A/N: Finally caught my muse again. She is now being held in a maximum security cell under my bed. Hopefully she will learn not to repeat this through electroshock therapy. Well. Onward!
Disclaimer: Did you really think that I'd let you read without going through this nonsense first? For those of you reading this, there IS Drug USE in this chapter. I don't think it's horribly explicit, but then again I have been proven wrong before. And more warnings for Rikku acting pathetic. I also know next to nothing about concussions, fractures ribs, and injected drugs. All information here is purely made up. Oh, I also don't own anything. The idea for shooting up Cactaur fluids came from a story titled Son of Sin. It's very good. Also, if you object to reading shower scenes or descriptions of ladies underwear, leave now. Thank you and have a nice day.
A/N2: Thanks a million to who ever pointed out… something in the last chapter that was wonky between Auron and Yuna. Now that it's been pointed out, it shall be dealt with accordingly. And thanks to Biv and Ann, who I luff dearly. Again, many apologies for the massive ass draggage. I have a lot of new stuff to work with, so keep your eyes peeled.
000
Sunlight filtering through her eyelids tugs the sleeping teenager from the sweet kingdom of sleep with all the gentleness of a rhinoceros. Shit. She flails around in an attempt to disentangle her head from under the covers. Bad idea. She sits up slowly, resting cold hands against her head. She blinks slowly, eyes crossing and uncrossing before the room comes into some semblance of focus before staring around her new surroundings. They were… bleak to say the least. Four white walls, the monotony broken up only by a curtain less window, an unused desk, and a grey metal filing cabinet. Stark would be an understatement. She sits up, ignoring the flashes of pain traveling along her temples and sides. Maybe the whole, if you ignore something it will go away approach would work. Somehow she wasn't so sure about that. Well, one way or another, if she didn't find some sort of magic cure all ouches soon, she would be shit on tonight.
She swings her legs over the side of the bed and stands, biting down on her lip to keep from whimpering. "Come on, girl! There's only eight measly feet separating you from the door. Please don't wimp out on me…" She hisses to herself, trying to get some cooperation from her less than responsive feet. Her golden brows knot with concentration, and she manages a step. Then another one. After a few minutes of intensive labor, she makes it to the door when a tsunami of nausea hits her, knees giving out like overcooked spaghetti. The door begins opening, and she rolls off to the side, sides shrieking with agony. The last of her strength gives out and she dry heaves, arms crossed pitifully across her stomach, as though she can hold the tumultuous organ in place. Through eyes blurred by tears she manages to make out a pair of rather scuffed boots that she's retching air onto. If I had eaten anything last night, this would have been really freaking gross. But she hadn't eaten, she never ate right before a big dose, because those induced vomiting anyway.
Eventually the heaves lessen in intensity, leaving her gasping for air like a beached fish, and looks around the room, finding the sunlight filtering through the glass to be the crisp yellow light of noon. Christ, it had almost been two days. She'd break soon. She shivers, fear and anticipation warring for control of her emotions.
Auron looks down at the blond girl vomiting air onto his boots. He shakes his head and sets the three small bags down inside the door frame. He wasn't at all a sympathetic person by nature, or even circumstance, assuming he could help it, but there is something distinctly heart wrenching about the teenager's dry heaves. Knees only protesting slightly, he squats in front of the young woman, pulling a green and brown flask from his belt, and passes it to her. It wasn't that he pitied her, he reassures himself. He wasn't the type to offer pity, and she would get angry if he showed any, but he can almost feel a sense of camaraderie with her. He was no stranger to painful illnesses which forced you to spend weeks at a time lying in a bed or relatively flat surface as you vomit regularly for all of those weeks, spewing blood and air when there's not even any acid left in your guts. His good eye, the one left whole after a run in with several long pieces of shrapnel glares at the girl. "Drink it."
She obeys, struggling with the weight of the vessel. He was a man, an older and stronger one at that. Years of training has made obedience almost an integrated part of who she is. Almost. But she obeys, twisting the fat cork out of the mouth, and taking a shallow sip, should the contents prove to be vile tasting. Cool water laced with mint and lavender flows down her throat, healing as it sooths her strained throat and belly. She replaces the cork, strength flowing back into her gradually, and wipes her mouth. "Thank you sir."
The older man accepts his jug back and sticks it onto his belt. He stands, knees creaking with protest and nods at the small heap of belongings. "Your cousin brought these over this morning. Rather, this afternoon. Shower's right across the hall."
Her eyes are glued to the back of his coat as he makes his way down to the closet, and pulls the thick crimson fabric off, revealing sinew and muscle squirming beneath unblemished skin the color of caramel. Had the temperature just spiked? She runs her fingers through her disgusting hair, realizing with a blush that she's staring. Like I want to eat him or something. She shakes her head at her stupidity and picks up one of the bags Yunie had packed for her. How much of a nymphomaniac was she, if after being fucked by grey haired strangers, she could feel turned on by her cousin's godfather?
She grabs one of the bags, not even bothering to check the contents. Why bother spreading what little crap she had all over the place when she was leaving today? Rikku staggers across the hall and into the well lit bathroom, leaning against the door to make it shut, fingers scrambling on the locking mechanism. She slides slowly to the floor, over active imagination supplying, what she considered, an appropriate 'plop' sound as her bum hits the cold tiles. She leans back, tilting her head against the painted wood, staring dreamily at the light fixtures. She shakes her head agin, clutching at her temples. Damn it, she needs to stop that. "Oh-kay." She stands slowly, leaning against the door frame for support, trying to combat the nearly overwhelming vertigo that temporarily darkens her sight. A glance into the mirror reveals a less than pretty picture: black eye, split eyebrow, bitten lip, bruise marks darkening her hairline and throat. Sweet gods, I look like Mrs. Frankenstein. She grimaces and tugs off the faded tee shirt and sweatpants that the hospital had given her. Her working clothes had been tossed, shirt and skirt blood stained, and then surgically cut off by well meaning paramedics. After fumbling around with the dial on the shower, she steps under the spray, forcing her eyes away from the rest of her body. She didn't even want to know what the rest of her looked like.
The shampoo smells nice as she rubs the gel between her hands and then works it into her hair. Soapy and antiseptic, but tinged with ginger and nutmeg smells. A warm feeling, comforting even as it stings her scalp and back. She just stands there for a little while, letting the pounding water wash the remaining blood and dirt away, browny red liquid gurgling down the drain, as spray drips off her eye lashes, and dribbles down her sides.
Eventually she cuts the flow of water off, shivering slightly, and wrings her hair out over the tub, determined to make as little mess as possible while she's living here. She spies a stack of clean white towels and wraps one around herself, securing it under her armpits, before rifling through her bag, pulling out deodorant, tooth brush, and a comb. She rechecks the knot in her towel, before setting herself to the task of smoothing out the yellow rat's nest on the top of her head.
Unable to find a hair tie, she just leaves her now limp, though completely untangled hair dribbling droplets in between her shoulder blades, and pulls on a clean pair of white cotton underwear and a camisole with a yellow duck pattern. She smoothes the wrinkled cotton over her stomach affectionately. The shirt, or technically undershirt, had been a Christmas present from her 'mother' Lulu. Apparently, the shirt had originally been sold with a matching thong, but none of the women, least of all Rikku, would wear a thong outside of work. She personally didn't wear a thong while she was working. Anal floss was simply too… garish for the types of customers who usually paid for her, apparently she catered to those who liked very young looking girls in Hello Kitty panties. Perverts. She then tugs on a pair of forest green sweat pants, her own this time, and is about to unlock the door and leave when something feather light thumps against her leg inside the pant's pockets.
Her inquisitive fingers brush against a tiny paper package, and she pulls the stamp sized envelope out, flicking it open with a well bitten finger nail. Nearly one hundred glittery needles meet her eyes, widened with shock. A clandestine supply of Cactaur needles, the drug keeping her hooked, literally and figuratively, to her pimp.
Rikku stares dumbly at the small sharps for a long time, common sense writhing against the pull of the addiction, the remnants of the toxic twisting her brain around, begging for more. She hates this, loathes the constant wheedling of another thing in her brain, attempting to dictate her actions. She clamps her eyes shut, a final attempt to see no evil, before completely and totally surrendering to chemistry's needs. Resistance is futile, right? She blindly pulls out a needle, the packet fluttering onto the tiles, and makes a fist, stretching her arm out in front of her, before stabbing the piece of organic metal into her arm. The motion is so rote by now that she doesn't even need to look for a vein, and the pinch of the metalloid entering flesh doesn't even register along her relaxed nerves. The tidal wave of nausea sure as hell does though, and she leans over the toilet, puking up the water her benefactor had given her a short while ago. She feels irrationally guilty, but her brain fogs up, drowning her in artificial delirium. That was the great thing about shooting up Cactaur, you lost complete control of your thoughts, but your body could still function fairly normally, assuming that you overlooked the fact that each injection shaved a handful of hours off you life.
The drugged girl lets out a heady giggle, before crumpling boneless onto the once cleaned tiles, curling up on her side as her brain begins methodically shutting down.
000
Auron ignores tingling feeling of someone staring at him, and heaves a silent sigh of relief as the bathroom door shuts. That had been awkward, and he briefly wonders how the hell he's going to get through the next couple of days sharing his apartment with a teenager hooker. Not that he wanted a friend of his rediscovered god daughter's to be a hooker, but hell. Thinking circles was only going to make him more tired. So he switches to something productive: the making to breakfast.
It wasn't that he was a bad cook, what he could cook always was, in his opinion, eatable. In fact, as long as you ignore the fact that he can only cook a handful of different things – he was pretty good. But his options for breakfast, or even lunch, were fairly limited if one didn't want something from a can heated – either sandwiches or French toast.
After a brief excursion into his refrigerator, he discovers that someone, probably his blond adopted son, had finished off both the mayonnaise, cold cuts, and just about every other sandwich-y thing, except the bread. That left him with exactly one option: French toast. He settles into the familiar rhythm easily, beating the eggs and milk into the dip, adding a rather large dash of cinnamon and ginger, before beginning the meditative exercise of frying the dipped bread until it turns golden brown, slightly burnt along the edges. He flips the finished piece of toast onto a plate, and sets it into the oven to keep warm, and lets the peace of cooking breakfast alone on a Sunday afternoon massage his conscious. The silence tempered by the sound of water running in the apartment causes him to raise an eyebrow, a clumsy motion on him, but one he had forced himself to master by sheer force of will. Some mornings it was the only proof he had that the muscles on the right side of his face were still mobile. But the water does shut off fairly promptly, the fading sound echoing slightly in the apartment, a change from the typically all encompassing silence that rings in his ears. He shrugs it off casually, and pulls the stack of morning papers on the counter a little closer to him.
Thirty minutes, three articles, and two cups of coffee later, Auron makes an official decision that his guest was simply taking far too long in his bathroom. Under no condition should it take thirty minutes to dress and tie your hair back, he could manage it in five. He knocks loudly. No response. He knocks again, the wood vibrating with the force, the rapping echoing through the apartment. This time he waits until the count of ten before setting his shoulder to the door and giving it a good shove. The shoddy lock gives way meekly, revealing an empty eyed girl giggling to herself in between sporadic spasms of dry heaving.
Auron's years of military training kick in along with the adrenaline, trampling down the carefully cultivated civilian mindset he had spent years trying to build and maintain. Analyze the situation. Unfocused eyes, delirium, catatonic, dry vomiting. Drug overdose. He begins searching the bathroom carefully, blocking out the breathy giggles , and spots the paper pack on the ground. He carries it over to the sink, opening the seal, hard face contorting with disgust. He had seen these drugs before during the war, used both as a relaxant, pain reliever, and date rape drug. He pulls a random needle out carefully, snapping it over the basin with one fluid motion, and holding the freshly broken end up to the light.
The light from the ceiling filters through the blackish green toxin on the tip, and he curses vividly. Either someone doesn't like his new charge very much, or her dealer is a cheap piece of shit. Why else would a teenage girl be shooting up with a fragment of a King Cactaur needle? He had come across the scamming process a couple times before. King Cactaurs were, of course, much harder to kill than the normal fiends, but they brought in much more profit, much more quickly. A single King Cactaur needle could be cut to mimic regular Cactaur needles, easily making the dealer one thousand times what he might make in a week from a single kill. Jecht had experienced the same god damned thing during a mission.
He flushes the package down the toilet, before scooping the corpse like girl up in his arms and carrying her into his room, where all the medicines were kept. He sets her down on top of his bed, and pulls a small padlocked chest out from a hidden recess in his closet. It's the work of a minute to lose the locks, and he pulls out a vial of electric blue fluid and a flask of the same herbal tincture that he carried with him at all times. The seal on the blue liquid pops off with a smooth twist, and he sniffs it carefully, fetid medications could be more fatal than any OD, but the tangy scent of lemon and kiwi reassures him of the cure's potency. He holds the girl up, slipping the opening of the container between blue lips, and tilts it, letting the medicine trickle slowly into her belly, giving her time to swallow. The elixir is followed by a long draught of the herbal water, diluting the potent drug, making it easier to stay down. The blonde girl relaxes, eyes sliding shut, as she falls into a healing sleep.
The older man stares down at the Al Bhed and wonders exactly when did life get so complicated?