Sidestory:
Mortalitas
by Tami
Sometimes I wonder when my life fucked up.
It had been three days eight hours thirty-six minutes twenty-four seconds a handful of tranqs two news cameras five interview offers ten million heartbeats and no partridge in a pear tree later.
..."We're sorry, Mr. Parfett is currently being operated on and we can't give any details yet as to whether - "...
..."Damn it, let me through!"...
..."Glasgow Scale Three; currently no response to stimulation. However, his condition is stable. Ravi Skada was unable to be revived at the scene and was later pronounced dead of wounds to the - "...
No response to stimulation. Ha. And a mere few days ago she'd been counting his ribs with her lips.
"Jace?"
The redhead's head snapped up from her place on the floor, soaking in the sunshine going through her window like it gave life. She couldn't get warm, not any more.
"News?" she asked curtly.
Emily Kellen shook her head, peach eyes darkening in sorrow as she expelled a sigh, whispersoft. "... the doctors don't know when he's going to wake up, honey."
"Why not?" She was disgusted to hear her voice rising in something akin to a wail. Days and days of tears had twisted her usually husky, strong alto into something pathetic.
Her mother leant against the doorway. She would remember that, later on, the way her mother had looked, her dark hair falling in her face as she groped blindly for the right words to say. People usually said Jace resembled her father David; the jaw, the chin, the shape of the eyes, the frank sharp looks; the expression, though, all came from Emily.
I love you, mama. Don't say it -
"I 'phoned the hospital." Emily pushed her hair out of her face and looked at her daughter directly, lit up in the sunshine, small and fiery and woebegone. Her heart ached for her as she sat at the foot of her bed. "They... they don't know what's wrong. He suffered some kind of head trauma and... his brain's not functioning properly. Without the machines, baby, he'd die. It's sort of like... severed from his body, love, please - " Jace had begun shaking her head frantically. "He might wake up, Jace, but he'd be - "
"He wouldn't, Mom, don't you dare say that, don't you even start - "
" - disabled - "
"A vegetable."
There was a pregnant silence in the room; the wind pressed against the door and Jace kneaded her fingers into the carpet.
"Yes," Emily whispered.
"A vegetable and a cripple," Jace sneered, collapsing on her back, sun bright against her tan skin and too harsh on her eyes until she had to close them squeezing I won't cry again. "Match made in goddamn heaven."
The older woman put her head in her hands, massaging her forehead briefly. "They'll let you go sit with him - if you want to."
Her voice was tight. "I want to. When?"
"Almost every day."
Another silence.
"You really want to?"
"I'm going to be there when he wakes up."
"... Honey - "
"Don't even fucking start! I'm not listening to you! He's going to wake up!"
She hadn't meant to scream. It cracked in the air, angry and seething with violence, all the more horrible because Jace never shouted at her mother like that. Small and fragile and tinier than daughter or husband, Emily was usually treated with soft protective tenderness that the redhead had learned early off her father. Jace might swear at her father, but Emily was sacred ground.
Jace broke soon after she pushed and collapsed down on her stomach, burying her face in the carpet and kneading the roughness with her knuckles. There was soon a hand on her back, light and tenative, moving over her shoulderblades in the familiar rhythm of rub-rub-pat. She tensed at the touch, shaking her head in tight misery.
"Mom."
Silently, Emily stood and padded over to Jace's door, tracing the doorknob that was used rarely by Jace herself in favour of the ever-abused button opening the door electronically. She had not survived as Jace's mother all this time by not knowing when to back away. "... I'll be in the kitchen, baby," she finally relented, and left the room.
The click of the door shutting echoed for a while, before Jace rolled over to lie on her back, staring out through the glass into the sunlight. With deliberate viciousness, she half-crawled forward to stab at the buttons on her stereo to something with insistent bass to drown out her head, and began to do modified push-ups.
One, damnit, two, damnit, three, damnit, four...
Acacia's death had never hurt so hard. Acacia's death, she admitted, just hadn't hurt. It had been filed to the back of her brain in a little knot of anger that could be used helpfully against the Romanus who killed her, a casualty of war, you died bravely girl and that's given you more respect than I ever gave you in real life. Sometimes late at night she still saw mintgreen eyes and very pale hands and heard a haunting English accent, but that was only on the nights with the very darkest nightmares.
And, of course, there was Zaza.
She couldn't stop the feelings that time. Zaza was filed away with Acacia in an even deeper part of her brain, shadowed and painted over so well that not even Jack with his siamese soul knew that it was there. Oh, he knew damn well that she'd killed a girl, but not how or why or when or... perhaps he thought it was self-defence.
Creampuff...
It washed over her, soft, and she fell to the rolling tide without even offering token resistance.
Y'know, Grogan, death and sex were never too different. They weren't, were they? Why'd I pick on killing you that way? Why didn't I stand back and let my magic do the work? Instead, it had been arms and hands and god even teeth and the last bloodied pas-de-deux the brighthaired Galaxia senshi would ever dance. She could still hear the girl's sobbing cries and gasps of pain, the crack of bone, the meaty thud of flesh giving way, the scraping sounds her legs made on the pavement of the alleyway and how clearly she'd been able to see in the darkness huge cocoa-coloured eyes.
Not very methodical, Kellen. She'd broken the ribs and dislocated the arm - it had hung painful and useless at Sextans' side; and by the end of she'd been confused and lost as to what to do next. What to break, what to pound, what to destroy. Her first kill was clumsy and prolonged because she could not do it cleanly and god she got angrier with each passing noise -
Her blood had been slick on her palms, and had slipped from the Physics senshi like silk, especially from her mouth. Jace had memorized every shape and edge of her and then broken it.
Bloodspattering heavy and warm on her body as Sextans fell -
- and when I fell to you, thin steady streams coming off in drips that bloodied both our thighs and I bit my lip so hard it trickled down my chin until you wiped it away -
God, she hated blood now. Her entire life seemed to revolve around the damn stuff. Her first kill? Her metalmaterial gloves had been heavy with it, and her face decorated like she was a bad extra from a horror movie when finally she destroyed the last remnant of Sextans and the huge severing inside the other girl had spurted up in floods against her as she dragged the body. Her first promise? Made with it, the thin hot slash against Jack's hand as he mingled his blood with hers, warm and tender and fucking painful. Her first - time?
That was still too much of a bruise against her heart, so barely hours old and still a deep sweet physical ache down somewhere inside. She had wept like some kind of moron, when it had hurt, as if she hadn't sustained much huger injuries before than the simple sweet act of him. He'd murmured fervent muffled apology into her forehead and cheeks and mouth, having devolved into complete untranslateable Cockney, enough to make her laugh through the sudden tears caught on her eyelashes. Jace didn't know yet what to think of the fact that he still had a massive lovebite on his collarbone. They would have seen, those who worked on him, the medical staff patiently repairing the huge wound in his chest. She knew well enough, enough to make her lips twitch in an aborted smile, that he would be mortified.
Forty-five-forty-six-forty-seven-can't-feel-pain-yet...
Suddenly her wrists gave and she fell to the floor in a crumpled heap, forehead digging into the carpet as she rolled over onto her back. The pain hadn't gotten her; the sudden fatigue had, the urge to just crawl into bed and sleep forever and never wake up. Or maybe sleep so long that when she did it'd all be over.
Never over. Never ever ever...
Would she still be doing this at twenty? Twenty-five? Twenty-nine and old before her time with an equally tired-eyed Jack, and eternally perky grownup Leta who maybe would have grown some brains after a lifetime of war and maybe the world would know by now and she would be able to look her dad in the eyes and say, 'I meant to tell you earlier, but - '
Jace no longer knew what to say, or what to think, or what to do. The tears were suddenly on her hands and she stared at them, warm but cooling, shaking them off so that they made dark little drops on the floor. Every time she thought she had no more weeping left in her she found another well; her eyes, making up for years with a girl who never cried at anything, were now on a roll. Her greatest enemy, she curled herself into the tightest little ball she could form and sobbed.
Falling always had involved breaking. She'd known that from the start.
Don't die on me before I can tell you I'm sorry.