*sigh* it's early...
Dec. 29th, 2004 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lavandarlizard2I have just spent a miserable day waiting for someone to give me something to do. Do you know how hard it is to be stuck at work with nothing to do? And then get handed something - finally! - five minutes before you're supposed to leave. I spent an hour and fifteen minutes doing something that I could have done at noon, if the guy running the inventory wasn't so bloody disorganized.
Now I have an option. I can take the overtime pay or I can take off early. I believe I'll leave early. My knee is trying to swell, dammit, probably from running up and down the stairs a couple dozen times. And I'm tired.
On the plus side, I did a lot of reading... ^_^ And I decided to go ahead and post the first partlet of this part early. You can stomp me squishy when it's all over. Hmm... That'll be... about the middle of January.
Mmm... Same warnings as the first part.
BFB - 084a - Strange Days II
I swam up through the layers of consciousness fearing what waited, even as I scrambled toward it. Before, when I surfaced, there were strange voices and hands and an overwhelming sense of betrayal. Another time, the same – maybe – strange voices, more hands roaming over me and pain. Sharp, shocking, terrifying *pain*.
I remember being cold and more scared than ever before in my life… Even leaving my home at eleven wasn’t this scary. I remember crying somewhere in there, and I remember calling for Heero. I could almost hear his voice some times, telling me not to be afraid; everything would be all right. But the hands came back…
I don’t remember hearing my screams, but I know I did scream. And then everything just went away; stopped, including me.
Never trusting anyone ever again. NEVER.
Dark… Dark room… Gods, I hurt so much… just everywhere... Want to run, escape… Stop my head from spinning so wildly… Crawl if I fuckin’ have to… No more bloody damn *hands* on me…
I managed vertical in spite of the pain and the dizziness and the pervasive darkness. Managed three, maybe four steps.
Someone laid hands on me. I screamed, flailing wildly. A great deal of yelling, screaming and wild struggling ensued. I wasn’t bound and helpless this time. Maybe I couldn’t see what I was doing, but at least I was fighting back. My frantic swings landed at least twice.
And then a second pair of hands joined the first, closing about my upper arms. Fear and fury coalesced and I screamed fit to wake the entire demon realm.
The darkness splintered, or maybe it was just me… And I heard voices.
“No! Don’t touch him! Get Heero! Damn, are you all right?! I said not to touch him! Duo! Duo, you’re safe! It’s over! Calm down!”
My need to escape wavered. Heero? Safety? Over?
I froze where I was, blinking. It didn’t seem to help with the darkness… From far away, I heard voices again. Good voices; voices I knew I could trust…
“Hurry, Heero! He’s disoriented; talk to him.”
And softly, from in front of me, “Baby… Baby, it’s all right now. It’s all over, all finished. You don’t have to fight anymore. You don’t have to be afraid.”
“Heero…?” I was so afraid it wasn’t true; that I was just dreaming again.
“Yes, angel,” he sighed. “It’s me. You’re at the Castle, in the infirmary.”
A rustle off to the side caught my ear and I half-turned that way, still uncertain.
“No, baby,” breathed Heero. “It’s just Q.”
“Sorry, Duo,” said that familiar quiet voice. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” I felt him touch me, without actually touching me, and all my fear just washed away.
“Q?” I breathed. “Heero?”
“Yes, angel; it’s all right now.” Fingertips brushed my hand and I clutched at him. His arms came around me, pulling me hard against him. I think I whimpered. The world just went away, everything except me and my Wyvern. He murmured in my ear and his hands moved possessively over me, and they were *good* hands; hands I love, the touch I live for. The nightmare retreated…
Vaguely, I heard and recognized Q’s voice at a distance. Then Trowa and Wufei. Another voice, a warm contralto… I didn’t fear it, even though I didn’t recognize it. Then Q… touched me again.
“Duo, I’m sorry; I know this has been terrible for you…” He trailed off as if embarrassed or uncertain.
I raised my head from Heero’s shoulder, trying again to see in the darkness, remembering that it shouldn’t be this dark. “Why is it dark?” I asked quietly. Don’t panic; nothing to panic about yet.
“It’s just a potion. Mistress Loquinn will put some drops in your eyes and it’ll be gone. Whatever drug they gave you was making your eyes burn; Heero wanted to spare you that pain.”
Okay, then the darkness was just temporary. My insides, which had apparently panicked without me, began to relax. But that didn’t account for Q’s obvious distress.
“Then… what is it? Heero? Q?” My voice shook; I tried taking a deep breath, but it didn’t seem to help. The heavy silence helped even less.
“Baby…” Heero’s arms wrapped around me again. “You need to… They want… It’s their policy…”
“Policy?” I know I stiffened; my heart skipped a couple of beats. ‘Policy’ is not a word generally used by Magical Creatures. It’s a Human term. “Policy for what?” Dammit, my own voice and my body conspired against me to make me shudder with apprehension.
“Duo, angel,” began Heero, but Q stepped in.
“Duo, the Human authorities want to know if you were assaulted.”
I flinched. Violently. Heero growled and kissed my forehead.
“They… I… I… don’t know…” I whispered shakily. I was doing my best to disappear into Heero. Another five seconds and I would either hyperventilate myself into unconsciousness or spontaneously combust.
“They can just leave him the fuck alone!” Heero snarled. “He’s been through enough!”
“Heero,” sighed Q. “I do know… But this is their jurisdiction; we have to follow their rules.”
“Fuck them!”
I’ve never heard Heero like this before. He was… scaring me.
I know I whimpered then. “What do they want? I don’t *know* what happened! I don’t know… if… if… I don’t fuckin’ *know*!”
“I understand, Duo,” said Q gently. “They want to do… a test. They have procedures to follow. It’s done by a doctor.”
It took… a long time for his words to register. And when they did, I began to shake. Into that moment stepped Mistress Loquinn with the eye drops. I clutched at that distraction like it was a damned life preserver. As long as I could think ‘eye drops’ I didn’t have to think…
How the hell long could this nightmare go on?
I felt the healer next to me an instant before her fingertips touched my cheek.
“Tilt your head back, dear,” she instructed.
I tried; I swear I tried, but my body was still in full defense mode and just plain refused to bare its throat to someone it couldn’t see. All at once Heero’s arm went behind my knees and the next thing I knew, I was horizontal in his arms and Mistress Loquinn was telling me to pry my eyelids open. It gave my fragmented wits somewhere to focus and before I had to consciously think, my eyes were open and the drops were in. I blinked a few times, shivering at the icy feel of the stuff. Light began to creep slowly into my shadowed vision.
I really was at the Castle, in the spacious ward of the infirmary. I saw Mistress Loquinn smiling at me and Q behind her looking relieved. Above me, rumbling softly to himself in his worry, my Wyvern looked haggard and worn and incredibly relieved. Absurdly relieved.
An odd little thought formed in my head then, that there was no reason for him to have been so worried, that he would now be so obviously relieved. I can take care of myself.
Except…
…and then it hit me like a kick in the balls. I *couldn’t* take care of myself. It had just been unequivocally demonstrated that I *hadn’t* taken care of myself. We wouldn’t be here, like this, if I had.
And that rude little reality check circled inexorably back around to the matter of ‘policy’ and ‘test’ and ‘doctor’.
My face must have done something, because Heero suddenly had a death grip on me and Q had hold of both my hands.
Given past experience, I’m a little surprised I didn’t just port my freaked-out little self somewhere far, far away.
Instead, my brain went with hysterical sobs, complete with random flailing and screams of “NO!”
And yet, if you had asked me what I was so afraid of, I could not have told you. It was… a little while before rational thought returned. When it did, I was lying on a bed, still wrapped in Heero’s arms and shaking like… Well, comparing my trembling to that of a leaf would be just feeble. I was shaking hard enough to make the bed rattle, okay?
And my solid island of Wyvernian safety wasn’t much better. I was scaring him. I’d *been* scaring him since… yesterday, I guess.
Shit. What he must think of me… What they all must think of me, falling apart for… for so little reason. I tried to ignore the voice that was whispering in the depths of my head, telling me exactly what that little reason was.
::Not going there. Not giving in to that. Not! Do you hear?! NOT!::
I scavenged up a few shreds of dignity or common sense or… something, and did some inhale/exhale/relax.
Heero responded to the calming of my heartbeat and the fact that I no longer had a death grip on his neck with a deep breath and a long sigh. Damn. I’d almost strangled him. I had to get control of myself…
“Heero,” I whispered, forcing my arms to release him and stroking his cheek gently. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean…”
He caught at my still-trembling hand, kissing it again and again, between words.
“Don’t! Don’t you dare apologize! You’ve done nothing wrong!”
Q stepped into my line of sight. “Duo, I’m sorry. We need to decide if you want to do that test…” he said quietly. “It needs to be done soon, while… while…”
I swallowed, and forced the words out. “While it’s still… fresh?” I managed.
Heero growled again, his grip on me tightening painfully. Q looked miserable, as if he was somehow responsible.
“Fuck!” I snarled. “Why don’t they just ask– I mean, they have him in custody, right?” I tried to stick with ‘mad’; ‘scared’ was just too close to… things.
“Yeah,” said someone behind me sourly and I jumped. It was only Wufei, I discovered, sitting on the bed behind me, but it scared me half to death. “They have him. In a couple of buckets in the Coroner’s freezer.”
I made a noise best described as ‘strangled.’ Ruthlessly wrestled down the panic crawling up my throat as a scream.
::No. Done with that. All done. Gonna be a grown-up here.::
Instead I said calmly, “Q, why is this so important, if he’s… not around? Why do they care what, if anything was done to me?”
The blond Wizard looked suddenly very uncomfortable. He took a full minute to formulate his answer; I waited, feeling something scurrying around in the back of my head. Tiny whispers, brief flickers of memory. I stomped them down.
“Duo…”
God, he was having a hard time with this!
Heero’s hands came up to knead at my shoulders and the back of my neck while he whispered his love for me.
Q sighed. “Duo, they want to know if self-defense was justified. If you were being… assaulted, there is no question that it was self-defense. If not…” He sighed again. “If not, they will charge you with murder.”
I stared at him. “I didn’t kill anyone.” I looked at Heero. “I thought you…”
“If he had been alive when I found you, I would have torn his damn heart out. But there were only… remains.” He stroked my hair gently while I tried to digest what he’d said.
“Are you… Do they think… But…” I couldn’t follow it; it simply would not make sense in my head. I’ve never *killed* anyone. I don’t know if I could.
“Like the toad demon,” Heero whispered.
My stomach lurched. “Oh,” I said blankly. “Oh.”
I was going to faint. I knew it; I felt it coming and I did absolutely nothing to fight it off. If I couldn’t go to my beach, at least I could go *away*.
I came back to the sound of Q’s very stiff and strained voice and knew that he was on a cellphone.
“– Admissibility of evidence frankly does not concern me. That monster got what he deserved, regardless.” A long pause, then, angrily, “Very well. But don’t think that this is over!”
“Q?” murmured Heero, obviously unaware of my return.
“I’m sorry, Heero,” he sighed. “They won’t budge. They still insist that he be examined or they’re going to charge him with first degree murder.”
“I’ll take him to Torii; they can’t touch him there. Or to Merry Brook. Teal won’t let them hurt him.”
Oh, fuck… Time to smile and laugh and do my little happy dance. Geez, I didn’t want to be a fuckin’ *fugitive*. Didn’t want Q to get into trouble.
::Get the fuck over it!:: I told myself.
“No,” I told them. “I’ll do what they want.” They both jumped, not having realized that I was listening. I thought I would choke on it, but I said it. “Tell me… Just tell me what they have to do.” I ruthlessly throttled that rotten little voice in my head; the one that seemed to take fiendish delight in taunting me with nightmares and bogeymen.
Dammit, I *am* a bogeyman!
I wanted the nightmare *over*. I’d survived… whatever. I could survive the aftermath. I’m a fucking Banshee, not a damn hothouse orchid. And if I said it often enough and loud enough, I might even convince myself.
“Let’s just get it the hell over with!” I snarled. “Tell me what they’re gonna do.”
I got body-slammed with so damn much shit in the next five minutes; I was bloody well wishing I could sink into the ground and never come back.
Mistress Loquinn was somehow drafted to explain the… procedure to me. She did her best to put a positive spin on it, but it still had me shaking and near tears when she finished. Heero sat behind me, arms around me and his head against my shoulder. He didn’t say anything; he didn’t have to. His very presence was a godsend. I leaned against him and just concentrated on breathing; inhale, exhale. Repeat.
I was aware, I think, of the fury bubbling away beneath his calm façade, but somehow I also knew that it wasn’t for me. In no way was he angry at me. You laugh? Hey, I am the poster child for ‘insecure’.
When I could manage it, I asked, “Who is going to… to do it?”
Q answered me. “There are three doctors authorized to perform a rape exam.”
He continued, but I lost track for a few minutes. The magic word. Everyone else had managed to avoid it. *I’d* managed to avoid it.
How in the hell…
“Q? Say that again. I… zoned.” Heero shifted, turning me so that I could curl against him wearily.
“Of course, Duo,” said Q gently. “Dr Arabella French; she’s a Witch and a medical doctor. She has a mixed practice in town. I’ve met her socially, and she’s a very sweet lady.”
“Yeah… Okay… Let’s do it; I wanna go home.” I looked up at Heero. “You’ll go with?” I asked hesitantly.
“Of course,” he said fiercely.
I got to my feet slowly, feeling a little dizzy and a lot shaky, and noticed for the first time that I was wearing… one of those horrible open-assed hospital gowns.
It just would not end. The mood swings alone would kill me at this rate…
My face went hot, my knees wobbled. I had a brief moment of just wanting to sit down and cry in humiliation. How many people had been staring at my butt through all of this?
But I sucked it up again.
Do what they want. Get it over with. Go home. Never leave my room again.
...tbc...
Now I have an option. I can take the overtime pay or I can take off early. I believe I'll leave early. My knee is trying to swell, dammit, probably from running up and down the stairs a couple dozen times. And I'm tired.
On the plus side, I did a lot of reading... ^_^ And I decided to go ahead and post the first partlet of this part early. You can stomp me squishy when it's all over. Hmm... That'll be... about the middle of January.
Mmm... Same warnings as the first part.
BFB - 084a - Strange Days II
I swam up through the layers of consciousness fearing what waited, even as I scrambled toward it. Before, when I surfaced, there were strange voices and hands and an overwhelming sense of betrayal. Another time, the same – maybe – strange voices, more hands roaming over me and pain. Sharp, shocking, terrifying *pain*.
I remember being cold and more scared than ever before in my life… Even leaving my home at eleven wasn’t this scary. I remember crying somewhere in there, and I remember calling for Heero. I could almost hear his voice some times, telling me not to be afraid; everything would be all right. But the hands came back…
I don’t remember hearing my screams, but I know I did scream. And then everything just went away; stopped, including me.
Never trusting anyone ever again. NEVER.
Dark… Dark room… Gods, I hurt so much… just everywhere... Want to run, escape… Stop my head from spinning so wildly… Crawl if I fuckin’ have to… No more bloody damn *hands* on me…
I managed vertical in spite of the pain and the dizziness and the pervasive darkness. Managed three, maybe four steps.
Someone laid hands on me. I screamed, flailing wildly. A great deal of yelling, screaming and wild struggling ensued. I wasn’t bound and helpless this time. Maybe I couldn’t see what I was doing, but at least I was fighting back. My frantic swings landed at least twice.
And then a second pair of hands joined the first, closing about my upper arms. Fear and fury coalesced and I screamed fit to wake the entire demon realm.
The darkness splintered, or maybe it was just me… And I heard voices.
“No! Don’t touch him! Get Heero! Damn, are you all right?! I said not to touch him! Duo! Duo, you’re safe! It’s over! Calm down!”
My need to escape wavered. Heero? Safety? Over?
I froze where I was, blinking. It didn’t seem to help with the darkness… From far away, I heard voices again. Good voices; voices I knew I could trust…
“Hurry, Heero! He’s disoriented; talk to him.”
And softly, from in front of me, “Baby… Baby, it’s all right now. It’s all over, all finished. You don’t have to fight anymore. You don’t have to be afraid.”
“Heero…?” I was so afraid it wasn’t true; that I was just dreaming again.
“Yes, angel,” he sighed. “It’s me. You’re at the Castle, in the infirmary.”
A rustle off to the side caught my ear and I half-turned that way, still uncertain.
“No, baby,” breathed Heero. “It’s just Q.”
“Sorry, Duo,” said that familiar quiet voice. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” I felt him touch me, without actually touching me, and all my fear just washed away.
“Q?” I breathed. “Heero?”
“Yes, angel; it’s all right now.” Fingertips brushed my hand and I clutched at him. His arms came around me, pulling me hard against him. I think I whimpered. The world just went away, everything except me and my Wyvern. He murmured in my ear and his hands moved possessively over me, and they were *good* hands; hands I love, the touch I live for. The nightmare retreated…
Vaguely, I heard and recognized Q’s voice at a distance. Then Trowa and Wufei. Another voice, a warm contralto… I didn’t fear it, even though I didn’t recognize it. Then Q… touched me again.
“Duo, I’m sorry; I know this has been terrible for you…” He trailed off as if embarrassed or uncertain.
I raised my head from Heero’s shoulder, trying again to see in the darkness, remembering that it shouldn’t be this dark. “Why is it dark?” I asked quietly. Don’t panic; nothing to panic about yet.
“It’s just a potion. Mistress Loquinn will put some drops in your eyes and it’ll be gone. Whatever drug they gave you was making your eyes burn; Heero wanted to spare you that pain.”
Okay, then the darkness was just temporary. My insides, which had apparently panicked without me, began to relax. But that didn’t account for Q’s obvious distress.
“Then… what is it? Heero? Q?” My voice shook; I tried taking a deep breath, but it didn’t seem to help. The heavy silence helped even less.
“Baby…” Heero’s arms wrapped around me again. “You need to… They want… It’s their policy…”
“Policy?” I know I stiffened; my heart skipped a couple of beats. ‘Policy’ is not a word generally used by Magical Creatures. It’s a Human term. “Policy for what?” Dammit, my own voice and my body conspired against me to make me shudder with apprehension.
“Duo, angel,” began Heero, but Q stepped in.
“Duo, the Human authorities want to know if you were assaulted.”
I flinched. Violently. Heero growled and kissed my forehead.
“They… I… I… don’t know…” I whispered shakily. I was doing my best to disappear into Heero. Another five seconds and I would either hyperventilate myself into unconsciousness or spontaneously combust.
“They can just leave him the fuck alone!” Heero snarled. “He’s been through enough!”
“Heero,” sighed Q. “I do know… But this is their jurisdiction; we have to follow their rules.”
“Fuck them!”
I’ve never heard Heero like this before. He was… scaring me.
I know I whimpered then. “What do they want? I don’t *know* what happened! I don’t know… if… if… I don’t fuckin’ *know*!”
“I understand, Duo,” said Q gently. “They want to do… a test. They have procedures to follow. It’s done by a doctor.”
It took… a long time for his words to register. And when they did, I began to shake. Into that moment stepped Mistress Loquinn with the eye drops. I clutched at that distraction like it was a damned life preserver. As long as I could think ‘eye drops’ I didn’t have to think…
How the hell long could this nightmare go on?
I felt the healer next to me an instant before her fingertips touched my cheek.
“Tilt your head back, dear,” she instructed.
I tried; I swear I tried, but my body was still in full defense mode and just plain refused to bare its throat to someone it couldn’t see. All at once Heero’s arm went behind my knees and the next thing I knew, I was horizontal in his arms and Mistress Loquinn was telling me to pry my eyelids open. It gave my fragmented wits somewhere to focus and before I had to consciously think, my eyes were open and the drops were in. I blinked a few times, shivering at the icy feel of the stuff. Light began to creep slowly into my shadowed vision.
I really was at the Castle, in the spacious ward of the infirmary. I saw Mistress Loquinn smiling at me and Q behind her looking relieved. Above me, rumbling softly to himself in his worry, my Wyvern looked haggard and worn and incredibly relieved. Absurdly relieved.
An odd little thought formed in my head then, that there was no reason for him to have been so worried, that he would now be so obviously relieved. I can take care of myself.
Except…
…and then it hit me like a kick in the balls. I *couldn’t* take care of myself. It had just been unequivocally demonstrated that I *hadn’t* taken care of myself. We wouldn’t be here, like this, if I had.
And that rude little reality check circled inexorably back around to the matter of ‘policy’ and ‘test’ and ‘doctor’.
My face must have done something, because Heero suddenly had a death grip on me and Q had hold of both my hands.
Given past experience, I’m a little surprised I didn’t just port my freaked-out little self somewhere far, far away.
Instead, my brain went with hysterical sobs, complete with random flailing and screams of “NO!”
And yet, if you had asked me what I was so afraid of, I could not have told you. It was… a little while before rational thought returned. When it did, I was lying on a bed, still wrapped in Heero’s arms and shaking like… Well, comparing my trembling to that of a leaf would be just feeble. I was shaking hard enough to make the bed rattle, okay?
And my solid island of Wyvernian safety wasn’t much better. I was scaring him. I’d *been* scaring him since… yesterday, I guess.
Shit. What he must think of me… What they all must think of me, falling apart for… for so little reason. I tried to ignore the voice that was whispering in the depths of my head, telling me exactly what that little reason was.
::Not going there. Not giving in to that. Not! Do you hear?! NOT!::
I scavenged up a few shreds of dignity or common sense or… something, and did some inhale/exhale/relax.
Heero responded to the calming of my heartbeat and the fact that I no longer had a death grip on his neck with a deep breath and a long sigh. Damn. I’d almost strangled him. I had to get control of myself…
“Heero,” I whispered, forcing my arms to release him and stroking his cheek gently. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean…”
He caught at my still-trembling hand, kissing it again and again, between words.
“Don’t! Don’t you dare apologize! You’ve done nothing wrong!”
Q stepped into my line of sight. “Duo, I’m sorry. We need to decide if you want to do that test…” he said quietly. “It needs to be done soon, while… while…”
I swallowed, and forced the words out. “While it’s still… fresh?” I managed.
Heero growled again, his grip on me tightening painfully. Q looked miserable, as if he was somehow responsible.
“Fuck!” I snarled. “Why don’t they just ask– I mean, they have him in custody, right?” I tried to stick with ‘mad’; ‘scared’ was just too close to… things.
“Yeah,” said someone behind me sourly and I jumped. It was only Wufei, I discovered, sitting on the bed behind me, but it scared me half to death. “They have him. In a couple of buckets in the Coroner’s freezer.”
I made a noise best described as ‘strangled.’ Ruthlessly wrestled down the panic crawling up my throat as a scream.
::No. Done with that. All done. Gonna be a grown-up here.::
Instead I said calmly, “Q, why is this so important, if he’s… not around? Why do they care what, if anything was done to me?”
The blond Wizard looked suddenly very uncomfortable. He took a full minute to formulate his answer; I waited, feeling something scurrying around in the back of my head. Tiny whispers, brief flickers of memory. I stomped them down.
“Duo…”
God, he was having a hard time with this!
Heero’s hands came up to knead at my shoulders and the back of my neck while he whispered his love for me.
Q sighed. “Duo, they want to know if self-defense was justified. If you were being… assaulted, there is no question that it was self-defense. If not…” He sighed again. “If not, they will charge you with murder.”
I stared at him. “I didn’t kill anyone.” I looked at Heero. “I thought you…”
“If he had been alive when I found you, I would have torn his damn heart out. But there were only… remains.” He stroked my hair gently while I tried to digest what he’d said.
“Are you… Do they think… But…” I couldn’t follow it; it simply would not make sense in my head. I’ve never *killed* anyone. I don’t know if I could.
“Like the toad demon,” Heero whispered.
My stomach lurched. “Oh,” I said blankly. “Oh.”
I was going to faint. I knew it; I felt it coming and I did absolutely nothing to fight it off. If I couldn’t go to my beach, at least I could go *away*.
I came back to the sound of Q’s very stiff and strained voice and knew that he was on a cellphone.
“– Admissibility of evidence frankly does not concern me. That monster got what he deserved, regardless.” A long pause, then, angrily, “Very well. But don’t think that this is over!”
“Q?” murmured Heero, obviously unaware of my return.
“I’m sorry, Heero,” he sighed. “They won’t budge. They still insist that he be examined or they’re going to charge him with first degree murder.”
“I’ll take him to Torii; they can’t touch him there. Or to Merry Brook. Teal won’t let them hurt him.”
Oh, fuck… Time to smile and laugh and do my little happy dance. Geez, I didn’t want to be a fuckin’ *fugitive*. Didn’t want Q to get into trouble.
::Get the fuck over it!:: I told myself.
“No,” I told them. “I’ll do what they want.” They both jumped, not having realized that I was listening. I thought I would choke on it, but I said it. “Tell me… Just tell me what they have to do.” I ruthlessly throttled that rotten little voice in my head; the one that seemed to take fiendish delight in taunting me with nightmares and bogeymen.
Dammit, I *am* a bogeyman!
I wanted the nightmare *over*. I’d survived… whatever. I could survive the aftermath. I’m a fucking Banshee, not a damn hothouse orchid. And if I said it often enough and loud enough, I might even convince myself.
“Let’s just get it the hell over with!” I snarled. “Tell me what they’re gonna do.”
I got body-slammed with so damn much shit in the next five minutes; I was bloody well wishing I could sink into the ground and never come back.
Mistress Loquinn was somehow drafted to explain the… procedure to me. She did her best to put a positive spin on it, but it still had me shaking and near tears when she finished. Heero sat behind me, arms around me and his head against my shoulder. He didn’t say anything; he didn’t have to. His very presence was a godsend. I leaned against him and just concentrated on breathing; inhale, exhale. Repeat.
I was aware, I think, of the fury bubbling away beneath his calm façade, but somehow I also knew that it wasn’t for me. In no way was he angry at me. You laugh? Hey, I am the poster child for ‘insecure’.
When I could manage it, I asked, “Who is going to… to do it?”
Q answered me. “There are three doctors authorized to perform a rape exam.”
He continued, but I lost track for a few minutes. The magic word. Everyone else had managed to avoid it. *I’d* managed to avoid it.
How in the hell…
“Q? Say that again. I… zoned.” Heero shifted, turning me so that I could curl against him wearily.
“Of course, Duo,” said Q gently. “Dr Arabella French; she’s a Witch and a medical doctor. She has a mixed practice in town. I’ve met her socially, and she’s a very sweet lady.”
“Yeah… Okay… Let’s do it; I wanna go home.” I looked up at Heero. “You’ll go with?” I asked hesitantly.
“Of course,” he said fiercely.
I got to my feet slowly, feeling a little dizzy and a lot shaky, and noticed for the first time that I was wearing… one of those horrible open-assed hospital gowns.
It just would not end. The mood swings alone would kill me at this rate…
My face went hot, my knees wobbled. I had a brief moment of just wanting to sit down and cry in humiliation. How many people had been staring at my butt through all of this?
But I sucked it up again.
Do what they want. Get it over with. Go home. Never leave my room again.
...tbc...
