28-Sep-2003

Title: Stigmata 2/??
Author: CleverYoungThief (duffsbrandy@yahoo.com)
Rating: R
Warnings: Duo POV (from early childhood on), death, gore, psychological squick, language, soldier brutality, skewed religious themes, slow updates? *heh*
Genre: Angst (how surprising, right?)
Pairings: None so far. That may change as the story goes on.
Spoilers: None.
Feedback: Please?
Disclaimers: Don't own 'em. Don't sue. I'm a college student. I have nothing.
Author's Note: Yeah, I'm starting another multichapter fic. Don't kill me. ^_^;;

"God help the outcasts
Hungry from birth
Show them the mercy they don't find on earth
God help my people
They look to you still
God help the outcasts
Or nobody will."
      - Alan Menken Cast Out From Eden

Stigmata by CleverYoungThief

Part Two: Cast Out Of Eden

I didn't die then.

Although later, I thought maybe it would have been better if I had.

I tried to turn away from that voice. It hurt me.

I wanted my Mama, with her warm cotton aprons and her soft perfume. I wanted my Daddy, with his scratchy-tickly beard and his tobacco-stained fingertips and his big belly laugh, the one that sounded like it came from the soles of his feet.

I didn't want this.

That voice spoke again. It was harsh and impatient. Tired, like Daddy's voice after a hard day of work out at the spacer docks.

I opened my eyes a little. There was a strange reddish half-light in the room, crimson stripes of light coming through the boarded windows.

I had kicked the filthy blanket onto the floor. I was burning up from the inside. Someone in the darkness put their hand on my forehead, and it felt like that one time when I laid my hand on Mama's curling iron. So hot.

I moaned, turning my face away. The room was tilting and I closed my eyes again.

Somebody spoke softly from the shadows. "He has the delirium."

Someone else gasped. There was rustling. The shadows seemed to step back and disperse.

"Bullshit. Shaddup," the voice over me snarled, and there was a sound of feet running across the asphalt, retreating into the darkness.

"Drink." I felt hard fingers and thumbs press on either side of my cheeks, making me turn my head. A grim, dirty face floated over my head. It wasn't Solo. It was the one who had kicked me. The one eyes the color of dirty slush.

Jeremiah was holding a tin cup in his hand. I could see where the light gleamed on the dinged metal. He was trying to press it to my mouth. I closed it tight. I closed my mouth and my eyes. I didn't want to see it.

"Fine." He grabbed my face again, forcing my mouth open, and poured whatever was in the cup down my throat. I cried out hoarsely, sputtering.

Water. Just water.

"Don't be a dumbass. You have to drink." His voice was sullen. He put a wet cloth on my forehead, and I was so grateful I thought I could cry. But I didn't have any tears left.

Jeremiah sat the cup on an overturned wooden crate by the mattress and peered over me. He lifted the scrap of Solo's shirt from my side. The blood had dried, and it stuck to my skin and the meatier stuff underneath and it came away with a thick ripping sound. I felt it start to bleed again, warmth trickling down my side, soaking into the mattress.

I cried out in pain and then shut my mouth tight. I swallowed all the hurt noise back when he probed at the wound, gritting my teeth, closing my eyes.

I found out there were some tears left in me, after all.

The fever got worse.

He kept watch over me for awhile, I think.

I didn't know whether he was really there at all, sometimes. He crouched in the twilight like some wild thing, sprawled over a metal folding chair in ripped blue jeans so worn they were almost faded white, colorless eyes sparkling in the half-light, crazy shadows dancing through the boarded window with the headlights of passing cars from the street. He chain-smoked bent, wrinkled cigarettes.

He never looked away from me. His hair was falling down in his face like a wild animal's mane.

My dreams were fuzzy, mixed up. Bad. I drifted off and woke up screaming one time, and he moved over to the side of the bed, trying to quiet me. His touch was rough, hard, like he wasn't used to being gentle.

He wiped more water across my cheeks and forehead. He squeezed the rag over my head, slicking the hair back from my face. I sighed. Nothing felt as good as that cold, dirty water drying on my skin.

My eyes felt hot. Sweat broke out on my face. I groaned, fisting the mattress.

"Hush. He'll be back soon."

Solo brought some guy who ran one of the churches on Bottomside to look at the place where the soldiers shot me.

He came in with his bandanna wrapped over his mouth and nose. His eyes looked bright and feverish over it, like the shiny gems on my mother's best bracelet.

I recognized him, the guy Solo brought, because I saw his picture on TV once. Father Phineas O'Brian. He went to jail for assaulting a group of soldiers. Almost beat them to death. I don't know why they didn't kill him. Maybe because he was one of the priests. Hard to kill a priest. Especially with witnesses.

Everyone just called him Foxy. He wore a priest's habit and an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder like a purse.

Solo said I could trust him. Said after joining the priesthood he had gone through medical school to become a military chaplain and dropped out halfway, because he lost his grant money when the lion soldiers- the Alliance, Solo says, I had to call them - took over L2.

He was huge, so big and broad, with a mop of flaming red hair that reminded me of the Vikings in my picture-book at home, and fierce green eyes like a cat. He had the wolf tattoo like Solo, in the middle of his palm. The mark of the rebel. He wore a bandanna over his face, too.

The only one who didn't seem to care about catching plague was Jeremiah. He sat in the corner glowering, arms crossed over his chest.

I learned later on that Jeremiah felt the same way about catching plague as he did about a lot of other things.

He just didn't give a shit.

Foxy leaned over me, bringing his hands down to touch my side. They looked big enough to crush my head like a soda can. I cried out, jerking away from his hands.

He gazed down at me, amused. "Haven't done anything yet, kiddo. Trust me. I won't hurt you any more than I have to." He glanced over at Solo. "Get me some fresh water. And the cleanest rags you can find."

Solo nodded, looking into my eyes one last second before fading into the dull, throbbing darkness of the warehouse. Somewhere, someone was sobbing. The sound was echoing off the metal rafters.

I sat still, feeling his hands come down gently against my torn skin. He was gentle. When he touched the wound itself, probing with a pair of pliers for the bullet, I screamed and tried to sit up. Jeremiah silently came and pinned me at the shoulders.

I was too young to curse. All I could do was cry.

And it's hard to trust someone when they're so much bigger than you.

My eyes slid shut, and I sank beneath the pain, away from it.

I drifted away on a gray tide, and I thought I could hear my Mama singing...

Voices in the darkness. Someone was saying a rosary.

I slept.

End Part 2

(:./cyt/stigmata2)