Fear
Friday, August 7, 4:45 A.M.
Brenda knew it was a dream. She'd had nightmares before, had stopped freaking out every time she found herself trapped in the twisted depths of her own mind. She had pills for this sort of thing; one pill a night during the cases that really got to her, and she slept the night through. She'd forgotten to take the pill, and now she was in the midst of a nightmare.
It didn't change how sick she felt, or how she really, really wanted to hurt someone, but it was nice knowing what was going on.
Because Mewtwo was dead in this nightmare. He was dead, he was sprawled on a morgue table where her desk should be, Hades was pulling open his chest with those damn chest spreaders and she couldn't move, damn it!
She was crying, which was weird. She never cried, she was pretty sure she'd forgotten how.
Hades looked up, and smiled in her direction. "Detective Johnson, just in time. Why don't you come over here. I've only just begun."
She didn't think she walked over. It was the dream, of course. In dreams, it was possible to go from the bullpen doorway to beside her desk- which wasn't a desk- without moving. And the bullpen shifted to the morgue, the colors blurring and running together like a still-wet painting left out in the rain.
"What- why?" She reached out, but couldn't actually touch Mewtwo's shoulder. She wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. She knew this was a dream, but it felt real, so far as she could tell. She could smell the blood; feel the solidity of the floor beneath her feet.
And for one terrifying moment, she considered the possibility that it wasn't a dream.
That was the moment Hades wrenched Mewtwo's chest wide open, peeling back fur and skin and muscle and oh, Gods… Brenda had to look away for just a second. It was a dream. And if she threw up in a dream, did that mean she'd throw up for real? And if she did throw up, would she choke on her own vomit and die? Be a pretty pathetic way to go… She reminded herself that this was just a dream, and looked back at the body.
Hades had managed to remove the bony chest plates, crack open the ribs, and extend the Y-cut all the way down to Mewtwo's navel. Some of the organs were flat out missing, she could tell. She'd only watched a real autopsy- four of them- the day before. Real autopsies had layers of fat and odd, jell-o-like tissue that clung and had to be peeled back. None of that was present, fortunately. If it had been, she would've been a bit worried about her mental health.
Not that she wasn't worried now. She was watching her partner being dissected. Sort of.
Hades pulled out Mewtwo's heart- wasn't he supposed to cut a bunch of veins before he could do that?- and weighed it in one hand. "Not bad. A bit big, but he's a bit big himself, wouldn't you agree?" Hades asked, managing to morph into her old high school science teacher. Mr. McCormick smiled politely, and put the heart down. Brenda couldn't help but stare at the organ. It looked like a 3D image of a valentine's heart, not like a real heart.
"You know, Brenda," Mr. McCormick said, in that nasty, nasally voice that always managed to piss her off. "You really should be more careful." He tapped one finger against a lung. "This might happen for real."
"This is just a dream," she told him. "Fucked up, but that's it."
"You'd think with a psychologist for a mother-"
"Adopted mother."
"-you'd have a higher opinion of psychology. Oh, well. Hold out your hands, please? There's not enough room."
Despite herself, Brenda held out her hands. And flinched when Mr. McCormick pulled out Mewtwo's large and small intestines- and then draped them over her arms.
"Ew," she muttered, stomach rolling. She could feel- nasty, nasty- the guts sliding over her arms, heavy and slick and still a little warm, which was warped, they shouldn't be warm…
Something slapped onto the intestines. She automatically put her elbows together to keep it from dropping, looked, and saw a stomach. It looked like an actual stomach, shaped a little like a J, a bit yellow in color. Her gorge struggled to rise, but she swallowed it down. "Wha- what, why do I have this?"
"Do you really need to ask?" Mr. McCormick asked. He put a second organ into her hands. It was vaguely purple, weighed about four pounds or so, and was the size of a football.
She was pretty damn sure she had Mewtwo's liver in her hands, and his stomach in the crook of her arms.
Her own stomach rebelled. She managed to wake up, and somehow made it to the bathroom before she threw up everything she'd eaten. For the past week.
She spent fifteen minutes in the bathroom, most of the time bent over the toilet with dry heaves. She could still feel Mewtwo's guts, and each time she remembered, she retched again. Even when she could bring up nothing but a little sour tasting spit, she kept near the toilet. She needed to calm down.
She needed to check up on Mewtwo. It was way late- or early, whatever- but that didn't matter. She needed to make sure he was alive and in one piece. He lived in the Shades. Anything could have happened.
He was her partner. She had to make sure he was okay. And not gutted.
Brenda heaved over the toilet again, dragging her nails across the linoleum floor. Okay, no thinking about guts. She could do that. And if anyone dared to threaten Mewtwo with gutting, not that anyone could hurt him… She'd kill them. Flat out kill them.
That decided, she got to her feet. Her knees were weak, and she almost fell over. She would have, except she managed to grab the shower curtain before her legs gave out. She sat back down, on the side of the tub, and groaned. Her hands were shaking, her throat burned like a bitch, she had a nasty taste in her mouth… She felt like shit.
Somehow, she managed to get up, brush her teeth, and check herself out in the mirror. She had paled to a shade of taupe normally seen in dead Islanders. Vomit flecked her cheeks and stuck to her hair. In the interests of speed, she turned on the shower and stuck her head into the spray. It was ice cold, but it got her clean. She wrung out her hair and shook her head.
Then she headed out the door. She was going to check on Mewtwo. Barefoot, weak kneed, feeling like someone had used her stomach for a punching bag, she was going to head into the Shades without so much as a pair of brass knuckles.
Maybe everyone was right. Maybe she really was crazy.
Friday, August 7, 4:45 A.M.
Strangely enough, the Shade dwellers left her alone. She wasn't sure why. She looked and felt as weak as a newborn. Shade dwellers were a tough lot, almost like Islanders, only without the Gods to govern their actions. An Islander, for example, would never murder a neighbor for their shoes; they'd murder over an insult, even just a nasty look, and take the shoes as a trophy afterwards…
That was besides the point. Brenda shook her head and kept walking. She was only on the fringes of the Shades, an area where at least half the people had quasi-legal jobs. The other half were either children, or criminals. Deeper into the Shades, though… Mewtwo had to be the only one with an actual job, legalities be damned.
Vomit-stench smeared the air, nearly thick enough to touch. She saw a puddle of piss on a door step, saw a homeless man taking a shit in an alley. And this was the good part of the Shades. Just what the hell had Mewtwo been thinking?
She continued on into the Shades, kept her eyes moving, side to side. Kept her ears open for footsteps, anyone following her. Gods only knew she looked like a target.
Or maybe not. Weak kneed and with a sore stomach, she knew she still moved like an Islander. Predator, not prey. She'd never felt so thankful for nearly seven thousand years of history and pre-history, give or take a couple centuries, of ongoing war in all her life.
Unless these Shade bastards shoved a pole through her stomach, she'd be able to fight them off. And even if they did get her with a pole, she could probably manage to rip the pole out and beat them with it before she died. Something to remember. She was an Islander, damn it, and had the scars to prove it.
She saw a few street toughs, saw them see her. Saw them sneer, but move away. What the fuck?
Heat moved up behind, close enough that she could feel it through her thin shirt. "What's a pretty Island-bitch like you doing down here?" a man hissed. His breath tickled her ear. A knife, cold and dull-edged from use, pressed against the side of her neck.
Brenda jerked her elbow back, swept her bad leg back and around and took her would-be attacker's legs right out from under him. He landed badly, elbow cracking against the cracked cement road. He growled a curse, and glared up at her. He was Islander dark, maybe a little lighter then she was.
"This pretty Island-bitch be visiting kin," she told him, allowing her accent free rein. Damn it, she'd been trying to get rid of it all her life. Still, it made him flinch back a little, though she'd have loved to know why. "This pretty Island-bitch planning ways of killing little Island-whore-son he show his face here again. Scram."
He scrammed. She watched him go for a second, and then went back to scanning her surroundings. At least now she had an idea as to why the Shade dwellers avoided her. Islanders dwelt here, probably here illegally, hiding from the Priests of Justice. Figured.
At least it kept her from being molested. She didn't really want to fight right now.
Friday, August 7, 5:00 A.M.
Brenda had to duck a floating lamp, side step the mini-'fridge, and duck something mechanical Mewtwo had found in the police trash bin. She thought it was a toaster, he was of the opinion that it had been a radio in some former life. Whatever. It was currently floating in mid air, like the vast majority of his possessions.
"You know," she murmured, studying his sleeping, twitching form. "You could always move back in with me. Furniture's all set up and everything. More things to throw about during a nightmare."
Nightmare, night terror… He had them. She knew he had them. She'd offer her sleep pills, except she didn't know just what they'd do to a pokemon. Back when he'd been on her couch, she'd had to stumble out of her bedroom at least once a night to throw a pillow at his head. That's what she sort of remembered, anyways. And it wasn't like it was something you talked about. 'Yeah, you were twitching and groaning in your sleep, and I think you might have said something about 'killing you all', are you alright?' No. Just no.
It figured that she didn't have a choice this time. Not unless she wanted Mewtwo to wake up screaming.
She touched his shoulder, half to wake him up, half to reassure herself that this wasn't a dream, that she wasn't still stuck in a nightmare.
Next thing she knew, she was pinned to the floor, staring up at pissed, glowing blue eyes. A three-fingered hand was clenched around her throat, and she felt claws pricking her skin. Since when did Mewtwo have claws?
"This is new," she growled, and shoved at his chest. "Get off. I can't breathe good."
Mewtwo growled.
Sheryl wasn't a big fan of Freud, with his ego, super ego, and id. Brenda wasn't a big fan of him either, mostly because of the work he'd done with dreams. And while Mewtwo growling didn't make her a Freud convert, she had to admit there was some evidence to the 'three levels of the mind' shit. Because on one level, she wanted to hunt down and kill whatever had pissed off or terrified Mewtwo that badly. On another level, she wanted to rip her partner limb from limb for threatening her. And… Screw it, she just wanted violence.
And Mewtwo was obviously pretty ready for violence too.
Brenda grabbed both his throats, one for each hand. She squeezed, intending to cut off his air.
It didn't work out the way it was supposed to.
One second, she'd been pinned down, uncomfortable but not in any real pain. The next, her left bicep was on fire. She couldn't move for a full three seconds- Mewtwo had just bitten her! Only the sight of blood welling up around his teeth, start to drip down her arm, knocked her out of her shock.
"Gah!" She jerked her knee up between Mewtwo's legs, and bared her teeth as the glow died out from his eyes and he whimpered. Bite her, would he? Fuckwit. "Get off!" She wasn't quite strong enough to throw him away, and his mouth was still attached to her arm, but she was able to shift him slightly. He let go of her throat. As a good will gesture, she let go of his necks, and stopped trying to castrate him with her knee.
And that was when things got weird. Well, weirder.
Mewtwo made a weird noise halfway between a growl and a groan, and buried his face in the crook of Brenda's neck. Then he nuzzled her neck, and flexed one hand- with claws, what the fuck- against her shoulder.
"Are you alright?" he asked, the first sense he'd made since last night.
"I'm bleeding all over your floor and you're crushing me. Move."
Brenda kept glaring, despite the fact that Mewtwo looked like she'd kicked him in the face and told him his computer had died. A harder heart then hers would have melted. Not that he needed to know she wasn't angry. A little anger was going to be useful.
"You," she said, and pointed at his nose. "Have issues. A lot of them. They probably all have long names and are hideously difficult to pronounce."
Mewtwo ducked his head, and tried to subtly swipe at his mouth. Brenda growled and headed for the bathroom. A washcloth, damp, would get the blood out of his fur a lot easier. Then she could convince him to rinse and spit with a glass of water. Once that was all done, her arm would have stopped bleeding and she'd be able to beat him over the head with his own stupidity.
It was a good plan. She liked that plan.
"Hold still," she grumbled, and tilted his face up. Lots of blood, but she managed to get rid of most of it. "Now. Glass of water, rinse your mouth out. Brush your teeth if it makes you feel better."
She was going to hurt her throat if she kept growling the way she was. Damn it, screw beating him over the head with his stupidity, she needed a stick. Bastard kept glancing over at her as if he expected her to shoot at him. With a gun she didn't have.
Yeah, she was insane. Down in the Shades, in a fight with her partner- who had claws! And fangs! And why didn't she know that?- and no gun. Real smart, she was, oh yes. Giving lie to all those stories about Islanders not being able to do anything other then fight and fuck.
Judging by the little jump and wide eyed look of shock Mewtwo had, he'd been reading her mind again. Or she'd been projecting. It didn't really matter much either way. Picking at him for reading her mind on top of the whole fight? She didn't want to bring someone acting like a whipped dog up home for dinner later tonight. Sheryl would kill her.
"You finished yet?" she asked, and gestured at the bed. "Sit."
Mewtwo slunk over and sat. Fucking apartment, so small it felt crowded with just two people. And it was mostly empty!
Brenda examined her bicep, and grimaced. Well, at least she didn't have to worry too much about infection. It was Mewtwo, after all, Mr. Vegetarian and the poster boy for hygiene. Just what sorts of bacteria could play in his mouth?
Never mind, she didn't want to know. She'd put some antiseptic cream on the bite, slap a bandage on. If it got bad, well, that was what Melanie was for.
"I don't know what you freaked at, don't care neither. You try and strangle at me again, I won't play nice no more."
Mewtwo frowned, and tilted his head. Anyone else would have opened their mouth to talk, and stopped. Finally, though, he spoke.
"Detective? Did you know you have a drawl?"
Where was a stick when she needed it most? Bastard. "Yes, I know I've a drawl. It's been said. Now. New rule- no biting me. Anyone else, fair game. Understand?"
Mewtwo nodded, and looked down at his hands. Brenda just stifled a groan. Dinner with her parents couldn't come soon enough.
End Notes
Why no, no one died. And no one mentioned the clones. Surprise! Chapter ten's going to be fun, Davis is BACK! (And Brenda's not happy about it. Or about the shrink apointment either.)