Rhiannon Lee (rhiannon_lee) wrote in city_limits, @ 2009-04-10 20:43:00 |
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Entry tags: | connor reilly, rhiannon lee |
Gone
When Rhiannon awoke, the world rushed at her. Tall, thick trees crowded together overhead and threatened to press down on her. The sun was a pale, yellow spotlight behind the tree branches. The rapid play of light and dark strained her pupils, and she had to cover her eyes. A bird's wings flapped thunderously as it landed on a trashcan. She could smell that hot garbage scent. She rolled over and vomited acid and saliva in the un-mowed grass, her stomach squeezing and twisting beyond the point when nothing else would come up. She was shaking. It was cold outside and her shoes were gone, and she couldn't get up the energy to do anything except curl on her side. She wanted to go back to sleep. Even before she remembered what happened, she remembered that it was bad.
Time passed, maybe an hour, before a jogger woke her up and tried to call 911 on his cell. Rhiannon shook her head no. There was cotton in her mind, and an ugly thing trying to push through it. She got him to call Connor's number and say to come there, wherever 'there' was. It was Jackson Park. The gold-hued statue called 'The Republic' was within sight.
Connor had left the smoothie shop behind by the time his cell phone went off, and his mind was an insistent blank as he reclaimed his bike and threw away the dregs of his drink. When the object buzzed, he checked the number and found it unfamiliar. He almost didn't answer, then decided he might as well direct the caller to the right number. As he spoke to the man at the other end of the line, a sense of worry settled lightly on his shoulders. What the hell was Rhiannon doing unconscious in Jackson Park?
He'd intended to go home, but instead the Destroyer headed over to the location he'd been told about to look for his friend. He found the statue and oriented himself from there; after that it took him less than five minutes to find her. The jogger was still there, his cellphone out as if he meant to make that 911 call after all. His tracksuit was orange. Few things irritated Connor more than a nosy civilian.
"Rhiannon?" He crouched down close to her, catching the smell of sweat and puke as he drew nearer. There were leaves in her hair, and he absently began to brush them loose. She looked...he'd almost say she looked stoned, now that he'd seen her in such a state, but it was more than that. She didn't just look stoned, she looked wrecked. "Rhiannon, what happened?"
When she looked at Connor, her mouth was crooked, because she was chewing it on the inside. Rhiannon didn't say anything, but her eyes flickered to a point over his shoulder, trying to tell him something. The man in the orange suit was standing on the foot path not five feet away. If she felt better, she would've thanked him for the donation of his daytime minutes and blown him off, but she couldn't even stand up, so she wasn't in a position to give him attitude.
"Can you get me out of here?" She held her hands in her lap. There was a sore place on the web of her fingers, which she massaged with her thumb. "Tell him anything."
"Of course." He registered the look, translated that to mean 'questions later', and that meant this wasn't a mundane event. He pushed himself to his feet, walked over to Tracksuit. "I got it from here," he said blandly. "She's diabetic, I guess she forgot her insulin." The man lifted one dubious eyebrow, tried to look past Connor's shoulder at the Slayer, and the Destroyer stepped to the left to block his view. "I. Got. It."
Once he was sure the yuppie was well on his way, expensive cross-trainers slapping the pavement in a diminishing rhythm, he moved back to where his friend was still hunkered near the path. "Give me your arm," he said, and between the two of them they managed to get the brunette on her feet with him bearing her up when she otherwise might not have been able to make it.
"Where's out of here?" The bike was a bad idea in her condition, and he'd never driven her car before. "What do you need me to do?"
Already, she was out of breath. She couldn't remember the last time she felt so poorly. It wasn't that anything in particular hurt; she was just sluggish and slow, like she had contracted a flu with no virus cells. "I don't know," she said. Rhiannon thought of going back to her apartment, but then she had a flash of the station wagon outside, how she'd never made it to the front door. What if the man with the wool smell came back?
No, he wouldn't, because he already had what he wanted. But she didn't want to go home, anyway, and be surrounded by her things. "Your place. I didn't drive." The old, black car had been broken down and sold for parts, and she hadn't gotten here on her own anyway. She didn't know how she'd gotten there. "Fuck." Rhiannon pressed her mouth closed tightly and took on more of her body weight. "On your bike or in a cab."
"I got you." Connor's voice was very quiet, his arm around her waist while her arm was draped over his shoulders. They looked a little like two drunks, her shambling gait weighing him down, but he bore her up without complaint. Somebody'd done something to hurt her, and it wasn't the usual sort of hurt. This was bad, this was so bad.
He settled her on a bench once they got near the street, then swiped his hair out of his face before cupping his hands around his mouth to be heard over the sudden rumbling thunder of a city garbage truck going past. "Taxi!" The vehicle came to a tire-squealing stop five feet ahead of him, and he gathered the Slayer up again to cross the short distance between them and the door. He opened it one handed, eased her inside. The upholstery was a little worn, and he thought he smelled Cheetos. The cab driver glowered into the rearview at them.
"I don't need a junkie in here. Is she gonna OD?" Connor's blue eyes narrowed as he focused on the reflective surface. "She's fine. She just got sick." He gave the guy his address, and after some grumbling about charging extra if Rhiannon vomited again they started off. Connor watched the brunette's face, brushed hair away from her brow a little awkwardly. She did look pretty bad, but he knew she'd shoot down any suggestion of hospital. Then again, that could be a good sign. If she was okay enough to do that, she'd be okay.
"You're all right. I'm here with you." Whatever he'd been thinking about before, those thoughts were long gone.
"Jesus Christ... I'm getting lectured by a cab driver." Another wave of nausea swept past uneventfully. Rhiannon let her body shift on the seat until her temple was on Connor's shoulder. Looking at the world sideways made her feel worse, so she shut her eyes. Please, she thought, please don't let there be traffic, I just want to be inside.
"I didn't do drugs." Rhiannon wanted to make sure her friend knew. After they smoked so much pot at her party, she wasn't sure if he thought so. She didn't want Connor to think she was the type to get so stoned, she couldn't get herself home. The cab hit a pothole. She held onto the vinyl seat cushions that bounced around on old springs. It made her think about the other car, how she was stretched out flat in the back. There were faces hovering over her, backlit by the rear window, but she couldn't hang onto consciousness long enough to make them out or touch them.
She gathered up Connor's hand and squeezed it. "Don't call anybody, okay?"
He thought about Joseph, thought that if Rhiannon was his girlfriend he'd want to know, and then he looked down at where their hands were clasped. His free arm went around her waist again, his eyes looking straight ahead as he tucked her further into his side. "I know you're not high," He said, his voice inaudible except inside the small space they shared. "I've seen you high, this isn't that. We can talk when we're home." He almost asked if she wanted someone else; Kris, Joseph, anyone, but she'd already kind of said no.
"If I have to carry you inside myself, I will. Just don't pass out again, okay?"
That stung. The idea of being picked up and carried around like a child rallied her into lifting her head and letting go of Connor's hand. She clasped her fists between her knees and focused on a cigarette hole in the floorboard. If she looked at one particular thing, the rest wasn't as overwhelming. "I'm not going to pass out again," she said, a touch defensively. "I didn't pass out in the first place. Not really."
Something was off. Rhiannon was sitting right in Connor's personal space, and she felt as emotionally close to her friend as ever (close enough to decide he was the one who could deal with this), but physically it was different. For the first time, being unable to sense his 'otherness' swept through her. He was just another person to her five very regular senses. It made her feel empty and blind, and that opened the floodgates for the first tide of anger. She ground her teeth together and stared at the burnt-out carpet.
"Hey." Connor could hear the way her teeth were setting together, enamel on enamel as she fixed her gaze on the dirty floorboards, and he made sure Mr. Cab Driver's eyes were on the road before speaking again. "I know you didn't pass out, all right? Not...on your own." He remembered last year, the time she'd disappeared because Deanna had laid a trap for her, taken a cheap shot. He'd been worried then, too, close to panic because she'd stopped answering her phone. And he had seen Star recently. Would Star have known if her bitch of a grand-sire was hanging around?
The Slayer's wish for light traffic had been granted, and soon enough he was swinging the door open to help his friend out onto the sidewalk. He dug some cash out of his wallet and stuffed it into the cabbie's hand. No tip, just for being an asshole. The man flipped him off as he pulled away, and Connor rolled his eyes and offered the brunette his arm. A gesture that bordered on ridiculously gallant, given the situation.
"I'll run you a glass of water so you can rinse your mouth out. Then we can talk about this."
Rhiannon looked at his elbow. She didn't want to have to take it. It made her feel like an invalid, but that's exactly how it was. She was an out-patient that had been scraped free of something unnatural and discharged, still foggy-headed and half-asleep. Now the world was in monochrome, everything dulled down. "Okay." She relented and reached out.
A muscle in her upper arm throbbed from a second tiny injury. Had he shot at her twice? She couldn't remember that part. She walked up the sidewalk with Connor in her sock feet and ducked into the hallway when he held the door open. She didn't say anything while Connor fished out the key to let her into the apartment. Going back to his bedroom would allow more privacy in case Francess was home, but the couch was too inviting. She picked her way around a low table and sat on a cushion.
Now that she was in his clean place, she was aware of how dirty her sock bottoms were and how her jeans and sweatshirt had grass stains. Rhiannon waited and watched an old, fat cat stretch on the window sill and jump down. It waddled back toward the bedrooms.
"That's just Ivan," Connor said distractedly. He made sure Rhiannon seemed comfortable enough, then busied himself in the kitchen. Cupboards were opened and closed, and he found a glass and inspected it before filling it with cool water at the tap. After a moment's deliberation he dropped a single cube of ice from the freezer tray into it. Back in the living room, he handed the glass off to his friend and took the cushion on the other end of the sofa.
"Who did this to you?" The question was softly asked, but there was an edge just underneath it. He had never seen her like this, not even after the worst of the fights they'd been in. Hell, she hadn't looked this bad the time he'd taken his best shot at beating her up. He wanted to put his hand on her arm, wasn't sure she'd let him. "How did you end up in the park?"
The ice cube crackled in the glass of water. She sipped and the cold felt great going down her throat, but it didn't hit her empty stomach that well. Rhiannon set it down and rubbed her knees. Little circles, slow and controlled. "Is it still Friday?" She wasn't sure if she'd been gone hours or a day. Anesthesia was like that; it played around with your inner clock until you weren't sure of anything. "I went out to mail some bills, and there was a man in an old station wagon outside my building. I didn't see him at first, but he shot me with a tranq dart."
The rest of the story was in scattered pictures. The back of the wagon. A dark room that smelled like mothballs. The unacceptable thing. Then she woke up in the park, dumped out of the way. "I tried to run inside, but I didn't make it. It must've been really strong." Uncertainly, she touched her bicep, trying to decide if the hurting there was related.
"Yeah, it's Friday," the Destroyer said. "The sun had been down about fifteen minutes when I got the call. What...why would...?" He was watching her rub her upper arm, his brow furrowing with thought. This meant he could rule out Deanna, and while that should have been a comfort, the look on Rhiannon's face said it was anything but.
"He took you off the street?" The neighborhood the Slayer lived in was almost deserted, so even asking about witnesses felt pointless. Instead he said, "Did you recognize him before you lost consciousness, or at least see his face? If he tranqed you first, that probably means he knew you. Or at least the whole Slayer thing. What did he...?" And this was the question he didn't want to ask, because he didn't like the hollow look in his friend's eyes. And because he'd found the word that had eluded him before.
Rhiannon looked like she'd been violated somehow. Connor reached out and took the brunette's hand, lifting it away from the knee of her pants. A muscle in his cheek jumped. "What did he do?"
She shook her head 'no', that she didn't see his face. "He had on a hat. An old fedora." The only other thing she remembered was his skin color. He was white. White man in a station wagon. Not exactly something you could put on an APB, and not that Rhiannon would. You didn't tell the authorities this kind of thing; all he'd be guilty of was kidnapping, because the rest of it didn't exist on the books.
"Connor." She slipped her arms between her legs, away from him, reaching all the way down to her ankles and lacing her fingers together. Rhiannon's back was rounded. One of her shoulders dipped lower than the other. She felt her cheeks burning and she didn't want to tell him this, because it made her less than before. A normal woman he could beat with both hands tied behind his back. Not his mirror image anymore. "He took something, but it's not what you think."
She closed her eyes. "I don't know how he did it."
Fedoras made him think of Whistler, which was stupid because Whistler wouldn't do this. He turned his mind away from the question about the attacker's identity and towards the other thing, the question of what had been lost. He sat back against his own end of the couch, folding his arms across the narrow expanse of his chest, brain pulling at the problem even as his fingers plucked at the sideseams of his shirt. He took in her posture, the huddled way she was sitting, the curvature of her spine, and another uncomfortable word floated across his brain before disappearing.
Defeated. Connor's mouth opened, and he closed it again, closed it so fast that his teeth clacked together.
"No." Not a protest, just a negation, because it didn't work like that. It wasn't a jacket to be taken off and put back on at your leisure. It would be more like slicing off a layer of skin with a razor, or cutting out a chunk of your soul, if such a thing was possible. The inversion of self. "No."
"Yes." Having to say it to Connor made it real to Rhiannon. She kept everything closed up tight: her eyes, her mouth when she wasn't speaking, her knees around her elbows. The reason she felt so sluggish wasn't just because of the chemicals he shot into her system; it was her body adjusting to being normal again, like a massive altitude adjustment or being pressurized all the sudden. Her physical strength, endurance, agility, the whole of what came with being a Slayer was missing and it was screwing up her equilibrium. "Trust me, it's gone. I can't feel it anymore and I wouldn't fuck around about this." That would be like cussing out god, to her, as stupid as the explanation would've sounded.
"I saw him take it." Rhiannon had been coming out of unconsciousness, and there it was, hovering over her chest, a little ball of golden light moving away. That's when he stuck her again; she remembered that now.
He let go of his shirt with one hand, and his index finger reached out and poked Rhiannon's closest shoulder as if he were conducting a stress test. Because he hadn't noticed before, had been too concerned with getting his friend off of the street and away from prying eyes to take in the fact that something was bad-wrong about this whole thing. His finger made contact through the fabric of her shirt, and while the arm felt more or less the same, the muscle tone was different. Unable to drive a punch through the ribcage of any vampire unlucky enough to run across her. He took his hand back on his own this time.
"Oh, man." It wanted to be a negation again, but he couldn't quite manage it this time. He wet his lower lip, laced both hands together on the back of his neck. His mind was threatening to spin off into a dozen different directions at once, and he corralled it back into place to keep himself on task, if there even was a task. "Hey," he finally said, aware that the silence had likely dragged on too long. "Look at me, okay?"
Rhiannon considered saying no. She considered giving herself over to tears, too, but no matter how changed her body was, her personality was the same, and it vetoed the possibility. This was all still new, and maybe she was in shock, but she couldn't make up her mind whether to be furious or ashamed or devastated. Could she be all three at once?
All kinds of questions tangled up in her mind, which she was too addled to answer. She wanted Connor to do it for her, but she was too proud to ask those things. What am I going to do? How could he do this to me? Why did he do it? What if I can't get it back? That one was the worst.
She tucked her hair behind her earlobes and looked at Connor. "I'm going to kill him."
"Not if I get to him first."
He held up one knuckled fist when he said it, his expression divided almost equally between 'Connor' and 'Destroyer', and he wasn't even sure he was kidding. Physical differences aside, he could still read Rhiannon's emotional state pretty well, and it was like having a book in front of him watching her expression shift and change. He had thought about it over the years, how much easier things would be for him if he wasn't some genetic thing-that-should-not-be, what it would be like to be 'normal'.
But not like this. Not forced, and that someone had done this to Rhiannon, who had been there for him so many times in the past was something to put him in a mood to curb-stomp someone. He drew in a soft breath, shook his fingers out of their fist. He looked down the hall where Ivan had disappeared as if the cat might be spying on them, then very carefully put his arm around his friend's shoulders. He'd never been good with words, with articulating the things he felt, but he could imagine his own reaction if the circumstances were reversed. His arm formed a protective shield around her bowed shoulders, his brow coming to rest on the side of her head.
"That's not why, you know." Because he'd thought that too off and on; not with her, but with others. "Why I'm your friend, why I love you. I want you to understand that."
Rhiannon squeezed her eyes shut tight. Her throat burned and a lump kept getting bigger in it. "It's why I love me." A tremor built in her legs, and even when she locked them together, they wouldn't stay still. She wanted to be motionless. She wanted to feel rooted in something, even if it was her place on the couch. Like she couldn't be disconnected from that, too. She wrung wrinkles into her sweatshirt sleeves, hands swallowed whole. "I couldn't call Kris or Jules. I think I'd hate them."
It wasn't right. They were her friends. They were her sisters, but she was too divorced from them. What Rhiannon's emotions wanted was an outlet, and resentment was an ugly, easy out. She didn't want to be jealous of them; there was a very real chance that if this couldn't be fixed, she'd never go near either of them again. As to why she hadn't called Whistler... He would make her cry. He wouldn't even mean to, but he was so wound up in her calling, how could he not? All he'd have to do is stand there.
He was still holding her, and he got it, the arrogance, because he had it too, the assurance that you could walk through a dozen demons and end up with maybe a broken arm. Invincibility, or if not then something damned close to it. The world couldn't bottle what set them apart. He avoided trying to pry one of her hands out of her sleeves.
"I wouldn't have come out here for Kris." Because as much as he liked and respected the other Slayer, he would not have uprooted his life in Nevada for her. One place could be much the same as another, and when there were always monsters to fight the location hardly mattered. But if he were truly honest with himself it was the thought of his life with Rhiannon so far away that had been part of the spur to pack his belongings and seek out a new home. He hadn't been exaggerating before; in a lot of ways that mattered, she was his guide, and without her he'd be lost.
"We'll get it back." Not 'you', but 'we', because he'd do everything he could to help her. "He can't keep what's yours." He gave her shoulder a squeeze, one that was mindful of the new differences in their strength, then pressed a quick kiss to her temple before backing off. "Francess is either at work or with Avery, I'm not sure which. If you want, I can square it with her so you can sleep on the couch for a couple of nights. I could even feed Mary Sue for you. You know, whatever you need."
Relief rolled through her. Just as she was going to bury her face in his shoulder and have God knew what emotional meltdown, he got out of her space. Rhiannon looked out the window. It was fully dark outside. Her time of night. "Can I think about it for a few minutes?" She honestly didn't know where to go, or what would hurt less. She needed a shower, but her clothes were at home. Purity was going to freak out when she saw Rhiannon was gone and had left the door unlocked, her keys and cell inside, and mail all over the ground. Joseph might've called. Like it or not, hiding wasn't going to sort anything out for her.
"Nevermind. I want to go home, just not yet. In a couple of hours," she decided. She wasn't sure it was true, but it was what she was going to do anyway. Rhiannon pushed up her sleeves. "I'm gonna wash my face." On standing, her body felt a little less strange. She touched his arm for a second, trying to show gratitude and failing miserably. Then she went to the bathroom and shut the door. A few seconds later, the sink started running.
He was watching the bathroom door, his brow creased with thought lines, and he pushed the hair out of his eyes as he got up from the couch. He'd see her home in another cab, insist on it even if she said she was fine, then casually park himself on her couch for the night. He knew she would never ask it of him, that vulnerability was something neither of them excelled at, but he might be able to get by with it if he just did it without calling attention to it.
They'd get it back. This guy, whoever he was, had chosen the wrong girl. And whether he said it or whether he didn't, Connor loved Rhiannon too much to let her go through it by herself.