She clutched her knees under her chin, weeping without a sound in the grateful loneliness of her room, weaving her fingers into her blue hair, the muted fluorescent lights above catching the green highlights in it, dark greens obscured in the dark blues. Her palms grated her cheeks, melting into the slippery streams of tiny tears cascading from her eyes, the oceans spilling out in clear silver that coursed down her lower arms. Rain, she begged the room, begged whatever force was listening; make it rain, make it pour, make it take my feelings away. The pain under her breasts was numbing, bandages wrapped about her sewn gashes, the glass taken away by the doctor, removed from her rib cage as he gasped earlier, murmuring how lucky she was her heart had not been pierced, her lungs escaped unscratched. It did not matter, it was not raining, the doll was broken and gone, taken by the Man whose name she did not know, but she did not know what a name was anyway. Only Jessica-the-nurse had a name, she was trustworthy, but it still did not rain.
Rain, she cried, rain is cold, rain is bliss. It takes away the pain and the longing and the evil desires for soft touches and kisses that do not bruise or scar, for a man who does not burn and laugh and shatter glass, those evil lusts for good things she does not deserve, for a man who would not want a bad girl like her. He told her those things, years of those words etched into her mind in the Book of Truths, and she felt a sea of sickness in her stomach, knowing in the darkest corner of her mind, the corner washed with light and innocence, things he said were the baddest of all because they corrupted her, she had trusted the Man she had seen, the man with beautiful hair and otherworldly eyes, and she needed the rain to wash away the badness of hope.
Is it bad to hope, she wondered, and then she cried harder, fresher, always swept by the knowledge of the Book of Truths that she hated and trusted and rejected, and she wanted to see the Man, even if it was a bad thing to look at a man and not be afraid.
She was crying slower an hour later, her legs dangling limply over the bed and her left hand, wrapped in crisscrossing tan gauze to hide and heal the melted, puckered skin stretching from her ring finger, was resting in her lap, right hand still woven into her thick, tangled hair, when Jessica-the-nurse returned, and touched her face with a soft, damp washcloth, cooing words that meant nothing.
--
Requiem: Discord
--
He couldn't get the image of her out of his mind. Aimee Cortez, small and thin, a living example of abuse, of the pain and evil he thought he had pushed from his mind years ago, thought he had forced himself to forget. She was a relic from the war he had been an integral part of, thrust into a misery no human deserved by the cold and desperation, forgotten and molded into the image of a sick bastard's dream. He, being privy to things others were not, knew the other women Cortez was seen with had been tall, willowy with long, golden white locks that twisted into buns, into braids, into coils and coil of silken strands, women with heavy breasts and shapely waists, thighs balanced at the perfect degree of sensuality, neither too thin nor too thick. There were photos kept locked in the file cases at the Preventers' archives, satellite and infrared, clippings from newspapers and the occasional professional photo stolen from offices by worried secretaries, and he found that it was tossing around in his mind, slithering and wrapping in on itself like a crazed labyrinth.
Duo drummed his fingers against the tight, black leather of his steering wheel, gritting his teeth behind his dark lips as he drove the length of the colony, nearing the vast, sloping curve in the road that would send him on another five hour drive back along M-13's left side, moving without thought towards his apartment. She was compact, in a word, with small hips and thighs that would be trim if she were healthy, and he was able to picture what she would look like if nourished: tiny. So why would a man groom a girl to be silent and obedient that he could beat her all the easier? Why would he want her thin and short and pale when the whores he so used were the opposite? A thousand reasons ran through his head, insights into the human mind gained from years learning and practicing psychology, dancing the gauntlet from a perverted form of the Oedipus Rex syndrome, acting out sexual frustration from a lacking female role model growing up or a cruel mother, to some branch of the thick, stretching tree of schizophrenia.
"Manic depression," he murmured, remembering the stir the media had made over her delicate wardrobe, the hundreds of thousands of gowns found in walk-in closets throughout the manor of a summer home, all silk and ivory, a sleek whiteness that he knew even Foreign Minister Dorlian would find exceptionally difficult to obtain. Trinkets had been all over the place, though the gowns had long since been confiscated for the laborious process of testing to find traces of blood or semen, bodily fluids that should not be there, when he had gone a few days past, in an attempt to form some sort of empathic connection with the victim he would work with. God, he'd made a connection all right, but not the way he'd wanted. "Manic depression," he repeated to himself, frowning and tucking an errant whip of brown hair behind his ear, his braid made somewhat buoyant by the artificial air whipping past his car as he pushed seventy, flicking his headlights on. The streamers of lights meant to mimic daylight were dimming gradually and he preferred to make it home without crashing.
It had been obvious that Philip Cortez had abused his common law wife; she had bandages and bruises and a gauntness to her that all proved it if any doubted. He'd seen Anders carefully ply the cotton dress from her upper body, the moment before Jessica, RN, bullied him out of the room in a fit of motherly rage, seen the blood trickling down pale flesh, wavering over the strict lines of her ribs, leaking from under the gentle curves of breasts made thin by malnourishment. But the baubles that had been placed on every space in the manor had been expensive, European glass and the delicate craftsmanship that had existed for centuries, thrived for millennia, under the hands of the Arabic artisans, vases from the country that had replaced Thailand, statuettes and pagan goddesses erected about the place, all serene and sad, as if asking for forgiveness. "I wonder," he said in a quiet tone, wrinkling his strong nose under the sunglasses he was wearing, and he took them off with his spare hand in a flash of 'oh yeah' insight, "if he was…aw, Jesus!" He swore a second time, forcing his car to hit seventy-five and clenching his jaw in irritation.
A thread of annoyance wove into his mind, silver and ghostly and still tangible, and he slammed his fist against the center of the wheel, letting his self-directed anger travel into the horn that exploded noisily into being before fading abruptly when he jerked his hand away, still seething somewhat at himself. "I could be thinking of a babe," he muttered to himself, "an incredibly sexy babe I happen to like very, very much, and instead, after already blowing off two other minor appointments I had today with patients, I'm stuck worrying about an anorexic kid nearly ten years younger than me." A guilty twinge struck his stomach and he ignored it steadily, used to dealing with such unwanted emotions, used to suppressing them and covering them smoothly over with a delicate, fooling mask of brevity and perfectly human, masculine vices.
He let thoughts of Aimee slip from his mind like slick oil through a sieve, let his job and empathy swirl away into the desert he kept in the back of his mind, a coarse, burning memory where he hid the darker things in his mind, like caged monsters. She was placed there, in his mind, amongst the monsters snarling and curling behind their cage bars, and he could see her sit down carefully, resting on the sand and pulling her legs up to her chest once more, wrapping her arms around her shins and dropping her head on her cheek to the scabbed skin of her knee. Before the guilt could twine around his lungs, squeezing the breath from his body, he filled his mind with the glowing image of Mina, promising and bright and so very much like him. Her he could understand without thinking, obsessing over her for a half hour was never painful, never unwelcome. If anything, it was pleasurable, imagining the smooth curves of her happy nature, the sunny personality that attracted him like Hilde's had, and he was fine if the relationship with Mina, like the one with the German pilot, ended in a cozy, intimate friendship.
Duo smiled at the thought and he eased the car back down to sixty-nine, cutting away into the lit darkness of the night.
She touched her fingers to the cloth under her left breast, her movement muffled by the heavy quilt Jessica-the-nurse had placed on her before leaving her alone, alone in the horrible dark. To keep her mind off the memories of what was meant to be in the dark, she prodded gently at the clean bandage, feeling for any clear shrapnel the doctor might have left without knowing. There was pain, yes, whispering streaks of dagger swift agony that faded as soon as they were born, but none of the lingering burning of imbedded glass and she smiled, slightly, hesitantly, to herself, slowly moving her hand to the other side and repeating the careful process, her fingertips brushing over the exactly applied gauze and seeking for what she did not want to be there. Again, she felt no telling, steady pain, and she pulled her hand away, folding it in her other, the wrapped one encasing the seeking. She closed her dark ocean eyes, falling into the soothing black of her eyelids in place of the frightening, alien darkness of her cold room. Pulling her legs up, curving them into a loose fetal position, caused only a dull ache in her belly, one that was bearable and hateful at the same time, for the growth of comfort she could take in that motion meant the further away her beautiful, empty child was. Lowering her arms to her belly, she spread her fingers out into open hands that barely grazed the naked skin of her lower stomach, hovering a breath above the skin and touching it just so with her own warmth, as if to cradle to her heart the memory of what should have been.
She thought of her baby, the infant that had grown inside of her, one she imagined to be like the babies she had seen on the days she was taken from the house, but with a fringe of soft blue hair, not the coarse, greasy hair of him, and sweet aqua eyes closed, with trims of dark eyelashes leaning against tender skin. A son, she thought to herself as tears pricked her eyes, dripping down her cheeks once they pushed past the dam of her eyelids, flowing over dark circles and tracing her cheeks. He had wanted a daughter, but she knew, she felt in her soul, in her heart, with every fiber of her life, that she was carrying a son, a lovely boy with pretty eyes and hair like long velvet, hair she could caress, a son to protect from him and show brilliant things to. Oranges, she thought dreamily, remembering from a faint day of years before, the tangy, exotic taste of a spongy, round fruit with a thick crust and pale yellow veins that stuck in her teeth, hanging like threads from her mouth. Oranges for her son, a hundred, but she felt he might take only one, knowing something can only be precious if it is rare, if it is secret. Nothing can be precious if it is seen by others, nothing.
Lace doilies the color of deep, silver tainted amethyst, and never any dolls for him to stare at and fear and think he would be made into one like she had been. A convulsive shudder swept into her body, overcome by the imagined touch of thousands of male fingers, prodding and grabbing and choking and pulling, always hurting, bruising, shearing away her hair every time it began to brush her shoulders, thin strands stretching to touch her skin, forcing her to stay awake when she was a naughty girl so that she could not find sleep now. He would punish her, her mind whispered, the compulsion to clean, to find a place to hide, swelling up, taking control.
Quiet, she thought in a weak command, sliding her legs from under the quilt, from over the squished swell of another lying below her, setting her feet on the rough rug lining the side of the metal table, and she flinched momentarily, instinctively, from the throbbing that the touch sent spiraling up her legs. For a few dangerous, muted minutes, she stood there, naked in the pervading dark and still, her breathing shallow when she finally began limping, slowly, to the door. This was not like the doors from the house, the ones that slid to the side, tucking away into the thick, boarded walls, and she brought up a clear image in her mind of Jessica-the-nurse grasping the silver bar that jabbed out of the smooth plastic coated metal of the door. Her fingers, the ones that were so pale in comparison to the dark peach of the sticky bandage swept around her flesh, tensed, uncurling carefully to touch the handle, wrapping about it in a mindfully paced manner to avoid pain. She turned the handle and pulled, pushed, moved to the side as she planted her feet as firmly to the ground as she dared, but the door did not move. Breathing, breathing, she thought of what he would say, what he would do, if he found her in the pitch of the hospital room, quivering by the door, trying to flee from him and trying to appease him.
I can't clean in here, she cried wildly in her head, I can't clean and he'll punish me; let me out, let me out, let me out! And her hands struck the door without rhythm, careless and variant in the abrupt motions, one hand slapping harder than the other, for one was hurt and too sensitive to lash out carelessly. She kept pounding, harder and faster, casting about in her mind for someone who would come to let her out so she could clean.
Her eyes were too dry for tears.
"Golly gee whiz, Russell sure is a fun, go-go sort of guy, isn't he?" Mina commented in a cavalier tone to the dimly lit reception room in the V.V.C. section. Seven-frickin'-thirty-five, she fumed, crossing her arms as she stood before the front desk, tapping her foot in its leather clog angrily against the dirtied tile floor, made dusty by feet walking through and people stopping to visit. Her purse had long since been abandoned by her feet, tilted over on its muted orange side, and her hopes to use the money inside it after work were, yet again, dashed. Entertaining herself with wicked mental cartoons of Russell's girlfriend dumping him - assuming, of course, that he had one - and him losing that chrome motorcycle he was disturbingly proud of had been fun for the first thirty minutes he was late, but as she was just starting to wait out the fourth half hour following the official end of her day long shift, it was no longer amusing.
Jessica had stuck around until seven-oh-five before booking and Mina highly doubted all but a few doctors or nurses had remained for the relatively boring evening shift, making sure a favored patient was taken care of. This was leading her into a mood of complete boredom, punctuated only by the tired guilt of considering leaving before she knew Russell was set and that bizarre pounding she'd been hearing for the past three minutes, drifting dully through the air vents and pumping into the areas outside of its origin point. "This," she gritted, "is - absolute - crap! God!" The pounding had paced itself faster a second time, knocking at a higher pitch and moving into a steadier rhythm of hard-soft-hard-soft-hard, and it, while a welcome break from the monotony of her after-shift twilight, was growing swiftly annoying. "Is nobody going to check on that?" questioned Mina incredulously, shifting her weight to her opposite leg as she swiveled on her hips, twisting around to stare fixedly at the sliver of hallway she could see from her angle, staring, eyebrows lowered dangerously, through the heavy glass window formed in the locked door. "For all they know, Dennis could have finally gone of the deep end!" Dennis being, she reminded herself, someone who was probably more or less not likely to act in an insane way, place of residence aside. Still, it was the basic principle that counted and, as far as she could tell, not a soul had stirred to check on the source of the thumping. There has to be someone here, she reasoned in her mind; it's got to be illegal for no registered doctors or nurses to be on duty, right?
She lasted for ten more seconds before she growled at life in general and started kicking her purse around the semicircular mold of her/Russell's desk, punching it with her foot into hiding under the jutting platform of the desk that provided writing space. So unfair, she grumbled silently, leaning over to the bouncing screensaver of the computer and hurriedly tapping in a suitably complicated password, and she leaned back, trilling her fingers on her hip and watching with restraint as the door slid open, hissing softly in a wave of automated coolness.
Stalking down the hallway in heeled clogs did a remarkable job at releasing anger directed at several different persons, and she followed the sound with a tuned ear, passing four rooms - two on each side - and stopping at what certainly sounded like the spot of origin.
Room B-902.
Strings of warnings and advice shot through her mind at rocket speed, colliding and meshing into incomprehensible bits that melted into her brain, and the only thing she could focus on was the remembrance of being told to make sure Aimee Cortez was kept safe, kept quiet, crazy people all around and Mina didn't know what to do, this wasn't her job so why was she reaching for the door, fiddling with the master key in her pocket that she was required to carry? She fit it in the door and, gently, with an air of trepidation, she pushed it open, feeling the soft-hard-soft vibrations whisper against her hand.
The pounding was sliced off and a light weight moved off the door, stepping back in alarm as the golden-haired woman moved inside, feeling around the outside of the large white cell for the inner light and flicking it on. Inky pupils trimmed with a thin lace of dark blue contracted quickly, shrinking abnormally into smaller ellipses, and the girl blinked painfully, lifting her hands to touch them to her doe eyes. Her lips moved wordlessly, in mindless repetition, and Mina hastily thrust herself forward to grab a quilt from the double-purpose metal rectangle set high up in the room, pulling the sewn, stuffed cloth from its collapsed shelter, left by a body that slipped from it. She tossed it around the blue-haired girl and, in comforting caresses she had learned from her mother, she touched her shoulders, rubbing them gently.
Something had shone in Aimee's eyes the instant before the pupils whittled down, something that had twisted Mina's heart in its familiarity: the birds she had cared for growing up had that same frightened look. They had broken wings, those birds, wings broken by nature or man or accident, and her mother had taught her how to mend those wings, how to treat the bird like a child and let them learn to fly a second time. She chided herself in the back of her head, a silly thing to think when she was holding a girl on the cusp of hyperventilation.
Aimee sunk down in the quilt, dragging her meager weight backwards as she buried her head in the folds of the blanket, bringing to mind the 'out of sight, out of mind' adage. "Oh, sweetie," Mina started, her eyebrows curving up in pity as she began gently wrestling the slowly twining girl toward the flat table bed.
The shrill ring of her cell-phone bubbling smashed apart the intentions of both young women, and the smaller of the two broke free, dropping to the floor like a lead ball, curling up into an indistinguishable lump under the dimpled surface of the quilt. Mina swore several times under her breath and dug into the pocket of her red slacks, whipping out the small gray square and flipping it open. "Of all the times," she exhaled, hitting the receive button.
"What?" she demanded in a voice that was perhaps a bit too harsh and she winced in turn at a sarcastic reply that filtered as a low murmur to other ears. "No, no," she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose in a subconscious plea for patience, "I'm not mad at you. What? Oh, I'm stuck at the V.V.C., no overtime pay. I didn't exactly volunteer for duty." A pause as she broke off, biting her lower lip and kneeling beside the bundle, reaching out with one hand to smooth out a wrinkle on the fabric. "No, Russell didn't have a stroke," she all but groaned, rolling her robin blue eyes, "there was a…disturbance in the B-section. Grow up! That is so typical of you, to think something like that. No, Aimee Cortez freaked and I'm trying to get her to calm down. Oh, for God's sake, I can take care of it. Look, I'll call you back, okay? I need to get someone to help in here, I sure don't know what to do."
The phone was off then, clicked off with a beep and discontinued for the time being with another, and she slipped it back into the deep pocket of her pants, patting the lump once, almost reassuringly, before standing and exiting the room, calling loudly for someone to come.
"Where's the guard?" she yelled. "And why the hell is Russell not here yet!"
Duo eyed the simple cell-phone in his hand and decided it wasn't worth the headache he knew was developing, right in that spot behind his eyes that they always seemed to start at. Tossing the cell-phone to his right, he watched with satisfaction as it fell in a perfect arc through the plastic mini-hoop attached to the window leading to the small ledge of his apartment, landing safely on a ragged cushion. A sofa and an armchair, both centered around a coffee table with dents in it from booted feet crossing on top of it, a decent sized television set up behind it, on a wide bench, were the only pieces of furniture in the small den/living room and he grimaced at it, wondering, as he often found himself doing, why he didn't just rent a better apartment; he had the pay for it.
"Ah, but then," he murmured, lifting a plastic shopping bag up with his arm as he angled his body around the small bar into his also small kitchen, "however would I manage to pay for the 'Romance of the Week' novels Sally so loves?" He dropped the bag off his wrist onto the counter, leaning over to the small vid-phone hooked up to the outlet conspicuously placed near the sink. Duo thumbed the circled O near the left corner, starting an automatic dial-up, and opened the bag, filching out a packaged doll and making a face at it in memory of the last role-playing doll's demise. The customary comics were thrown neatly across the few feet of his kitchen, landing unbalanced on the opposite counter beside his refrigerator, and a romance novel, complete with a blue circle on the leftmost corner proudly stating in Amazone BT, 'Romance of the Week,' was retreived from the foggy white depths of the bag and he grinned.
"Duo," came a woman's voice, one made wry with secret knowledge, and he looked over his shoulders quickly, worrying that he'd left something incriminating out in the open. The vid image of Sally raised a pale gold eyebrow and he smiled sheepishly, adding a tinny wave to complete the visual she would receive. She snorted, narrowing her ice eyes and running a hand through the thick curls trailing on either side of her head.
"Before you ask, O Mighty and Magnificent One," he cut in quickly, sensing a wave of disapproval emanating from her, "I purchased your copy of 'The Duchess of Fire.'" He grinned maliciously at the sudden flush in her cheeks and the way she, too, checked the area around her, to ensure her somewhat close-minded husband couldn't catch wind of what she had asked the self-styled God of Death to pick up for her on the way back to his apartment.
"Is it good?" she asked finally, sure that Wufei was nowhere to be seen - both a good and a bad thing, as it meant conversations about juicy romance novels were a fifty-fifty chance now. He granted her a look that asked in a way words never could, However would I know? "Don't try to pull that crap," Sally said bluntly, cutting straight to the quick, a habit that had probably endeared Wufei to her. "I happen to be one of three people that know about your subscription to 'Romance of the Week.' That's also not counting the romantic westerns stacked in the bottom of your closet, the various tattered copies of 'Gone with the Wind' scattered throughout your apartment, the--"
"I sense the pattern," Duo pointed, his grin a little more self-indulgent now. "I can't help it if I'm not as manly as Wufei, with his pristine copies of 'The Art of War' on every inch of available space in your guys' house." His grin widened again, turning a bit devilish. "He'd never be caught reading a 'Romance of the Weak.'" It took Sally all of three seconds to catch the pun and she scowled at him, shaking her head and still smirking a little.
"But, in any case," shrugged Duo, leaning his elbows on the counter and replacing her newly purchased copy of 'The Duchess of Fire' with his slightly bent copy, "I think my favorite part was," he flipped swiftly through the pages, sticking his finger in the way when he found the spot. Clearing his throat, he repeated the last bit, and then read, with much gusto, "'As Marie watched, her heart pounding slowly, hungrily in her throat, he raised his head, licking his lips, from--'"
"Shut up," the woman interrupted, her cheeks a definite rosy color.
"From shut-up?" he echoed, sticking his tongue out cheekily. "You and I both know Quatre subscribes to the same romances I do, and he doesn't do it for his wife, either. You're such a prude, Mrs. Chang."
"And you are not very high on my 'People I Like' list," Sally retorted, folding her arms over her chest, obscuring the faded hard rock t-shirt she was wearing with her jeans. "While I'd love to stick around and chat about romances, I don't have the time. You're going to go back to work tomorrow, to all of your appointments in the order they were scheduled for today. You will be social and friendly to Aimee Cortez in particular, and you are not to do anything like you did this morning. Wufei found out from Mina," here it was Duo's turn to snort, "what happened and he, of course, told me around noon, which ruined my lunch, and guess who I was eating it with? Your commanding officer, no less." Sally leaned forward, her eyes a deadly cold that had, on past occasion, served her well in many situations others had thought a woman could not finish. "Kino is going to have your ass."
"Damn," he sighed, and the link went out. He stared darkly at the screen, slowly reaching for the fresh copy of the book and stuffing it back into the bag. With a resigned air, he turned his attention back to Marie's slow, hungry heart.
Author's Notes: It wasn't as long as I wanted it to be, but it is six pages (and that's oversized for a story by me). How do people like Priscilla-san write 30+ page chapters without having a coronary or something? Insane.
Many thanks to my five reviewers, Girl-chama (I always love it when you review! I admire your stories so much and you write such awesome reviews), UNgoddess (who guessed a plot point and forced my hand...*sulky look* How'd you know Sally was going to scold Duo? And, yeah, the doctor-patient thing is going to figure into the story; been planning it since the start), Michelle Ann/Myst Lady (I think that different is good, right? *Angst* is good...so long as fluff and obscene amounts of chocolate follow), Kaiya-chan (you didn't have to review, you know...not that I'm complaining, of course, it's always nice to hear compliments from your beta-reader...*winks*), and WindRider-Damia (I hope I don't get flamed! Although, with me being pro-Relena in a mostly anti-Relena zone, I might get flamed later on...thanks for your comments and here's two new chapters in one update!). They made me feel warm and fuzzy and introspective. Which is usually a good thing. (My apologies to any other reviewers; at the time this was written, I only had five. Thank-you!)
Girl-chama brought up an interesting point. I'm hoping this won't take away from whatever you might learn (or be inspired to learn) from this story, but I have never personally been abused, physically, sexually, or verbally. If anything, I'm drawing on far too many casual viewings of Forensic Files on Discovery Channel, my own disgust for rape, and an experience one of my friends had to live through. She was the victim of incest rape (her father sexually abused her several times as a child and as an adolescent), and her family moved as soon as they managed to get him convicted and in jail. For reasons of security, I haven't heard from her in four years and I like to believe she's doing much better. So, while I haven't suffered in that way, I have known several people who have. If any of that made sense...but don't worry. :] Always remember to hope! Hope pays in this story...
I'm hoping to be able to post a new chapter (or two) every Monday, with the possibility of an update on a Friday every so often. Oh! Before I forget…I owe a great deal to Kaiya-chan, who agreed to be my beta-reader even though I forgot to e-mail her about a different story for months. *weepy face* Sorry…
Standard disclaimer applies to this chapter, too. Also distributed to www.FanFiction.net and wherever available on Saturn's ninth ring.
I encourage feedback happily and with picket signs, so please drop a line - rude, insightful, or bizarre - to my fic via the bar below or by e-mailing me at alien_wolf@sailorjupiter.com.
Rain, she cried, rain is cold, rain is bliss. It takes away the pain and the longing and the evil desires for soft touches and kisses that do not bruise or scar, for a man who does not burn and laugh and shatter glass, those evil lusts for good things she does not deserve, for a man who would not want a bad girl like her. He told her those things, years of those words etched into her mind in the Book of Truths, and she felt a sea of sickness in her stomach, knowing in the darkest corner of her mind, the corner washed with light and innocence, things he said were the baddest of all because they corrupted her, she had trusted the Man she had seen, the man with beautiful hair and otherworldly eyes, and she needed the rain to wash away the badness of hope.
Is it bad to hope, she wondered, and then she cried harder, fresher, always swept by the knowledge of the Book of Truths that she hated and trusted and rejected, and she wanted to see the Man, even if it was a bad thing to look at a man and not be afraid.
She was crying slower an hour later, her legs dangling limply over the bed and her left hand, wrapped in crisscrossing tan gauze to hide and heal the melted, puckered skin stretching from her ring finger, was resting in her lap, right hand still woven into her thick, tangled hair, when Jessica-the-nurse returned, and touched her face with a soft, damp washcloth, cooing words that meant nothing.
--
Requiem: Discord
--
He couldn't get the image of her out of his mind. Aimee Cortez, small and thin, a living example of abuse, of the pain and evil he thought he had pushed from his mind years ago, thought he had forced himself to forget. She was a relic from the war he had been an integral part of, thrust into a misery no human deserved by the cold and desperation, forgotten and molded into the image of a sick bastard's dream. He, being privy to things others were not, knew the other women Cortez was seen with had been tall, willowy with long, golden white locks that twisted into buns, into braids, into coils and coil of silken strands, women with heavy breasts and shapely waists, thighs balanced at the perfect degree of sensuality, neither too thin nor too thick. There were photos kept locked in the file cases at the Preventers' archives, satellite and infrared, clippings from newspapers and the occasional professional photo stolen from offices by worried secretaries, and he found that it was tossing around in his mind, slithering and wrapping in on itself like a crazed labyrinth.
Duo drummed his fingers against the tight, black leather of his steering wheel, gritting his teeth behind his dark lips as he drove the length of the colony, nearing the vast, sloping curve in the road that would send him on another five hour drive back along M-13's left side, moving without thought towards his apartment. She was compact, in a word, with small hips and thighs that would be trim if she were healthy, and he was able to picture what she would look like if nourished: tiny. So why would a man groom a girl to be silent and obedient that he could beat her all the easier? Why would he want her thin and short and pale when the whores he so used were the opposite? A thousand reasons ran through his head, insights into the human mind gained from years learning and practicing psychology, dancing the gauntlet from a perverted form of the Oedipus Rex syndrome, acting out sexual frustration from a lacking female role model growing up or a cruel mother, to some branch of the thick, stretching tree of schizophrenia.
"Manic depression," he murmured, remembering the stir the media had made over her delicate wardrobe, the hundreds of thousands of gowns found in walk-in closets throughout the manor of a summer home, all silk and ivory, a sleek whiteness that he knew even Foreign Minister Dorlian would find exceptionally difficult to obtain. Trinkets had been all over the place, though the gowns had long since been confiscated for the laborious process of testing to find traces of blood or semen, bodily fluids that should not be there, when he had gone a few days past, in an attempt to form some sort of empathic connection with the victim he would work with. God, he'd made a connection all right, but not the way he'd wanted. "Manic depression," he repeated to himself, frowning and tucking an errant whip of brown hair behind his ear, his braid made somewhat buoyant by the artificial air whipping past his car as he pushed seventy, flicking his headlights on. The streamers of lights meant to mimic daylight were dimming gradually and he preferred to make it home without crashing.
It had been obvious that Philip Cortez had abused his common law wife; she had bandages and bruises and a gauntness to her that all proved it if any doubted. He'd seen Anders carefully ply the cotton dress from her upper body, the moment before Jessica, RN, bullied him out of the room in a fit of motherly rage, seen the blood trickling down pale flesh, wavering over the strict lines of her ribs, leaking from under the gentle curves of breasts made thin by malnourishment. But the baubles that had been placed on every space in the manor had been expensive, European glass and the delicate craftsmanship that had existed for centuries, thrived for millennia, under the hands of the Arabic artisans, vases from the country that had replaced Thailand, statuettes and pagan goddesses erected about the place, all serene and sad, as if asking for forgiveness. "I wonder," he said in a quiet tone, wrinkling his strong nose under the sunglasses he was wearing, and he took them off with his spare hand in a flash of 'oh yeah' insight, "if he was…aw, Jesus!" He swore a second time, forcing his car to hit seventy-five and clenching his jaw in irritation.
A thread of annoyance wove into his mind, silver and ghostly and still tangible, and he slammed his fist against the center of the wheel, letting his self-directed anger travel into the horn that exploded noisily into being before fading abruptly when he jerked his hand away, still seething somewhat at himself. "I could be thinking of a babe," he muttered to himself, "an incredibly sexy babe I happen to like very, very much, and instead, after already blowing off two other minor appointments I had today with patients, I'm stuck worrying about an anorexic kid nearly ten years younger than me." A guilty twinge struck his stomach and he ignored it steadily, used to dealing with such unwanted emotions, used to suppressing them and covering them smoothly over with a delicate, fooling mask of brevity and perfectly human, masculine vices.
He let thoughts of Aimee slip from his mind like slick oil through a sieve, let his job and empathy swirl away into the desert he kept in the back of his mind, a coarse, burning memory where he hid the darker things in his mind, like caged monsters. She was placed there, in his mind, amongst the monsters snarling and curling behind their cage bars, and he could see her sit down carefully, resting on the sand and pulling her legs up to her chest once more, wrapping her arms around her shins and dropping her head on her cheek to the scabbed skin of her knee. Before the guilt could twine around his lungs, squeezing the breath from his body, he filled his mind with the glowing image of Mina, promising and bright and so very much like him. Her he could understand without thinking, obsessing over her for a half hour was never painful, never unwelcome. If anything, it was pleasurable, imagining the smooth curves of her happy nature, the sunny personality that attracted him like Hilde's had, and he was fine if the relationship with Mina, like the one with the German pilot, ended in a cozy, intimate friendship.
Duo smiled at the thought and he eased the car back down to sixty-nine, cutting away into the lit darkness of the night.
She touched her fingers to the cloth under her left breast, her movement muffled by the heavy quilt Jessica-the-nurse had placed on her before leaving her alone, alone in the horrible dark. To keep her mind off the memories of what was meant to be in the dark, she prodded gently at the clean bandage, feeling for any clear shrapnel the doctor might have left without knowing. There was pain, yes, whispering streaks of dagger swift agony that faded as soon as they were born, but none of the lingering burning of imbedded glass and she smiled, slightly, hesitantly, to herself, slowly moving her hand to the other side and repeating the careful process, her fingertips brushing over the exactly applied gauze and seeking for what she did not want to be there. Again, she felt no telling, steady pain, and she pulled her hand away, folding it in her other, the wrapped one encasing the seeking. She closed her dark ocean eyes, falling into the soothing black of her eyelids in place of the frightening, alien darkness of her cold room. Pulling her legs up, curving them into a loose fetal position, caused only a dull ache in her belly, one that was bearable and hateful at the same time, for the growth of comfort she could take in that motion meant the further away her beautiful, empty child was. Lowering her arms to her belly, she spread her fingers out into open hands that barely grazed the naked skin of her lower stomach, hovering a breath above the skin and touching it just so with her own warmth, as if to cradle to her heart the memory of what should have been.
She thought of her baby, the infant that had grown inside of her, one she imagined to be like the babies she had seen on the days she was taken from the house, but with a fringe of soft blue hair, not the coarse, greasy hair of him, and sweet aqua eyes closed, with trims of dark eyelashes leaning against tender skin. A son, she thought to herself as tears pricked her eyes, dripping down her cheeks once they pushed past the dam of her eyelids, flowing over dark circles and tracing her cheeks. He had wanted a daughter, but she knew, she felt in her soul, in her heart, with every fiber of her life, that she was carrying a son, a lovely boy with pretty eyes and hair like long velvet, hair she could caress, a son to protect from him and show brilliant things to. Oranges, she thought dreamily, remembering from a faint day of years before, the tangy, exotic taste of a spongy, round fruit with a thick crust and pale yellow veins that stuck in her teeth, hanging like threads from her mouth. Oranges for her son, a hundred, but she felt he might take only one, knowing something can only be precious if it is rare, if it is secret. Nothing can be precious if it is seen by others, nothing.
Lace doilies the color of deep, silver tainted amethyst, and never any dolls for him to stare at and fear and think he would be made into one like she had been. A convulsive shudder swept into her body, overcome by the imagined touch of thousands of male fingers, prodding and grabbing and choking and pulling, always hurting, bruising, shearing away her hair every time it began to brush her shoulders, thin strands stretching to touch her skin, forcing her to stay awake when she was a naughty girl so that she could not find sleep now. He would punish her, her mind whispered, the compulsion to clean, to find a place to hide, swelling up, taking control.
Quiet, she thought in a weak command, sliding her legs from under the quilt, from over the squished swell of another lying below her, setting her feet on the rough rug lining the side of the metal table, and she flinched momentarily, instinctively, from the throbbing that the touch sent spiraling up her legs. For a few dangerous, muted minutes, she stood there, naked in the pervading dark and still, her breathing shallow when she finally began limping, slowly, to the door. This was not like the doors from the house, the ones that slid to the side, tucking away into the thick, boarded walls, and she brought up a clear image in her mind of Jessica-the-nurse grasping the silver bar that jabbed out of the smooth plastic coated metal of the door. Her fingers, the ones that were so pale in comparison to the dark peach of the sticky bandage swept around her flesh, tensed, uncurling carefully to touch the handle, wrapping about it in a mindfully paced manner to avoid pain. She turned the handle and pulled, pushed, moved to the side as she planted her feet as firmly to the ground as she dared, but the door did not move. Breathing, breathing, she thought of what he would say, what he would do, if he found her in the pitch of the hospital room, quivering by the door, trying to flee from him and trying to appease him.
I can't clean in here, she cried wildly in her head, I can't clean and he'll punish me; let me out, let me out, let me out! And her hands struck the door without rhythm, careless and variant in the abrupt motions, one hand slapping harder than the other, for one was hurt and too sensitive to lash out carelessly. She kept pounding, harder and faster, casting about in her mind for someone who would come to let her out so she could clean.
Her eyes were too dry for tears.
"Golly gee whiz, Russell sure is a fun, go-go sort of guy, isn't he?" Mina commented in a cavalier tone to the dimly lit reception room in the V.V.C. section. Seven-frickin'-thirty-five, she fumed, crossing her arms as she stood before the front desk, tapping her foot in its leather clog angrily against the dirtied tile floor, made dusty by feet walking through and people stopping to visit. Her purse had long since been abandoned by her feet, tilted over on its muted orange side, and her hopes to use the money inside it after work were, yet again, dashed. Entertaining herself with wicked mental cartoons of Russell's girlfriend dumping him - assuming, of course, that he had one - and him losing that chrome motorcycle he was disturbingly proud of had been fun for the first thirty minutes he was late, but as she was just starting to wait out the fourth half hour following the official end of her day long shift, it was no longer amusing.
Jessica had stuck around until seven-oh-five before booking and Mina highly doubted all but a few doctors or nurses had remained for the relatively boring evening shift, making sure a favored patient was taken care of. This was leading her into a mood of complete boredom, punctuated only by the tired guilt of considering leaving before she knew Russell was set and that bizarre pounding she'd been hearing for the past three minutes, drifting dully through the air vents and pumping into the areas outside of its origin point. "This," she gritted, "is - absolute - crap! God!" The pounding had paced itself faster a second time, knocking at a higher pitch and moving into a steadier rhythm of hard-soft-hard-soft-hard, and it, while a welcome break from the monotony of her after-shift twilight, was growing swiftly annoying. "Is nobody going to check on that?" questioned Mina incredulously, shifting her weight to her opposite leg as she swiveled on her hips, twisting around to stare fixedly at the sliver of hallway she could see from her angle, staring, eyebrows lowered dangerously, through the heavy glass window formed in the locked door. "For all they know, Dennis could have finally gone of the deep end!" Dennis being, she reminded herself, someone who was probably more or less not likely to act in an insane way, place of residence aside. Still, it was the basic principle that counted and, as far as she could tell, not a soul had stirred to check on the source of the thumping. There has to be someone here, she reasoned in her mind; it's got to be illegal for no registered doctors or nurses to be on duty, right?
She lasted for ten more seconds before she growled at life in general and started kicking her purse around the semicircular mold of her/Russell's desk, punching it with her foot into hiding under the jutting platform of the desk that provided writing space. So unfair, she grumbled silently, leaning over to the bouncing screensaver of the computer and hurriedly tapping in a suitably complicated password, and she leaned back, trilling her fingers on her hip and watching with restraint as the door slid open, hissing softly in a wave of automated coolness.
Stalking down the hallway in heeled clogs did a remarkable job at releasing anger directed at several different persons, and she followed the sound with a tuned ear, passing four rooms - two on each side - and stopping at what certainly sounded like the spot of origin.
Room B-902.
Strings of warnings and advice shot through her mind at rocket speed, colliding and meshing into incomprehensible bits that melted into her brain, and the only thing she could focus on was the remembrance of being told to make sure Aimee Cortez was kept safe, kept quiet, crazy people all around and Mina didn't know what to do, this wasn't her job so why was she reaching for the door, fiddling with the master key in her pocket that she was required to carry? She fit it in the door and, gently, with an air of trepidation, she pushed it open, feeling the soft-hard-soft vibrations whisper against her hand.
The pounding was sliced off and a light weight moved off the door, stepping back in alarm as the golden-haired woman moved inside, feeling around the outside of the large white cell for the inner light and flicking it on. Inky pupils trimmed with a thin lace of dark blue contracted quickly, shrinking abnormally into smaller ellipses, and the girl blinked painfully, lifting her hands to touch them to her doe eyes. Her lips moved wordlessly, in mindless repetition, and Mina hastily thrust herself forward to grab a quilt from the double-purpose metal rectangle set high up in the room, pulling the sewn, stuffed cloth from its collapsed shelter, left by a body that slipped from it. She tossed it around the blue-haired girl and, in comforting caresses she had learned from her mother, she touched her shoulders, rubbing them gently.
Something had shone in Aimee's eyes the instant before the pupils whittled down, something that had twisted Mina's heart in its familiarity: the birds she had cared for growing up had that same frightened look. They had broken wings, those birds, wings broken by nature or man or accident, and her mother had taught her how to mend those wings, how to treat the bird like a child and let them learn to fly a second time. She chided herself in the back of her head, a silly thing to think when she was holding a girl on the cusp of hyperventilation.
Aimee sunk down in the quilt, dragging her meager weight backwards as she buried her head in the folds of the blanket, bringing to mind the 'out of sight, out of mind' adage. "Oh, sweetie," Mina started, her eyebrows curving up in pity as she began gently wrestling the slowly twining girl toward the flat table bed.
The shrill ring of her cell-phone bubbling smashed apart the intentions of both young women, and the smaller of the two broke free, dropping to the floor like a lead ball, curling up into an indistinguishable lump under the dimpled surface of the quilt. Mina swore several times under her breath and dug into the pocket of her red slacks, whipping out the small gray square and flipping it open. "Of all the times," she exhaled, hitting the receive button.
"What?" she demanded in a voice that was perhaps a bit too harsh and she winced in turn at a sarcastic reply that filtered as a low murmur to other ears. "No, no," she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose in a subconscious plea for patience, "I'm not mad at you. What? Oh, I'm stuck at the V.V.C., no overtime pay. I didn't exactly volunteer for duty." A pause as she broke off, biting her lower lip and kneeling beside the bundle, reaching out with one hand to smooth out a wrinkle on the fabric. "No, Russell didn't have a stroke," she all but groaned, rolling her robin blue eyes, "there was a…disturbance in the B-section. Grow up! That is so typical of you, to think something like that. No, Aimee Cortez freaked and I'm trying to get her to calm down. Oh, for God's sake, I can take care of it. Look, I'll call you back, okay? I need to get someone to help in here, I sure don't know what to do."
The phone was off then, clicked off with a beep and discontinued for the time being with another, and she slipped it back into the deep pocket of her pants, patting the lump once, almost reassuringly, before standing and exiting the room, calling loudly for someone to come.
"Where's the guard?" she yelled. "And why the hell is Russell not here yet!"
Duo eyed the simple cell-phone in his hand and decided it wasn't worth the headache he knew was developing, right in that spot behind his eyes that they always seemed to start at. Tossing the cell-phone to his right, he watched with satisfaction as it fell in a perfect arc through the plastic mini-hoop attached to the window leading to the small ledge of his apartment, landing safely on a ragged cushion. A sofa and an armchair, both centered around a coffee table with dents in it from booted feet crossing on top of it, a decent sized television set up behind it, on a wide bench, were the only pieces of furniture in the small den/living room and he grimaced at it, wondering, as he often found himself doing, why he didn't just rent a better apartment; he had the pay for it.
"Ah, but then," he murmured, lifting a plastic shopping bag up with his arm as he angled his body around the small bar into his also small kitchen, "however would I manage to pay for the 'Romance of the Week' novels Sally so loves?" He dropped the bag off his wrist onto the counter, leaning over to the small vid-phone hooked up to the outlet conspicuously placed near the sink. Duo thumbed the circled O near the left corner, starting an automatic dial-up, and opened the bag, filching out a packaged doll and making a face at it in memory of the last role-playing doll's demise. The customary comics were thrown neatly across the few feet of his kitchen, landing unbalanced on the opposite counter beside his refrigerator, and a romance novel, complete with a blue circle on the leftmost corner proudly stating in Amazone BT, 'Romance of the Week,' was retreived from the foggy white depths of the bag and he grinned.
"Duo," came a woman's voice, one made wry with secret knowledge, and he looked over his shoulders quickly, worrying that he'd left something incriminating out in the open. The vid image of Sally raised a pale gold eyebrow and he smiled sheepishly, adding a tinny wave to complete the visual she would receive. She snorted, narrowing her ice eyes and running a hand through the thick curls trailing on either side of her head.
"Before you ask, O Mighty and Magnificent One," he cut in quickly, sensing a wave of disapproval emanating from her, "I purchased your copy of 'The Duchess of Fire.'" He grinned maliciously at the sudden flush in her cheeks and the way she, too, checked the area around her, to ensure her somewhat close-minded husband couldn't catch wind of what she had asked the self-styled God of Death to pick up for her on the way back to his apartment.
"Is it good?" she asked finally, sure that Wufei was nowhere to be seen - both a good and a bad thing, as it meant conversations about juicy romance novels were a fifty-fifty chance now. He granted her a look that asked in a way words never could, However would I know? "Don't try to pull that crap," Sally said bluntly, cutting straight to the quick, a habit that had probably endeared Wufei to her. "I happen to be one of three people that know about your subscription to 'Romance of the Week.' That's also not counting the romantic westerns stacked in the bottom of your closet, the various tattered copies of 'Gone with the Wind' scattered throughout your apartment, the--"
"I sense the pattern," Duo pointed, his grin a little more self-indulgent now. "I can't help it if I'm not as manly as Wufei, with his pristine copies of 'The Art of War' on every inch of available space in your guys' house." His grin widened again, turning a bit devilish. "He'd never be caught reading a 'Romance of the Weak.'" It took Sally all of three seconds to catch the pun and she scowled at him, shaking her head and still smirking a little.
"But, in any case," shrugged Duo, leaning his elbows on the counter and replacing her newly purchased copy of 'The Duchess of Fire' with his slightly bent copy, "I think my favorite part was," he flipped swiftly through the pages, sticking his finger in the way when he found the spot. Clearing his throat, he repeated the last bit, and then read, with much gusto, "'As Marie watched, her heart pounding slowly, hungrily in her throat, he raised his head, licking his lips, from--'"
"Shut up," the woman interrupted, her cheeks a definite rosy color.
"From shut-up?" he echoed, sticking his tongue out cheekily. "You and I both know Quatre subscribes to the same romances I do, and he doesn't do it for his wife, either. You're such a prude, Mrs. Chang."
"And you are not very high on my 'People I Like' list," Sally retorted, folding her arms over her chest, obscuring the faded hard rock t-shirt she was wearing with her jeans. "While I'd love to stick around and chat about romances, I don't have the time. You're going to go back to work tomorrow, to all of your appointments in the order they were scheduled for today. You will be social and friendly to Aimee Cortez in particular, and you are not to do anything like you did this morning. Wufei found out from Mina," here it was Duo's turn to snort, "what happened and he, of course, told me around noon, which ruined my lunch, and guess who I was eating it with? Your commanding officer, no less." Sally leaned forward, her eyes a deadly cold that had, on past occasion, served her well in many situations others had thought a woman could not finish. "Kino is going to have your ass."
"Damn," he sighed, and the link went out. He stared darkly at the screen, slowly reaching for the fresh copy of the book and stuffing it back into the bag. With a resigned air, he turned his attention back to Marie's slow, hungry heart.
Author's Notes: It wasn't as long as I wanted it to be, but it is six pages (and that's oversized for a story by me). How do people like Priscilla-san write 30+ page chapters without having a coronary or something? Insane.
Many thanks to my five reviewers, Girl-chama (I always love it when you review! I admire your stories so much and you write such awesome reviews), UNgoddess (who guessed a plot point and forced my hand...*sulky look* How'd you know Sally was going to scold Duo? And, yeah, the doctor-patient thing is going to figure into the story; been planning it since the start), Michelle Ann/Myst Lady (I think that different is good, right? *Angst* is good...so long as fluff and obscene amounts of chocolate follow), Kaiya-chan (you didn't have to review, you know...not that I'm complaining, of course, it's always nice to hear compliments from your beta-reader...*winks*), and WindRider-Damia (I hope I don't get flamed! Although, with me being pro-Relena in a mostly anti-Relena zone, I might get flamed later on...thanks for your comments and here's two new chapters in one update!). They made me feel warm and fuzzy and introspective. Which is usually a good thing. (My apologies to any other reviewers; at the time this was written, I only had five. Thank-you!)
Girl-chama brought up an interesting point. I'm hoping this won't take away from whatever you might learn (or be inspired to learn) from this story, but I have never personally been abused, physically, sexually, or verbally. If anything, I'm drawing on far too many casual viewings of Forensic Files on Discovery Channel, my own disgust for rape, and an experience one of my friends had to live through. She was the victim of incest rape (her father sexually abused her several times as a child and as an adolescent), and her family moved as soon as they managed to get him convicted and in jail. For reasons of security, I haven't heard from her in four years and I like to believe she's doing much better. So, while I haven't suffered in that way, I have known several people who have. If any of that made sense...but don't worry. :] Always remember to hope! Hope pays in this story...
I'm hoping to be able to post a new chapter (or two) every Monday, with the possibility of an update on a Friday every so often. Oh! Before I forget…I owe a great deal to Kaiya-chan, who agreed to be my beta-reader even though I forgot to e-mail her about a different story for months. *weepy face* Sorry…
Standard disclaimer applies to this chapter, too. Also distributed to www.FanFiction.net and wherever available on Saturn's ninth ring.
I encourage feedback happily and with picket signs, so please drop a line - rude, insightful, or bizarre - to my fic via the bar below or by e-mailing me at alien_wolf@sailorjupiter.com.