AN: I ended up making this a lot less graphic than was my initial intent, largely because I didn't want to have to bump the rating for the sake of one chapter out of 60. Despite this I'd like to throw in a warning for implied references to rape, prostitution, semi-graphic violence, and some thematic elements that may be offensive. Tbh I feel like those first two are topics that are treated far too cavalierly in fanfiction as a genre and almost did not incorporate them for exactly that reason, but on second thought I figured pretending something doesn't exist doesn't make it go away. So I hope that this doesn't come across as frivolous or as something bent for shock value. /soapbox I'd also like to make clear that views expressed by characters are not necessarily my own, etc.
56. Grab
For years Xie has dreamed about the red-paneled walls and gritty-plush carpets of the 'massage parlor' in Phuket. They used to be nightmares, with hands grabbing and pulling and—
X breathes out hard through her nose. Her muscles are relaxed but she's tense like a coiled spring, prepared to strike with perfect force and discipline at the right trigger. Clean lines, controlled movement, clean emotions and controlled thoughts. She isn't the frightened, helpless little girl she was then, not awake here in the House and not in her dreams of the dark, musky upper rooms of the massage parlor.
She dreamt about it last night again. Or at least, she thinks she did. It has become hard to distinguish what is played out by her subconscious deep mind and what is deliberately guided fantasy. They always start the same, the heavy curtains and low voices and the disgusting odors of sweat and sickly-sweet incense and man-stench. But they don't end with her waking in a flurry of terror and pain and self-loathing anymore, not for Xie.
In the early hours of the morning today she dreamt or daydreamed that she killed a man.
He came to her, had paid for her, and when he reached for her she calmly and systematically broke his face and shattered his teeth and kicked his nose back into his sinus cavity, and left him with what was left of his head seeping in and blending with the dusky red carpets and walked out into open air, free, free, and woke gradually and pleasantly and thinking that she ought to go bathe before Marta scolded her for getting bloody handprints all over her nice clean sheets.
Since she was brought to the House, everyone has been told not to touch Xie, especially not boys. At first it was because she was afraid. It made her skittish, panicky. It made her cry. Now nobody touches her out of habit. Xie doesn't think it would scare her now, but she doesn't say anything. She still doesn't want their hands on her.
The truth is, she's not afraid of men. Not anymore.
X loathes them.
All of them. Disgusting, slavering pigs, the lot of them, bristle-fleshed and rank. Age, race, doesn't matter. She'd seen them all in the massage parlor, dark and light and fat and thin and old and young, beggars off the street who got lucky and found a couple extra baht to cop a feel and rich tourists from overseas with wives and children at home. Lower than animals, since Xie likes animals more than she likes most people—because animals take what they need to survive and nothing more.
The only exempt were Kiet, who risked his life and ultimately lost it to get her out of that hellhole, and Mr. W, who Xie reckons was probably some sort of angel and not a man, and now he's dead too. Which leaves the nations of earth populated half with humans and half with a festering genetic disease caused by the Y chromosome, as far as Xie is concerned.
She can't say anything, though, not here, and doesn't dare. It would be disrespectful to Mr. W, who believed in equality, and worked hard to make it a reality in his House; and her tentative hints to other girls have uncovered no glimmer that anyone else can see what she does, that there is no such thing as a good man, or a civilized man. But men are more openly savage on the Outside. It's better to bide her time here, at least until she's an adult. So she tolerates them, and waits.
Xie doesn't remember, later, what exactly was said, or the blow-by-blow details of what happened, because her reaction was so swift and automatic that she barely thought; she does remember Vince being his usual annoying self and ignoring whatever cheery greeting he was unnecessarily offering her as they passed each other in the hall, and a door opening unexpectedly, resulting in a jostling that, in retrospect, was almost certainly accidental, since V surely knew better.
And then suddenly hands everywhere, grabbing and pulling her away and making her scream out loud in shock and outrage, because no one has dared manhandle her in such a way. As Matron Marta hugs her arms firmly to her sides and an aide catches at her flailing feet, Xie registers peripherally that others are kneeling down to Vince, who's sunk down against the wall in a crumpled pile, and her own knuckles and heels are sticky with blood.
A stinging prick in her shoulder, and all is dark.
She wakes not to dirty red walls and sticky heat, but to the sterile smell of the infirmary and the damp, cool binding of a rollywrap and a muffled voice murmuring in the darkness.
"...tho that'th dot too bad," it's saying. "I dod' thik that'th godda bake a differeth to Bull though. I got a feelid' there'th dot buth I cad do about that."
With effort, Xie turns her face toward the voice. It makes her head reel, spinning and spinning even though her neck has stopped moving. Whatever they've dosed her with is strong. She's dizzy and muzzy and has difficulty focusing her eyes on the dark figure sitting two beds away.
"Oh," Vince says, cracking a weak smile, a broken sliver of white against his black face. "You're awake. Are you feelid better?"
He looks terrible, worse than Xie feels, even, and that's saying something. One arm is in a sling over his chest and there are bandages over his nose and one of his eyes. She thinks she can make out stitches on his brow, too, but it's hard to tell in the darkness with her vision swimming the way it is.
Hot fear and anger explodes from her chest and rushes down to her toes and fingers. Xie has high-level belts in four different martial arts forms, but all of that experience and discipline and ability does her exactly no good whatsoever with her arms and legs pinned by the rollywrap. Instead of fighting back when she's free to defend herself he's come while she's helpless, in the middle of the night, to exact his revenge. Typical cowardly man! Tears of frustration squeeze out the corners of her eyes and trickle down her temples.
"I gueth dot," V says, and it's the saddest she's ever heard him sound. But he doesn't sound angry at all, and he's not coming over to smother her with a pillow or hit her while she's tied down, just sitting on the far side of the other bed, trying to smile.
"Why…are you here," Xie manages.
"Well, Berity tol' be to thtay id the other roob," says Vince, shrugging a little then wincing. "But I figured if you woke up you bight be codfoothed add thcared tho I thought thob-wod thould be here jutht in cathe. I probith I'b dot godda cob over there or adythig."
"You better not," she croaks. She can move her fingers, and her feet, a little, but that's it. Verity sure knows how to immobilize her patients, Xie thinks. With all the kids around here who snap and try to hurt themselves, either intentionally or not, she probably has a lot of experience. Then, in a flowering burst of cold anxiety, it dawns on her that it's probably not X that the nurse was trying to protect.
"I thaid I would'det."
"What gonna happen now?" Xie asks with a sharp intake of breath, ignoring his reassurance. The hard facts of the situation are slowly making themselves clear to her even through the druggy, muddled haze. She let her mask slip. She attacked another student—and did a pretty good number on him, by the looks of it. Never mind that he's male, and therefore deserved it. The House won't see it that way. The Warden won't see it that way.
"I'b really thorry, Thie," Vince says quietly. "I tried to 'thplain to the Bull add the Warded that you were jutht upthet cuth I bupped you, but I dod't thik…."
"Just go away! Leave me alone!" she gasps, writhing against the taut fabric. No. No, it can't end this way. Not scrubbed, not sent to the Outside. Not for something like this. "Get out!"
"I'll go get Berity," V says, slipping off the bed and disappearing into the darkness. Sobbing, Xie struggles, but she can't move. She's stronger than this. She's not supposed to be scared anymore.
