I have to apologize for not posting this sooner. I know that I promised to have this posted last weekend, but I left last Friday for my Spring Break, and found to my surprise and horror that there was no computer where I was staying! But here it is.
This chapter is short. It really didn't seem right to add anything just to make it a longer chapter, so I'll simply promise to make the next chapter longer.
Chapter Seven
"What?" Throttle pulled back and stared at her in confusion. "What'cha mean, Charlie-girl?"
The storm had spent itself, and her legs buckled, leaving her to hang limply in his grasp. She was crying too hard to talk. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed pathetically.
"Charlie. Oh, Charlie-girl." His words were gentle and soft, as soft as the fur on his arms when he picked her up and cradled her against him. She could feel him carrying her somewhere, but couldn't see through the tears.
He sat down. Still holding her in his lap, he reached down and fumbled with her boots, pulling them off. She dimly recognized the feel of her bedspread under one bare foot. Her bedroom. They were in her bedroom.
"Shhh, Charlie-girl. I'm here. I got ya. Shhh."
And he rocked her, like a mother rocks her child after a nightmare, murmuring soft, soothing nothings into her ear and stroking her hair.
Finally, the tears slowed to an end, and she sniffled and buried her face in his chest. Her eyes and nose and head hurt. And her heart. Oh, how her heart ached.
Throttle looked down at the fragile woman shivering in his arms. Her words had not at all been what he'd expected. I can't ever have a baby. Throttle had never told anyone, not even his bros, but the hope of some day marrying the woman he loved, raising a family together in a world filled with peace, had been his most secret desire for as long as he could remember. He had once thought that Carbine would be that woman. But that was over, and his heart had returned to Charlie, where he now realized it had been all along. The possibility that she could never bear children was one he had never even contemplated.
His heart was bleeding.
But he kept these thoughts to himself while his Charlie hiccupped against the last of her tears. Finally, she turned her face away from his chest and sighed, resting her head over his heart. He wondered if she was listening to his heartbeat.
"I got your chest all wet," she sniffled.
"'Sokay. Fur dries. So, do you wanna tell me about it? Might help." What was he supposed to say?
She stared blankly off into space for a few minutes. "Nothing helps. I'm all broken inside. Like Humpty Dumpty."
He didn't know who Humpty Dumpty was, or why he had such a weird name, and right now he didn't much care. "Charlie-girl, talk to me. Please?" When Charlie only continued to stare at something only she could see, he clenched his teeth in frustration. How was he supposed to help if he didn't know what hurt? Well, if she wouldn't tell him, maybe he could see…
It was a tremendous breech of Martian protocol. No Martian was ever supposed to use what they fondly referred to as "mind tricks" on anyone without the other's permission. But right now, Throttle plain just didn't care. In one swift motion, holding Charlie gently but firmly where she couldn't escape, he bent his head and touched both antennae to her forehead.
Charlie gasped and jerked back as she felt the alien intrusion into her mind, but it was too late…
It wasn't hard to find what he was looking for. The source of her pain was playing back before her mind's eye as if on instant replay. Several flashes of a familiar laboratory. Karbunkle. Limburger. Both gloating. Fear. Sharp instruments, gleaming in the bright lab lights. Other Plutarkians and unfamiliar aliens, all wearing lab coats. Sometimes bloody lab coats. Pain. Plutarkian men, leering at her as they unbuckled their pants. Incredible pain. Grief. A prison cell. Cold. The Mouse in the next cell, reaching out. Watching as that same Mouse was left behind. More familiar lab surroundings, this time with Mice wearing the white coats. Sad faces, shaking heads. And all the while, indescribable pain and grief that tightened his throat around the agonized scream building within his chest.
With an oath, Throttle pulled himself out of Charlie's mind and fell back onto the bed, gasping for breath.
"Throttle…"
After a time, he raised his head and stared down at the human woman trapped in his arms.
"Throttle, let… go. I can't… breath." He realized that, caught in her emotions, he had unconsciously tightened his arms around Charlie. He loosened them.
"Sorry."
They lay there in silence, looking at each other. Throttle could see the questions in her eyes. Finally, he sighed and stared up at the ceiling. "You're probably pretty ticked at me."
"What did you do?"
He pricked up his antennae and pointed them at her. "I peeked in your head. Looked at what was hurtin'." He could feel her stiffen, knew that if he looked back, there would be anger on her face. "Damn it, Charlene, I didn't know what else to do! Ya can't expect me ta just go off and leave ya like this!"
"You could have trusted me to tell you when I was ready." Her voice was soft, vibrating with insult. "You could have respected my privacy. I never asked any of the other Mice what had been done to you when you were captured. I trusted that you'd talk when you were ready. You could have let me do the same."
"And when would that've been, huh? Tomorrow? Next week? Five years from now?! Shit."
"So, how much do you know?"
The change of topic surprised him, and he blinked at her. "Huh?" When she tilted her head and continued to wait patiently, he let his head drop back onto the bed again. "Not enough. When I look in your mind like that, without you invitin' me, I just get images. Since you were already thinkin' about it pretty hard, I saw most of your memories from when the Fish-Heads had you. But I'm still kinda confused."
"And you want me to finish out the story for you." Charlie pushed herself up from his chest. The tears had dried on her cheeks, but her green eyes were red and tight and her nose looked the same.
"I know I don't have the right to ask you. But, please, Charlie-girl. Won'cha let me help?"
Outside, in the streets, bikes roared and voices raised in companionship. Charlie rose and crossed to the window to look out. She recognized several of her Fighters. It was clear that they had drunk away the horrors of the day. Well, they'd pay for it tomorrow. Her head hurt –whether from the mind scan or from the crying spree, she couldn't say- and she rested her forehead against the cold of the window glass.
A noise from the bed turned her wandering attention back to the golden-furred Mouse sitting there. He looked odd there. Strange, but no one had ever been up here, in her room, since she had rebuilt the apartment.
Did he have the right to know? He'd already taken so much.
But standing there, watching him as he watched her, Charlie realized something. Throttle looked right, waiting for her on her narrow bed. And like a flashback, a suddenly remembered memory, she realized something else.
It had not been revenge that had kept her going, that year on the moon. It had not been a desire for revenge, or her own pride, or anything similar that had given her the strength to escape the prison camp and return to Earth. To bring together the men and women still uncaptured and form them into her Freedom Fighters.
It had been Throttle.
She had wanted to see Throttle again. She had wanted to see his handsome face, and to show him, in turn, all that she had done to help his people.
If anyone had the right to know what had been done to her, it was he.
Out on the street, the group of bikers sped away. The roars of their bikes dimmed.
"When they had me in the moon camp, the Plutarkian scientists took away my ovaries and womb to play with." Her voice was a whisper against the sudden silence. "I guess human, Mouse, and Plutarkian reproductive systems are pretty similar, but not quite. Anyway, they put something back in there, but it didn't work. Not so surprising."
Throttle rose from his spot on the bed and held out his arms. For the first time since he'd left, she went willingly into them, and twined her own arms around his neck as he picked her up.
"When I escaped and got back here, I'm told I was pretty close to dead. The Mouse technicians here on Earth at that point put me back together, but they just didn't know enough about human physiology. They healed me, saved my life. Almost half the organs in my body are artificial. But they didn't know how to replicate ovaries. They couldn't give me back the eggs the scientists s-stole." She was crying again now. She hated to cry. It made her look weak. She didn't even have enough tears any more to really cry, but could only hiccup and gasp out her words while her eyes stung. "I-I can't ev-ever have a li-litt-tle g-girl. Nothing. Ever."
Throttle closed his eyes in shared pain and rocked her some more. When her dry sobs quieted, he simply held her. "They're comin' up with new stuff all the time now. Between your docs and ours, we've got a bunch of brains workin' at all sorts of stuff." The words were hollow, useless. But he needed to say something.
But Charlie tucked her head into the hollow of his neck and sighed. "Maybe," she whispered. "At this point, it doesn't matter so much. I can't even think about children until we're finished cleaning up Earth. And it's not like I've got a man to make any kids with." Her arms tightened around his neck as she said this.
Throttle tightened his own around her and sighed. A Mouse could dream, couldn't he? This wasn't the time, or the place. But someday…
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