Chapter Title: Confession: David's Arc

Rating: PG-15/R (chapter/story)

Chapter: 12.1/?

Warnings: mentions of child prostitution, mentions of child abuse, mentions of forced slavery, heavy conversation, language maybe?,

Disclaimer: Gackt owns Moon Child. (Doesn't that mean he owns Kei too?)

Pairings: Lindsay/David mentioning

Jaded's fore-words: This chapter was a bitch to write. It took up all my time for the last five days of my break and then it was calling me at two in the morning and texting me in class and just generally being really annoying and whiny and bitchy. I practically fucking doubled my word count on it in less than 24 hours one night though. It jumped from 6,865 words to 12,318. This thing just fucking wrote itself. Eventually it was 14 thousand-and-some words. So I had to split it into separate chapters cuz damn it was long (37 pages in Word).

Yeah so be sure to check the warning up ^ there because things get pretty heavy from here. I really honestly think it's funny how much I like to fuck up my characters' pasts and shit. I have a masochistic addiction to drama as long as it's not my own. …Angst is fun. Don't deny it. So anyway… enjoy learning about David.

Previously *dramatic pause* in Marijuana Mishaps:

"Save you from what?" He asked. David looked up at him and his gaze seemed to have said that he was waiting for that exact moment when something like that would be asked. His eyes locked onto Kei's and he swallowed.

"From being locked in a brothel full of vampire-child sex-slaves run by the gang world," David stated, his expression twisted and appearing as though he'd just been forced to swallow something horribly slimy and disgusting.

Both men's eyes widened impossibly and Sho's jaw dropped so low it almost thudded on the table. Somewhere in the barely registered back of his mind he was increasingly glad he wasn't drinking coffee when David answered, otherwise it would have been sprayed over the table… and it's occupants. Kei could only stare dumbly at David, an expression of shocked horror freezing on his face. Well, Sho looked horrified too, but he was more shocked and …disgusted.

"Wha-Wh-What?" Sho sputtered, almost choking on the word. Kei agreed with him.

"Do you say that because I need to repeat myself or is it because your just dumbfounded and confused?" David questioned monotonously, giving them both a flat look.

They both remained silent, apparently having trouble processing what David had just told them. Sho's jaw kept moving up and down as though he were trying to something, anything. Kei's previous expression had gone from shocked and horrified to building-anger and disgust as the information sunk in.

David inhaled from his cigarette again, noting that it had burned almost halfway when he wasn't looking.

"Oh god," Kei was finally able to whisper. He cleared his throat, pressing his palm to his forehead as his elbow made contact with the tabletop, and then he raised his voice a little louder. "I- I don't even know... how to- What to say to that."

"What the hell?" Sho practically exclaimed, an outraged expression taking over his face. "How the fuck do we not know about this shit? We take down gangs all the time! Branches of the bigger ones! How the fuck did we not fucking hear about that shit?"

"Because it was a secret kept very hush hush and the people who blabbed about it in the open were dealt with, often missing something from their person or found dead afterward," David explained. "Besides, it was taken down almost three years ago. No one's had the balls to start it up again after what happened."

"Three years ago? What happened?" Sho asked slowly, as if he didn't know if he wanted an answer.

David sighed out a breath of smoke and snubbed his cigarette, having finished it off before the rest of it could burn away.

"That is quite the memory," David said and looked at Sho, clasping his hands around his yogurt drink.

"Then it can wait," Kei said before David could even formulate a start to the story in his head. The teen switched his attention to Kei, feeling Sho do the same. "You said you were kidnapped when you were three. They weren't …whoring kids out that young were they?"

"No," David stated and shook his head, fixating his gaze on a discolored section of the wall behind Kei. "No, we were all taken from homes- families, like me from my parents, or picked up off the streets in some cases, at young ages. Later I figured out it was because young kids are impressionable and easy to train and if you get them when they're about three they're potty-trained and the parents already did all the hard work as they were infants.

"But I mean, not all kids were taken when they were young. To our… Sirs, as we started calling the men who basically owned us, we were all valuable, since we were all children of vampiric descent. We healed quicker. We had to be taken care of less. We aged slower. And with a couple restrictive bolts and rules, we were easy to manipulate. Like, we weren't allowed outside without a Sir, and we only went outside to be taken to private residences. So there was no way for us to feed on people outside the brothel. As a rule, we were only to get blood from customers. Or another vampire child, but if, and only if, we got sick since it was discovered early on that it lessened the pain and made you fit for work again, with no trouble caused to the Sirs.

"That way we were forced to work hard or starve. And since we only fed on customers we were also given actual food by how many customers we had. One meant bread for your next three meals. Two was bread and a fruit or vegetable of some sort. The over achievers tried for four or five customers a day so they could get full meals. Sometimes, some of them, the nicer ones, would hide a part of their meals and share them with their roommates. Some of them were caught and received lashes from a cat-o'-nine-tails or a beating from a bamboo rod. That was basically the punishment for everything..."

"That's- That's-" Sho tried to say but kept fumbling for a word.

"Disgusting? Horrible? Sick? Wrong? Immoral?" David supplied with a grimace. He could feel his stomach churn and he kept wondering when the trembling would start.

Kei looked sick.

"When did kids start 'working' then?" 'When did you start having to…?'

"Around five or six. I started when I was five." David's voice was casual, trying to keep the conversation even, but he was visibly impossibly tense. He had to stay tense or his barely noticeable trembles (that had begun with that declaration) would turn into horribly visible shudders.

"So that's when you…?" Sho asked, appearing close to retching, his skin seeming a pale green.

"Yeah," David said, nodding his head. "Before that it was training. Training to behave without question. During training we lived in one house - the one with the older, teenage, kids. Half of our training was waiting on them. We had to take their meals to them, escort their customers around the house, clean up after them… And a load of other bullshit. We basically did everything for them that the Sirs never wanted to do. Fetch their meals if they couldn't move...

"And once training was over, I was sent off to the next house. The house where all the younger kids were. That was where you started out working, getting customers. And there was always a customer there. A lot of fucking sickos really. It never was difficult to get a customer, a meal as everyone referred to them as behind their hands, so there wasn't a lot of waiting around or trying to show off so you could eat, like there was in the other house."

David paused, taking a drink of his warmer tasting yogurt shake. About to put it down he decided to just finish it off and downed the whole thing before standing up to toss it away, trying to keep himself detached, distracted. Sho and Kei were silent, watching him and waiting for him to continue. But when he sat back down he reached for his cigarettes and lit up another one with a deep inhale. He blew out the smoke without a word even waiting on his tongue and Sho finally broke the silence, ever-more impatient than usual.

"What else?" He inquired quietly as if he'd break something with words too loud as he watched David intently.

David took another calming, casual drag from his cigarette, staring at the ceiling across the room.

"What else…." He breathed out, blowing smoke. "Well, when I was around ten-years-old - ten vampiricially, as in that's about the age my body was, not how long I'd been on earth - I'd somehow become a favorite of sorts for customers. Almost every gang member that entered that house was looking for me. The house even got more business because of me. Well, me and another girl that had been recently snatched from the streets. The customers became so demanding that Sirs actually had to deal with them for us. Eventually they realized that they could give us up to the people who'd pay more… and get more money that way instead of selling us off to many customers paying the set price.

"So about half a year later I was transferred to the housing of the older kids to bring it better business, and was the youngest one there. Then a month later the girl was transferred and we were put into a small room together in the attic of the house. That girl was Gabe. She is a whole three months older than me so together we were the youngest members of the house, excluding the newbies that were forced to wait on us. Funny enough, there was a newbie fresh off the streets that was barely older than us that ended up actually being assigned to wait on us. She's Max. I think they did it so that she'd feel pathetic, since we were younger and 'higher ranking.'

"That didn't work so well considering Gabe and I told her to be as scatterbrained and clumsy and untrainable as possible. It wasn't difficult for her. Anyway, we made friends with her and funny enough, even though we were younger, we wanted to protect her. Gabe and I shared an equally intense animosity towards the Sirs and the customers and the whole fucked up house in general. It'd been imprinted in me from the older kids I'd had to wait on and she, well she'd had freedom before being dragged into the house.

"We tried to get out, many times, she more actively trying anything from stealing knives from the kitchen to punching the Sir escorting her to a customer's house in the face. I was more passive aggressive about it, sneaking and attempting to 'accidentally' kill my customers without them noticing and turning the children on the Sirs - like I was trying to create an army of angry toddlers." David chuckled dryly and snubbed out his now gone cigarette. "Nothing we did ever worked. We were always found out or stopped or recaptured and then we were punished. Sometimes it was starvation and god that pain was horrible. Other times it was flogging by cat-o'-nine-tails or bamboo. Sometimes it was even fists and boots. It didn't matter to them. We healed quickly. Bruised ribs today would only be sore the next day. Whip welts would be closed. But only if we got blood. And you know the rule."

"How did you get out?" Kei asked, barely able to force the question passed his clenched teeth. Sho wasn't much better off. He'd taken to attempting to burn holes into the middle of the table using his eyes, not able to take the images starring David flashing through his head.

David gave Kei a calculating stare for a minute before leaning back in his chair with a sigh.

"There were a couple of ways you could get out, but few ever did. You were let go if you were too much work - too much to handle - and there was a lot of disinterest. You could get out by disfiguring yourself some way or another, but that was tricky since it took a high tolerance of pain to do it. One girl did it while I was there. She took a shard from a broken vase and hid it in her room and after lights out she cut herself deeply across her face repeatedly in the same spot until she couldn't heal anymore. Then she passed out and starved through the rest of the night. When she was found she was near death and was immediately given blood by another girl down the hall from her. She healed from it, but the thick jagged scar remained on her face even after she'd properly eaten.

"A week later she was tossed out on the streets."

David grabbed his cigarettes and examined them, as if he were trying to decide if he should really light another. (He was actually thinking about Kei's question, knowing what the vampire really wanted to know and not feeling ready to give the real answer. He'd have to go into detail about it, he just knew it. So he stalled.)

Eventually he flipped the top and pulled one out, but instead of lighting it he slipped it behind his ear before closing the pack again and putting it into his pocket.

"Sometimes kids escaped if they had help from the outside, but that wasn't often. There was a group of vampire-children formed though, that knew about the brothel. Because they'd escaped from it or had been tossed out because of lack of interest, either because nobody wanted them or they were too old and not up to par with the Sirs' standards, or someone was told about it and recruited. They would sometimes be able to slip a kid or two away from the Sirs during escorts. But it only happened once or twice a year, with mixed results. A kid or two would or wouldn't escape.

"Once though, one of the members was caught and brought back. The Sirs were all kinds of happy about that, whooping and laughing and jeering about it. I never got a look at the guy but I heard him screaming every night for three days. After that he died. And I'm positive that if he hadn't he would have had to work in the house again. Which brings us to the only other means of escape. Death. In the beginning, apparently a large group kids were able to kill themselves and since then it was pretty improbable that you could get ahold of anything that could be used to commit suicide.

"One guy chewed through both of his wrists though and died while I was there. One of the kids that had been waiting on him found him. I remember he cried for a whole day, terrified of what he'd seen."

"If there were all these kids escaping and out and shit, how come the police weren't told or-" Sho said and David interrupted him with a wave of his hand.

"Threats. Very real threats. And anyone who told the police was killed and then the police were payed off to not look into the claim," he explained.

"How-" Kei started but was interrupted by David.

"-Did I escape?"

He plucked his cigarette from behind his ear and rolled it around between his fingers for a moment. Then the filter was between his lips and he snatched up Kei's lighter again, flicking it open and ratcheting the wheel with a violent sweep of his thumb. Flame burst into life and was immediately placed at the end of the cig. He inhaled shakily and flipped the lighter closed with a jerk of his wrist, extinguishing the flame. He tossed it onto the table with a clatter and brought his shaking hand up to remove the cigarette from his mouth with a smoky exhale.

"I didn't," he whispered, bringing the cigarette back to his lips. Then he tapped the ashes off the end and into the ashtray, blowing out smoke again. "I was rescued. We all were. Remember that group I mentioned? Well, they were lead by smart people that weren't afraid of the gangs' threats. They never got caught because they were smart. They covered their trails. They removed their scents with ammonia and bleach, knowing that dogs or the kids would be used to pick them up. They hid themselves well, and planned extensively."

David paused, taking another drag before returning to what he was saying.

"They- They were pissed off. They were disgusted. They were sad. They wanted to bring everything down. They were underestimated and they used it. And they were ruthless when they brought the flames of hell to the brothels. …And that's what happened, Sho. They burned everything."

"Even the kids inside?" Sho burst out with a horrified look on his face, about ready to fly out his seat.

"No," David whispered and finished his cigarette. "No, they got us all out… It's actually how I met Lindsay."

Jaded's after-words: Short chapter... but anyway. I seriously hearts David hardcore and stuff *squishes him* but really, I enjoyed writing about his fucked up past.

The chapters in this arc should be flying out quickly and I expect my beloveds (SATCHI and SOUBI)(there, I CAPed them since ff . net won't let me underline them) to review each one. Next chapter is a flashback.

Bai for nowz. :)