Larxene gets sick three days before Christmas. At first I just think she's being fussy when she doesn't feed properly at five AM that morning, but then I pick her up from Evil Babysitter in the afternoon and the first thing she says is "She's been coughing and wheezing all day. You need to take her to the doctor."
I'm not registered at the doctor's surgery in Hollow Bastion, so I have to take the bus to the next town over. It crawls through the brown slush on the road, wipers scraping against the flurries of snow in the windscreen. The only other people on the bus are an old couple and a school age kid sitting morosely on her own at the back.
"That's a cute baby," the old woman says to me when the bus shudders to a halt at a red light. I smile, but don't say anything. Larxene's breath is laboured, her last milky feed coming up in drips at the corners of her mouth. It's not like the times before when I still lived in the car and she was ill every other week, but my main emotion is still one of concern, just in case. I might stay at home with her tomorrow, especially since I haven't exactly been feeling great myself lately.
I held out on going back to Demyx for a few days, but then I missed him and moreover Larxene missed him, because she kept doing this thing where she'd grab onto my hair and put it in her mouth and then pointedly spit it out. I need to get a hair cut. My hair is a long, half-pink mess that flops into my eyes and gets in the way so much that now at work I tie it back with rubber bands, which are as painful to remove as they are difficult. I wonder how much Demyx spends on his elaborate hairstyle. But anyway, so I went back to the soup kitchen to see him and he got me to help make soup, which turned out to be surprisingly satisfying. I now have reasons to believe that I have broken a world record for the number of carrots I've grated in the space of an hour. He told me all about how Aqua keeps it going from the contibutions of the small army of people living upstairs and the donations she gets from rich people who still come in for soup. Later on I was introduced to Terra, Aqua's partner, a well built man with a face that looked like it was used to fighting, who took one look at me and said "Did you find yourself a boyfriend?" to a suddenly red-faced Demyx. He joked it off and hasn't said anything about it since, but that doesn't mean I'm not hoping.
The bus stops in town, the old couple get off, and a middle aged woman with two loud chilren climb on. One of the children needs to pee so much she whines about it every five seconds, her legs crossed and her hands in the folds of her skirt. The mother is telling off the other child, saying things like "No, you can't have your car until we get home, so stop asking!" This, of course, doesn't make him stop asking. And telling the daughter to shut up and hold it in has the opposite effect. As the puddle of piss spreads out on the floor I glance at the kid in the back: she's got her headphones in and her eyes closed, apparently oblivious to everything. I wonder if I'm going to turn out like that mother, worn down to her last straw, reduced to shouting at children she's supposed to be loving on a bus while one of them wails for a toy and the other cries and cries, urine soaking her tights. I pull Larxene tighter to my chest. God, I hope not.
The next stop is the hospital, so I gladly get out, shouting my thanks to the driver as I escape through the middle door. Immediately I am hit by a barrage of cold wind and icy hail. I push through it to the hospital doors, which creak in protest as I shove them open. Inside the air is warm and clean-smelling. I breathe in deeply, clearing the smell of piss from my lungs and the cold air from my windpipe as I make my way down to A&E.
Hospitals still scare me, but not as much as they used to. So I stay calm as I talk to the receptionist and even casually read a book while I sit next to the sick and injured and infirm during my wait for a doctor. Two and a half hours later Larxene is prescribed lots of rest and fluids with a directive to give her half an ibuprofen if she looks like she's in pain. "Keep an eye on her, though," says the doctor; "Infections like these can easily develop into pneumonia at this time of year. If she feels faint or has a fever, bring her straight back." He gives me a leaflet about pneumonia and other common baby illnesses which has seemingly been designed to scare the living motherhood out of me; he also tells me to take care of my own health, because it's easy for babies to catch things off their parents and vice versa.
The journey home through the darkness is long and dull. When I get in I kick off my shoes and take Larxene down the corridor for a shower, pulling the nozzle off its hook to wash her gently. I let the shower cubicle steam right up until we can hardly see each other, Larxene curled up against my naked chest, chest heaving. "Poor baby," I say, rocking her back and forth. "It's okay, I'll take good care of you. Lots of rest and lots of water. And I'll be with you all day tomorrow just like on Sundays so you don't have to be with Evil Babysitter while you're poorly. I'll wrap you up all warm and snug and clean." Larxene gurgles and dribbles on me. She's normally quite noisy and active, at least when she's awake, but now she moves lethargically, hands resting on her chest with her fingers just twitching every so often. I stroke her soft, pale skin. It's so smooth and clear, unlike mine. The blotches seem to stand out more when she's touching me, and they make me feel sad and isolated and alone. "It doesn't matter if Demyx is gay, does it?" I say morosely, turning the stream of hot water right down to a trickle, just enough to keep things warm. "He wouldn't like somebody like me. He probably just picks guys up all the time. I bet he felt sorry for me." I pull my wet hair out of my face and around one side of my neck, where it sticks to me. "If I had a pair of scissors I'd cut off all the pink," I continue, aimlessly, talking to nobody but myself. "It looks stupid now. It's hardly even pink any more, it's just… I don't even know what this colour is."
I wonder if Larxene, the other Larxene, still has dyed hair. It's probably some other ridiculous colour now, like blue or purple. Her birthday was in December, so she'll be sixteen now too. I can imagine her saying "Finally, I can have sex," and laughing at the irony as she takes another swig from a bottle of vodka. She probably goes to parties now, or maybe I don't want her to have found another friend to take out to the woods, because there was always something about her and me in that place that seemed special. But she wasn't sentimental like I am. She lives for the moment. Anyone would, with a shitty past and shitty prospects like hers. I miss her.
"We should probably get out of the shower," I say. "Look, you're already wrinkly." But Larxene is almost asleep, soothed by the hot steam rising up to the ceiling. I open the door and reach out for the towel, pulling it into the cubicle where I dry Larxene off as much as possible where it's still warm. Then, with her wrapped up warm I brave the cold air beyond the cubicle, smarting as it stings my skin. I am in clothes faster than I thought possible, then since another person comes into the room I take Larxene back to our place to dress her up. I tuck her into bed all warm and cosy, and even though she's sick she looks so comfortable and peaceful that I pull out the camera with its fifteen photos left and change that to fourteen.
"I need to make a call," I say, putting the camera back in its drawer. "You won't cause any trouble here on your own, will you?" I know you're not supposed to leave babies alone, but it'll only be for five minutes, and I'm only going downstairs to the pay phones to tell my manager that I won't be going in tomorrow.
It's already eight thirty. I slot my twenty munny into the phone and dial my manager's home number. She's got kids of her own, so she gets that I need to stay at home for my baby, and although I don't explicitly mention my own general shittiness I manage to sound seriously poorly myself over the phone, for extra sympathy points. I also call the Evil Babyminder, who seems all too happy to not have Larxene for a day. I return to find my baby in exactly the same position that I left her, asleep with her arms up by her shoulders. I climb into bed with her, curling my body around her for extra warmth, and I fall asleep that way even though I haven't had any supper or done any of my chores, my alarm clock turned off and all the insulating things I own piled on top of us to keep us warm.
I wake up because Larxene is poking her finger up my nose. I force myself to sit up, even though my head feels groggy like I'm thinking everything through a smokescreen. Larxene looks pretty worse for wear too. I change her nappy and feed her some milk and some pulverised avocado. Then I pour her a tumbler of water, which I get her to sip at every few minutes. We stay in bed all morning, playing with her cat sometimes, but mostly just resting. It feels nice to take a day off. Grown up, somehow. You have to have responsibilities before you can take a day off and stop worrying about them.
"Things aren't too bad, considering," I say to Larxene while I hold the cup up to her mouth, the warm bed and fluffy snow outside putting me in an optimistic mood. "You're alive, I'm alive. That's better than my mother did. And I have a job and a home. Granted, I only bought half my groceries last week so I could pay rent but, you know. It could be worse."
My baby books tell me that by now Larxene should be practicing to hold a two-handled cup. I don't have a two-handled cup, so instead I let her wrap her fingers around the tumbler while I hold it, her grip firm even if not quite weak enough to hold it herself. I'm trying to save up for a cup for her, but saving up for anything is proving hard work at the moment. Right now there's about nine hundred munny in my savings box, but it also has to pay for my bills and food (I have a separate fund for baby supplies, because that's my third biggest expenditure after rent and childcare), so I'm loathe even to spend eighty munny on a cup. These handleless tumblers will have to do for now.
We are just about to have another nap when somebody knocks on the door. This is weird, because nobody ever visits me; even my post, not that I get any, gets put in a pigeon hole in the lobby. And Demyx doesn't know where I live, except apparently now he does, because there he is, standing in the doorway looking nervous, pleased and concerned all at the same time.
"Woah," he says when he sees me, "No wonder you're at home, Marluxia, you're wobbling."
"Actually, I'm just here because Larxene is sick," I try to explain, but now that Demyx has mentioned it I realise how light headed I feel. I guess because I've been like this for days I didn't really notice the sickness coming on. "I'm fine," I lie anyway, letting Demyx in. "How did you know I lived here?"
"Well, I haven't seen you for a few days, so I thought I'd drop in to see you at the shop. But you weren't there, so I asked the manager for your address and, well, she took some persuading but voila! Here I am." Says Demyx. For someone as lazy as he is, he can be surprisingly enterprising. "Hey, it's freezing in here."
"Cheaper," I say, getting back into bed. Demyx looks in the fridge, asking if I want anything from the kettle. "Should've brought some soup," he says when I admit that I haven't got any tea or coffee, only a bottle of cheap hot chocolate. He sets out two mugs anyway, coming over to the bed while he waits for my ancient, second hand kettle to boil. "There were actually some things I wanted to talk to you about," he says, passing me my cup. "Firstly, Christmas is coming, and I kind of figured you didn't have anyone else to spend it with, so do you wanna come over? Aqua normally does a big thing during the day for all the hobos because she's superwoman, but you can stay the night too if you want. Whenever, really."
"I don't have the money to buy anyone presents or anything," I say doubtfully. It sounds nice, but I was kind of planning for Christmas to be a day at home, sleeping. But Demyx just laughs. "That's okay! Come anyway. I want you to be there. Nobody should spend Christmas on their own." I recall Christmasses of my early childhood, spent sulking upstairs while the other kids played pass the parcel and musical chairs, secretly hoping that someone would notice I was missing from the pack, and come and find me. In my head, they'd sit down on the bed and give me a special present, which was normally a puppy, and tell me that I was the best, most special child in the whole home, and in fact they had just been waiting for a good time to tell me that a wonderful couple wanted to adopt me and just me, and that's when they'd come in and whisk me away from all the horrible children, feeding me a roast Christmas dinner that wasn't boiled to death, giving me tons of presents and tucking me in at night. Of course, this never happened. Later on, I would devise ways of brutally doing away with myself so when they finally came upstairs, drunk and high on Christmas spirit they'd be confronted with a bloody corpse that would scar their Christmasses forever. They weren't ever serious thoughts. I only wanted to do it to upset them, because I was bitter and, just like all children, desperate for attention.
"Okay," I say finally, "Okay, sure." And Demyx grins into his hot chocolate for a moment before continuing cheerfully; "I know I upset you that other week when I asked what kind of stuff you liked, but Aqua and I were talking about you the other day and you should really talk to her about jobs and stuff. I know you're not happy in the shop, and she could probably help you find something better."
"I didn't even finish school," I tell him, yawning. Suddenly I feel too tired to talk. "So that kind of narrows down a lot of options."
"You should still talk to her," Demyx insists. "She knows a lot of people. The other thing I was gonna say is that like, Aqua also said that-" And he breathes in dramatically- "I should offer to look after Larxene for you during the day, until I go back to school. And I thought, it couldn't be too bad, right? And it'll save you a bit of money. So?" He looks at me expectantly. For a moment, I'm not sure how to react, so I yawn. Then I say; "You'd have to learn to change a nappy."
"How hard can it be?" Demyx asks disbelieivngly. I almost laugh, but then I'm too tired, struggling to keep my eyes open.
"Not hard, but not fun either."
I think about how much money I'd save if Demyx took over Larxene duties, just for a week or two. That would probably see me through the winter with the heating up a few extra degrees, or give me the chance to try out some more exciting foods with Larxene. I could open a bank account and try to collect some savings.
"That would actually be a great help," I admit. So that's what happens: Demyx takes care of Larxene while I'm at work until he has to go back to school, and then he does Saturday mornings too (which is probably the best time, because the Evil Babysitter charges a premium for weekends). I go around to the soup kitchen on Christmas day and Demyx gives me a two-handled cup for Larxene and I honestly hate him for it because it's wonderful, and then I sleep in his bed while he migrates to a mattress on the floor. Halfway through the night, Larxene sleeping noisily on my chest (her cold is clearing up, but her breathing is still loud and uneven), I wonder if I could just accidentally roll off the side of the bed and conveniently land next to him on the mattress. Of course it would never work, but I like to pretend that I could have done it, secretly. Then at New Year I tell him the story about how Larxene and I used to go get drunk in the woods because I didn't like parties, and we hand Larxene to Terra, and with our thickest coats on and our teeth still chattering in the cold, he takes me up to the Bastion with a few bottles of beer that end up so cold they sting against my lips.
"It's really easy to get in," Demyx says, ducking under a low beam to slip into the hollow carcass of a castle. "And nobody really cares if you do." We sit down on a patch of snow-less floor. "Sorry this isn't a wood, but it's close enough, right?"
"No, I like it," I say, leaning back against the brickwork and staring upwards at what might be ceiling or just a thick, black sky. Demyx laughs and says "I know, you stare at it every time you walk past." He moves a little closer to me, tugging his sleeves over his gloveless hands.
He says; "We need to keep an eye on the time," and glances at his watch. "I can hardly even make out the hands in this light."
"Does it really matter?" I ask. Normally, I sleep through New Years. At homes they'd wake us up at eleven thirty but it always seemed stupid to me to celebrate the minute when one year became the next. Who even decided when the turn of the year was supposed to be?
"Of course it matters," Demyx says. "It's a fresh start, a chance to start anew. And, you know, an excuse to party. Should've brought my guitar."
"You couldn't play in the cold anyway," I tell him, so I don't have to give my opinions on how stupid "fresh chances" and "starting anew" are. They're great until you realise that all the emotional baggage from your past life came with you, and then no matter how hard you try to live your new life it still just hangs over you like a dark cloud, making everything painful and difficult and isolating. I wonder if Demyx knows how that feels, or if he's just genuinely stupid.
"I guess." We fall into silence, sipping our ice cold beers. Snow cascades through openings in the castle, coating everything with a thin layer of white dust. Demyx clicks his tongue a little and says "Five more minutes."
I wonder if I could just kiss him, right now, just turn around and capture his blue lips in mine. But my chest feels heavy every time I glance at him and imagine the sensation. All of that emotional baggage, ruining my fresh start. I've never kissed someone I wanted to kiss, and suddenly I'm very afraid that Demyx's affections are just his personality and nothing to do with me. Why would he like me, anyway? He could do so much better than a wiry, ratty boy with a baby. So I try not to think about his lips, focusing more on the rim of my bottle, rubbing it against the palm of my hand so it doesn't sting my mouth.
"Two minutes," Demyx says. I glance at him very briefly, not daring to look too long in case he realises how beautiful I think he is.
I say; "What's your New Year's resolution?" Demyx laughs.
"Finish school. Get better at the guitar. Not do drugs."
"Have you had problems with not doing drugs?" This surprises me. Maybe it's because he's so cheerful and lively and open, but I didn't think Demyx would have been that sort of person.
"That was how Aqua picked me up," he says, suddenly sad again, rubbing at his hands. "After my parents, you know, the attack, I just. I mean. You'd go off the rails, wouldn't you? If you suddenly had nothing to bolt you down." I think to myself, it doesn't have to be sudden. "I got in with a bad group. I mean, I never did anything worse than ecstasy, but you know. It screws with you. Thirty seconds. What about you?"
"Not kill Larxene," I say briefly. Demyx giggles, thinking that's a joke. Then I let him count down, and at zero he yells to the whole world, as loud as he can manage: "Happy New Year!" and as if in reply fireworks light up the sky, illuminating the shadows of the Bastion each time they flash and bang.
We stay in the castle until the fireworks stop. Then we trudge home and I collect my baby, and maybe it's stupid and pointless but as I bounce her on my shoulder I whisper very softly; "Happy New Year, Larxene," and she falls asleep on me, warm and content, in reply. And I think to myself as I follow Demyx upstairs to his room, maybe this year will be better; at least, it would be hard for it to be worse.