Not Just Passing Time
Chapter One: Trimalchio de Midgar

He knew enough to know his mother wasn't coming back.

Sure, he had hoped, for a while longer then most children would, that she'd walk in the door and hug him. But then again, she never hugged him much to begin with. Even her coldness would be preferred, however to the barrage of women insisting he call them "mommy".

His father never said a word about it. When he didn't respect them enough he was sent to his room. That suited the child fine. He'd rather be alone then watch his father lift some strange woman up on the counter. It was a shame he couldn't close his ears as well as his eyes.

But he learned to live with them; after all, thirteen was an age where adaptation was second nature.

Then came Araby. She was different from the other women that his father carted home. The moment she saw him she stood stock still, like a cat looking at a rather threatening rat. Her sharp black eyes were already narrow, the ends pointed upwards when she forced a smile. "Such a cute young man."

He didn't like her, or the way she said the word "cute". Of course, as they always loved to tell him, "what do you know Em? You're just a kid."

"I know that true and false are not the same"

Moliere

The mere fact that they had a child was amazing. After she was born, what they did with her was not. Scarlet. What a name for a little girl, and they never gave her a nickname. Hell, they actually managed to forget her name some times.

The child grew up serious, like her name, she was sharp, calculating. Maybe they did something right, she was far from stupid. In fact, she was so intelligent, it was disturbing.

"Scarlet." That meant she wanted something, if the woman remembered her name. "Mix me up something would ya?"

The twelve-year-old pulled a stool up near the counter; hazel eyes scanned labels of medications and then darted over to the baggies and the plants hanging over the tables. She had learned to read at two, though her parents had been oblivious to this fact. The first person to pick up on it had been a man buying drugs off the woman.

Scarlet had never called her "mother", she never addressed the man as "father" either. They didn't seem to mind. They didn't mind anything, for that matter, unless they needed something, they left her alone. It had always been that way, Scarlet saw no reason for it to change. She wasn't happy, but she really wasn't unhappy. She actually enjoyed mixing drugs. She had been rolling joints at four, experimenting on her parents at five. By ten she could fill a syringe better then any surgeon.

She handed the needle to the woman, not a word passed between them. The other person at the table was skinny, track marks almost glowed through her paste-toned skin. Some of the veins actually did glow slightly-a sign of shooting up raw mako. The person's hair was clipped short, almost to the skin, if it was a man or woman would be left up to speculation. Androgynous was the best word to describe it, though the word was out of Scarlet's vocabulary.

After the person shot up the other half of the syringe, its eyes flared. "Bring me summora dat kid?"

Scarlet snorted, "fifty gil."

"What does not destroy me, makes me stronger."

Friedrich Nietzsche

But she did come back.

He never asked why, she never offered the information to him. The door flew open, rousing him from the book he was reading in his room. It had been years, enough for him to forget little details, like the color of her eyes.

The three adults yelled from down the stairs. Never once was his name mentioned. Money was, Araby was, other words were yelled. Emmerson almost started reading again for a while, tuning out. When he reached the end of his chapter he sat his book down and started to the front door.

He saw her there and was reminded that her eyes were brown, like his.

The boy was told then to call Araby "Nanny" from now on. He had no idea who they thought they were fooling. His father still slept with Araby, it was obvious. It was, however, his mother that was in the will. This didn't sit well with a woman like Araby, as could be expected.

He'd never liked her, he was certain she never liked him. Thus, when she entered his room on a night when his parents were away, it shocked him.

He was on his side, one arm supporting his head and the other holding a book. "What do you want?" Emmerson asked, not looking up. Though his back was not really to her, his mussed black hair would have obscured his vision at that angle anyway. He could hear her cross the room, still he didn't look up. He felt her sit behind his knees and his body tensed up, still he pretended that ignoring her would make her go away.

Then her hand sat lightly on his knee. "Hey, what are you always doing in here all alone?"

"What does it look like I am doing?" Emmerson asked in an agitated tone.

Her hand started to move, rubbing and drifting slowly upwards. "Looks like you need to relax."

The book flopped loudly on the floor as Emmerson jolted up. Automatically, his back pressed against the headboard. He gaped at Araby. The chemise she was wearing should have required a robe to be appropriate around her lover's son. She smiled at him, leaning forward and looking more like a cat ready to pounce then he'd ever seen her before. It didn't help that she was still too close for comfort.

"You can't be happy holed up like this, can you?" She purred.

He swallowed a lump in his throat angrily. "You know, I could have sworn you were sleeping with my father."

Araby didn't miss a beat, instead she moved closer. "When I got here, you were just a little boy. You've grown up a lot, Em. And you're father's just getting old." Her black eyes flicked up and down once before returning to his face. "And you, well, you're certainly better looking." She scooted closer, nearly on his lap, her hand found that place above his knee again. "I won't say anything…"

He knew what she was playing at. If she couldn't have the wealth of his father by being with the man, Araby would wait with Emmerson. Or try to talk the young man into collecting early. While he wouldn't loose any sleep over his parent's deaths, he loathed her, and felt the need to make the point abundantly clear. "I have something to say."

"Oh, what's that?" Araby rocked from side to side in an almost playful manner.

"Statutory rape. Get off me."

Angry, Araby stood up, hands on her hips. "You little shit. You think you're smarter then me kid? You think I'm not going to get that money sooner or later? I was willing to share, but you think you're better then me." She stormed to the door. "You blew it brat, watch your back."

"Hell is other people."

Jean-Paul Sartre

Scarlet woke up the same way she had always done. Fourteen years of the same thing, she made her way across the hall and halted. The man was laying half in his room. Upon further inspection, the woman was face down on the bed. They looked paler then usual. Scarlet got on her knees, feeling for a pulse.

There was none.

The only thing that remained was a needle in the woman's thigh. The girl stood in the middle of the room and looked from one of them to the other. The man's open eyes were cloudy, like a doll's and fixated on nothing. The woman still clutched the sheet in a rigor mortis strengthened grip.

Hands on hips that were overly curvy for her age, Scarlet frowned. Her fist thought was that they were going to be difficult to move. Her second was a sudden unwelcome feeling of loneliness. It was powerful enough to urge her to sit on the bed next to the woman. She wrapped her arms around herself, swallowing.

She couldn't sit there any longer, without bothering to look back, the girl fled into the streets. Scarlet didn't like the streets, there were people here that catcalled and chased her, but more often then not she was seen more as a dealer then a possible distraction. Still wrapping her arms around herself, she turned down an alley. There, at the end were three men that usually asked for her mix. They'd nicknamed it Red Bombshell. Though why Scarlet had yet to figure out.

"Hey, I need a favor."

The one with the most teeth- though he lacked a good amount- cocked his head at her. "We don't do things for free, baby."

Scarlet stomped her foot and glared at them. "Look, you want me to stop selling to you? I said you are going to do me a favor, it wasn't a question."

They balked, faced with the rare empowered woman of the slums. She knew that they wanted to throw her against the wall and have their way with her, but Scarlet also knew that she had the power because they needed a fix and only hers would do. It was the dependence that made their choice. "Lead the way."

She watched them critically as they tossed her parent's bodies into the dumpsters behind the house. Without much speaking, they did the task quickly and thanked her for the reward that she dispersed in vials. While they were on their way out, an idea struck her. "Hey, if you guys can bring me more business, I'll keep cutting you freebies." They all grinned wider then they would have if she would have offered blow jobs. Feeling smug, she returned into the house.

"There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite."

Jorge Luis Borges