So Much for My Happy Ending – Chapter 9
Author's Note: Hey all, sorry for the long break with no update, my life has been ridiculously hectic lately and I've been dealing with a lot of stress because of it, so I wasn't in a great space to create anything. I want to thank everyone for the amazing comments, but three people especially. BigBadWolfyBoy, for paying me perhaps the singular greatest compliment anyone has given me in my life, london vixen, for being my original fic fan and encouraging me to continue when this was still a Misc. Movie fic, and last, but not least, Halfpipechick247, who inspired me to write this thing in the first place, since we were pissed off that there weren't any good Rocket/Babydoll fics.
I apologize if this chapter reads a little differently, I finished half of it over a week ago and then picked it up again this weekend, so if it feels a little disjointed, forgive me.
Rocket was going to be sick. The things that stared back at them were not Amber and Blondie. Their normally olive toned skin was sallow, and seemed to hang off of their bones like poorly draped fabric. Their eyes, once dark, bright pools of liveliness, were glazed over with foggy cataracts. Rocket and Baby felt the pale stare tickling their skin, the unseeing gaze burning right though them.
A horrifying revulsion crept over both girls. Babydoll had seen it happen, smelled the acrid scent of the gunpowder as Blue took first Amber, and then Blondie, callously ending their lives because he couldn't stand the thought of anyone slipping through his fingers, free of his control. Rocket's jaw clenched, fighting back the nausea. She had held on to the slim hope that the bodies she found in the green room were a figment of Babydoll's fantasy, somehow linked to her abuse by the High Roller. Every time she closed her eyes she could see the faces of her long time friends staring back at her, stilled in death. Escape was now impossible, as the visions from her nightmares became her reality.
She blinked.
Two girls looked back at her from across the scarred table surface, where they were playing checkers.
"Hi, Raquelle, who's your friend?" Amber broke eye contact to jump one of Blondie's pieces.
"Aww, no fair!" Blondie crossed her arms and pouted until she realized there were more interesting things at the table. "Yeah Raquelle, who's the new girl?"
Rocket was starting to accept this new reality, strange though it was, where she at least got her friends back. "Blondie, you know Babydoll, and you know I hate that name."
Amber giggled. "Blondie? Finn's not blonde, Raquelle, why are you being so silly?"
Blondie reached over and playfully tapped Amber on the nose. "Maaaybe she's playing a game, Amy. Like secret agents! I am secret agent Blondie!" She pointed a thumb at her chest and puffed up her frame, trying to look much more imposing than her diminutive stature allowed. "Most feared fighting expert in the world! And Babydoll is…?" She looked over at Babydoll, expectantly waiting for her to fill in the blanks.
"Secret agent Babydoll is an escape artist…" She finished quietly, the words feeling empty after facing so many failures.
Amber wasn't in the mood to be playing; she wanted the gossip on the new girl instead. "But what's secret agent Babydoll's real name?" She waited for a response, impatiently drumming her long fingers against the table.
"Secret agent Babydoll's name is Briar, Briar Rose." She reached her hand across the table, waiting to grasp Amber's.
"That's a pretty name, I'm Amy." She stated, her hand meeting Baby's across the table.
Their fingers touched, and with a start, Babydoll remembered everything.
"You think you're sooooo clever, don't you?" Blue stared at them accusingly, while all three girls struggled against the holds of their respective orderlies."Thought you had it all figured out and no one was the wiser." He leaned in close, inches from Amber's flashing eyes, which were hard as coal as she stared at him in loathing. "Well guess what? I'm the wiser." He smiled at her, with cold malice.
She spat in his face. "Get away from me, you pig!"
"Just for that!" He screamed, wiping the spittle off his cheek, "You're going first! Get her in the chair!"
"Blue, Stop! This is madness! You've already won…" Doctor Gorski tried to intervene, putting herself between Blue and the girls.
"Ver-a," he scolded her, his voice singsong, "you know that all disciplinary action against violent patients is my responsibility."
"But this? This is unnecessary! You've gone too far this time!" She pleaded, not caring that her position meant she shouldn't have had to.
"No Vera, I just haven't gone far enough." He looked back at his minions. "Boys, she better be in the chair and prepped within the next thirty seconds." The sounds of grunting and shuffling filled the room as they hurried to obey.
When the job was finished, Amber sat, bound in the chair, thick leather straps encased both her wrists and ankles. She was still struggling fiercely, shouting every obscenity she could think of at Blue until one of the orderlies shoved a rubber block into her mouth, silencing her. She settled on glaring, nostrils flared as she sucked in oxygen, her limbs taut as she pulled against the restraints.
Blue stepped towards her, colored wires trailing across the floor, spilling out from a circlet in his hands. "And now, Madame, for your crown…" He mocked her as he secured the band of leather around her brow, making sure the electrodes made solid contact. Pleased with his handiwork, Blue addressed the orderly closest to the controls. "Frank!"
"Yes, Boss?" Frank was nervous, nothing good ever came of special attention. He tried his best to blend into the woodwork whenever possible, but sometimes the roving eye of the higher administration was impossible to avoid.
"Set the session for two minutes and flip the switch." Blue's voice was flat, clinical.
"But Boss that's-"
"I said do it!" He bellowed, foot tapping impatiently as he waited for his orders to be carried out.
Frank opened his mouth, about to object again, but the look that Blue was sending cowed him into submission. With a sigh of defeat, Frank placed his hand on the worn bronze of the handle and pulled, activating the machine.
It became so quiet in the room you could have heard a pin drop. The air seemed to take on a loaded, expectant quality, a heaviness.
The silence was shattered by the awful noise of arcing electricity. It filled the ears of everyone present, making their skin shiver. This sound was innately wrong, instinctual nails on chalkboard. Fight or flight.
Blondie chose fight.
"Amber, Amber!" She cried out fiercely, struggling against the frozen bonds of her captor, who was struck stone still by the horror of what had just happened. "Stay with me Amber, don't go!"
The only other movement in the room came from the woman seated in the chair. Amber's limbs shook, her whole body convulsing into seizures as the current ran through her. Her jaw muscles bunched as she bit down into the rubber block, spittle foaming at the corners of her mouth. Her eyes rolled around madly, the whites flashing.
All the while Blondie called out her name; begging her to stay, to remain whole, to fight the mind erasing static.
The seconds ticked on, each moment dragging on into an eternity of revulsion, the conscience behind all those watching eyes a heavy burden.
Blondie's cries were soon tainted with hopelessness, her pleas becoming softer and softer until they were inaudible. Despair settled over her like a filthy blanket, smothering her. All the while, Amber sat in front of her, twitching.
Two minutes had passed, the machine chirped quietly as it cycled back to standby. Everyone was still, not wanting to break the tableau. If no one spoke, they could pretend it was all a horrible nightmare.
"She's next." Blue raised an imperious finger and aimed it at Blondie. She was sobbing quietly, head bowed as she refused to look at the catatonic Amber. Half the orderlies in the room began to loosen the straps that had bound her to the chair. They carefully removed the band, wary not to touch the electrodes after seeing what they were capable of. It took two men to lift Amber out of the chair; her body, lax and boneless, was all dead weight.
Blondie didn't even struggle as she was placed into the seat, she felt responsible for everything that had just happened. It was her fault that Amber and Babydoll were here with her, and that she was here at all.
She hadn't wanted to betray her friends, but the anxiety of getting caught, and being punished, was weighing her down, making her day to day life miserable. She had felt so much better after telling the plan to Doctor Gorski. Blondie hated keeping secrets, especially from the doctor, who always seemed to chase away all the fears that lived inside of her.
Being in that office, she had felt light as a feather. All the dread that had hounded her before seemingly evaporated in the face of Doctor Gorski's calm reasoning. She was free, she had no secrets and everything was going to be alright. The happiness that began to bubble up inside of her was almost enough to make her skip out the office door as she turned the knob and playfully pulled it open. That feeling had vanished when she saw who was standing on the other side of the door, listening. Blue had grabbed her then, his fingers iron bands on her wrist as he dragged her down the hall, right to where he knew the other girls would be.
Everyone except Sweet Pea, who was still off alone somewhere, mourning the loss of her sister.
And now they were here, and it was all Blondie's fault.
She felt the leather cinch tight against her wrists and ankles. The metal from the electrodes was still warm, reminding her of where it had just been, and what it had done.
She looked up through her tears. Her eyes met Babydoll's and held there. She needed to make her understand that this wasn't intentional.
"I'm so sorry." Her quiet words filled the room, one last tear escaping before a rubber block was roughly jammed between her teeth and someone pulled the switch. The hissing snap of arcing electricity was all that could be heard.
"Hell-ooooooooooo? Operator to Briar, will you take the call?" Blondie waved her hand in front of Babydoll's face, who had been silently staring at her after touching Amber's hand.
Babydoll blinked and shook her head, trying to dispel the images she had been seeing. She looked back at Blondie. "I'm sorry, what?"
"Whoa! What's wrong with your eye?" Blondie was pointing and nudging Amber to take a closer look, suddenly intrigued and looking closely at Babydoll's face.
Babydoll shrank back instinctively as both girls barged into her personal space. "Hold on, you guys!"
Rocket, who had been watching the entire interaction, came to the rescue and instantly closed the space between Babydoll and the curious girls.
There wasn't a lot of space, however, and the two ended up practically nose to nose. Rocket was frenetic, desperately searching for indications that Baby could see. Babydoll tried her best to find a focal point. Rocket was so close that she was hardly anything more than a peach colored blur in front of her.
"Rocket…" She growled, trying to hold her temper. "I need to you back up at least a half foot or so…"
Rocket, realizing the situation she had gotten herself into, was instantly full of remorse and sheepishly backed up the requisite distance. "Is um…is that better?"
She was rewarded by the sight of Babydoll's dark gaze zeroing in and focusing on her face, something she'd only seen in the dream worlds.
Half of her gaze, anyway, her left eye remained loose and unfocused, tugged along into new positions by ghostly reflexes sent from her dominant eye. The result was that at first glance, nothing appeared to be wrong with Baby's eyes. It was only after she fixed her sight on something that the blind side would start to wander.
Rocket, who had feared the worst after she had first seen Babydoll's blindness, would take this mixed blessing. Some sight was better than a life of darkness.
"Oh my god, you can see!"
Babydoll was nonplussed, "Duh Rocket, I've been able to see since…" She trailed off, realizing that all the places she had been able to see had been in her mind. "Wait! I can see!" A fully fledged smile broke out then and she grabbed Rocket in a joyous embrace, the two hopping up and down like carefree school girls.
Blondie and Amber stared at them, heads cocked in morbid fascination.
"Finn!" Amber whispered to Blondie, "I think they're craaaaaazy, like, for real." She stuck a finger by her ear and wound it about in a circle.
Blondie's eyes went wide and she nodded, "Oh my gosh, Amy! I think you're right! Maybe we shouldn't talk to them anymore..."
The two tried to sidle away unnoticed, but their escape was interrupted by a loud commotion at the main doors.
"Rocket, Babydoll! I must speak with you at once!" Heads turned as Madame Gorski strode in, her presence filling the theater.
