It was the familiar scent that roused her from an uncomfortable slumber. A White Diamond dupe with way too much alcohol. That scent used to mean getting picked up from school on a cold winter's day, or getting a hug after doing well at a dance recital. Now it just heralded the coming of some woman that Jasmine didn't know anymore, and didn't want to know.
"What are you doing here?" Jasmine asked wearily, not even turning around.
There was no reply. The scent became stronger somehow, more real. Jasmine slowly stretched her legs out, and rolled over to face the door. There Angela stood in all her heroine addicted glory. Her arms were at her sides, fists balling and unballing, her mouth set. She looked as if she wanted to fight, and Jasmine supposed that should have been the way of it. Angela always wanted to fight.
Jasmine took a good look at the specter of her mother standing in her alien prison with her, as if it were the most natural thing in all the world. Her black hair that was only a little greyed at the temples, was pulled back into a single large French braid down the middle. The tip was tucked in and pinned. She never wore makeup, and once upon a time that accentuated her natural beauty. Now it made her look skeletal and severe. She wore her old favorite charcoal gray cardigan, and a pair of old stonewashed jeans. Her clothes used to always be immaculate, now they were littered with stains of every sort, and inexplicably Jasmine could see the tell-tale tracks that marred her mother's arms. Her feet were bare and impossibly caked with dirt. Like she'd walked through a mud pit and never bothered to wash it off. As Jasmine took in the sight, she wondered vaguely if she had died and gone to some form of personal hell.
"I said what are you doing here Angela?" Jasmine said in a very low tone. It couldn't be real, but that didn't stop the feeling of dread and apprehension that closed in around her.
"I should kill you. Slut," Angela said, spitting her words out with such vitriol that Jazzy could practically see the venom dripping from them.
"Yeah well, missed your chance. Or you can join the club. These predators look like they about two minutes off my ass anyway," Jasmine said casually.
"Why are you here Angela? I thought I left you back home?" Jasmine asked the apparition before her.
"I told you I'm always here. You're never getting rid of me. You can't hide from who you are. What you are," Angela said, her tone accusatory and cryptic.
"And I just bet you came all the way across the damn galaxy to tell me about who the hell I am, right? Well go ahead, say I'm a whore, a slut, a bitch, a drug addict! I've heard it all!" Jazzy yelled, her head starting a dull throb.
"Yesss," her mother hissed out like a snake. Something about the certainty of that affirmation, made Jazzy cringe back.
"I'm not though," Jazzy managed weakly.
She'd swung her legs down and sat up on the edge of the metal cot. Now she had scooted back a little towards the wall, away from her mother. Angela raised an incredulous brow. Silently challenging the assertion that those things weren't true.
"You're where you are now because you sell pussy in the streets, excuse my French but it's true," Angela stated as if she were explaining the concept of 1+1 to a child.
"I'm here because I actually tried to go to a rehab and get clean. Something you should be doing," Jazzy said, looking around everywhere in the room except in her mother's eyes.
The apparition had the audacity to look wounded by that. Jasmine looked at her straight on finally, and could see a small flicker in Angela's form. For a split second, she wasn't as solid as she was before, and Jasmine saw the wall behind her.
The small groups of yautja, warrior, unblooded, young bloods, and even the few females on the clan ship parted as Kujhade made his way with purpose. It was written all over his body, his face, the set of his mandibles, and the length of his strides. Kujhade was ready to hunt, but he wouldn't have to leave the ship to do it. Up through the long backlit hall, up the two flights of stairs that took all of three steps for him to clear, Kujhade walked with single-minded determination. Kujhade was never one for a lot of talking and explanation. He was outcast in many ways from the small social interactions that his kind engaged in, and that encouraged him to withdraw and be silent in most situations. He liked to let his actions speak for him.
With white and green dreads flowing behind him, Kujhade had made his way back to the council chambers only to find it empty. One other place to go then. Kujhade headed towards the kehrite he had been training in earlier. It was on a higher level of the ship than the living quarters. Kujhade had to take the elevator to reach it. It opened upon an entire floor dedicated to training for both hand to hand combat, and weapons. Kujhade stormed past various yautja practicing different forms of endurance testing. One young male was repeatedly shoving his hands into a bowl full of live coal-like material, toughening them. Another was sitting still at the bottom of a clear tank of water, holding his breath while his instructor timed it. Just past them, were the kehrite rings. Pits depressed into the floor reminiscent of their bedding. However, these pits were much bigger and not lined with anything so comfortable as pelts and furs. Some of the pits weren't lined with anything, but some others were lined with things simulating different terrain. Some terrain was like a jungle floor, littered with sticks and rocks. Others were smooth like ice or glass, and still others were wet and seemed very slippery.
Kujhade found his mark in one of the rings having just finished a sparring session. Without preamble, Kujhade stepped down into the pit and immediately shoved U'darajhe to the floor, aggressively issuing a challenge. U'darajhe scrambled his bulk off the floor, embarrassed and angry at being shoved around for the second time by Kujhade. He wouldn't be bested again. U'darajhe roared loudly, splaying his claws and arching his back in a full display of aggression. Kujhade responded in kind, as the two hunters circled each other. A crowd of young males formed around the edge of the pit, as they watched the two more experienced fighters do battle.
"Here to fight for an ooman that's worth even less than you are?" U'darajhe mocked.
Kujhade was on him in a flash, having already punched him twice in the face. He cut his hand on U'darajhe's teeth, but did manage to crack a lower mandible in the process. U'darajhe wasn't interested in getting beaten. He charged Kujhade, tackling him to the floor and landing four or five solid blows to Kujhade's face. Kujhade closed his mouth tightly, and turned his head to minimize the damage. He used one hand to shield his face, and the heel of the other he used to strike just underneath U'darajhe's chin, one of the few soft spots on a yautja. With a strangled yelp U'darajhe stopped his attack, giving Kujhade enough time deliver a second strike sending the other hunter reeling backwards on his knees. Quickly, Kujhade got to his feet in time to deliver two or three kicks to U'darajhe's ribs, taking a few chunks of flesh with every back swing.
"What part of don't touch her didn't you understand!" Kujhade yelled as U'darajhe grabbed his foot, twisted his ankle, and sent him to the floor.
With his other foot, Kujhade kicked the other hunter hard in the face, making him release his ankle. When he did, Kujhade wasted no time mounting him and using his claws to great effect. Dazed by the kicks to the face, U'darajhe was unable to defend himself as Kujhade started taking chunks of flesh out of his thick hide. Kujhade wasn't thinking clearly anymore. He had allowed his anger to boil over, and it wasn't until four of the young bloods pulled him off of the beaten and humiliated yautja, did Kujhade come back to his senses.
U'darajhe lay coughing and gagging, spitting up copious amounts of florescent green blood, as he turned over on his side in an effort not to actually choke on it. Kujhade breathed a silent sigh of relief that he hadn't killed him. He wasn't worth being branded a bad blood over, and in any case with his purpose fulfilled, he needed to get back to Jasmine. He was going to guard her, as he didn't trust anyone else to do it. As much as he liked Bakuub and knew he was fair, the way the others had thought to kill off all the women had him on high alert.
Immediately he wrested himself from the grip of the young males, and took a good look at his handiwork. The other male was in bad shape, but he would be alright. In the back of his mind Kujhade knew that this was probably not over. Something would happen again, and when it did Kujhade didn't know if sparing U'darajhe's life would be possible. He didn't even know if he would want to spare his life. Kujhade climbed out of the ring pit and headed towards the elevator.
A few minutes later found him in front of Jasmine's cell door, palms flat against it, head cocked, listening. She was speaking to someone. Her voice seemed strained, almost panicked. He couldn't smell her, not through the doors but he could tell from her tone that something was frightening her.
"He raped me, mom. Terrell raped me, and you didn't stop him," Jasmine whimpered.
Her mother's face twisted in horrible anger and rage, distorting her features into a nightmarish caricature. She looked like she wanted to rush Jasmine, hurt her, beat her, but she didn't move from her spot. It was as if she couldn't no matter how she may have wanted to, and no matter how corporeal she seemed.
"Nnnoooo! You had sex with him, you took him from meee! You Liieeed!" Angela screamed, the sounds driving deep into Jasmine's psyche.
Jasmine closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, clasping each hand over her ears trying to block the sound, but she wasn't hearing it with her ears and it could not be stopped. She slipped off the cot and sank to her knees, rocking back and forth, and shaking her head slowly from side to side in denial. It wasn't true, she hadn't wanted it. Terrell raped her as often as he could, and the first few times she tried to fight him off, she really did. He was too strong. The force of his body and his will was too much for a young Jasmine to fend off. She remembered resigning to her fate after a while, mumbling no to him, but no longer having the will or strength to keep fighting what seemed destined for her to endure. The worst thing, the most horrible part, was that on one or two of those occasions her body responded and betrayed her. She'd orgasmed once or twice. Nothing passionate accompanied the feeling. It was just a body reacting to certain stimuli the way a body reacted to certain stimuli, but it was enough to eat her alive from that day forward. Jasmine always questioned after that if she was a depraved whore. It was during a nasty argument between Terrell and her mother, that he bragged about how he'd fucked Jasmine and made her cum.
It was after that, that her mother went from passive willing blindness, to active hatred towards Jasmine. She no longer viewed her as her daughter, but as 'the other woman' vying for the affections of her man. Angela knew that Jasmine was being assaulted, but she turned a blind eye to her daughter's pain. Jasmine knew it was the drugs doing the thinking. Terrell was a small time drug dealer, and Angela quickly became his best customer. He introduced heroine and other drugs to a household, and a woman who was drug free before his unfortunate arrival in their lives.
Jasmine was still on the floor, almost in prostration when the cell door slid up silently and two males walked in. For a second, for the briefest of seconds Jasmine's mind conjured Terrell and she immediately began to reel backwards, her hands scrabbling for the purchase of the cot behind her. She couldn't even scream. It only came out as choked gasps, as she seemed to be moving in slow motion. It was like a nightmare, where you know you should run or fight, but can do neither.
Kujhade was alarmed at what he saw when the door slid up. The medic had finally come and not a moment too soon. Jasmine was kneeled on the floor with her head down, and when she lifted it the fear in her eyes made something in his chest clench for the fourth time. So great was her fear, that he could see the whites of her eyes. That was a thing he had only seen in prey when they knew they would die at his hands. He looked around the small room and saw nothing, as he expected. He didn't understand what had her so afraid, but he began to purr to her in an effort to calm her. The medic must have sensed something wrong also, because Kujhade noticed that the short yautja was also purring and giving him a questioning look.
Jasmine swiped at them weakly, turning towards the steel cot as she did so until one of them grabbed her arms and pinned them to her sides. It wasn't until she heard the purrs that she paused in her meek efforts to struggle. She looked up at the male nearest her head in confusion. Then it came into focus. The cream colored skin, the green patterns on the crest and hair, the leafy green eyes.
"Kujhade?" Jasmine whispered. He nodded his head and kept his purr going. He lifted her gently to the cot, as he took a seat on it and cradled her head in his lap.
The medic put her feet up so that she was laying down, and began to inspect her wounds. The injury to her head wasn't as severe as it seemed. It was no more than a laceration that seemed to be healing already. He took his small box of medical supplies, and searched until he found a bottle of clear, viscous fluid which he dabbed on her head. Jasmine winced a little, but kept her eyes on Kujhade, looking up at him with a look that he had never seen before.
It was a mix of relief, and wonder, and….something else. He didn't want to think about what else it could mean. It couldn't have been what he thought. Perhaps she had simply relaxed, and she had. Her body wasn't so tense, and she appeared to be content to focus solely on him.
The medic tended her eye and lip, cleaning it off and smoothed a salve over her swollen eye that stung but brought down the swelling immediately. Still, an angry plum colored bruise framed it, and the sight of it made Kujhade very glad he had beaten Mr. I Like to Beat Defenseless Females. Soon the medic was done, leaving behind some pain killers for later. When Kujhade did not rise to follow him out, he gave another questioning look until a growl sent him on his way.
"You're gonna get in trouble being in here with me. I'm a criminal remember?" Jasmine said seriously. Kujhade just shook his large head.
"I will keep you safe," he said to her.
Jasmine's eyes went wide, then a single tear slid from it and ran down the side of her face and into her ear. She clambered awkwardly into his lap and wrapped her arms around him, curling her legs up to fit neatly on his thighs as she did so. To hear those words. To hear that someone, somewhere wanted her safe, wanted her to be okay, wanted to shield her from some unknown horror. In that moment, Jasmine felt something she hadn't felt since she was a little girl. She felt protected. Her heart had been shattered years ago, bent over the kitchen sink where she still remembered counting the droplets of water. There were at least one hundred and fifty-two. It had been teetering on the edge of completely crumbling since that day, and now it had been obliterated into dust. Her eyes shut tight, and her face twisted in the anguish that would erupt from her in the form of tears and hitching breaths. She hugged Kujhade for all she was worth, clinging to him like a buoy in a stormy sea.
"Th-tha-ank y-y-youuu," she cried miserably, her heart breaking into more pieces than she could ever count.
Slowly, so slowly, she felt two strong arms enclose around her. At first they were gentle, light, and hesitant. Then they became sure, and fierce and tight around her, creating a fortress that no harm could penetrate. No monster could touch her as long as she remained in his arms. With each passing sob, and falling tear, Jasmine thought that maybe the foundations of her heart could heal, and she could be made whole again.