Disclaimer: I don't own any Azumanga Daioh characters. This story is rated R for language, drug content, violence, and explicit sexual content.
Note: Obviously this story does not follow the original Azumanga Daioh storyline. That's what makes it a fan fiction, and a rather sick one at that. Don't ask me why I wrote it. I love Yukari. She's cute, adorably self-centered, and adamant in her refusal to mature and take responsibility for her life. So with all of her short-comings, lost popularity contests with Nyamo, quick resorts to alcohol, apathy towards her students, and sadistic tendencies in the face of harmless cute things, one might wonder how she lives with herself or why she is the way that she is. Or at least I wondered about it. This story is the result.
Control
Early to bed, early to rise was one of many philosophies used by Minamo Kurosawa. A renowned and rational high school P.E. teacher, Nyamo's young age made no difference against her high level of self discipline. Whether on weekdays or weekends, she kept herself on a steady schedule that included healthy sleeping habits, usually having her in bed no later than ten o'clock. Other women her age may have classified her as a boring prude because of this, but it was more because of that fact that Nyamo had several responsibilities that extended outside of regular working hours. She wasn't a prude, nor was she boring. She was an adult living in an adult life, though a rather uneventful one. One downside to living in a world of schedules and routines was the saddening reality that some things would simply never change.
It was 2:14 one morning when Nyamo found herself groggily blinking her eyes open. For a moment she laid there, focusing on the blurry green numbers of her alarm clock. Usually when she woke up in such a fashion it was because of an outside occurrence like a dog barking or people talking loudly out on the street as they made their way home from bars, yet on this night all remained silent. The clock on the opposite wall ticked softly, and outside her window a lone cricket chirped. She groaned and let her eyes close once more. The mind was an odd thing sometimes. Perhaps her dream had ended.
Suddenly the sound of someone knocking at her front door echoed through the small apartment. Nyamo started into a half sitting position, dark blue eyes shot open with sharp awareness. That must have been the sound that woke her in the first place.
"Who in the..." She frowned and sifted a hand back through her tussled black hair. Anyone who paid visits at 2 AM was either crazy or just downright ignorant of common courtesy. Either that or it was an emergency, or maybe just some kids playing a prank.
Grumbling to herself, she tossed the blankets off and twisted to set her feet on the floor. She was only dressed in a tank top and a pair of pajama pants but if someone was calling on her at this hour then she wasn't exactly obligated to look her best. Not bothering to grab her robe from the bathroom door she crossed to the front threshold and lifted her hand to grasp the door knob.
"Who is it?" Her tone carried more than a hint of her annoyance at having been woken up. Whether or not she would even unlock the door would depend on who it was.
"Shut up and open the door would ya!" A voice, distinctly female and very familiar, replied boisterously from the other side. Nyamo groaned again and rolled her eyes skyward. She should have known that if anyone was going to come and bug her at 2 AM, it was going to be Yukari.
Yukari had been Nyamo's best friend and worst pain in the ass since high school. In terms of personality, they were polar opposites. While Nyamo was organized and responsible, Yukari was wild and all over the place. It was a wonder that she had ever qualified to be a language teacher. She was no better than some of her most immature students at times. She was rambunctious and brash, and most of the people who knew her couldn't stand her fabricated sense of superiority. Despite these undesirable characteristics, Nyamo had remained a loyal friend to Yukari, partially to keep an eye on her and make sure that she stayed out of trouble, and partly because of a faint sense of obligation.
With a heavy sigh, Nyamo unlocked the dead bolt and threw open the door.
"Yukari, what in the Hell are you-"The blunt demand was abruptly choked off, her eyes growing wide with a mixture of shock and alarm as she looked at the wreck of a woman on her doorstep.
Yukari leaned heavily against the door frame. Her hair was a mess, her sweater was torn and missing most of its buttons, her skirt was smudged with dirt, and among other visible bruises around her neck and collar bone she sported a bloody lip and one black eye; however, none of that was more disturbing than the empty smile plastered across her face.
"Long time no see, yeah? Ya gonna lemme in or what?" The language teacher suddenly burst into a fit of hollow laughter. She seemed completely unaware of the fact that she was injured and showing up at her friend's house instead of a hospital.
"Yukari!" Nyamo hardly knew what to think. There had been times in the past when Yukari had gotten drunk and retreated to her friend's house, unable to return to her own, but not like this. She had seen Yukari drunk and this was something beyond simple intoxication. Quickly she stepped forward and circled an arm around the slouching woman's shoulders to help her into the apartment. Yukari only laughed louder, nearly falling when she tripped over the doorstep.
"You're not...gonna believe it, Nyamo!" Remaining completely oblivious to her own condition, Yukari slung her arm around the sober woman to help keep her balance. She had no real idea of what she was doing or even where she had been or where she was. She had come to her friend's apartment simply by following a vague sense of familiarity that had seeped through the drunken state of her mind. To her, she had done this a million times before and it was just the thing to do.
"Dammit, Yukari! How many times have I told you about this? What the Hell happened to you?" Nyamo led the stumbling teacher through the living room one tedious step at a time. She had never so much wanted to be angry at her friend for pulling this kind of stuff, but right now she was too concerned to be mad. Yukari looked as though she had been beaten pretty badly. She could only hope that those injuries had in some way been self-inflicted, but the more logical part of her mind knew better.
Eventually the two managed to stumble into the bathroom where Nyamo flicked on the light and carefully set her charge down on the closed lid of the toilet. Yukari growled and raised her hand to shield her eyes from the bright illumination.
"Damn!...I see how it is now...I gotta have a reason to visit? You too good tospend a little time...with yer best gal pal?"
Nyamo ignored the retort, uttering curses under her breath as she grabbed a washcloth from under the sink. She quickly soaked the washcloth under running water then wrung it out to fold into a square. She then moved to crouch down in front of Yukari who had hugged her arms tight around herself and was rocking slightly, her eyes traveling around the bathroom as though she had never seen one before in her life.
"Honestly, I don't know what gets into you sometimes." Nyamo's expression hardly softened as she took Yukari's chin between her fingers and set to work with the washcloth to wipe away the blood and dirt. Yukari only giggled, seeming not to notice when her body flinched once to the cold touch of the cloth.
"Men!"
"That's not what I meant"
"Ya know, you dun have a boy friend."
"Neither do you."
"Shut yer face, woman! Ima tell you somethin'—now!"
"Just...be quiet."
There was no use in talking to Yukari right now. What Nyamo had really wanted to say was 'why do you do this to yourself?', but she wouldn't have gotten a meaningful answer. Looking carefully at the slouching woman she paid particular attention to her eyes. The normally vibrant brown hues were dulled and dilated with the effects of excessive intoxication; her eyes were open but it was clear that she was off in another world. Yukari had never been this bad before, and for a moment Nyamo wondered what had driven her to such an extent. Had she just been partying so hard that she got in a fight and didn't even realize it? Somehow that notion wasn't satisfying. No one got this drunk for the sake of having fun.
Once Yukari was sufficiently cleaned up, Nyamo set the washcloth aside and got up on her knees.
"Let's at least get you into something more comfortable. There's no way I'm letting you into my bed in those clothes."
Yukari suddenly straightened and threw her arms out to the side with a stubborn frown.
"Silence! I've...got control...under everything..." With that outburst she let her chin fall limply to her chest and brought her hands up to the first button of the sweater, one of two that still remained closed. Nyamo sighed and sat back on her heels, but after five minutes of watching the drunken woman fidget with the button she shook her head and straightened again to push her hands aside.
"You're hopeless. Now sit still and be quiet."
It was nearly twenty minutes later that Nyamo emerged from the bathroom with Yukari's clothes in her arms. Altogether there had been the sweater, shirt, ankle length skirt, socks, shoes, bra, and panties which were thankfully unsoiled. Removing them should have qualified as an event for the Olympics. If Yukari wasn't tensed and jittering then she was completely limp and slouching from the toilet. As Nyamo would remove a piece of clothing, Yukari would reach for another to slip on with the claim that it was late and she should be on her way. As if Yukari wasn't hard enough to deal with when she was sober, she was just as childish when she was drunk. For the hundredth time Nyamo wondered why she even bothered, but even as she did, she already knew the answer. It was because someone had to. Setting parental figures aside, she was the only one in Yukari's life who could stand her antics, even if she didn't entirely understand them.
She dropped the clothes into the laundry hamper then went to her dresser to grab an extra pair of boxers and a shirt. Upon her return to the bathroom she would stop suddenly in the doorway and blink.
"Uh...Yukari?"
An odd site indeed. In the few moments that she had been away, Yukari had somehow lifted from the toilet seat and dragged herself into the bathtub where she laid curled up on her side, fast asleep and drooling. Nyamo walked forward and set the clothing articles by the sink, then crouched down by the edge of the tub. Her brow was furrowed with thoughtful concern as she reached her hand in and touched the back of her knuckles to Yukari's forehead. She was ice cold.
This had gone on long enough. She shifted forward over the edge of the tub and slipped her arms under the limp form inside. With a pained expression she hauled the dead weight up into her arms, a Herculean accomplishment considering the awkward position and the fact that she wasn't a body builder. Yukari snorted when the two fell backwards against the bathroom floor, yet she failed to stir beyond that.
Nyamo extricated herself from the nude form with a stoic frown. Nudity didn't embarrass her, and she wasn't entirely modest herself, but the situation was very awkward and she could only imagine what would have happened if somehow a picture of the scene was taken and made public. Both of their careers would have been over for the rest of their lives, Yukari's for several reasons.
Yukari was surprisingly easier to work with when she was unconscious. Nyamo had little difficulty slipping the boxers onto her legs and up around her hips, but it was when she pulled the shirt down over her head that she paused and did a small double take. She had Yukari's wrist in her hand and was sliding it through the shirt sleeve when she noticed a small imperfection on the crook of the language teacher's arm. Straightening the shirt, she took Yukari's elbow and turned it so the inner bend of it faced upward. The red dot was small, almost unnoticeable had it not had the smallest bit of blood around it. As part of her training as a P.E. teacher Nyamo had gone through several classes in first aid and she knew a puncture site when she saw one.
"God...dammit...Yukari..." The words escaped as little more than a hushed whisper. So that's what it had been. Nyamo's expression fell even more, not only with concern, but with sadness as well. Those kinds of marks weren't the kind that a person got by accident. It was a good explanation for Yukari's neurotic behavior that night.
Carefully the fatigued teacher got to her knees, once again to haul her unconscious friend into her arms and make her way from the bathroom. She would get her answers in the morning, one way or another. She wasn't going to let Yukari do this again, even if it could potentially put them on bad terms. Yukari was stubborn and hard headed to the point of absurdity, but someone had to pound some reality into that thick skull of hers before something irreversible happened.
One hundred and fifteen pounds worth of dead weight made the trip from the bathroom to the bed a very long and precarious one. Nyamo grunted a sigh of relief when she finally set her burden down on the near edge of the mattress. Tucking the sheets up around the sleeping form, she took a moment to examine Yukari in her unguarded state.
The only time that anyone could actually look at Yukari was when she was sleeping. When she was awake she was always so dynamic, the two extremes of her personality being happiness and anger. She never showed remorse or contemplation, and she never seemed to have a down moment when she actually thought about what she was doing. Even when she was at a situational disadvantage, like losing one of the many competitions she staged, she was a master at shrugging off the defeat and manipulating the facts to her benefit. She was indeed quite impossible to insult. It was remarkable how she could be so simple, yet so complex at the same time. No matter what may have been going on inside her head, which might not have been much at all, she always lived her life as though she had not a care in the world.
In sleep, however, none of that showed through. Her expression was void of energy, almost softened in a way. Her jaw wasn't clenched, her eyebrows weren't furrowed or raised into high arches, and Nyamo decided that she was actually a fairly attractive young woman. Yukari could be very successful with men if they only saw her while she slept. She may have looked just as attractive while she was awake, but her personality would be enough to drive them off.
With a solemn shake of her head, Nyamo climbed over to the other side of the small bed and slipped under the covers. She laid on her back and folded her hands gently on her stomach, allowing her eyes to close. She doubted that she would be getting back to sleep, but she wanted to stay awake anyway just in case Yukari did anything else during the night. For her repeated efforts to help, Nyamo was definitely a better friend than Yukari deserved. Anyone would have agreed to that, but Yukari had never thanked her for anything, and there was little chance that she had the mind to do so. Still, Nyamo accepted this because, after all, there was no one else who would.
Note: Please R&R and all that.