Saiyuki Reincarnation Fic - The Wheel
Aug. 2nd, 2005 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
new_kateTitle: 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.
Betead by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hibem - thank you!
Part One: Shift (Ch.3)
Ch.1, Ch.2
I heard Sophia chatting to him from the corridor. Everybody’s day shifts had ended, and the wing was empty and echoing, so her clear high voice carried out of the room through half-opened doors, and I stopped to listen while putting on a seriously scary face. I told that monkey to go straight home an hour ago!
“So, is Marina your fiancée?”
“Why would you say that?” he asked instead of answering, the way he liked to do.
“Everybody knows you are doing it,” she proclaimed with morbid fascination.
“Do they? Well then, I suppose I have no choice and have to propose,” he said, laughing. “What an irony, really.”
“Do you love her?”
“Why do you ask? Doesn’t the wide-known fact that we’re, ah, doing it speak for itself?”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child,” she said, sulking. “I’m fourteen already.”
“My apologies.”
“How old are you, Haim?” she asked in such a voice that I suddenly wanted to rush into the room, drag her away and ground her for life. She was only fourteen, she shouldn’t be even able to use that kind of voice yet, let alone want and know to use it on men…
“Twenty,” he said, uneasy now. “Sophia, does your father know you’re here? I don’t think he’s going to like you spending time with me. I’m not a good company.”
“Because you’re older? Or because you’re…”
“Because I’m a bad man,” he said firmly. “I’m – I’m evil. It’s best that you stay away.”
There was a pause during which I was hoping that she would listen to him and walk out of that room on her own so I wouldn’t have to force the issue and trigger her rebellious streak. But then she spoke again: “Can you keep a secret? Give me your word of honour you won’t tell anybody.”
“Sophia…”
“I never told this to anyone. I really want to tell you, so can you promise?”
“I promise,” he sighed, defeated, and I almost felt like I should leave and not eavesdrop any longer, but that was my monkey and some scary secret she kept inside; she probably needed my help and was too stupid to ask for it. I stayed, bracing myself for something heavy, but when she went ahead and said it, I found myself completely unprepared.
“He’s not actually my dad,” she said. “He doesn’t think I remember, but I have for a while now. My parents were – I don’t know, spies or something. I’m evil too.”
There came a silence when I could hear nothing but my own pulse pounding in my ears. The autonomic nervous system was doing its thing – heart skipping beats, vessels constraining till my fingertips felt jabbed with cold needles, but the brain refused to catch up, stuck on a loop of “can’t be, can’t be, I’m sure I’ve misheard that”.
“You are not evil, Sophia,” said Haim finally. “He wouldn’t love an evil person.”
“He doesn’t know everything about me… I don’t really tell him - I have these feelings, scary thoughts, and sometimes… What if he’s wrong about me?”
“Well,” he said warmly, with a smile in his voice, “Don’t you think you owe it to him to make sure he isn’t?”
I decided I’d had enough of that, turned around and walked away, quietly. When I was passing a window, I’ve noticed that the bench outside was empty. Marina was gone. Well, that’s women for you.
So this is how an era ends, I thought. Not with a bang, not with a whimper, not even with me in the room. I should be curious as to when she remembered the truth, should be thinking how to explain to her why that was such a dangerous secret, but I just felt numb and tired.
Stupid monkey.
It had been two years, and for some reason I thought it was going to be forever. She was so noisy, annoying, demanding, I had to change my whole life to fit around her, and I didn’t dare to dream I would ever be released from that sentence. Well, my own needs or wishes never counted for shit since I got stuck with her, so nothing new here. I never had any choice in this whole matter.
Two years ago, back in the capital city, back in a different lifetime, my destiny was sealed when the Assistant Head of Surgery caught me on my way to the staff room, looking pale and determined, and pulled me into his office.
“Alexander,” he said. “The Head of Surgery is gone. Everybody knows you were his favourite, so just be careful, okay? I know you’re all right, but people talk.”
“Gone?”
“Yes, they came for him last night. It’s not announced yet, but I called their place, and the neighbours told me there was screaming and shooting and hell knows what there. I never heard of anyone resisting arrest. Can you imagine him fighting?”
“No,” I said, grabbing his jug of water from the table and filling the glasses. My hands shook and felt weak and slippery, the way a surgeon’s hands have to right to be. “Do you know what it was? Have you spoken to his wife?”
“Is that a joke? Do the words ‘failing to inform’ ring a bell?” he gulped the water down, gestured for the refill.
“Did they take her as well? But…”
“Less talk,” he reminded. “Just… best not to talk at all. You know.”
“Yeah, but… What about their daughter? What’s going to happen to her, if they’re both…”
He let out a long-suffering sigh.
“Honestly, are you living under a rock? They have special orphanages for those. Oh wait, is she over twelve?”
“I think so,” I nodded, vaguely remembering the old man obsessing about her birthday present last month.
“Then it’s five years of labour camps for her. Okay, go scrub up, you have a lot of work to do today. I need you to take his operations, I’ll take his night shift and tomorrow we’ll have to redo the whole schedule…”
That day I smoked over two packs to keep an even mind and stay focused. The workload I could manage, I had pulled longer and tougher shifts during the war, but for some reason my thoughts kept coming back to the news.
I had known the old man since I was a med school student and worked in this hospital as a nurse to make ends meet. I really was his favourite for some reason. We talked a lot when we had a night shift together, he helped me out with my studies, lent me some papers with current research that I had no access to, invited me over for dinner. I even accepted more than once – the food was incredible, even if his wife went completely overboard, talking me into having seconds of everything and moaning about how extremely, unhealthily skinny I was. Sophia, their only child, took an inexplicable liking to me despite my intentional coldness and kept crawling all over me like a little excited monkey, until one of her parents forcibly pried her from my leg or my shoulders, and then she had to wait for a window of opportunity to attack me again.
She was six, still a bouncy little ball of energy, when the war began. I was too young to get drafted in the first wave, but got tagged by the January draft and, with the rest of the last two years, was allowed to take the finals and graduate before getting shipped away. For those three months whenever I visited she was torn between bouts of proud patriotism and tearful clutching onto me as if I was already leaving, and her parents were too mushy themselves to help me out. I didn’t think she’d remember me once I was gone, so getting a letter – mostly unreadable, she was still learning to write – was a big shock, but oddly pleasant. War makes you sickeningly sentimental.
I didn’t get to see Berlin, my regiment only made it as far West as Krakow when the Victory came. As soon as I returned to Moscow I paid the old man a visit, and hardly recognised Sophia then: even her face had changed; she looked much more like her father now. Only the eyes stayed the same, huge, such light brown they were almost golden, twinkling with mischief, warm. Her parents had told her she was too big now to jump at me from the sofa and attempt to climb on my shoulders. She did anyway, bothersome little pest, and kept doing it for all of the two years I worked under her father, up until last several months, when she finally started growing breasts and became mysterious and demure, stealing strange glances at me while her parents weren’t looking, smiling coyly, twirling strands of hair around her finger. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or worried.
Well, that was all in the past, it wasn’t likely I’d ever see them again. Over the course of that day, as I kept working, cutting, cleaning, pulling, stitching, I’ve managed to force myself to stop thinking about the old man and his kind, fussing wife. It was the thing to do, what happened was probably their own fault, I shouldn’t question the decisions of higher-ups and it wasn’t like I could change anything anyway. But the thoughts of Sophia wouldn’t leave me alone. She was innocent, silly pathetic creature, just – born in a wrong place, at a wrong time, that’s all.
I never figured out what possessed me to go over to their place after work. That was foolish and dangerous, and completely pointless, of course. I had no reason to think she wasn’t taken along with her parents. I suppose that was why I didn’t actually go into the house when I reached it, but instead turned around and started in the direction near opposite my own home. I needed a walk. After wandering aimlessly for almost ten minutes I left the footpath, climbed over some bushes and squeezed through a breach in the metal fence.
I guess I was hoping to find a shortcut. After all, why would anyone break a park fence if not to make one? It was dark already, and I couldn’t see any good paths except for the one that led to a small metal cabin under the trees, not far from the fence, one of those things that housed the electrical transformers for the building and bore a flashy “skull-and-bones stricken by lightning” signs on the door.
The padlock on the door was broken, hanging askew on the hinges. When I pulled it open and was met by an unblinking pair of round yellow eyes, I wasn’t even surprised. She was sitting on the ground, frighteningly close to the coils humming with electric current, more still than she have ever been on my memory, wearing a torn, grass-stained nightdress, and her forehead was covered with caked blood. When I reached out my hand she didn’t flinch, grabbed onto me with cold, stiff fingers and let me pull her out.
“Hey you,” I said, trying to access the extent of her head injury despite the dark and all the blood-stiff hair in the way. “What happened?”
“I don’t remember really,” she said in an even, colourless voice. “Who are you?”
“What?” I turned her face up, even moved closer so she could take a good look. “Don’t you know who I am?”
“Should I?” she asked, still clutching my hand so tightly it was almost painful. “Are you my dad?”
And that’s how the plan was formed.
I had to move away, to put some distance between her and those who should be still looking, and there was only one place where I could get the help I needed. The new Head of Surgery accepted my resignation with an understanding nod, told me that relocating to province and trying to keep a low profile was probably wise, considering my misguided past friendship with unsavoury characters, offered his condolences over my once promising career. I didn’t care much, consumed by other worries. Sophia’s wound wasn’t too bad, but I couldn’t tell if there was going to be lasting brain damage, if her memory would return at all.
Constantine yelled at me over the long distance, loudly and creatively, but didn’t really try to talk me out of it. When ten days later he picked us up at their tiny one-track train station, he already had the set of fake papers for her and a prospective job for me, a job that would provide us with accommodation no less. We stayed at his place for the time being, and Lydia was overjoyed to suddenly get a niece three years older than herself. The girls just wouldn’t go to sleep, kept talking and giggling in Lydia’s room, and we listened to them through the thin wall, him wide awake in his bed, me on the floor next to it, on his old moleskin coat, feeling strangely at home although I haven’t been here for years.
“What’s left of our family,” said Constantine quietly. “Remember that huge party we had when Lydia was born? And now it’s just the four of us.”
I didn’t even realise at first that he already included the monkey.
When the townsfolk figured out our respective ages and did the math, they came to the conclusion that I married an older woman with a child and now was a widower bravely raising this girl as a reminder of the love I shared with her mother or something equally vomit-inducing. I didn’t discourage that theory, though it somehow made me into an even more eligible bachelor.
Sophia recovered fast, was well enough by September to start school, and I didn’t even get on her case about the appalling grades she was getting since she probably couldn’t remember much she of what she learned in the five previous years. I just tried to make sure she didn’t skip classes and didn’t start too many fights. She seemed to revert to her younger self a little and was all over me again, wrapped around my arm when we were walking together, plastered to my back and peeking over my shoulder whenever I tried to read, and then falling asleep on our small sofa while I was distracted by the newspaper, head in my lap, forcing me to carry her to bed later. I just didn’t have enough energy to keep her away, and the trouble wasn’t worth it. I even started thinking about her future, as in yelling really loudly and throwing things every time she mentioned she wanted to drop out next year and enrol in the circus school. I even…
I crashed into something head first and completely lost my train of thought, clutching to the wall to stay on my feet.
“Dammit, blondie, look where you’re going, will you?” grumbled Marina, rubbing her forehead. She dropped to her knees to gather up things spilled from the bag she dropped on impact. “And don’t say you haven’t noticed me, last thing I need from you is more insults.”
“I thought you left,” I said, helping her catch scattered apples. “You weren’t down there…”
“I went home to check up on dad and get some stuff for Haim. Is he allowed to smoke?”
That made sense - she did look freshly showered and wore a different slutty dress. The bag she packed was full of snacks, cigarette packets, socks, books. There was even an old, well-used deck of cards.
“Yeah,” she said, prying it from my hand, “Thought he might like a game or two.”
“So you really do play cards? That’s how you spend time together?”
“Well, he taught me Chess, but it’s too boring. He always wins, with cards there is at least the element of luck. Okay, he still always wins, but…”
She suddenly darted out an arm, grabbed my face, leaned closer to look me in the eye. I pushed her away, but it was too late.
“Were you…” she started, reaching for me again.
“No.”
“But you look – okay, you’re still hot and everything, but you look like crap.”
“I’m tired. I’ve been here for thirty two hours. Working, not sitting around shaking my boobs at people and littering the area with cigarette stubs.”
“You can stop talking about my boobs any time you want. You can stop staring at them any time you want, too.”
“I wouldn’t stare if they weren’t on display like that. What did you stuff in your bra, the whole contents of your pillow?”
She grinned again, moving toward me, still on all fours: “It’s all me, baby, want to check for yourself?”
I gave her a look, and she curled on the floor instead, hugging her knees. Her hair fell forward, tickling her neck and chest, and my fingers itched to brush it back.
“This is so fucked up,” she moaned, “I just don’t know what to do. Sorry if I’m freaking you out. Hey, wanna stick around, play a couple of hands with us?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come on,” she glanced at me through the hair, flashed her surprisingly white, even teeth, waved the cards around. “Most games are more fun with three players.”
“Uh, gross,” I said almost sincerely. “Just go already. Make sure he’s not trying to do anything extreme, like killing himself or making a confession. All I want is go home, get some sleep. Tell the kid I’m expecting her to catch up.”
“Whatever you say, you big shot doctor you,” she said, grabbed the bag and got up, letting me have a good look at her knees. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll be here all day – aren’t you lucky?”
“Aren’t I just. What about your job?”
“Hey, I know my rights, they can’t fire me unless I skip three days in a row. I’ll go the day after tomorrow. Sweet dreams.”
She tossed me one of the apples and walked away, swaying her hips deliberately, leaving faint traces of clean girl smell behind her. I ate that apple later, while changing out of the dirty scrubs. It was last year’s crop, obviously, tasted like wet cotton except for the peel that tasted like cellophane, but I sort of enjoyed it anyway.
Sophia caught up to me not that far from the hospital, tackled me from behind like she always did, panted into my back, catching her breath after a short run, grabbed onto my arm with both hands, matched her steps to mine. We walked all the way to the park without exchanging a word, but then I remembered I had something important to ask.
“Hey, monkey,” I said, shaking her off. “What will you do if someone attacks you?”
“Call for help?” she offered, batting her eyelashes.
“No, seriously.”
“I’d fuck them up bad and run to the closest Militia station to get my statement down before they did,” she said with a toothy, scary smile. “I’d like to see a nutcase that tries to attack me though.”
“You never know, there are all sorts of crazy weirdoes around. Can you still fight? Not too out of practise?”
She rubbed her knuckles and nodded smugly.
“Show me,” I said, dropping into battle stance. She let out a delighted yell and rushed me with the same expression she had when about to bite into the piece of white bread sprinkled with real sugar.
Her punches were too weak for the effort she was putting into them and needed straightening, but she was light on her feet and kicked like a horse, even in those soft light sandals she wore. I mostly countered, faked attacks to gauge her defence skills, forced her into different battle modes to see if she could adapt and improvise.
“Not bad, but your technique needs work,” I said eventually, trying to wipe sweat from my face without her noticing. “You should be able to fend off a bunch of thugs, and you can’t even beat a doctor.”
“Hey! I’m going easy on you.”
“Cut loose, I can take it.”
“Right,” she smiled, clenching her fists, “Ready or not, here I come.”
She sprang forward, almost too fast for me to react, and pathetically pulled what would have been a crippling punch to the throat. I had a block in place anyway, and paid her back for treating me like an old man by grabbing her shoulder and spinning her away, not tripping her as I would in a real combat situation, but roughly enough to get the message through. She whirled around, hit the gnarled trunk of an old cherry tree, grabbed onto a branch, laughed, righting herself. Some petals, disturbed by the impact, got shaken loose and stuck in her messy hair.
And right then, looking at her while she chuckled, brushed the petals away and taunted me into going for another round, I realised for the first time ever how beautiful she would grow up to be.
End of part one
Part Two: Dance
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.
Betead by
hibem - thank you!Part One: Shift (Ch.3)
Ch.1, Ch.2
I heard Sophia chatting to him from the corridor. Everybody’s day shifts had ended, and the wing was empty and echoing, so her clear high voice carried out of the room through half-opened doors, and I stopped to listen while putting on a seriously scary face. I told that monkey to go straight home an hour ago!
“So, is Marina your fiancée?”
“Why would you say that?” he asked instead of answering, the way he liked to do.
“Everybody knows you are doing it,” she proclaimed with morbid fascination.
“Do they? Well then, I suppose I have no choice and have to propose,” he said, laughing. “What an irony, really.”
“Do you love her?”
“Why do you ask? Doesn’t the wide-known fact that we’re, ah, doing it speak for itself?”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child,” she said, sulking. “I’m fourteen already.”
“My apologies.”
“How old are you, Haim?” she asked in such a voice that I suddenly wanted to rush into the room, drag her away and ground her for life. She was only fourteen, she shouldn’t be even able to use that kind of voice yet, let alone want and know to use it on men…
“Twenty,” he said, uneasy now. “Sophia, does your father know you’re here? I don’t think he’s going to like you spending time with me. I’m not a good company.”
“Because you’re older? Or because you’re…”
“Because I’m a bad man,” he said firmly. “I’m – I’m evil. It’s best that you stay away.”
There was a pause during which I was hoping that she would listen to him and walk out of that room on her own so I wouldn’t have to force the issue and trigger her rebellious streak. But then she spoke again: “Can you keep a secret? Give me your word of honour you won’t tell anybody.”
“Sophia…”
“I never told this to anyone. I really want to tell you, so can you promise?”
“I promise,” he sighed, defeated, and I almost felt like I should leave and not eavesdrop any longer, but that was my monkey and some scary secret she kept inside; she probably needed my help and was too stupid to ask for it. I stayed, bracing myself for something heavy, but when she went ahead and said it, I found myself completely unprepared.
“He’s not actually my dad,” she said. “He doesn’t think I remember, but I have for a while now. My parents were – I don’t know, spies or something. I’m evil too.”
There came a silence when I could hear nothing but my own pulse pounding in my ears. The autonomic nervous system was doing its thing – heart skipping beats, vessels constraining till my fingertips felt jabbed with cold needles, but the brain refused to catch up, stuck on a loop of “can’t be, can’t be, I’m sure I’ve misheard that”.
“You are not evil, Sophia,” said Haim finally. “He wouldn’t love an evil person.”
“He doesn’t know everything about me… I don’t really tell him - I have these feelings, scary thoughts, and sometimes… What if he’s wrong about me?”
“Well,” he said warmly, with a smile in his voice, “Don’t you think you owe it to him to make sure he isn’t?”
I decided I’d had enough of that, turned around and walked away, quietly. When I was passing a window, I’ve noticed that the bench outside was empty. Marina was gone. Well, that’s women for you.
So this is how an era ends, I thought. Not with a bang, not with a whimper, not even with me in the room. I should be curious as to when she remembered the truth, should be thinking how to explain to her why that was such a dangerous secret, but I just felt numb and tired.
Stupid monkey.
It had been two years, and for some reason I thought it was going to be forever. She was so noisy, annoying, demanding, I had to change my whole life to fit around her, and I didn’t dare to dream I would ever be released from that sentence. Well, my own needs or wishes never counted for shit since I got stuck with her, so nothing new here. I never had any choice in this whole matter.
Two years ago, back in the capital city, back in a different lifetime, my destiny was sealed when the Assistant Head of Surgery caught me on my way to the staff room, looking pale and determined, and pulled me into his office.
“Alexander,” he said. “The Head of Surgery is gone. Everybody knows you were his favourite, so just be careful, okay? I know you’re all right, but people talk.”
“Gone?”
“Yes, they came for him last night. It’s not announced yet, but I called their place, and the neighbours told me there was screaming and shooting and hell knows what there. I never heard of anyone resisting arrest. Can you imagine him fighting?”
“No,” I said, grabbing his jug of water from the table and filling the glasses. My hands shook and felt weak and slippery, the way a surgeon’s hands have to right to be. “Do you know what it was? Have you spoken to his wife?”
“Is that a joke? Do the words ‘failing to inform’ ring a bell?” he gulped the water down, gestured for the refill.
“Did they take her as well? But…”
“Less talk,” he reminded. “Just… best not to talk at all. You know.”
“Yeah, but… What about their daughter? What’s going to happen to her, if they’re both…”
He let out a long-suffering sigh.
“Honestly, are you living under a rock? They have special orphanages for those. Oh wait, is she over twelve?”
“I think so,” I nodded, vaguely remembering the old man obsessing about her birthday present last month.
“Then it’s five years of labour camps for her. Okay, go scrub up, you have a lot of work to do today. I need you to take his operations, I’ll take his night shift and tomorrow we’ll have to redo the whole schedule…”
That day I smoked over two packs to keep an even mind and stay focused. The workload I could manage, I had pulled longer and tougher shifts during the war, but for some reason my thoughts kept coming back to the news.
I had known the old man since I was a med school student and worked in this hospital as a nurse to make ends meet. I really was his favourite for some reason. We talked a lot when we had a night shift together, he helped me out with my studies, lent me some papers with current research that I had no access to, invited me over for dinner. I even accepted more than once – the food was incredible, even if his wife went completely overboard, talking me into having seconds of everything and moaning about how extremely, unhealthily skinny I was. Sophia, their only child, took an inexplicable liking to me despite my intentional coldness and kept crawling all over me like a little excited monkey, until one of her parents forcibly pried her from my leg or my shoulders, and then she had to wait for a window of opportunity to attack me again.
She was six, still a bouncy little ball of energy, when the war began. I was too young to get drafted in the first wave, but got tagged by the January draft and, with the rest of the last two years, was allowed to take the finals and graduate before getting shipped away. For those three months whenever I visited she was torn between bouts of proud patriotism and tearful clutching onto me as if I was already leaving, and her parents were too mushy themselves to help me out. I didn’t think she’d remember me once I was gone, so getting a letter – mostly unreadable, she was still learning to write – was a big shock, but oddly pleasant. War makes you sickeningly sentimental.
I didn’t get to see Berlin, my regiment only made it as far West as Krakow when the Victory came. As soon as I returned to Moscow I paid the old man a visit, and hardly recognised Sophia then: even her face had changed; she looked much more like her father now. Only the eyes stayed the same, huge, such light brown they were almost golden, twinkling with mischief, warm. Her parents had told her she was too big now to jump at me from the sofa and attempt to climb on my shoulders. She did anyway, bothersome little pest, and kept doing it for all of the two years I worked under her father, up until last several months, when she finally started growing breasts and became mysterious and demure, stealing strange glances at me while her parents weren’t looking, smiling coyly, twirling strands of hair around her finger. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or worried.
Well, that was all in the past, it wasn’t likely I’d ever see them again. Over the course of that day, as I kept working, cutting, cleaning, pulling, stitching, I’ve managed to force myself to stop thinking about the old man and his kind, fussing wife. It was the thing to do, what happened was probably their own fault, I shouldn’t question the decisions of higher-ups and it wasn’t like I could change anything anyway. But the thoughts of Sophia wouldn’t leave me alone. She was innocent, silly pathetic creature, just – born in a wrong place, at a wrong time, that’s all.
I never figured out what possessed me to go over to their place after work. That was foolish and dangerous, and completely pointless, of course. I had no reason to think she wasn’t taken along with her parents. I suppose that was why I didn’t actually go into the house when I reached it, but instead turned around and started in the direction near opposite my own home. I needed a walk. After wandering aimlessly for almost ten minutes I left the footpath, climbed over some bushes and squeezed through a breach in the metal fence.
I guess I was hoping to find a shortcut. After all, why would anyone break a park fence if not to make one? It was dark already, and I couldn’t see any good paths except for the one that led to a small metal cabin under the trees, not far from the fence, one of those things that housed the electrical transformers for the building and bore a flashy “skull-and-bones stricken by lightning” signs on the door.
The padlock on the door was broken, hanging askew on the hinges. When I pulled it open and was met by an unblinking pair of round yellow eyes, I wasn’t even surprised. She was sitting on the ground, frighteningly close to the coils humming with electric current, more still than she have ever been on my memory, wearing a torn, grass-stained nightdress, and her forehead was covered with caked blood. When I reached out my hand she didn’t flinch, grabbed onto me with cold, stiff fingers and let me pull her out.
“Hey you,” I said, trying to access the extent of her head injury despite the dark and all the blood-stiff hair in the way. “What happened?”
“I don’t remember really,” she said in an even, colourless voice. “Who are you?”
“What?” I turned her face up, even moved closer so she could take a good look. “Don’t you know who I am?”
“Should I?” she asked, still clutching my hand so tightly it was almost painful. “Are you my dad?”
And that’s how the plan was formed.
I had to move away, to put some distance between her and those who should be still looking, and there was only one place where I could get the help I needed. The new Head of Surgery accepted my resignation with an understanding nod, told me that relocating to province and trying to keep a low profile was probably wise, considering my misguided past friendship with unsavoury characters, offered his condolences over my once promising career. I didn’t care much, consumed by other worries. Sophia’s wound wasn’t too bad, but I couldn’t tell if there was going to be lasting brain damage, if her memory would return at all.
Constantine yelled at me over the long distance, loudly and creatively, but didn’t really try to talk me out of it. When ten days later he picked us up at their tiny one-track train station, he already had the set of fake papers for her and a prospective job for me, a job that would provide us with accommodation no less. We stayed at his place for the time being, and Lydia was overjoyed to suddenly get a niece three years older than herself. The girls just wouldn’t go to sleep, kept talking and giggling in Lydia’s room, and we listened to them through the thin wall, him wide awake in his bed, me on the floor next to it, on his old moleskin coat, feeling strangely at home although I haven’t been here for years.
“What’s left of our family,” said Constantine quietly. “Remember that huge party we had when Lydia was born? And now it’s just the four of us.”
I didn’t even realise at first that he already included the monkey.
When the townsfolk figured out our respective ages and did the math, they came to the conclusion that I married an older woman with a child and now was a widower bravely raising this girl as a reminder of the love I shared with her mother or something equally vomit-inducing. I didn’t discourage that theory, though it somehow made me into an even more eligible bachelor.
Sophia recovered fast, was well enough by September to start school, and I didn’t even get on her case about the appalling grades she was getting since she probably couldn’t remember much she of what she learned in the five previous years. I just tried to make sure she didn’t skip classes and didn’t start too many fights. She seemed to revert to her younger self a little and was all over me again, wrapped around my arm when we were walking together, plastered to my back and peeking over my shoulder whenever I tried to read, and then falling asleep on our small sofa while I was distracted by the newspaper, head in my lap, forcing me to carry her to bed later. I just didn’t have enough energy to keep her away, and the trouble wasn’t worth it. I even started thinking about her future, as in yelling really loudly and throwing things every time she mentioned she wanted to drop out next year and enrol in the circus school. I even…
I crashed into something head first and completely lost my train of thought, clutching to the wall to stay on my feet.
“Dammit, blondie, look where you’re going, will you?” grumbled Marina, rubbing her forehead. She dropped to her knees to gather up things spilled from the bag she dropped on impact. “And don’t say you haven’t noticed me, last thing I need from you is more insults.”
“I thought you left,” I said, helping her catch scattered apples. “You weren’t down there…”
“I went home to check up on dad and get some stuff for Haim. Is he allowed to smoke?”
That made sense - she did look freshly showered and wore a different slutty dress. The bag she packed was full of snacks, cigarette packets, socks, books. There was even an old, well-used deck of cards.
“Yeah,” she said, prying it from my hand, “Thought he might like a game or two.”
“So you really do play cards? That’s how you spend time together?”
“Well, he taught me Chess, but it’s too boring. He always wins, with cards there is at least the element of luck. Okay, he still always wins, but…”
She suddenly darted out an arm, grabbed my face, leaned closer to look me in the eye. I pushed her away, but it was too late.
“Were you…” she started, reaching for me again.
“No.”
“But you look – okay, you’re still hot and everything, but you look like crap.”
“I’m tired. I’ve been here for thirty two hours. Working, not sitting around shaking my boobs at people and littering the area with cigarette stubs.”
“You can stop talking about my boobs any time you want. You can stop staring at them any time you want, too.”
“I wouldn’t stare if they weren’t on display like that. What did you stuff in your bra, the whole contents of your pillow?”
She grinned again, moving toward me, still on all fours: “It’s all me, baby, want to check for yourself?”
I gave her a look, and she curled on the floor instead, hugging her knees. Her hair fell forward, tickling her neck and chest, and my fingers itched to brush it back.
“This is so fucked up,” she moaned, “I just don’t know what to do. Sorry if I’m freaking you out. Hey, wanna stick around, play a couple of hands with us?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come on,” she glanced at me through the hair, flashed her surprisingly white, even teeth, waved the cards around. “Most games are more fun with three players.”
“Uh, gross,” I said almost sincerely. “Just go already. Make sure he’s not trying to do anything extreme, like killing himself or making a confession. All I want is go home, get some sleep. Tell the kid I’m expecting her to catch up.”
“Whatever you say, you big shot doctor you,” she said, grabbed the bag and got up, letting me have a good look at her knees. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll be here all day – aren’t you lucky?”
“Aren’t I just. What about your job?”
“Hey, I know my rights, they can’t fire me unless I skip three days in a row. I’ll go the day after tomorrow. Sweet dreams.”
She tossed me one of the apples and walked away, swaying her hips deliberately, leaving faint traces of clean girl smell behind her. I ate that apple later, while changing out of the dirty scrubs. It was last year’s crop, obviously, tasted like wet cotton except for the peel that tasted like cellophane, but I sort of enjoyed it anyway.
Sophia caught up to me not that far from the hospital, tackled me from behind like she always did, panted into my back, catching her breath after a short run, grabbed onto my arm with both hands, matched her steps to mine. We walked all the way to the park without exchanging a word, but then I remembered I had something important to ask.
“Hey, monkey,” I said, shaking her off. “What will you do if someone attacks you?”
“Call for help?” she offered, batting her eyelashes.
“No, seriously.”
“I’d fuck them up bad and run to the closest Militia station to get my statement down before they did,” she said with a toothy, scary smile. “I’d like to see a nutcase that tries to attack me though.”
“You never know, there are all sorts of crazy weirdoes around. Can you still fight? Not too out of practise?”
She rubbed her knuckles and nodded smugly.
“Show me,” I said, dropping into battle stance. She let out a delighted yell and rushed me with the same expression she had when about to bite into the piece of white bread sprinkled with real sugar.
Her punches were too weak for the effort she was putting into them and needed straightening, but she was light on her feet and kicked like a horse, even in those soft light sandals she wore. I mostly countered, faked attacks to gauge her defence skills, forced her into different battle modes to see if she could adapt and improvise.
“Not bad, but your technique needs work,” I said eventually, trying to wipe sweat from my face without her noticing. “You should be able to fend off a bunch of thugs, and you can’t even beat a doctor.”
“Hey! I’m going easy on you.”
“Cut loose, I can take it.”
“Right,” she smiled, clenching her fists, “Ready or not, here I come.”
She sprang forward, almost too fast for me to react, and pathetically pulled what would have been a crippling punch to the throat. I had a block in place anyway, and paid her back for treating me like an old man by grabbing her shoulder and spinning her away, not tripping her as I would in a real combat situation, but roughly enough to get the message through. She whirled around, hit the gnarled trunk of an old cherry tree, grabbed onto a branch, laughed, righting herself. Some petals, disturbed by the impact, got shaken loose and stuck in her messy hair.
And right then, looking at her while she chuckled, brushed the petals away and taunted me into going for another round, I realised for the first time ever how beautiful she would grow up to be.
End of part one
Part Two: Dance
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2005-08-02 04:58 pm (UTC)(more?)
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Date: 2005-08-03 07:42 am (UTC)Oh yeah, there is more. Like, 48 000 words more *facepalms* But in different settings, because I'm fickle and easily carried away. Will post next part in about a week, hopefully, after my holiday. Thanks again!
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Date: 2005-08-02 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 08:01 am (UTC)Hee, I'm having a lot of fun with everybody's names. Btw, Doku's surname, Ozerov, totally translates as "of the lake". He's such a knight...
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Date: 2005-08-15 08:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-16 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-16 03:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-22 07:20 pm (UTC)And now to see what the next part may hold...
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Date: 2005-08-24 07:17 am (UTC)I was always uneasy with the idea for this setting because of my own background - can a universe be a Mary Sue? - so knowing you enjoyed it means a lot to me! Thank you!
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Date: 2005-08-24 08:59 pm (UTC)Oh man. You know, I thought I'd gotten really jaded to most Sanzo-Goku interaction, but you made it so new and-- geh, why doesn't E have good stuff like this? ;_;
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Date: 2005-08-25 12:32 pm (UTC)Thank you!