Saiyuki Reincarnation Fic
Jul. 27th, 2005 12:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
new_kateOkay. Written, being edited, time to start posting.
Title: The Wheel
Author: Newkate
Fandom: Saiyuki
Rating: R for language, blood and violence to NC-17 for m/m smut later
General notes and warnings: Reincarnation fic. There shall be implied het, impied and explicit m/m, multiple pairings, 1st person POV. Completed. In four parts.
Many thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hibem for awesome beta and invaluable moral support, chaosd and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
runefallstar for all the help and advice *glomps*
Part one: Shift
1949
It was a textbook operation, nice and straightforward. The patient was young and strong, and pretty lucky – the knife went into abdominal cavity, missed the liver and kidney, didn’t damage any major vessels. I finished my work, left it to the nurses to close him up and went outside for a cigarette.
The girl was still there, on the same bench, huddled up in a ball, dark hair spilled like a cape over her hunched shoulders, knees pressed together against the cold of the night. Huge terrified eyes were seeking mine, and after a first drag I relented and told her:
“He’ll live.”
Her eyes closed for a second, and then she uncurled, smiled, stretched, unnecessarily thrusting her chest out, pushed the hair back and pulled her own pack out of her purse.
“Good. Thanks.”
We smoked in silence. My eyes wondered between lit hospital windows, shadows on the wall, my cigarette, her naked knees. Lack of sleep multiplied by tea and nicotine buzz was giving me the usual trouble – every time I dared to close my eyes the only thing I could see were loops and loops of savaged small intestine, my gloved hands moving over them, revising the damage, making stitches. It took that little shit only a second to plunge the knife in his own gut, and I’ve spent last five hours cleaning up the mess. Tedious, pointless effort. He was as good as dead anyway.
“That filth is talking out of his ass,” said the girl abruptly. “Haim didn’t kill anybody.”
“That filth has a name.”
“Do I give a fuck?”
“He’s my cousin, so you better.”
“Right, of course, same surname. Nice. Congratulations. Anyway, Detective Kouznetsov is talking out of his ass. Haim spent the whole day at home, with me. Since… When were they killed, Alexander?” she asked, oh so very matter-of-factly.
Ever since I was made the Head of Surgery I was getting an impression that every single person in this one-horse town, including the ones I’ve never met, knew my full name, but most at least had enough sense to show proper decorum.
“Between nine and ten, and that’s Doctor Kouznetsov to you,” I said, deciding to play along until she gets too annoying, even though I could already tell she’d never be able to pull off this ruse.
“Great, so I came back from the factory at quarter past six and went straight to his room. He didn’t leave my sight – well, I obviously went out to call the ambulance, but he was already – you know,” she shivered and lit up another cigarette. The ground around her high-heeled shoes was littered with crushed, lipstick-stained dogends.
“Can anyone corroborate your words? And by this I obviously mean: can anyone call you on that?”
“No, no!” she exclaimed, getting excited. “There are just two families in the whole flat, me and dad in one room, Haim and Sarah in the other. Sarah is still in the loony bin, and dad was passed out drunk...”
“At quarter past six?”
“Yeah, his shift ends at five. I’m telling you, nobody saw or heard anything.”
“What were you doing in his room all that time?” I asked, getting into it a little.
“I don’t suppose anyone will believe me if I say we played cards for seven hours. So yeah, we were fucking.”
“Charming,” I said, cringing slightly. I really wasn’t used to this sort of woman. “How far are you willing to take this?”
“All the way.”
“Give a signed statement for the Militia, testify in court, in front of everybody?”
“Sure,” she said, firmly enough to hold my attention for a little bit longer. “Don’t see why not.”
“Hm. Describe how he looks naked.”
“Um,” she paused, confirming my suspicions. I’ve only met Haim several times before, while I was treating his sister, but he never really struck me as someone to go for a slut from the soap factory with a drunk for a father. “Oh! He’s definitely circumcised! His parents were like that. They called him Haim, for fuck’s sake! Stubborn idiots.”
“I don’t think it was this bad twenty years ago.”
“Haim says it was like this since Ancient Egypt. Hey, you saw him naked! Just now, when you operated, you saw and you can tell me…”
“Oh, this is frigging ridiculous. Moving on, if you were having intimate relations all that time, why was he suddenly overcome with an urge to kill himself?”
“Because of Sarah? He forgot for a while, and then remembered and… Oh maybe, maybe… What if I did it? We were screwing, and had an argument, so I went to the kitchen, grabbed the knife, and – and stabbed him. And then, full of regret, called the ambulance!”
“Have you lost your mind? That’s…”
“No, no, that’s fine! He’s alive, so they won’t prosecute unless he presses charges. My dad once…”
“I really don’t want to know.”
“So, what do you think? Will your cousin buy it?”
“Not a chance.”
“What if I make it worth his while?” she smiled like a shark on a picture from a children’s book, leaning closer, and I could almost catch the scent of her body through the smoke from our cigarettes and strong, overpowering smell of cheap soap that clung to her hair.
I let my glance slide over her full painted lips, smooth long neck, the soft shadow between her breasts, exposed by outrageous cleavage. She was stunning, really, with that raw, unrefined beauty of a wild animal. Graceful, feral, lithe and strong, bold features, almond-shaped dark eyes. Mixed blood, probably, Georgian or Armenian. And that mouth, too wide for her face, but all the more tempting somehow…
“What’s your name?”
“Marina,” she said, grinning.
It sounded like soft waves crashing to the shore, foam splattering around, salt on your tongue, sun hot on your skin. Marina, “of the sea”. For some reason, proletarians loved giving their daughters those stupid pretentious names: Angelica, Victoria, Marina.
“Marina, you’re a slut and an idiot. Forget all this nonsense, it’s not a game. There is nothing you can do. Go home.”
She pulled away from me, pouting, and I left her there and went back inside. I still needed to get at least two hours of sleep to make sure my hands would stay steady through the next day.
Two hours curled up on a short sofa in the staff room flew by like one second. I washed up at the sink in the operating room, had tea and a cigarette for breakfast, joined the rest of the doctors for the morning rounds and decided to check up on the monkey before my next planned operation.
Calling home always was a horrible chore.
“Hello, can I…”
“Doctor, doctor, is that you? I have the most terrible pain in my back, on the right…”
“Yeah, sure. Can I talk to Sophia?”
“You really shouldn’t leave this girl unattended so much. I’m certain she’s about to fall in with a wrong crowd. Fourteen is a sensitive age, you know.”
“Can I talk to…”
“It’s not right for her to grow up without a woman’s care. I know this lovely lady, a widow…”
“Shut up, you hag. You’re my neighbour, not my mother, so learn to respect my fucking privacy, will you? Get me Sophia, now.”
Horrified gasp – as if I’d never given her this kind of treatment before, - scuffle, screams, and finally my girl’s voice breathing into my ear:
“Daaaad? Good morning, Dad!”
Shit. Monkey. I dragged on a cigarette to calm myself down. She had some kind of weird unsettling effect on me.
“Morning. Slept all right?”
“I’m not a kid, I’m not afraid of the dark any more, Dad.”
“Why the fuck aren’t you at school yet?”
“I don’t have to leave for another ten minutes. You know it. Daaad, are you coming home tonight?”
“I should hope so. Hey…”
It’s been years, and I still didn’t really know how to talk to her. When was this supposed to get easier?
“…do you have enough food?”
Yes, that was a good one. Practical question. Puberty did something to her appetite, and although food was no longer a luxury, if she ran out unexpectedly she’d start stealing from the neighbours, and I’d never hear the end of it.
“Yeah, I think so. Although those noodles you cooked are yucky. So soggy!”
“Well, if you want to get anything, money and rations cards are in the…”
“I know, Dad,” I could almost hear her rolling her eyes.
“Don’t be late for school. And behave. And go straight home after classes, no loitering.”
“Sure, Dad. I’ll see you later.”
She just hung up, easy as anything, and I was still standing in the reception clutching the handset, clinging to the sound of her happy, chirpy voice. Nothing about her ever went as planned. This was not at all what I expected the parenthood to be.
I had an ulcer and a gallstone case that day, and afterwards I had to do time till six in the evening, so I came back to that three-fourths empty recovery room to check on my only critical patient.
Haim was sound asleep. His vital signs were great, he even looked good: no longer waxen, breathing deep and easy. Eyelids still looked a bit too thin, but none of that skeletal sunken eyes appearance. Well on the way to recovery, whatever that might bring for him.
I plopped down on a free bed, planning to rest my back and my eyes a little, and only realised that I had fallen asleep again when I was disturbed by familiar, cheerful voice:
“Hi!”
Here she was, in the middle of sunlit recovery room: long limbs, wide grin, hair a usual mess, all of her surrounded by a halo of shimmering light, as seen through my eyelashes. Looking curious, fake-coy, wriggling her sandaled toes, hands primly behind her back. Girly girl, an act of god, a golden lightning. The skirt was getting too short, she needed a new dress, she was growing up so fast…
“My name’s Sophia. What’s yours?”
“Haim,” said the man on the other bed. His big, wetly glistening brown eyes searched the room in anxious confusion; his unsteady hand snaked under the covers to probe at his stomach and came back up damp and red. He let out a strangled moan, looking at his stained, shaking fingers in utter horror, as if he had never seen a little blood on skin before.
“Your bandages need changing,” she said. “What kind of operation did you have?”
He just breathed, noisily and fast, and stared at her with glassy, far away eyes.
“Are you in pain? Is something wrong? Daaaad, Dad, wake up! Something is…”
“Shut up, monkey,” I said, sitting up. “What the hell are you doing here, anyway? I told you to go home after classes.”
“I brought you lunch! Meat pastries! The woman who sells them gave me her word of honour that they aren’t made from cats,” she waved a newspaper-wrapped bundle around. “This man…”
“He’s fine. And you are leaving. This is a hospital, not a frigging playground. How do you keep getting past security anyway? I told the reception to stop letting you through.”
“Oh,” she shrugged. “I met this really cool girl outside, she taught me how to open the kitchen lock.”
Sometimes I was sure corporal punishment was the only way to go with child-rearing, because nothing else seemed to make any impression. Sadly, she was far too old now to get smacked with a rolled-up newspaper.
“That’s breaking and entering, you do realise?”
“So? I’ve missed you.”
I gritted my teeth in helpless frustration. She looked up at me with that sweet, sweet, disarming little smile of hers, her cat-yellow eyes twinkling and wild, daring me to lose it and get dragged into a demeaning, stupid squabble.
“You think she’s cool, huh? Come here,” I grabbed her and sniffed her hair and fingers. “You didn’t bum a cigarette off her, did you, monkey?”
“No, Dad, honestly, I didn’t. Oh, she says you’re a damn hot piece of ass. Does it mean…”
“Out!”
I waited at the window until she left the building and waved at me from the pavement. Marina was still there, on the same bench, chewing on the unlit cigarette, weaving a chain of dandelions plucked from our neglected flower bed. She grinned at me, and I pretended not to notice.
Haim calmed down somewhat. He pushed the covers down, examined his bloody bandages, wiped his hand clean on the dry parts of the gauze.
“Hello, Doctor Kouznetsov. I… I don’t remember much. Can you tell me what happened?” he asked, in a voice much more quiet and tight than weakness or pain from his wounds warranted.
“Good job. Keep pushing the amnesia angle, it might buy you some time,” I said and was rewarded by the dark flash in his eyes.
“Ah, I see, so you know,” he breathed, dropping his head back on the pillow. “You already know what I did. Strange. I expected stricter security.”
“You’re not arrested yet.”
“Why not?”
I pulled up a chair, checked his IV line, gathered the supplies and removed his bandages. He tensed under my hands, held still as I cleaned the wound and redressed it, kept quiet, waiting for my answer. I didn’t think I had to explain, really. It was obvious.
“Because I don’t want you to be. This is a bad time for it. All the angry mob needs right now is a case like that, to prove that your people are not just secretly plotting world domination, but also are dangerous, violent animals. I’m not saying it’ll cause the second Crystal Night, but there will be blood, and I’ll be the one to patch up the wounded, and god knows I don’t need any extra work. Got it?”
He laughed, cried out in pain when his severed muscles protested, still laughed some more and looked at me, bewildered and amused:
“That’s ridiculous. You know who these men were, can you imagine what happens if… You have a family, a daughter, you can’t be so careless.”
I raised an eyebrow as a way of stating my opinion on that.
“You’re right, of course. You’re right,” he started to shake, and I adjusted the drip to increase his painkillers. “But – I didn’t plan to be saved, you know. I was hoping that my death would settle the score, would be enough of a payment for the blood I’ve spilled.”
“As if.”
“Yes. I don’t suppose our lives are worth that much. But I had to make them pay for what they did. I had to.”
“So, do you feel better now?”
He smiled a little, acknowledging the joke:
“No, of course not. But you know, I still believe Sarah might. If she ever comes out of it enough to understand.”
“…And finds out that her brother is dead and she’s branded for life as a relative of a convicted criminal. Yes, that’ll perk her right up.”
The whole thing just went to show once again that one should never underestimate the people’s stupidity. When I first met Haim a couple of weeks ago, I actually thought he had some brains. He made that kind of impression.
His sister Sarah, his only living family member, was found in a dark corner of the town park by the routine Militia night patrol. If not for the dog they had with them, they would have never noticed the naked and bleeding girl curled up silent and motionless on the grass. To my knowledge, she still hasn’t said a word since.
Her brother called the hospital that same night, looking for her, and when the description matched, he arrived just in time to catch Constantine who was here taking my statement. Unlike a lot of victims and relatives, Haim didn’t waste any time or breath on being incredulous or hysterical, or ordering me and Constantine to really do our jobs this time, none of that usual half-assed slacking. He listened without interrupting as I described Sarah’s injuries and made my prognosis, nodded and thanked me in perfectly polite and controlled voice.
“I would like to help out with the investigation, Detective,” he told Constantine. “I know you are very busy and doubtlessly have many more important cases, so please count on me for any task you can delegate.”
Three days later he put on my cousin’s desk several sheets of paper covered in his neat handwriting. He managed to find some witnesses who saw the assailants pulling Sarah into the car. He took their detailed statements and actually found the men who matched the description perfectly. One of them knew Sarah through university, the others were his close friends and co-workers. Haim even included a blood-stained piece of upholstery he cut off a backseat of that man’s car. It was hardly enough to take the case into court, but it would have been a good place to start, if not for the identities of the men he implicated.
Two hours later the case was dismissed completely. Constantine was expressly forbidden to look into it any further. He did his best explaining to Haim how lucky he was to not get arrested for false accusations, disruptive propaganda and anti-government agitation, but that idiot didn’t seem very grateful. When Sarah’s condition stabilised and she remained catatonic, she was transferred to the psychiatric ward, and I thought that would be the end of it till all three accused rapists were found knifed to death in the same park where they left Sarah. And then, the same night, right on cue, the ambulance picked Haim up from his own room’s floor with a possible murder weapon still lodged in his stomach. Some cases really did solve themselves.
“Do you believe I should have just let them get away with it?” asked Haim in dry whisper. “Just live with what they did to me – to us – and hope that their next victim isn’t someone else I love?”
“Shut up,” I said. “I have enough on my plate without getting involved in useless discussions. You did what you did; now we have to deal with it. And since the best idea we have so far involves your neighbour regaling the court with obscene tales as a way of providing your alibi…”
“Marina?” he frowned, trying to sit up higher. I shoved him back on the bed before he could pull any stitches. “Is she here? What…”
“She told me you had intimate relations with her before she stabbed you,” I said with great delight, watching as he fluctuated between horrified and scandalised, all the while desperately trying to keep his face expressionless. “You are both batshit insane. Do you have a gas leak in your flat or something? That might be a reason for this localised epidemic of idiocy.”
“I must talk to her before it’s too late,” he said, finally looking like he appreciated the gravity of his situation. “Please, Doctor, I have to. Can she come here? If not, please let me go downstairs. She doesn’t understand what she’s getting herself into.”
“Visiting time starts in half an hour,” I said, going over to the window. “I’ll clear her to come and see you, but there will be no scandals or raised voices in my recovery room. And most definitely no intimate relations.”
He let out a tiny appalled moan, but I was no longer paying attention, distracted by more pressing things. For one, the monkey was still loitering outside, banging a small ball off the wall and the pavement in some kind of complicated pattern. Marina was sitting in the same spot, twirling a finished wreath in her fingers, smiling enticingly and saying something to the last person she should be talking to at all.
“Constantine!” I yelled, leaning out of the window. “Get away from that succubus and drag your ass upstairs, now. Monkey – go home! You, with the lipstick – stop harassing my family and behave. And don’t give any cigarettes to a minor! And you,” I turned back to Haim, who was biting his lips, dangerously close to being amused at my expense, “You get some rest and think about this deep shit you’ve gotten yourself into.”
Next chapter
Title: The Wheel
Author: Newkate
Fandom: Saiyuki
Rating: R for language, blood and violence to NC-17 for m/m smut later
General notes and warnings: Reincarnation fic. There shall be implied het, impied and explicit m/m, multiple pairings, 1st person POV. Completed. In four parts.
Many thanks to
hibem for awesome beta and invaluable moral support, chaosd and runefallstar for all the help and advice *glomps*Part one: Shift
1949
It was a textbook operation, nice and straightforward. The patient was young and strong, and pretty lucky – the knife went into abdominal cavity, missed the liver and kidney, didn’t damage any major vessels. I finished my work, left it to the nurses to close him up and went outside for a cigarette.
The girl was still there, on the same bench, huddled up in a ball, dark hair spilled like a cape over her hunched shoulders, knees pressed together against the cold of the night. Huge terrified eyes were seeking mine, and after a first drag I relented and told her:
“He’ll live.”
Her eyes closed for a second, and then she uncurled, smiled, stretched, unnecessarily thrusting her chest out, pushed the hair back and pulled her own pack out of her purse.
“Good. Thanks.”
We smoked in silence. My eyes wondered between lit hospital windows, shadows on the wall, my cigarette, her naked knees. Lack of sleep multiplied by tea and nicotine buzz was giving me the usual trouble – every time I dared to close my eyes the only thing I could see were loops and loops of savaged small intestine, my gloved hands moving over them, revising the damage, making stitches. It took that little shit only a second to plunge the knife in his own gut, and I’ve spent last five hours cleaning up the mess. Tedious, pointless effort. He was as good as dead anyway.
“That filth is talking out of his ass,” said the girl abruptly. “Haim didn’t kill anybody.”
“That filth has a name.”
“Do I give a fuck?”
“He’s my cousin, so you better.”
“Right, of course, same surname. Nice. Congratulations. Anyway, Detective Kouznetsov is talking out of his ass. Haim spent the whole day at home, with me. Since… When were they killed, Alexander?” she asked, oh so very matter-of-factly.
Ever since I was made the Head of Surgery I was getting an impression that every single person in this one-horse town, including the ones I’ve never met, knew my full name, but most at least had enough sense to show proper decorum.
“Between nine and ten, and that’s Doctor Kouznetsov to you,” I said, deciding to play along until she gets too annoying, even though I could already tell she’d never be able to pull off this ruse.
“Great, so I came back from the factory at quarter past six and went straight to his room. He didn’t leave my sight – well, I obviously went out to call the ambulance, but he was already – you know,” she shivered and lit up another cigarette. The ground around her high-heeled shoes was littered with crushed, lipstick-stained dogends.
“Can anyone corroborate your words? And by this I obviously mean: can anyone call you on that?”
“No, no!” she exclaimed, getting excited. “There are just two families in the whole flat, me and dad in one room, Haim and Sarah in the other. Sarah is still in the loony bin, and dad was passed out drunk...”
“At quarter past six?”
“Yeah, his shift ends at five. I’m telling you, nobody saw or heard anything.”
“What were you doing in his room all that time?” I asked, getting into it a little.
“I don’t suppose anyone will believe me if I say we played cards for seven hours. So yeah, we were fucking.”
“Charming,” I said, cringing slightly. I really wasn’t used to this sort of woman. “How far are you willing to take this?”
“All the way.”
“Give a signed statement for the Militia, testify in court, in front of everybody?”
“Sure,” she said, firmly enough to hold my attention for a little bit longer. “Don’t see why not.”
“Hm. Describe how he looks naked.”
“Um,” she paused, confirming my suspicions. I’ve only met Haim several times before, while I was treating his sister, but he never really struck me as someone to go for a slut from the soap factory with a drunk for a father. “Oh! He’s definitely circumcised! His parents were like that. They called him Haim, for fuck’s sake! Stubborn idiots.”
“I don’t think it was this bad twenty years ago.”
“Haim says it was like this since Ancient Egypt. Hey, you saw him naked! Just now, when you operated, you saw and you can tell me…”
“Oh, this is frigging ridiculous. Moving on, if you were having intimate relations all that time, why was he suddenly overcome with an urge to kill himself?”
“Because of Sarah? He forgot for a while, and then remembered and… Oh maybe, maybe… What if I did it? We were screwing, and had an argument, so I went to the kitchen, grabbed the knife, and – and stabbed him. And then, full of regret, called the ambulance!”
“Have you lost your mind? That’s…”
“No, no, that’s fine! He’s alive, so they won’t prosecute unless he presses charges. My dad once…”
“I really don’t want to know.”
“So, what do you think? Will your cousin buy it?”
“Not a chance.”
“What if I make it worth his while?” she smiled like a shark on a picture from a children’s book, leaning closer, and I could almost catch the scent of her body through the smoke from our cigarettes and strong, overpowering smell of cheap soap that clung to her hair.
I let my glance slide over her full painted lips, smooth long neck, the soft shadow between her breasts, exposed by outrageous cleavage. She was stunning, really, with that raw, unrefined beauty of a wild animal. Graceful, feral, lithe and strong, bold features, almond-shaped dark eyes. Mixed blood, probably, Georgian or Armenian. And that mouth, too wide for her face, but all the more tempting somehow…
“What’s your name?”
“Marina,” she said, grinning.
It sounded like soft waves crashing to the shore, foam splattering around, salt on your tongue, sun hot on your skin. Marina, “of the sea”. For some reason, proletarians loved giving their daughters those stupid pretentious names: Angelica, Victoria, Marina.
“Marina, you’re a slut and an idiot. Forget all this nonsense, it’s not a game. There is nothing you can do. Go home.”
She pulled away from me, pouting, and I left her there and went back inside. I still needed to get at least two hours of sleep to make sure my hands would stay steady through the next day.
Two hours curled up on a short sofa in the staff room flew by like one second. I washed up at the sink in the operating room, had tea and a cigarette for breakfast, joined the rest of the doctors for the morning rounds and decided to check up on the monkey before my next planned operation.
Calling home always was a horrible chore.
“Hello, can I…”
“Doctor, doctor, is that you? I have the most terrible pain in my back, on the right…”
“Yeah, sure. Can I talk to Sophia?”
“You really shouldn’t leave this girl unattended so much. I’m certain she’s about to fall in with a wrong crowd. Fourteen is a sensitive age, you know.”
“Can I talk to…”
“It’s not right for her to grow up without a woman’s care. I know this lovely lady, a widow…”
“Shut up, you hag. You’re my neighbour, not my mother, so learn to respect my fucking privacy, will you? Get me Sophia, now.”
Horrified gasp – as if I’d never given her this kind of treatment before, - scuffle, screams, and finally my girl’s voice breathing into my ear:
“Daaaad? Good morning, Dad!”
Shit. Monkey. I dragged on a cigarette to calm myself down. She had some kind of weird unsettling effect on me.
“Morning. Slept all right?”
“I’m not a kid, I’m not afraid of the dark any more, Dad.”
“Why the fuck aren’t you at school yet?”
“I don’t have to leave for another ten minutes. You know it. Daaad, are you coming home tonight?”
“I should hope so. Hey…”
It’s been years, and I still didn’t really know how to talk to her. When was this supposed to get easier?
“…do you have enough food?”
Yes, that was a good one. Practical question. Puberty did something to her appetite, and although food was no longer a luxury, if she ran out unexpectedly she’d start stealing from the neighbours, and I’d never hear the end of it.
“Yeah, I think so. Although those noodles you cooked are yucky. So soggy!”
“Well, if you want to get anything, money and rations cards are in the…”
“I know, Dad,” I could almost hear her rolling her eyes.
“Don’t be late for school. And behave. And go straight home after classes, no loitering.”
“Sure, Dad. I’ll see you later.”
She just hung up, easy as anything, and I was still standing in the reception clutching the handset, clinging to the sound of her happy, chirpy voice. Nothing about her ever went as planned. This was not at all what I expected the parenthood to be.
I had an ulcer and a gallstone case that day, and afterwards I had to do time till six in the evening, so I came back to that three-fourths empty recovery room to check on my only critical patient.
Haim was sound asleep. His vital signs were great, he even looked good: no longer waxen, breathing deep and easy. Eyelids still looked a bit too thin, but none of that skeletal sunken eyes appearance. Well on the way to recovery, whatever that might bring for him.
I plopped down on a free bed, planning to rest my back and my eyes a little, and only realised that I had fallen asleep again when I was disturbed by familiar, cheerful voice:
“Hi!”
Here she was, in the middle of sunlit recovery room: long limbs, wide grin, hair a usual mess, all of her surrounded by a halo of shimmering light, as seen through my eyelashes. Looking curious, fake-coy, wriggling her sandaled toes, hands primly behind her back. Girly girl, an act of god, a golden lightning. The skirt was getting too short, she needed a new dress, she was growing up so fast…
“My name’s Sophia. What’s yours?”
“Haim,” said the man on the other bed. His big, wetly glistening brown eyes searched the room in anxious confusion; his unsteady hand snaked under the covers to probe at his stomach and came back up damp and red. He let out a strangled moan, looking at his stained, shaking fingers in utter horror, as if he had never seen a little blood on skin before.
“Your bandages need changing,” she said. “What kind of operation did you have?”
He just breathed, noisily and fast, and stared at her with glassy, far away eyes.
“Are you in pain? Is something wrong? Daaaad, Dad, wake up! Something is…”
“Shut up, monkey,” I said, sitting up. “What the hell are you doing here, anyway? I told you to go home after classes.”
“I brought you lunch! Meat pastries! The woman who sells them gave me her word of honour that they aren’t made from cats,” she waved a newspaper-wrapped bundle around. “This man…”
“He’s fine. And you are leaving. This is a hospital, not a frigging playground. How do you keep getting past security anyway? I told the reception to stop letting you through.”
“Oh,” she shrugged. “I met this really cool girl outside, she taught me how to open the kitchen lock.”
Sometimes I was sure corporal punishment was the only way to go with child-rearing, because nothing else seemed to make any impression. Sadly, she was far too old now to get smacked with a rolled-up newspaper.
“That’s breaking and entering, you do realise?”
“So? I’ve missed you.”
I gritted my teeth in helpless frustration. She looked up at me with that sweet, sweet, disarming little smile of hers, her cat-yellow eyes twinkling and wild, daring me to lose it and get dragged into a demeaning, stupid squabble.
“You think she’s cool, huh? Come here,” I grabbed her and sniffed her hair and fingers. “You didn’t bum a cigarette off her, did you, monkey?”
“No, Dad, honestly, I didn’t. Oh, she says you’re a damn hot piece of ass. Does it mean…”
“Out!”
I waited at the window until she left the building and waved at me from the pavement. Marina was still there, on the same bench, chewing on the unlit cigarette, weaving a chain of dandelions plucked from our neglected flower bed. She grinned at me, and I pretended not to notice.
Haim calmed down somewhat. He pushed the covers down, examined his bloody bandages, wiped his hand clean on the dry parts of the gauze.
“Hello, Doctor Kouznetsov. I… I don’t remember much. Can you tell me what happened?” he asked, in a voice much more quiet and tight than weakness or pain from his wounds warranted.
“Good job. Keep pushing the amnesia angle, it might buy you some time,” I said and was rewarded by the dark flash in his eyes.
“Ah, I see, so you know,” he breathed, dropping his head back on the pillow. “You already know what I did. Strange. I expected stricter security.”
“You’re not arrested yet.”
“Why not?”
I pulled up a chair, checked his IV line, gathered the supplies and removed his bandages. He tensed under my hands, held still as I cleaned the wound and redressed it, kept quiet, waiting for my answer. I didn’t think I had to explain, really. It was obvious.
“Because I don’t want you to be. This is a bad time for it. All the angry mob needs right now is a case like that, to prove that your people are not just secretly plotting world domination, but also are dangerous, violent animals. I’m not saying it’ll cause the second Crystal Night, but there will be blood, and I’ll be the one to patch up the wounded, and god knows I don’t need any extra work. Got it?”
He laughed, cried out in pain when his severed muscles protested, still laughed some more and looked at me, bewildered and amused:
“That’s ridiculous. You know who these men were, can you imagine what happens if… You have a family, a daughter, you can’t be so careless.”
I raised an eyebrow as a way of stating my opinion on that.
“You’re right, of course. You’re right,” he started to shake, and I adjusted the drip to increase his painkillers. “But – I didn’t plan to be saved, you know. I was hoping that my death would settle the score, would be enough of a payment for the blood I’ve spilled.”
“As if.”
“Yes. I don’t suppose our lives are worth that much. But I had to make them pay for what they did. I had to.”
“So, do you feel better now?”
He smiled a little, acknowledging the joke:
“No, of course not. But you know, I still believe Sarah might. If she ever comes out of it enough to understand.”
“…And finds out that her brother is dead and she’s branded for life as a relative of a convicted criminal. Yes, that’ll perk her right up.”
The whole thing just went to show once again that one should never underestimate the people’s stupidity. When I first met Haim a couple of weeks ago, I actually thought he had some brains. He made that kind of impression.
His sister Sarah, his only living family member, was found in a dark corner of the town park by the routine Militia night patrol. If not for the dog they had with them, they would have never noticed the naked and bleeding girl curled up silent and motionless on the grass. To my knowledge, she still hasn’t said a word since.
Her brother called the hospital that same night, looking for her, and when the description matched, he arrived just in time to catch Constantine who was here taking my statement. Unlike a lot of victims and relatives, Haim didn’t waste any time or breath on being incredulous or hysterical, or ordering me and Constantine to really do our jobs this time, none of that usual half-assed slacking. He listened without interrupting as I described Sarah’s injuries and made my prognosis, nodded and thanked me in perfectly polite and controlled voice.
“I would like to help out with the investigation, Detective,” he told Constantine. “I know you are very busy and doubtlessly have many more important cases, so please count on me for any task you can delegate.”
Three days later he put on my cousin’s desk several sheets of paper covered in his neat handwriting. He managed to find some witnesses who saw the assailants pulling Sarah into the car. He took their detailed statements and actually found the men who matched the description perfectly. One of them knew Sarah through university, the others were his close friends and co-workers. Haim even included a blood-stained piece of upholstery he cut off a backseat of that man’s car. It was hardly enough to take the case into court, but it would have been a good place to start, if not for the identities of the men he implicated.
Two hours later the case was dismissed completely. Constantine was expressly forbidden to look into it any further. He did his best explaining to Haim how lucky he was to not get arrested for false accusations, disruptive propaganda and anti-government agitation, but that idiot didn’t seem very grateful. When Sarah’s condition stabilised and she remained catatonic, she was transferred to the psychiatric ward, and I thought that would be the end of it till all three accused rapists were found knifed to death in the same park where they left Sarah. And then, the same night, right on cue, the ambulance picked Haim up from his own room’s floor with a possible murder weapon still lodged in his stomach. Some cases really did solve themselves.
“Do you believe I should have just let them get away with it?” asked Haim in dry whisper. “Just live with what they did to me – to us – and hope that their next victim isn’t someone else I love?”
“Shut up,” I said. “I have enough on my plate without getting involved in useless discussions. You did what you did; now we have to deal with it. And since the best idea we have so far involves your neighbour regaling the court with obscene tales as a way of providing your alibi…”
“Marina?” he frowned, trying to sit up higher. I shoved him back on the bed before he could pull any stitches. “Is she here? What…”
“She told me you had intimate relations with her before she stabbed you,” I said with great delight, watching as he fluctuated between horrified and scandalised, all the while desperately trying to keep his face expressionless. “You are both batshit insane. Do you have a gas leak in your flat or something? That might be a reason for this localised epidemic of idiocy.”
“I must talk to her before it’s too late,” he said, finally looking like he appreciated the gravity of his situation. “Please, Doctor, I have to. Can she come here? If not, please let me go downstairs. She doesn’t understand what she’s getting herself into.”
“Visiting time starts in half an hour,” I said, going over to the window. “I’ll clear her to come and see you, but there will be no scandals or raised voices in my recovery room. And most definitely no intimate relations.”
He let out a tiny appalled moan, but I was no longer paying attention, distracted by more pressing things. For one, the monkey was still loitering outside, banging a small ball off the wall and the pavement in some kind of complicated pattern. Marina was sitting in the same spot, twirling a finished wreath in her fingers, smiling enticingly and saying something to the last person she should be talking to at all.
“Constantine!” I yelled, leaning out of the window. “Get away from that succubus and drag your ass upstairs, now. Monkey – go home! You, with the lipstick – stop harassing my family and behave. And don’t give any cigarettes to a minor! And you,” I turned back to Haim, who was biting his lips, dangerously close to being amused at my expense, “You get some rest and think about this deep shit you’ve gotten yourself into.”
Next chapter
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no subject
Date: 2005-07-27 10:02 am (UTC)Как же ты клево элементы их мира и сюжета вписала в очень плотную и узнаваемую *эту* реальность!
Александр - хорош, хорош, так и чувствуется его усталость, так и видится помятенький хирург, старательный, но у которого все в жизни идет наперекосяк. Марина - любовь моей жизни. Хаим - тоже. May I have both?
Черт, как же обидно, что в суботу уезжаю :( А до суботы кусочков не будет?
Сверю координаты:
Александр = Санзо, ты говорила.
Хаим = Хаккай, голову даю на отсечение
София = Гоку, ибо "мартышка".
Следовательно, Годжио = Марина?
no subject
Date: 2005-07-27 03:17 pm (UTC)И история про клонов - красота! Не только очень вкусно, но ещё и так оптимистично и позитивно (чего от подобного челленджа как-то не ждёшь ^_^).
no subject
Date: 2005-07-27 09:44 pm (UTC)Two very minor beta thingies:
...they would have never noticed naked and bleeding girl curled up silent and motionless on the grass.
Needs "the" or "a" before "naked and bleeding girl."
...or ordering me and Constantine to really do his job this time, none of that usual half-assed slacking.
By "his job" do you mean Alexander's and Constantine's jobs? This would be more clear if you said "to really do our jobs this time."
Otherwise great writing, with awesome dialogue and wonderful descriptions. I'll definitely be watching for the next installment.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-28 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-28 05:49 am (UTC)Ага, ты всех угадала! Годжо - Марина, спасать Хаккая - одно из его основных хобби. Кстати, он наполовину каппа, водяной екай, поэтому я его так обозвала.
Эта часть всего в трех кусочках, я надеюсь в пятницу вывесить второй, но я его еще ковыряю. Важный пассаж все никак не получается. К тому же там появляется масса героев из канона, которых ты еще не встречала, страшная путаница. Ну, как ориджинал все равно должно работать, теоретически...
А куда ты уезжаешь?
no subject
Date: 2005-07-28 05:54 am (UTC)Я очень рада, что про клонов тебе понравилось! Там моей целью как раз было выкрутить руки этому жуткому челленджу, чтобы все равно получилось в известной степени пушисто - особенно шота и насилие меня там напрягали. Я не люблю, когда маленьких обижают :)
no subject
Date: 2005-07-28 06:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-28 06:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-28 06:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-28 07:29 am (UTC)“She told me you had intimate relations with her before she stabbed you”, ммм...
Уезжаю в поход на байдарках, сейчас в доме все вверх дном, на всех поверхностях - пачки сухарей и собачьего корма, на полу - спальники и одежка, песа таскает по дому весла.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-28 09:01 pm (UTC)I'm definitely curious about who Constantine might be... I have my hopes but I'm also open minded and wouldn't mind being completely surprised.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-29 04:52 am (UTC)Ой, поход на байдарках! Ну ты экстремалка, классно! А куда? Завидуююю... Давно занимаешься?
Ну, береги себя, желаю хорошей погоды, приятно отдохнуть, и фотографии, фотографии! *чмоки*
no subject
Date: 2005-07-29 09:11 am (UTC)Ну ничего, будет мне стимул не утопнуть :)
Байдарки неэкстремальные, река спокойная, занимаюсь всю сознательную, компания, правда, странноватая (завидую Саючным парням :) )
О, кстати о Саюках. Ты видела, какие чудные разборы характеров им сделали на reflections_2? Пальчики оближешь. А еще читаю фик P.L.Nunn "Vindication" - пока кавай, зря что Санзо/Годжио. Ты не читала?
Saiyuki Reload и просто Saiyuki - это разные вещи?
no subject
Date: 2005-07-29 09:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-30 03:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-31 09:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-24 08:21 pm (UTC)*curls up with a big plate of Wheel*
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-25 12:20 pm (UTC)I'm so dead of E squee and I love you too *fangirls* Thank you so much!
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