Dystopic AU. M-rated for social, psychological, physical and sexual violence. Written for contest.
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Loveless
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THE PANAMERICANO HOTEL
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA (BUE)
She is one of the most sought after art smugglers in the world and the best in Japan, her adoptive homeland.
Nobody knows her real name, a cluster of consonants unintelligible to the untrained ear.
She was renamed Isis.
Goddess of motherhood.
Barren matriarch of the Ishtar Clan.
In the underground circles of Tokyo, her name is pronounced Aishizu. The stylized kanji on her inkan spells 'Ai'.
'Love'.
She always travels on her own. The airy sense of freedom she gets from mingling with the common folk is the only thrill she has left. When surrounding herself with strangers, she forgets about the weight of the long, long leash around her neck. Even here, at a place upon which the sun rises when the Japanese sun sets, she can feel his burning glare, his hands on her body.
Hunched over the phone of her hotel room, as if fearing he might be watching, she dials the string of digits she mouths like a prayer before going to sleep.
The phone is mute at first.
The wait is agonizing.
The defiance is... enthralling.
Then a ring.
Her heart beats harder.
There is a click, and the hesitant voice of the one she considers to be her next of kin.
"...Yes?"
She lets out a small cry, out of relief. It's the voice she's been aching to hear. "Rishid!" She balls her fist on her chest. "Rishid, my heart and blood."
There is a lag before she can hear his low humming voice again. "Don't call here. Don't call again." He hesitates, and she opens her mouth to protest, but he speaks up again. "I am well." She supposes it is the word 'well' she heard over the distortion.
"So am I," she says rapidly, panicking upon hearing the finality in his voice, "Where are you-" She pauses, unsettled by the sudden echo of her own voice in the receiver. "Rishid? Rishid?"
There is no dial tone, but a hollow sound echoing everywhere in the still room.
The late night clamour from the Plaza Republicana gradually rises as she comes back to her senses.
Listless, she cradles the receiver against her cheek and ear for an undetermined period of time.
She hangs up.
Somewhere in Tokyo, a third phone clicks shut.
LOCATION UNSPECIFIED, ? FEET BELOW GROUND
?-WARD, GREATER TOKYO AREA, JAPAN (TYO)
The girl thought she could echo-locate him from his incessant footsteps. She wishes for the grind of his soles against the dirt and grime to stop. The coldness in her hand, no longer numbing, is gaining terrain, spreading to her wrist, to the core of her bones. The fabric around her mouth and nose are wet from her own tears and saliva. She hasn't gotten used to the fumes of mold permeating the room.
Her captor hasn't said a word in minutes, walking in circles around her chair.
"I am in a foul mood tonight," he says to himself, loud enough for her to hear.
His voice. She can't stand it.
She had once found it so soothing.
She remembers the gentle way he held her daughter above the sacred water when he baptized her. She remembers having found peace in his arms. In his teachings.
The footsteps stop. He settles behind her, standing probably, his wet hands roaming about her shoulders.
"Do you know how much I love my sister?"
She doesn't know what he is hinting at. She mustn't answer his riddles. There is an itch on the patch of raw skin where the rope is binding her. She can't reach it. Even if she could, she mustn't attempt to reach it. The slightest twitch, even stemming from her neck, triggers the remotest muscles in her fingers. She thinks they might be glued together from the drying clots, but she might not have the strength it takes to wriggle them.
"Do you know," roars the voice in her ear, and the girl suppresses a yelp, "how much she means to me?" He is crouching next to her,
The voice is hoarse, low tones grating the insides of his throat. She can picture him in her mind's eye, the regal sandy hair, the lavender eyes, the aura.
The godly aura.
"Do you know how much she means to me," he repeats monotonously, breathing harder in the pavilion of her covered ear, and she can't help but cry as he twists the blade planted in her hand, "you don't like it here?" He seizes hold of her fingers with animalistic force, pushing the knife deeper into the flesh, "you don't like us? You want to leave?" His cackles echo against the stone walls, "you think you can leave?"
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ISHTAR ESTATE
CHIYODA-WARD, CENTRAL TOKYO, JAPAN (TYO)
He is behind her, brushing his hands on her sides up and down, up and down. On his forehead dwells a scarified Eye of Horus, allseeing. The mark of the Blessed.
Isis stands on attention, lost in the sight of her bony ribcage rising and falling, rising and falling in the mirror in front of her.
"I have missed you." He plants his lips on her shoulder blade, kissing his way up to her neck, to her ear. "Sister."
She shudders.
Her younger brother, in her eyes, is long dead. She loathes the man in the mirror, the man who renamed himself 'Prince'.
Malik.
He scrutinizes her neutral gaze, squeezes her breasts methodically, testing them for swell.
She exhales, willing herself to relax.
"That's a good girl," he murmurs lovingly.
She shivers from the cold draft entering the room. He encircles from behind, resting his forehead against her nape.
"Don't do this to me again," he whispers, and she can't help but think that he is really hurt.
That he is capable of hurting.
She can't help but think of Rishid's prudent voice in the phone of the Argentinian hotel.
"Don't make me hurt him again," he pleads, "I know how it saddens you to see him hurt..."
(She remembers having had a change of heart in New York City, exactly three years and forty days ago. She remembers having seen her plane take off without her, kissing the American soil, feeling free. Wanting to stay. Wanting to tell Rishid how it feels to be free, to come and join her.)
"I hate it when you cry." He applies more and more pressure on her shoulders, and her knees give in. She has no pity for the the woman in the mirror kneeling docilely, setting her palms flat out on the ceramic floor.
(She remembers checking in a nearby hotel; the page boy bringing her a small package on her second night of freedom; fainting at the sight of a decaying shred of skin attached to the remnants of an earlobe.)
"You have to be perfect." He kneels in turn and settles behind her with practiced ease, his legs spread just the right distance, her hips at the right angle before his.
(She remembers walking barefoot to the airport.)
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THE SOFITEL
MANHATTAN, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (NYC)
Fate dictated that her next client wished to have his canopy chests delivered to him in person. He is happy with the purchase. The money has already been wired to the family bank account in Swizterland. It is the only link she and Rishid are allowed to share, she thinks sourly.
She is drinking a glass of the dry white wine he is most fond of, strolling in her suite, dressed in nothing but a plush bathrobe. The skyscraper across the street partially obstructs the cityscape. She looks at the passerbys fifty two floors below. Minuscule. Insignificant human beings. So many different lives waiting to unfold...
In an hour, the sun will rise in Japan. And in three, Rishid will be acquiring more shares for the clan at the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
She would like to meet him again, to rest her cheek against his chest, to cry, to relish in his kindness. She loves him.
Sometimes, she resents him, too. His excessive love, his excessive lawfulness. His zeal in honoring an oath that is, in her eyes, void.
She wished his loyalty didn't extend to him. The tormentor. Hers doesn't-
LOCATION UNSPECIFIED
LOCATION UNSPECIFIED (?)
She has to lean on the walls for balance. The streets are alive with neon lights and sound, but she doesn't hear anything. She has to reach some place but she can't remember where. She realizes she is completely naked and her waist-long hair is braided around her neck.
Her legs stiffen; her feet take root into the ground and her hands melt into the brick wall in front of her; she wants to scream for help but she can't, she can't even open her mouth for her lips are sealed. Something tears up between her legs but she doesn't feel pain, and her eyes widen as slimy strings (she knows them to be snakes) leak from her insides unto the sidewalk. The little snakes molt as they touch the ground, hatching into a thousand squirming larvae-
She wakes up, flexing her hands, toes, neck. Licking her lips just to be sure, touching her face. Touching her...
She gets up, walks to the bathroom.
Mimicking his movements, she raises bony hands to her torso. Mechanically squeezes her breasts, testing them for swell.
And finds some.
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QUEENSBORO BRIDGE
NEW YORK CITY, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (NYC)
She has never bitten her fingernails before, but now seems like a good time to take up the habit. Just a matter of saving some time. Climbing the fence doesn't look too hard. .
Her knuckles blanch from gripping the metal railing.
"Where do you think you're going?"
A young woman stands to her right, a pair of shoes slung over her shoulder, panting. Isis can only stare in stupor.
"Yeah, you," the blue eyed girl insists, "you speak English?"
"Y-yes," fumbles Isis meekly, closing a fold of her trenchcoat. Strong winds beat the American girl's hair mercilessly, reddish tips whipping her cheeks, grazing at her jawline, at the corner of her lips. She looks furious.
"You're not doing anything stupid, are you?"
Isis knows the salty streaks on her cheeks are betraying her. One hand lets go of the railing.
"You got a place to stay tonight?" The girl narrows her eyes authoritatively. Isis finds herself warming up to her caring sort of brashness.
"I am fine. Thank you." Nervously, Isis tears her gaze from the girl's compelling blue eyes, contemplating the ink-like water.
"I ain't got all night, you know."
"Excuse me?"
For all answer, the girl - twenty, twenty one maybe - grabs her by the arm and drags her along in silence to the western end of the bridge. Isis notices these are ballerina shoelaces she's holding. Beige shoes, their dirty satin coating worn out at the corners. The girl is fast. Isis' own feet hurt. She frees her arm.
"My hotel is on the other side."
"My flat isn't." She waits expectantly for an answer she knows won't come. "Listen, I didn't mean to be rude. I just couldn't stay there, and let you do God-knows-what to yourself," she adds sourly. "Okay? Come on."
"I..." she begins, unsure how to react. This girl doesn't look like she can afford any more than a futon in a closet, yet she wants to take her in like a stray. Her eyes start to prickle. Warm tears find their way to her chin. "I'm sorry," she buries her face in her hands, "I didn't think it would happen. I'm-" her voice breaks- "I'm s-so sorry."
The girl's arms wraps around her. She smells of sweat and rosehip. "There."
Isis allows herself to weep in the warm embrace.
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INTERNATIONAL DEPARTURE GATES
LA GUARDIA AIRPORT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (NYC)
Isis absent-mindedly brushes her index against the edge of her boarding pass. Up and down, up, and down.
She's done a lot of warped rationalizing last night, and very little sleeping.
There's a payphone hanging idle on the immaculate white wall. It would take more effort to forget the numbers than to memorize them. But the encounter with the American girl left her full of mad hope.
A dozen people are lined up at the gate with their carry-on luggage.
She joins them.
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Companion fic: Godless (Wallshipping Rishid x Shizuka), coming August 2011.