Crossed and Damned
Chapter Two
*
"It's like a dream you try to remember but it's gone
When you
Try to scream but it only comes out as a yawn
When you
Try to figure out what all this is for."
~Barenaked Ladies, "Pinch Me"
*
She supposed, as she called out the names of her children frantically, that she should get better locks on the doors. As soon as she managed to get enough money…
But twenty-two year old Kino Makoto had more important things to worry about than financial situations. Like her children.
The holo-sun was setting on the 'horizon' and as she raced along the streets, red-brown curls swinging from side to side from its position in a ponytail, she cried out their names another time. Tears stung her deep green eyes and, praying fervently, she growled at the apron tangling itself about her legs. Ripping at the knot, she pulled it free, tossing the flour-covered cloth to the side, letting it flutter to the sidewalk.
"Chrissie! Nanya! Oh, God, please let them be safe…"
{{"Look, Mommy! I made a cross for my new sister! Is she coming today?"}}
Biting back a sob, she forced herself to quell the natural instincts to scream and fight for her children.
{{"Hey, Nanya, there's this really cool toy shop by 5th Market and McGulf Avenue!"}}
The memory suddenly became crystal clear, shattering the fog of desperation. It was just after Makoto had turned nineteen and Chrissie was four. They had picked up his adopted sister, Nanya, from the orphanage and her red-headed son had told Nanya about his favorite place…
A wave of intense relief washed through Makoto and she relaxed, even letting a smile cross her face. They were at the toy shop, they were just fine…
Turning corners and crossing streets unconsciously, with the unerring expertise of one who knew the path not only by heart, but soul as well, she moved past a brick corner…and found herself in hell.
Twisted, ravaged metal curled in the toy shop, what was once a car had become a tangled heap of junk, a ghostly white hand limply hanging out one window. Her throat squeezed shut viciously, and she nearly retched at the blood pooling in the streets. 'Oh, God, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name,' her mind stammered and she bit her tongue hard enough to draw blood.
"Mommy!"
Nanya.
Oh, God, where was Chrissie?
Two small, warm brown arms wrapped about her legs and she pulled her six-year old daughter into a deep bear hug, the child's small, wet face burying into the crook where her neck met her shoulders and collarbone. "Mommy," Nanya sobbed, curly black hair matted onto her skull, "Chrissie got hurt really bad! He…he wouldn't move, Mommy!"
NonononoNO!!
"Excuse me, ma'am."
Makoto turned, daughter clenched tightly in her arms. A small woman, barely more than a girl, with dark blue hair and large aquamarine eyes behind a pair of spectacles was staring at her.
"Are you this child's mother?" the woman-girl continued, a Japanese accent in her words.
Pressing her lips into Nanya's hair, she nodded.
The Japanese woman-girl hesitated before swallowing and adding, "And are you also the mother of the small boy with freckles and red-hair?"
"Y…yes. I am their mother."
The woman-girl bit her lip sharply. "Your son has been taken to the Emergency Room. He was struck by the car over there as the driver sped at 75 miles-per-hour. He…sustained injuries to the skull, chest cavity, spine, and pelvis. I…I think he has a good chance of living if the doctors operate fast enough."
'Bullshit," Makoto replied quietly. "That's what they said about my parents when I was twelve. They died."
"We," the blue-haired woman-girl interjected, "have learned much over the course of ten years, ma'am. My name is Mizuno Ami and I will personally see to it that your son is not only alive, but able to walk."
Makoto glanced at her wide-eyed, crying daughter and looked back up, face as emotionless as granite. "I'm holding you to that promise. Now I want to see my son."
*
Iria Jasmine Winner was up for lunch break when the call was patched through. Seven-year old boy with a fractured skull, three broken ribs, a broken hip, and possible spinal injuries was being brought to the emergency room of LaGrange Point 2 Central Hospital. Massive loss of blood from large gashes along legs and spine. All doctors and nurses available were to report to surgery at once.
Tools sharpened and laid out, disinfected everything, Iria sent a swift prayer to Allah that this child would not die. She didn't want to see the utter despair she had seen in that Maxwell man's eyes when his loved one couldn't be saved. 'Oh, please, child, don't die! There must be someone who loves you so much that it would end everything for them if you departed.'
She knew her little brother was in the lobby, having arrived for lunch. And she knew that he knew about the sudden emergency.
'Do you,' she thought to the boy as procedures began immediately, attention to protocol and his welfare prominent in everything, 'have a sister or brother who loves you? Live for them…'
They began.
*
He crumpled into a heap somewhere far from the crash site, screaming and gritting his teeth, pummeling the ground with angry fists and dark words. God, he hated his life. His 'little sister' had died, and then he had to come face-to-face with someone who could have passed as her Japanese twin? The cosmos had a sick sense of humor.
But Duo knew that the small, petite woman hadn't been his adopted sister. She'd been someone wholly different, with a feel about her that was both attractive and wary.
And, damn it, his thoughts kept returning to that little boy, bleeding and unconscious, sunk into a delirious not-slumber, half-dead, half-alive. He'd killed hundreds of soldiers before! Why would it matter if he never knew whether that one child lived or died?
Because, he realized morosely, the child was a child. Still innocent and naïve, impressionable and brimming with excitement, a child. A *child*, for goodness' sake.
Pulling himself up to his feet, getting up from his knees, he ran a hand through his chestnut brown hair until it reached the beginning of his braid, sighing a ragged, weary sigh. He hoped with all his being that he wouldn't bump into that eerie girl, who looked like Hilde, but didn't, at the same time.
He was afraid of her.
*
"Lolli, lolli, lollipop," Makoto sang softly to the breathing bundle in her arms, carefully walking through the halls of L2 Central Hospital in the wake of the slight figure of Ami. She recognized the name and face from public viewscreens--she was the genius from Earth, a renowned everything-whiz and doctor. Nanya whimpered momentarily in her arms and the tall, leggy woman shifted, causing her daughter to fall still and silent, sucking soundlessly on the collar of her little t-shirt. She smiled affectionately down at her little girl, eyes misting slightly. After a moment, she noticed that Ami was saying something.
"-ait here. You aren't allowed to view the surgery due to inter-colony-Earth protocol and regulations," Ami explained coolly, though her heart wrenched sympathetically for the young mother.
There was a blonde man, small and delicate in body build, in the lobby, younger than Makoto by three years at the least. He had a worried expression on his face, pacing nervously a few steps one way before doubling back and repeating the process. Wringing slender, pale hands, one decorated by a simple silver band with a gold seal on it, he spared the trio of females a glance, returning to his crude pacing with renewed vigor.
"Please stay here, Ms. Kino. I will see how your son is doing." Ami bowed, vanishing, it seemed to Makoto, into the maze of corridors.
"It's your son in the ER then, is it?" the young man broke the silence, large, trembling blue eyes holding her green ones.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" she snapped back at him, cradling Nanya and collapsing into a hard plastic chair that obviously wasn't built to fit the height and shape of a twenty-two year old woman with a sixty-something pound daughter in her arms.
He overlooked her rude response, speaking to himself, "My older sister, Iria, is one of the surgeons. She should be able to help. Allah willing, the boy should be fine…" His voice trailed off and he turned to stare at Makoto.
*
She looked worn out and tired beyond belief, red lips thin and drawn tight from worry. Rusty red ringlets circled her face and she was beautiful, Quatre thought with a blush, though she had a hardened look to her, like those who had it rough and were more likely to take an eye for an eye instead of turning the other cheek.
The tiny girl she held gently in her arms was dark of skin and hair, eyes closed tightly. She looked far too young, he mused, to have birthed the boy they had carted in, unless she had been fifteen when she gave birth.
He shook his head. Why was he thinking such thoughts when there was a bleeding, possibly dying (or dead) boy in the emergency room that this youthfully haggard woman was mother to? He was ashamed of himself, even as he feared for the boy.
*
Ami found herself outside the hospital instead of in the emergency room's own personal lobby. Why exactly she had been driven outside to the false environment of the colony was beyond her. A slight mist of artificial rain drifted gently down, creating fog as it touched the dampened sidewalk. Sighing and folding her arms about her chest, she closed her eyes for a brief respite, imagining herself back in her cozy little room with the stuffed toy on her pillow. A black panther, given to her by a deceased relative, curled on her pillowcase. The wallpaper was in the pattern of water lilies and tiger lilies and violets, all blue and comforting, soothing her when she felt depressed or angered. There was a fish tank in the corner, with an Amazonian fish swimming tranquilly in it, shimmering scales twinkling enigmatically beneath the warming lamp designed for sunbathing.
She sighed again, leaning despondently on a stone pillar built for show, not support.
There was man, she saw after a moment, running through the rain toward the building, with a thick, wet braid thudding heavily on his back. He must be soaked, Ami realized, and that black priest's outfit couldn't have been helping matters any. Waving at him, she noted with relief that he increased pace, managing to get under the immense stone walkway's roof before the light drizzle decided to become an artificial downpour, drenching and almost drowning everything.
The man whistled, not looking at her and she realized, with a start, that it was the man who had been spooked earlier by her appearance. The one who called her 'Hilde'…
"Some rain, huh?" he grinned, finally turning to look at her. His grin vanished instantly and his eyes widened. "Oh," he stated calmly, "God."
When faced with the dilemma of fleeing into the 'storm' and risk being drowned and beaten by the obviously malfunctioning pipe system or staying and getting to know this Hilde-clone, he chose the former and was preparing to become very well acquainted with immense pain when a firm grip grabbed his braid, hauling him back.
It was the woman-girl, face set in a frown. "Who," she asked carefully, "are you?"
Oooooo. Cliffhanger-y. No, just really, really stupid. :} Anyway, I kinda went Makoto/Quatre-ish there for a moment. And, no, I wasn't planning on making Chrissie and Nanya be Makoto's kids. But, I decided I liked the little squirts too much for them to just be how I get Duo and Ami to meet (their original, sole purpose). And Makoto had *rusty red* hair in the manga, not chestnut-brown. Expect more weirdness next chapter! Well, that's whenever I get the time to write it. Oi.
XOXO!
Purple Mongoose/PallaPlease.
CC&C, R, and, heck, flames are all welcome!
Chapter Two
*
"It's like a dream you try to remember but it's gone
When you
Try to scream but it only comes out as a yawn
When you
Try to figure out what all this is for."
~Barenaked Ladies, "Pinch Me"
*
She supposed, as she called out the names of her children frantically, that she should get better locks on the doors. As soon as she managed to get enough money…
But twenty-two year old Kino Makoto had more important things to worry about than financial situations. Like her children.
The holo-sun was setting on the 'horizon' and as she raced along the streets, red-brown curls swinging from side to side from its position in a ponytail, she cried out their names another time. Tears stung her deep green eyes and, praying fervently, she growled at the apron tangling itself about her legs. Ripping at the knot, she pulled it free, tossing the flour-covered cloth to the side, letting it flutter to the sidewalk.
"Chrissie! Nanya! Oh, God, please let them be safe…"
{{"Look, Mommy! I made a cross for my new sister! Is she coming today?"}}
Biting back a sob, she forced herself to quell the natural instincts to scream and fight for her children.
{{"Hey, Nanya, there's this really cool toy shop by 5th Market and McGulf Avenue!"}}
The memory suddenly became crystal clear, shattering the fog of desperation. It was just after Makoto had turned nineteen and Chrissie was four. They had picked up his adopted sister, Nanya, from the orphanage and her red-headed son had told Nanya about his favorite place…
A wave of intense relief washed through Makoto and she relaxed, even letting a smile cross her face. They were at the toy shop, they were just fine…
Turning corners and crossing streets unconsciously, with the unerring expertise of one who knew the path not only by heart, but soul as well, she moved past a brick corner…and found herself in hell.
Twisted, ravaged metal curled in the toy shop, what was once a car had become a tangled heap of junk, a ghostly white hand limply hanging out one window. Her throat squeezed shut viciously, and she nearly retched at the blood pooling in the streets. 'Oh, God, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name,' her mind stammered and she bit her tongue hard enough to draw blood.
"Mommy!"
Nanya.
Oh, God, where was Chrissie?
Two small, warm brown arms wrapped about her legs and she pulled her six-year old daughter into a deep bear hug, the child's small, wet face burying into the crook where her neck met her shoulders and collarbone. "Mommy," Nanya sobbed, curly black hair matted onto her skull, "Chrissie got hurt really bad! He…he wouldn't move, Mommy!"
NonononoNO!!
"Excuse me, ma'am."
Makoto turned, daughter clenched tightly in her arms. A small woman, barely more than a girl, with dark blue hair and large aquamarine eyes behind a pair of spectacles was staring at her.
"Are you this child's mother?" the woman-girl continued, a Japanese accent in her words.
Pressing her lips into Nanya's hair, she nodded.
The Japanese woman-girl hesitated before swallowing and adding, "And are you also the mother of the small boy with freckles and red-hair?"
"Y…yes. I am their mother."
The woman-girl bit her lip sharply. "Your son has been taken to the Emergency Room. He was struck by the car over there as the driver sped at 75 miles-per-hour. He…sustained injuries to the skull, chest cavity, spine, and pelvis. I…I think he has a good chance of living if the doctors operate fast enough."
'Bullshit," Makoto replied quietly. "That's what they said about my parents when I was twelve. They died."
"We," the blue-haired woman-girl interjected, "have learned much over the course of ten years, ma'am. My name is Mizuno Ami and I will personally see to it that your son is not only alive, but able to walk."
Makoto glanced at her wide-eyed, crying daughter and looked back up, face as emotionless as granite. "I'm holding you to that promise. Now I want to see my son."
*
Iria Jasmine Winner was up for lunch break when the call was patched through. Seven-year old boy with a fractured skull, three broken ribs, a broken hip, and possible spinal injuries was being brought to the emergency room of LaGrange Point 2 Central Hospital. Massive loss of blood from large gashes along legs and spine. All doctors and nurses available were to report to surgery at once.
Tools sharpened and laid out, disinfected everything, Iria sent a swift prayer to Allah that this child would not die. She didn't want to see the utter despair she had seen in that Maxwell man's eyes when his loved one couldn't be saved. 'Oh, please, child, don't die! There must be someone who loves you so much that it would end everything for them if you departed.'
She knew her little brother was in the lobby, having arrived for lunch. And she knew that he knew about the sudden emergency.
'Do you,' she thought to the boy as procedures began immediately, attention to protocol and his welfare prominent in everything, 'have a sister or brother who loves you? Live for them…'
They began.
*
He crumpled into a heap somewhere far from the crash site, screaming and gritting his teeth, pummeling the ground with angry fists and dark words. God, he hated his life. His 'little sister' had died, and then he had to come face-to-face with someone who could have passed as her Japanese twin? The cosmos had a sick sense of humor.
But Duo knew that the small, petite woman hadn't been his adopted sister. She'd been someone wholly different, with a feel about her that was both attractive and wary.
And, damn it, his thoughts kept returning to that little boy, bleeding and unconscious, sunk into a delirious not-slumber, half-dead, half-alive. He'd killed hundreds of soldiers before! Why would it matter if he never knew whether that one child lived or died?
Because, he realized morosely, the child was a child. Still innocent and naïve, impressionable and brimming with excitement, a child. A *child*, for goodness' sake.
Pulling himself up to his feet, getting up from his knees, he ran a hand through his chestnut brown hair until it reached the beginning of his braid, sighing a ragged, weary sigh. He hoped with all his being that he wouldn't bump into that eerie girl, who looked like Hilde, but didn't, at the same time.
He was afraid of her.
*
"Lolli, lolli, lollipop," Makoto sang softly to the breathing bundle in her arms, carefully walking through the halls of L2 Central Hospital in the wake of the slight figure of Ami. She recognized the name and face from public viewscreens--she was the genius from Earth, a renowned everything-whiz and doctor. Nanya whimpered momentarily in her arms and the tall, leggy woman shifted, causing her daughter to fall still and silent, sucking soundlessly on the collar of her little t-shirt. She smiled affectionately down at her little girl, eyes misting slightly. After a moment, she noticed that Ami was saying something.
"-ait here. You aren't allowed to view the surgery due to inter-colony-Earth protocol and regulations," Ami explained coolly, though her heart wrenched sympathetically for the young mother.
There was a blonde man, small and delicate in body build, in the lobby, younger than Makoto by three years at the least. He had a worried expression on his face, pacing nervously a few steps one way before doubling back and repeating the process. Wringing slender, pale hands, one decorated by a simple silver band with a gold seal on it, he spared the trio of females a glance, returning to his crude pacing with renewed vigor.
"Please stay here, Ms. Kino. I will see how your son is doing." Ami bowed, vanishing, it seemed to Makoto, into the maze of corridors.
"It's your son in the ER then, is it?" the young man broke the silence, large, trembling blue eyes holding her green ones.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" she snapped back at him, cradling Nanya and collapsing into a hard plastic chair that obviously wasn't built to fit the height and shape of a twenty-two year old woman with a sixty-something pound daughter in her arms.
He overlooked her rude response, speaking to himself, "My older sister, Iria, is one of the surgeons. She should be able to help. Allah willing, the boy should be fine…" His voice trailed off and he turned to stare at Makoto.
*
She looked worn out and tired beyond belief, red lips thin and drawn tight from worry. Rusty red ringlets circled her face and she was beautiful, Quatre thought with a blush, though she had a hardened look to her, like those who had it rough and were more likely to take an eye for an eye instead of turning the other cheek.
The tiny girl she held gently in her arms was dark of skin and hair, eyes closed tightly. She looked far too young, he mused, to have birthed the boy they had carted in, unless she had been fifteen when she gave birth.
He shook his head. Why was he thinking such thoughts when there was a bleeding, possibly dying (or dead) boy in the emergency room that this youthfully haggard woman was mother to? He was ashamed of himself, even as he feared for the boy.
*
Ami found herself outside the hospital instead of in the emergency room's own personal lobby. Why exactly she had been driven outside to the false environment of the colony was beyond her. A slight mist of artificial rain drifted gently down, creating fog as it touched the dampened sidewalk. Sighing and folding her arms about her chest, she closed her eyes for a brief respite, imagining herself back in her cozy little room with the stuffed toy on her pillow. A black panther, given to her by a deceased relative, curled on her pillowcase. The wallpaper was in the pattern of water lilies and tiger lilies and violets, all blue and comforting, soothing her when she felt depressed or angered. There was a fish tank in the corner, with an Amazonian fish swimming tranquilly in it, shimmering scales twinkling enigmatically beneath the warming lamp designed for sunbathing.
She sighed again, leaning despondently on a stone pillar built for show, not support.
There was man, she saw after a moment, running through the rain toward the building, with a thick, wet braid thudding heavily on his back. He must be soaked, Ami realized, and that black priest's outfit couldn't have been helping matters any. Waving at him, she noted with relief that he increased pace, managing to get under the immense stone walkway's roof before the light drizzle decided to become an artificial downpour, drenching and almost drowning everything.
The man whistled, not looking at her and she realized, with a start, that it was the man who had been spooked earlier by her appearance. The one who called her 'Hilde'…
"Some rain, huh?" he grinned, finally turning to look at her. His grin vanished instantly and his eyes widened. "Oh," he stated calmly, "God."
When faced with the dilemma of fleeing into the 'storm' and risk being drowned and beaten by the obviously malfunctioning pipe system or staying and getting to know this Hilde-clone, he chose the former and was preparing to become very well acquainted with immense pain when a firm grip grabbed his braid, hauling him back.
It was the woman-girl, face set in a frown. "Who," she asked carefully, "are you?"
Oooooo. Cliffhanger-y. No, just really, really stupid. :} Anyway, I kinda went Makoto/Quatre-ish there for a moment. And, no, I wasn't planning on making Chrissie and Nanya be Makoto's kids. But, I decided I liked the little squirts too much for them to just be how I get Duo and Ami to meet (their original, sole purpose). And Makoto had *rusty red* hair in the manga, not chestnut-brown. Expect more weirdness next chapter! Well, that's whenever I get the time to write it. Oi.
XOXO!
Purple Mongoose/PallaPlease.
CC&C, R, and, heck, flames are all welcome!