overdosed on zydrate and never woken up from one of her many surgeries a month before that. And with only one Largo sibling left to haunt her, Shilo Wallace decided it was time to step out of hiding.

Per her decision, she stood outside of the stone building that housed her mother's body, no longer willing to squat in the damp, darkness by Marni Wallace's grave. No, she stood alone in the faint morning light, breathing in the smoggy air, the bitter acrid scent of death faint, but ever present in the graveyard. Shilo stepped forward to press her hand against the door of the mausoleum, placing her father's glasses on the stone sill before the wrought iron window. She didn't know what they'd done with her father's body, but she thought it was appropriate that he be buried with the woman he loved, even if the only things she had left from him were a pair of broken glasses and a lot of pain.

"I'm sorry Mom. I would've come sooner, but I was running from your past," she whispered to the cracked, dirt encrusted door. She let a single tear slip through her carefully constructed barriers, and then she stepped away. "Goodbye."

Shilo did what she could to leave the pain and memories that still haunted her, there on the window sill with her father's glasses, as she walked out of the dingy expanse, not eager for the coming sunrise. She drew the hood of her coat farther over her face and crept west through the shadows, unseen.

She was headed towards her old house. Hopefully it's not boarded up and filled with Z addicts and whores, Shilo thought, not looking forward to dealing with them if, in fact, it was. Actually, she didn't really care if the house was trashed or boarded up; she wasn't going there out of sentiment. That house had been her prison for seventeen years, and she didn't need or want to relive the memories. What she wanted, were the weapons, medicines, and articles of clothing held inside, and if the building was filled with addicts and whores, she would have a harder time obtaining these items.

She hadn't been back to her prison since she'd fled it to go to the Opera that night for her cure. Cure, she mused sarcastically, pursing her chapped lips at the thought. It had been too dangerous to return after that, the Largo siblings would surely guess that she'd go there. But, as she was out of hiding, and planning to confront the remaining child of Rotti Largo anyway, it didn't matter. If she wanted to survive, her best bets were inside that house.

Shilo rounded the corner, and there it was. Boards covered the windows and doors and a few "NO TRESPASSING" signs had been stapled to the ornate, front door, but the haunting house was still standing, looking virtually untouched. She strode around to the back door, wary of the noise her boots made on the concrete. She preferred soft grass, quieter. She easily used her switch blade to pry out the nails sloppily boarding the entrance, placing the boards in a neat pile behind an overgrown rose bush as she did so. When the boards were all removed, she simply turned the handle and stepped inside.

The house was dark, dimmer than she'd ever seen it, but the dark no longer bothered her. The hiding prayed for the dark, fleeing from the sun and its garish light, preferring the cool, comforting dark to shadow them away. It wasn't the darkness that unsettled her; it was the eerie, undeniable silence. Every soft, almost soundless step she took sounded like cannon fire to Shilo's jumpy ears. Her pulse sounded like a bass drum, thudding in her head, as she crept through the kitchen, knife held protectively in front of her.

It looks like someone's been here, she thought, eyeing the wrappers and other remains of meals that scattered the counter. When she padded into the hallway, human presence became all the more evident. All of her mother's holographic pictures had been ripped sloppily from the walls, and there was a pair of her father's old boots lying muddy by the stairs. Has someone else been living here? Shilo thought, disconcerted. She pulled the dark hood off her face so she could see peripherally, releasing her raven hair (it had grown back after she stopped taking her father's poison) and letting it fall down her back.

She climbed the stairs, moving almost noiselessly up to the second floor. Her pulse was racing as she slowly pushed open her former bedroom's door. The old hinges let out a garish, high pitched squeal in protest and Shilo froze.

Down the hall, she heard an audible grunt then a thump as someone rolled out of bed. Her fear leaked adrenaline into her racing veins, and she crept silently to her father's door, where the noise was coming from, standing beside it, flat against the dark wallpaper, so that she could jump the figure, whoever it was, when they came out. It seemed like an hour she stood there, gripping her knife so tightly she thought her fingers might break.

Then THUMP, the door was shoved open so hard it hit the wall beside it. Shilo didn't jump, she didn't scream, she didn't even breathe. She stayed completely still and silent until she could see the shape of a masculine figure out of the corner of her eye.

She kicked out at his groin, landing a hard, crippling kick right on the figure's manhood. She heard a knife drop to the floor, not her own. Then she pounced on the groaning man, easily forcing him to the ground. She pressed her switch blade to his throat, ready to slice it open.

"Any last words?" she snarled, her hand tensing around the blade, adrenaline urging here to kill the enemy, the threat.

"Yeah," the man below her wheezed. "Get the fuck off of me, kid." That gave her pause. Kid. Kid? she thought, Why is that so familiar? Finally, she took a good look at the man she was straddling, and realized who he was with a start. It was unmistakable really, even in the unlit hallway. The voice should have given him away sooner, but it was the eyes that really made her sure. They had always been a strangely bright hazel color for such a dark, brooding man.

"Graverobber?" Shilo asked in surprise, not moving from where she sat on his abdomen.

"Duh." The man replied, his black rimmed eyes narrowing slightly in irritation.

"Oh, yeah, sorry." Shilo rolled easily off of him, still holding onto her open knife, unsure whether it was really safe to put it away.

Graverobber didn't get up right away, as she expected he would, and it took her a moment to remember that she'd just kicked him so hard between the legs he may never have children, not that she thought he'd particularly mind that part. But yeah, the kicking and pain part, that he probably minded.

She stood awkwardly above him for a few minutes, still trying to wrap her head around the idea of him being there, while he waited for the pain to subside. Finally, he sat up, and Shilo lowered her free hand down to pull him to his feet. He became vertical with a grunt.

"Thanks," he said snidely.

"You're welcome," she retorted, with just as much venom. "Now why exactly are you in my house?" Shilo pushed a piece of night black hair out of her face, still clutching her blade in front of her stomach, wary of the drug dealer she couldn't quite call a friend. But he might just be the only almost friend you have on this godforsaken island, she reminded herself.

He didn't answer her question. "Put that away." He gestured toward the switch blade she still held out protectively, crouching down to retrieve his own knife from the floor, replacing it in one of his many buckled boots. She did as he asked (though it was more of an order) and folded up her blade, putting it back in the satchel at her hip.

She raised her eyebrows at him expectantly, waiting for an answer to her original question. Of course, Graverobber completely ignored her and began walking down the hall to the staircase.

"Where are you going?" Shilo had forgotten how impulsive and reckless the man could be; he was a grave robber after all.

"To get some breakfast. Want some?" he said, not looking back or even pausing in his descent of the stairs, her stairs.

She sighed exasperatedly, following him. "This is my house!" It was true, even though it was also her prison, and she could never again claim it as a home, legally it belonged to her.

"Yeah, and it's a bit creepy don't you think?"

"You open people's graves and stick needles through their skulls to get addictive drugs and you think this is creepy?!"

"Well at least the graveyard people don't pop up whenever someone walks by," he responded, clearly referring to her mother's hollo portraits in the hallway below.

"You ripped those out?" She already knew the answer.

"Yep."

She laughed harshly, following him into the kitchen, past the wrecked holograph generators. "Good. I always hated those things."

Graverobber turned for the first time and looked back at her, really looked. He didn't seem to like what he saw. "What the hell happened to you, kid?"

He was still probing her face with his striking eyes when she answered. "You know what happened. I think you even knew some of it was going to happen."

He pursed his dark lips thoughtfully. "Not as naïve as you were, I see. Yes, well, I did have my suspicions about that night."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

He made a face. "What good would it have done? You would have gone for your cure no matter what I said."

Shilo was quiet, admitting silently that he was right. She would have done almost anything then to earn her freedom from the disease. Now that she had it, it was a hollow, bitter thing. Freedom became a fancy word for lost and alone.

"Why are you here?" Of course, she'd already realized the answer to that as well, but she wanted to change the subject. The past was not worth rehashing.

"I'm an opportunist. Not like anyone else was going to squat in the Repoman's old house, and I needed a place to stay. Kept it fairly clean for you." He grinned, the first time she'd seen that grin in almost a year. It was both mischievous and sincere, gleeful and wicked.

She grinned back, unable to stop herself from laughing a bit as well. It was just so absurd. She was standing in what was once her pristine little kitchen, talking to a zydrate dealer about how he'd kept her house clean while she was gone, running from people who were concerned she would try to take over GeneCo. Absurd, and yet absurd had become her life. Nothing made sense anymore.

Graverobber turned away from her, busying himself with the preparation of bagels. He bought bagels? Shilo thought, her eyebrows going up in surprised amusement. What next, popery?

He smeared cream cheese across both and thrust one at her. Although there was a fair amount of dirt beneath his fingernails and his hands probably still had the residue from last night's grave robbing on them, Shilo took the bagel and began eating. She hadn't eaten anything that had not been scavenged from a dumpster in weeks, and she was hungry.

They sat down at the spindly little kitchen table. Graverobber had finished his bready lump before Shilo even took a second bite.

"So, kid, what have you been up to lately?" he asked, as if they weren't discussing which dumpsters she'd been sleeping in since she fled the GeneCo fortune and her father's death.

"Oh, you know, running, hiding, dumpster diving, the usual." She took another bite of the bagel, chewing thoughtfully. He was looking at her strangely again.

"You went dumpster diving?" Graverobber seemed thoroughly impressed by this bit of information.

"Well it isn't like I had much of a choice." She didn't understand why he was so pleased by her scavenging for food, but then, he was a very strange man. He seemed to read her mind for a moment, and a broad grin appeared on his face, as if to say, yes I am a very strange man.

"Why did you come back? Seems like you had it pretty good." He chuckled lowly.

"I'm tired of running. Two of the Largo siblings are dead, and I'm going to make sure the third joins them very soon." She stared intently at the floor as she said this, her jaw set.

"Are you sure you're ready for that?" Graverobber's deep voice held an unusual amount of concern. It unsettled Shilo.

"Well I damn well better be, because he's going to come and try to fucking kill me either way!" she spat. "That's what those bastards have been doing ever since I left!" she shouted, rising from her chair and flinging the half eaten bagel across the room.

"I see someone has some unresolved issues." Shilo shot him a dark warning look, and he rolled his eyes at her. "Look kid," he started.

"AND STOP CALLING ME KID!" she bellowed, lunging at him.

He stood; easily catching her wrists before her tiny fists could get anywhere near his pale white face. He held her there, careful not to squeeze too tight and hurt her. She jerked and thrashed and tried to get away from him, but he just stood there, calmly holding onto her wrists, until she stopped struggling.

"You done?" he asked sarcastically, dropping her hands pointedly.

"No." She glared up at him, her dark brown eyes angry and seething, her black hair wild and disheveled.

He walked away, evidently not caring if she wished to try to hit him again or not. She followed him angrily into the living room, where he was yanking open the fireplace.

"Where are you going?" she asked again, registering the absurdity that she even cared.

"To do my fucking job," he replied, shooting her one last brooding look before he disappeared into the lair below.