Intervention
AN: I'm BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK! Yes, folks, the Magpie is in the building! She has returned, and she is hyper! Yay! Anyways, this is another chapter, and the next will soon follow (already in the works). My Exams went okay (some truly aweful results, some not so terrible), and school ends this Friday, so you can expect many updates in the near future. String and Chewing Gum, my other fic, for those of you wondering, will also be updated soon, (probably at the weekend). I should warn you this chapter gets pretty dark. It's not got much of the humour I (attempted) to inject into the others, and it's not very fluffy. I'm sorry, but it had to happen at some point, and I figured Rhade needed to go to a pretty dark place to finally snap out of it. But it'll get better in my next chapter,so enjoy this one, guys, and leave lots of reviews!
Summary: What finally forced Rhade to quit?
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Christieanne-Anna: Wow, that's the shortest comment I've ever had! Four letters! Thanks though... lol!
Miikka: I bite my fingernails too... and I will stop in the near future... I will... here's another chapter, and there'll be another soon, so bite your nails all you want, sit back, and enjoy the ride. :D
Jamieson Z: Hey! Thanks. Hope I manage to get you through your day, hope you enjoy this! There isn't much (if any) humour in this chapter. I had to go pretty dark, Im afraid, just 'cause... I dunno, it's winter, I have a cold, Rhade was talking to me again and he was really, really depressed... but we'll get more humour in the next chapter. This is probably as dark as it's gonna get, so enjoy!
Anzibanonzi: I quite agree, they make a wonderful couple! (And an ironic one at that.... ;) Now if we could get 'DROM's writers to see that, we'd be getting somewhere... Enjoy!
Jenn11: Thank you! My exams are over, and I did okay... thanks for the comments, glad you think Rhade's captured so well! Enjoy this, and keep reviewing!
SomeoneElsesDream: A little while later, but I'm obliging as I can be. Enjoy! Thanks for such a detailed review!
Jade Rhade: Your stratagy seems to be working! Thanks for such a detailed review. I've seen that episode! I saw it waaaay before Rhade was a regular on 'DROM but after I saw him I was like... I've seen him somewhere before! So I was looking up his bio on the ImDB, and there he was! Small world... Well, hope you eventually manage to get Rhade in a box for Christmas... I know he'd be on top of my wish list! And you have fic? -smacks forehead- must go read! I'll do that while you enjoy the next chapter...
L. C. Brotherton: Thank you! I did okay. Hope you enjoy this!
shastalily: Thanks! Keep reading, keep reviewing!
Iara: Thank you! I hope you enjoy this as much.
ANS4Christ: Thank you! Ahh, we can only dream, my friend, we can only dream...but that's what fanfiction is for! I'm updating now, so enjoy!
Donna Lynn: Thanks, here's another chapter!
Oenone: Attacking Rhade is funny! (Or it is to my twisted little mind, but there you go). I specialise in dark humour, so it's cool to find this stuff funny as well as depressing (though it isn't very funny this chapter, it'lll get better later, promise). Enjoy!
prin69: Thanks so much! If I ever actually finish something, and somehow get it published, I'll let you know, promise. I love mush... not much in this chapter, I'm afriad, but it had to happen. Enjoy and keep reviewing!
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I miss you,
Miss you so bad,
I don't forget you,
Oh, it's so sad,
I hope you can hear me,
I remember it clearly,
The day,
You slipped away,
Was the day,
I found it wont be the same.
I've had my wake up,
Wont you wake up,
I keep asking why,
And I can't take it,
I wasn't faking,
It happened,
You passed by.
Avril Lavigne – 'Slipped Away'
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"Beka!"
Damn.
Beka froze in the hallway, cursing her heart for beating faster. How the hell had he realised so quickly?
Well, okay, that was probably a dumb question. He was an alcoholic. He took a swig every thirty seconds or so. Of course it wouldn't take long for him to catch onto the fact that a certain pilot might have snuck into his old quarters while he was taking a shower and taken his travelling spirits supply.
The real question was… well… what the hell did she do now? She had kinda hoped to be on the Maru and away before he'd realised. At least if there was a nice open vacuum between them, he might have sobered up enough not to throttle her by the time he tracked her down.
Unfortunately, there was now less than ten meters of corridor between her and said alcoholic Nietzschean, and it was going to be very difficult to get back to the Maru without being caught.
Things to remember when curing friends of substance dependence, that cool little voice in the back of Beka's head snapped, never come between a Nietzschean and his poison of choice.
"Beka!"
Rhade, barely dressed, hair dripping, erupted out of his quarters looking like the most terrifying thing to come down them since the Magog invasion way back… ages ago.
Beka yelped, and ran.
"What have you done?" Andromeda's voice echoed through the corridors, still managing to sound cool and vaguely smug, despite the slight metallic stutter that accompanied it.
"Nothing!" Beka cried, indignantly, as she leapt down a ladder and bolted blindly down the next corridor.
"Beka, there is an intoxicated, dripping, very, very angry Nietzschean pursuing you through my halls," Andromeda stated, "I find it very difficult to believe that you haven't done something to provoke him."
"And it couldn't just be my… animal magnetism?" Beka suggested, somehow maintaining her flippancy as she tore round a corner and into a machine shop.
Silence, relaying Andromeda's scepticism.
Beka didn't bother pushing her point. Explanations could come later, if she hadn't been decapitated…
Darting under one of Harper's endless old gizmos, left there since long before they had entered the Seefra system, Beka saw the other exit and made for it, hearing an ominous thudding of heavy footsteps coming down the corridors.
"Beka! If you don't get back here…"
"You'll what? Kill me? Gee, that's original," Beka shook her head, muttering to herself as she exited the machine shop and headed for hydroponics. With any luck the plants would provide her with enough cover to out manoeuvre him, then double back on herself and get to the Maru.
His footsteps were getting closer, even as she tumbled into hydroponics and desperately cast about for somewhere to hide. Even drunk Nietzscheans could move faster than humans, it seemed. He appeared in the doorway at almost exactly the same time she dived beneath a particularly overgrown shrub, praying he hadn't caught the movement.
Rhade paused, his head swimming. The sudden movement hadn't been good for him. His stomach turned over and he instinctively bent double, desperately trying to keep his breakfast down. Horrible nausea crashed down upon him in wave after relentless wave. This only ever happened after running when he was making that transitory jump from hyper-reality to vague fuzziness.
He wasn't going to puke. He wasn't going to puke. Not here. Not in front of Beka.
Louisa, Louisa, Louisa... the voices were hissing, spiteful in his ears, you let her die… you let them all die…All their sweet little faces calling you daddy, daddy, daddy…
Bile boiled in his throat, followed by a mouthful of something distinctly unpleasant. He coughed, spat and wretched dryly into a plant, but nothing worse came up.
The world swirled black and gold and bloody scarlet. The last thing he needed was to have his life line taken away from him at a time like this… when they were all so close… when he could hear them in the back of his mind, screaming accusations as he left them to drown in their own blood.
Why had he mentioned his children? Why? Didn't he have enough ghosts flying around his brain already?
"Beka!" He called her again, her voice racketing around the room full of force and fear, "Rebecca! Come out!"
She was here. He could smell her.
"Don't call me that!"
He whirled round, but Beka's voice bounced and travelled and the voices suddenly became a roaring whirl in his head, drowning her out. Rhade hit the floor, forcing his head down onto his knees, desperately struggling to regain control. This was totally, totally insane…
One sip… one sip, that was it. That was all he needed. Just enough… to dull the pain…
"Beka!"
A hand suddenly found his shoulder, the world snapped into startling clarity and he blinked as he felt her standing, suddenly right next to him, "Rhade?"
Without a thought, without a care, Rhade spun round as fast as he could, proving his reflexes had not quite been as damaged as he had once thought them, at least, not when he wanted his drink this badly.
He was up off his knees and had Beka by the throat before she could quite comprehend what was happening, bending her right arm behind her back. "What have you done with it?"
His voice was dripping silent menace, his eyes suddenly cold in a way that Beka had never seen before. Suddenly, with a chill feeling of dread in her stomach, she realised she couldn't see Rhade in there. She couldn't see even a hint of the man she had once known, not even just beneath the surface. Whoever this was she had unleashed, it wasn't the man who had grabbed someone by the throat in the bar for her on a matter of honour a few weeks ago.
Now he had her by the throat.
Time froze. For a few seconds, Rhade could have sworn it simply stopped. He was aware of everything, everything down the most minimal detail, everything about that moment. He could hear it, taste, smell it. There was a fly buzzing two feet away, water dripping from a tank full of lilies, an air filterer humming, chemicals spilling into their atmosphere to purify the oxygen, fluorescent light flickering over head, and Beka, Beka staring at him with an expression he had never once seen on her face before.
Fear.
Shit.
With a start, he dropped her.
Beka hit the floor like a rag doll, coughing, one hand at her throat, instinctively checking for damage, then scrambling to get as far away from his as possible. Her feet and hands found the floor and she was clambering up, stumbling away, feeling nauseous, unsteady, collapsing again a few feat away, shuddering.
Rhade slumped onto his knees where he was, wishing nothing but blackness.
Something hit the side of his skull, sending the world spinning, crashing into something beyond sight, beyond feeling as he blinked, struggled. drew breath, drew stock, attempted to place what had happened into perspective.
The something slipped into his hands; metal, cool, solid beneath his fingers. His flask. His hip flask. She'd thrown it at him.
"Take it then," her voice sounded harsh, fierce, cold in the echoing twilight, "if it means that much to you."
Her eyes, burning topaz, were alight with defiance. The fear had gone, as fast as it had appeared, buried beneath a brick-pile of separate emotions that she need to feel, needed to have, to forget that single frozen moment when he could have hurt her.
Rhade struggled again, felt the air, so full of chemicals, purifiers, acids, alkalis, pressed into his mouth, against the back of his throat suddenly solid in his lungs; he wanted to choke, he wanted to curl up somewhere dark and pretend himself into oblivion.
It hadn't happened… it hadn't… he hadn't hurt her…
Beka was up and walking away, her feat echoing heavily in his head as he continued to breathe, thinking desperately, struggling for clarity, clarity, something close to order. It came to Rhade, suddenly, that he needed to do something. For the first time in… what felt like a life time, he knew in all certainty that something needed to be done, and he needed to, had to, do it.
"Rebecca!" The world lurched alarmingly as he rocked onto his feet, "come back!"
Nothing. She was gone. For a moment she'd been afraid, and he never, never wanted to see that look on her face again, especially not directed at him.
Bastard! Screamed the demons, drunken fool; fool! Pathetic filthy scum-bag! What have you become?! What have you done?!
Darkness roared in the back of his mind, words leaped and blackened and merged and he was struggling to breathe, struggling to think, needed to think had to understand, somehow, someway, had to do something, now, now very quickly, had to make something right, had to fix this…
Daddy, daddy, daddy…
With an inward howl of rage, Rhade hurled his hip flask away from him.
Just enough...
Just enough to silence the demons.