Title: Flash of Moments4
Author: dreamerchaos
Pairing: Wikus centered. ChristopherxWikus.
Rating: R
Warnings: Language. Slash (and slash hints) between an alien and a human(Or who was human…).
Summary: Little moments in time…like the frozen image in a Polaroid…Before and after District 9.
Author's Note: These drabbles are not meant to interconnect. I'll place a note where any may connect…
Integration
Wikus tries to slink away on his hands and knees, his human hand dragging across the ground while his prawn hand slowly pulls his body weight. The hybrid cringes at the crunch of bones and the rending of meat as the prawns continue to scour Koopus' corpse, one of the prawns hissing like a cougar, crouches over the man's cracked torso.
Wikus must have dredged up a sound or gagged loudly when another prawn began to peel back the flesh of the man's dissected arm, curling the folds of skin back down along the limp fingers.
The prawns jerk their heads in his direction. Immediately hissing at the scent of another human.
"Shit. No-" Wikus crab walks backwards, feet kicking in the trash and dirt. Members of the prawn group break away from the carcass, stalking towards him, and several prawns crawl across the ground using their long, long limbs.
"Get away from me!" Wikus frantically digs his hand into a pocket and grabs a handful of paper money that he has managed to pilfer over the last seventy two hours. He flings the money towards the prawn group, praying that the allure of the cash would distract them. Even the prawns appreciated the value of money for commodities such as meat, but especially for purchasing cat food.
The prawns grind the pile of crumbled bills into the ground, continuing to close in.
The last dregs of courage within Wikus break. He spins around and leaps onto his feet, the hot breath of the prawns scorching the back of his neck.
The hybrid makes it only ten yards before he is tackled to the ground, long arms caging his shoulders while another prawn knocks his legs out from underneath.
Wikus wraps his arms around his head, curling to protect his soft underbelly.
The prawns' mandibles snicker in surprise at the sight of Wikus' prawn arm and eye, their senses confused by the alternating scent of human and prawn.
Wikus cringes when large, wicked sharp hands run through his hair, mapping the sprouting patches of carapace that peeks through broken human skin.
One of the prawns twists and tilts his head and face for inspection while the other scratches at the exoskeleton melded into the human dermal layers of his chest.
Wikus cries out when the pawing causes the flesh along the edge of his armored plates to shred. The hybrid tries to buck and twist free, and kicks furiously to try to ward the prawns off him.
It is no harder for the prawns to subdue the hybrid than it would to pin a distempered sprawnling. One prawn pins his knees, the other snagging his wrists and pins the two upper limbs to the ground.
Perhaps the prawns believe that they are aiding his metamorphosis. Surely there is no other reason for the prawns to swarm him, brushing their palms and mandibles down his exoskeleton while they snarl at the pale human meat melded to his prawn armor.
Wikus tells himself that while the prawns seek to rid the hybrid of his human taint. A large prawn hand welded over his mouth to stifle his screams as the others begin to peel and scratch away the taut ripping human flesh to reveal the soft new prawn layer. Peeling Wikus open like a grape.
A Farwell To An Old Life
Sequel to 'A Flower'(His Allies series)
Wikus senses the change in the air. The prawns throughout the sector of District 10 freeze, contemplating the stranger who enters their midst.
Wikus peers over a huge trash mountain, his heart sinking with shock. "T…" He levers over the ridge of the trash, yanked back by another prawn that chirrs for him to stay down, "Tania?"
The other prawns pause in the middle of their scavenging as they watch the female stranger. Very few have ever seen such a pale, fair headed female amongst them. The prawns more accommodated to the late Mbube's young girls and doped women wandering the yard.
Tania clutches the metal flower in between her tightly laced hands, her eyes twitching left and right like a hummingbird, frightened by so many of the refugees who surround her.
But oh, his sweet, brave Tania. No matter how fearful, she dares to step into the District, ignoring the pleas and curses of her father and friends. Wanting to see with her two eyes…Wanting to know the truth for herself without anyone giving a plastic fake smile while they pat her hand and ask her if she has ordered pretty flowers for her husband's empty grave.
"Tania.." Wikus struggles while the other prawn stubbornly clings to him, Michael pleading with Wikus to stay down.
"Tania!"
His wife raises her chin in his direction. Beautiful, smart Tania; she had learned the prawn language alongside her husband, smiling and making a joke that she could apply a second language to her resume should she choose.
"W-Wikus?"
Wikus nearly loses his plating when he tears free from the other prawn. Tumbling down the mountain of trash, Wikus crashes onto the ground, scrambling onto his feet, his long arms curled across his chest like a praying mantis, antennas quirked as he hunkers down underneath his wife's stunned incredulity.
"….Wikus.." Tania dares a step.
Wikus swallows a small sound, gulping to quash his sob of joy as his wife's face doesn't filter into horror or disgust.
"Tania," Wikus' tentacles and mandibles quirk into a rendition of a smile, "Baby…it's me."
Tania's eyes shimmer, her cheeks blossoming with a rose blush. She chokes out a sob and runs to Wikus, throwing herself into his arms, the metal flower clutched in one hand as she hangs onto her husband.
"Wikus!" Tania's tears spill down his shoulder. Wikus moans softly, burying his face into her soft hair. He breathes in the warm scent of cotton and soap, her soft lush body once a distant dream now a solid, frozen moment that he didn't want to ever let go.
Their fairytale meeting is shattered as the ghastly gray alpha prawn barrels down another pile of garbage, spurred by the calls of the young prawn who had desperately tried to hold Wikus back. The young prawn panicked, running for the safety and numbers of the larger prawns, petrified and certain that Wikus has been led into a trap.
Wikus and Tania cringe like two youngsters caught in a tryst by an enraged father. Wikus yelps, ducking down and shielding Tania as the larger prawn howls above them.
"Wikus!" Tania screams from within his curled arms.
"D-Don't hurt her!" Wikus pleads, hunched over the much smaller female.
The alpha snarls. His fury increased when he catches the betraying presence of the metal flower, like so many of the art pieces from weeks prior that he has snatched from Wikus when the smaller prawn was in preparation to leave the District and leave his gift at Tania's doorstep.
"I warned you!" The larger prawn paces, directing his ire elsewhere when he smashes his fist into the side of an empty, rusted fridge. The material cracking, a punched hole left in the piece of metal, "I warned you but still you continue this…affair!"
"It's her fault!" A voice shouts.
"Michael!" Wikus begs, "No! It's not what you think!" He turns partway towards the young prawn.
Michael's tangerine carapace shudders, his hackles raised. "She's like all the others! She'll lure you in until your back is turned…Then those men will hack you up into pieces and eat you!" He shrieks, glaring and spitting at the young woman as if she were a white witch cast into the middle of a wild rabble of pilgrims.
"No! No!" Wikus denies, trembling as more and more prawns appear, rattling their agreement, stirring the alpha further into more dangerous waters of his temper, "She isn't one of Mbube's women! Mbube is dead!"
"You don't know that!" Another prawn shouts.
"She's my wife!"
His admission works opposite of what he had hoped.
The prawns howl in outrage.
"No!" The alpha dismisses with an angry swipe of his hand, "Your old life is gone. Youcontinue to fail to recognize this! You may hold her in your arms, but she is nothing more than a corpse. That past is long since dead!"
"Wikus.." Tania whimpers, frightened and shaking from the rising howls and circling of the angry crowd of prawns.
"Shhh." Wikus curls around her, "Baby. It's okay…"
But he knows that it is not okay. Tania is in far too much danger. And she wouldn't simply accept walking away. She would refuse. Threaten to call the police. She wouldn't agree to leave him.
But the police would laugh in her face if a hysterical woman came into their station claiming that her husband...a prawn…was being held against his will. And with no evidence of MNU's involvement during his metamorphosis, Tania would have no evidence from there.
Wikus' embrace tightens painfully, wilting at the thought of the pain and ridicule she would suffer if she took such steps to protect him and bring Wikus home.
"Tania-" Wikus is cut off as the prawns fall upon them, hands scratching and pulling at their shoulders and tightly wound arms. "Tania! You have to leave."
"No!"
"You have to leave me and not come back!"
"I…no.." Tania screams as thick arms wrap around her waist, lifting her off the ground, her arms stubbornly hanging onto Wikus.
"Baby, I love you so much." Wikus whispers, his words only for her ears, "But I can't let you waste away and suffer for me….Let me go."
"Wikus!"
"You have to go far away from here and not look back!" Wikus tries to hang on for one last fleeing moment, but he can only withhold for so long.
When the alpha prawn shoves the others away and grabs Wikus, it doesn't take more than a few seconds for the gray prawn to tear the smaller prawn out of the human female's arms.
Tania screams for him, screaming like a banshee as she is held back. Wikus is locked within the alpha's arms, hanging off the ground as he is hoisted away.
"Don't hurt her!" Wikus begs his arms wrapped above the thick pair circled around his waist.
"Get inside and stay here!" The prawn throws open the door of a shack and thrusts Wikus inside.
Wikus stumbles and flops onto his belly as the door slams shut. The smaller prawn shrieks in outrage when he hears something thump against door. When he rushes to the barrier, he finds that he cannot make it budge, the alpha having pushed something large and heavy in front of the door to block his exit.
Wikus smashes his fists against the door in outrage. His hisses and seethes, literally scales the walls and skittering across the ceiling. Peeking upside down out through the one grimy window.
The prawns continue to hound Tania. They shriek and herd her every step, forcing her to back away towards the tall District walls. The guards less than likely to interfere since so many warning signs have been placed around the District to forbid civilian access, and the men and women are not very forgiving of anyone daring or stupid enough to ignore the warnings and still step inside the concentration camp.
Tania finally runs when the alpha mocks a charge. The subordinates continue the chase, practically nipping at her heels, abandoning the chase when she is in sight of the fences.
Wikus drops from the ceiling, tumbles to the dirt-packed floor.
He curls up on the floor in fetal position, morose and shaking, listening to the ruckus of the angry prawns. Having no choice but forced to stay inside the barred shack until the leader will feel kind enough to eventually release him.
The Want Of A Family
Christopher shows the patience of a saint as he ignores the human female clinging to his waist; her persistence to try and keep him out of her home is fruitless.
"Leave us alone!" She screams, the other prawns from the mother ship hanging back, not sure what to make of this female or the spectacle she is making, "Get out of our house!"
"M-Ma'am," Christopher stubbornly uses the wall to pull him and the dead weight of the female, "I insist upon seeing Wikus Van der Merwe."
The female wails as he takes each step of the stairs, the prawn moving purposely up to the second floor.
This time the other Poleepkwas who accompany Christopher intervene before the shrieking female trips them both and sends the human and prawn pair toppling down the stairway. Christopher is silently thankful to be relieved of the woman.
He reaches what the humans would refer to as the bedroom. Finding the door is unlocked Christopher gently nudges the white frame to swing inward.
There is a sudden clatter and scurry, a gaunt prawn clambering to hide underneath a bed of shirts and blankets in the corner of the room. Wikus persistent in laying a nest inside his four-walled prison, no matter how many times Tania pleads and tries to coerce her 'husband' to use their bed.
"…Wikus." Christopher gasps.
Wikus' scrawny arms and hips are half-adorned with fresh pressed human clothing, a tailored blue shirt and black slacks forced onto him by the female. Tania insisting that her husband dress in preparation for work, the female seeming to forget that prawns are not allowed to be hired for work and that Wikus Van der Merwe has been listed dead for the last three years.
What is far sadder is that a pair of humans shoes had been forced onto Wikus, but the prawn managed to tear the confining leather off his too large feet. A well-brushed wig hangs askew on his head, kept up only by his drooped antennas.
The smaller prawn flinches and curls away from the larger Christopher, pulling up a blanket and tucking it over his head as if not seeing Christopher would make the larger prawn effectively disappear.
Christopher purrs assuredly, bends down to make himself look less intimidating as he crawls towards the frightened confused prawn.
"Wikus," Christopher coaxes the other prawn out from underneath the blanket, the rich green exoskeleton poking out as Wikus' head peeks out of a tiny hole of his cocoon.
"…" Wikus shivers, shoulders rattling underneath Christopher's hands.
"..she…she had a miscarriage…" Wikus' hands wring together, "Something turned out wrong, she wasn't the same after the baby was buried…she brought me here…said the three of us could be a family again. But I had to be really quiet so the neighbors didn't notice anything was wrong."
Christopher gently slides the wig off Wikus' head. The smaller prawn sighs in relief to have the itchy sack of hair off.
Hesitantly Wikus dares to crawl into his arms, curling into Christopher. He buries his face into the larger prawn's neck.
"I don't like it here…I've been here for so long." He whimpers, the white walls, plump bed and dressers covered with knickknacks and picture frames are foreign to him, no matter the three years he has spent prisoner in this gilded cage, "C-Can I stay with you now?"
"Of course," Christopher would insist even if Wikus had wanted to remain, the imprisonment far from healthy, the young prawn socially stunted and regressed without the presence of his fellow Poleepkwas, "Oliver will be very excited to see you again."
Christopher cups the trembling hands within his, gently guiding the weakened prawn to stand, Wikus reluctant to leave his familiar nest, but with enough patient coaxing and guiding he follows Christopher out of the den that has held him for the last three years.