Chapter Text
As things turn out, Carmilla’s ship decides to break on her. A superficial issue, but a really annoying one. The power display bugged out until the last moment, and now she’s stuck in the middle of nowhere with only a single power cell remaining.
Too far from the nearest spgas station to recharge easily, and so, of course, she has to land to refuel on a colony.
It’s just her luck this would happen. Just her luck, if she had just made it another lightyear- or hell! Not even that! she would’ve been golden, right in the heart of a populated system, with enough asteroid-based refueling stations and repair shops she could have gotten the thing fixed and ready to sail in no time.
Instead, in favor of not spending an unknown amount of time freewalking in the void until she manages to flag down a ship, she makes an emergency landing on a rundown former asteroid mining colony turned casino-ridden gambling outpost.
The marker signs read New Texas, population 24,000, gambling, nightlife, and drinks. A perfect rest stop for the weary spacer!
In other words, it’s a low-life ridden edge-of-civilization shell, an asteroid some corporation dumped trillions into terraforming a century or two back, now left to rot with its denizens locked in on worthless property, drifting further and further away from populated space. All while getting fewer and fewer visitors, now serving as little more than a refueling station as its atmosphere is slowly blown off into the void.
It’s dry, arid, atmosphere tasting more like smoke than air. The shipyard is full of pin-up ads, and as she walks her way down a street simply called main road, nothing much catches her eye.
Or well, nothing beyond the dozens of ‘ huge sale! Store closing’ signs that hang in the chipped windows of derelict, dusty buildings.
About what she expects, from a place like this.
She strolls down the road, cane tapping against the cracked and battered sidewalk. Silently, she’s glad she didn’t need her wheelchair today. Sure, it can hover, but when she’s wheeling along it’s a pain to need to, you know?
Her throat is dry, she realizes, as she watches a couple walk into a building she can only imagine to be a bar. Its sign reads Lone Star, with a sign in the window that reads ‘ Best Chilli this side of the galaxy!’
Well, so long as she’s here, she can refuel in more ways than one. She’s in the mood for a drink.
She ducks into one of the shops, a browned dusty thing claiming itself to be, of all things, a dry cleaner-combination-sign print shop. A half-dead neon open sign hangs in the window, flickering away in the harsh red light of the too-close star.
As she opens the door, a bell chimes above her, and from inside, a deep, gravelly smoker's voice calls out, “I’ll be out in a sec’n,"
Perfect.
Whoever that is, is in a room behind the counter, and that’s perfect,
The dust coating along the washing machines supports her hypothesis that this place may as well be dead, and well, she’ll be leaving soon anyway, she should get a bit of a bite while here, hm?
She drops to all fours, furred, now, a dark cat sticking to the shadows of the room, creeping along the wall, looking for prey to snatch a bite out of.
She sits herself behind the corner, perfectly positioned to grab the shopkeep from behind when they walk out.
Bite them a little.
It’s just her luck that, just as she settles into perfect position, the bell above the door rings again.
She only has enough time to think, huh, place looked fucking empty, before the kid, and it is a kid, walks forward. He ducks behind the desk like he owns the place, he doesn’t notice her, of course, tucked against the wall as she is, and she hardly gets a look at his face before he starts rifling through the register.
Oh. S he thinks. A robbery. What a coincidence.
“What in the motherfucking hell-“ says the owner, stepping out from the back, hand already going towards his gun. “What do you think you’re fuckin’ doin?”
A cigarette hangs from the man’s mouth, lit and burning. She wrinkles her nose, tail twitching— she can smell it all too well from here.
“Jacks sent me,” says the kid, and then a second later, another gun enters the scene, pointed directly at the man's skull. “I’ll be countin’ this, and if it aint enough, either you cough up the rest or you’ll be riding like Vidal ‘fore dawn.”
Carmilla, honestly, hasn’t the faintest what that means, but one thing is for certain.
Her dinner is probably about to be shot.
So much for eating tonight, Carmilla thinks, morose.
The man grows red as the kid talks, and well?
He draws his gun, probably not exactly keen on being robbed, or…. Debt collected? Maybe? But before anything else can be said, a shot rings out, and Dinner slumps to the ground.
The kid sighs, like this is a normal occurrence, kicks the body away, and starts counting out the bills inside the register.
Blood soaks the floor. What a waste.
Slinking into the backroom, Carmilla returns to a more recognizable humanoid appearance.
How to best do this?
“Well,” she says, plain, stepping around the corner and over the body, “That sure was eventful.”
The kid swears, and just about jumps out of his skin as he rears away from her, gun already raised. “Who the fuck are you?” he shouts, eyes wide, cash in hand.
Carmilla raises her free hand, casual, like blood isn’t soaking her shoe, leaning on her cane. “Oh don’t worry, I was about to rob him myself.”
Rob. Eat. What’s the difference? She was going to take something anyway. Life. Money. Blood. Who cares, really?
(She should care, she knows she should, really, but lately, without Loreli and without Aurora, she's found herself just not. )
(Loreli never cared about this sort of thing, and the quiet realization she had that she's being like her shook her to her core, several months prior)
(But it doesn't change the detachment from the world she's feeling.)
(Not at all.)
“You’re from around here, yeah?” she asks.
The kid, pale as a sheet now, looks between her and the body, and the cash on the table. “Don’t- don’t fucking move, I will shoot you too-“
“What, kill the bystander who was going to rob him myself? I’m not from here, kid,”
“Shut up-”
“Where’s the nearest fuel station? For starships?
“You literally just watched me fuckin murder a man and you’re asking for directions?”
“Mmhm.”
“What the fuck.”
“I get that a lot.”
For a few moments, they just look at each other, and of course, he cracks first.
“Its, uh, mile or so down the road, big flashy sign, uh, price gouged as shit, though, I’ve been told?” he says, confused, and well,
It’s a bit funny really.
“Thanks.” She shrugs, and walks out, continuing down the road.
She’ll just have to get dinner somewhere else, she supposes.
As shit turns out, the fuel cells are price-gouged to shit.
And, most annoyingly, they’re only charged up upon request.
So she has to stay a week while the owner buys the power from a nearby plant to charge them, something about ‘ what sort of idiot would keep charged fuel cells all the time? That’s asking to be robbed’ and ‘ sometimes the fuel plants reactors are maxxed out for a while, all power already allocated’ and ‘ it’ll be week, maybe a month, sorry miss, you can enjoy the casinos and bars in the meantime!’
To her, it seems like a ploy to get hapless spacers indebted here, or to wring as much as they can out of whatever travelers they can sink their teeth into. Regardless, she is getting very sick of the red sun beating down on her.
It’s a coincidence that she runs into the kid again. It really is. She’s in a local tailor, trying to solve the ‘ this sun is too bright all the time’ issue with the biggest sunhat she can buy.
She’s doing a great job talking up the woman at the register, hell, Carmilla’s gotten her to blush a bit! She says she has a husband, though, and that’s fine, it is, she’s not staying long, and really, the seamstress is rather not her type, too blond stay-at-home mom and not goth badass who kick ass but still.
Still.
It’s all going perfectly well! Until, of course, the same fucking kid strolls in the door, hands shoved into his pockets, face half hidden in his hair. He freezes in place as he spots her.
She smiles at him, waves, because whoops, did she just find his day job? That’s fucking hilarious!
“Jonathan,” the seamstress snaps, and he freezes in place, “What have I told you about coming in the front during hours?”
He mutters something about not, tries to quickly climb the stairs, but then- “Help this fine woman here, she’s looking at the hats, I have an order to finish.”
“But-“ he starts one foot on the steps.
“If you’re going to be home, you should be useful.” She glowers, and the kid positively wilts beneath her gaze, looking between her and upstairs.
Hm.
Carmilla decides.
Fuck you. I regret flirting with you.
He trudges over, taking over the spot his mother was standing. The woman disappears into the back of the shop.
“Jonathan?” Carmilla asks, raising an eyebrow, “Is that your name?”
“Jonny,” he snaps, crossing his arms, “And we’ve never met before.”
“Yes, I’m sure.” Carmilla smiles. “It's lovely to meet you.”
“…Did the fuel station not have cells?” he asks, hushed, “Because I cannot think of another reason you’d stick around this shithole.”
“Oh, they said it’d take a week or so to get me them…” She shrugs, tries on another hat, all the hats here are so…. Light colored. Pale yellows and tans. Nothing dark, and it makes sense, it does, they’re sunhats, but it all clashes with her look, okay?
“How does this look?” she questions, turning to the kid.
“Like a sunhat.”
She fixes him with a long look.
“…..like a flowered sunhat?” he tries, shrugging, he takes a seat at the counter, reclining back in the chair, scowl painted across his face, “I don’t know what you want from me, miss….?”
“Doctor,” she corrects, “Doctor Carmilla.”
“What the fuck is a doctor doing on New Texas?” he asks, spinning the chair in a circle. “Don’t you have, I don’t know, fancy places to be?”
“My ship ran out of fuel,” she reminds, setting down the flowered sunhat in favor of a plainer one, in a duller, gray color. If it weren’t for the rather garish collection of sewn flowers affixed to it, she thinks it may look nice.
“Oh. I knew that,” he mutters.
“Yes! You did. Congrats on the memories.”
“Fuck off.” He flips her off, then realizes what he’s doing, and folds his hands, sending a nervous glance towards the back – shoulders tense until he confirms he was not seen flipping off a guest.
“Do you not have doctors here?” she asks, comparing the gray sunhat to another, plain light yellow with a turquoise ribbon around the brim, the same color as her hair.
“Nope.” He continues spinning. “Just cards, whiskey, women and murder. What else do you need?”
“Yes. You’d know about the last one.” She grins to herself, she can feel his glare on her neck. “You know, its rude to stare,” she notes.
“I,” He stops spinning, just glowering at her, “Have no idea what you are talking about, Doc.”
“I’m sure. Can you put the ribbon from this hat onto the gray one?”
“….yeah, ‘course, bring it here.” He holds out a hand, and Carmilla hands him the hats, “You’d better buy this,” he warns, moving over the carefully crafted hatband from one to the other, “I don’t do free labor, much less for a stalkery-“
“Jonathan, are you being rude?” says a voice, and the kid, again, cringes beneath it. His mother steps out of the back room, approaching the counter.
“No ma, I-“
“Because it sounds like you’re being rude to our customer," she interrupts, plucking a pair of scissors and a spool of thread from the counter. As Jonny flinches away, Carmilla decides fuck this, fuck you, he was being fine, actually.
“Miss, he’s been perfectly polite,” Carmilla interrupts, “A model young man, quite funny, as it’s been,” she soothes, trying to defuse things a little, “When he’s finished, I’ll be buying the hat he’s fixing for me. But don’t worry, I’m sure he can handle it?”
She eyes her son, wary, “I’m sure. Jon, be a dear,” glancing to Carmilla, she shakes her head, “You don’t need to tell me he isn’t being a problem. He means well… God love him. Thank you for your patience.” With that, she walks back into the back room, and Carmilla is left with a kid who is tense as a fucking wire, fumbling with pins as he assembles the hat.
He swallows, thickly.
“So…” Carmilla continues, “I’m stalkery? For happening across you? In the small town you live in?”
“Not that small. We got a few hundred people livin here.”
“That’s small.”
“…Not for here.”
“There were millions of people where I grew up.”
Not anymore. She thinks and tries really hard not to.
“Millions?” He rolls his eyes, “I don’t buy it.”
“Maybe you’ll see a city like it one day.”
He shrugs, passes back over the hat, finished now. Carmilla sets it on her head.
“How do I look?”
“Like you’re in a sunhat,” he says, but sighs, “It matches your hair, suits you, I guess.”
“Thank you, kid,”
“I’m not a fucking kid.”
“Sure.” She pays, and strolls out, figuring that would be the last of it.
It is, of course, not the last of it.
It’s another few days, before she bumps into the kid again.
The stars above glimmer, twinkling, far-off worlds beyond. The atmosphere is thin, and she gives it another few hundred years before the atmosphere is too thin to support life here. She rests her chin on her paws.
Her ear flicks, as she hears footsteps below. Rotating towards the source of the sound as she turns to look at it.
Her fur stands on edge, because she sure as shit recognizes the figure.
The kid.
He’s not doing too hot, though. Not at all. He’s making his way down the road, hardly putting weight on one leg, using a fence to struggle along.
She can smell the blood from here.
Naturally, she jumps off the roof.
She follows, silent, a walking shadow, as he limps his way along, swearing and hissing beneath his breath.
As she spies, because that is what she is doing, spying, she manages to get an idea of what’s happened.
There is a bloody hole in the leg of his pants, so he probably absolutely has a bullet in him, or at least, an entrance and an exit wound. Just as concerningly, he seems to be slowing down.
Taking longer and longer breaks to lean against the fence.
She wonders if she should just let nature take its course, but well, when has she ever been someone to leave a kid to die?
Not once.
(She wonders, for a moment, where Aurora is.)
( Fuck she hopes she’s okay, wherever she may be)
Setting herself up like she was just on a nightly stroll, she rounds the corner.
The kid screams as he sees her, stumbling, weight shifting onto his bad leg, and he makes a low, agonized whine of a sound – pitching sideways against the fence, he fumbles for his gun.
Then he sees it's her, and freezes.
“What the fuck?” he asks, breathless, hurting, “You have to be fucking stalkin’ me, what the fuck.”
He’s pale as a sheet, standing there, a haunted sort of look to his eyes, he flinches back as she regards him. “You’re hurt,” Carmilla notes, not even bothering to argue the stalker accusation, “Let me help.”
“Fuck no, fuck you, I don’t need help.” His voice is sharp, almost frantic, and she just feels bad for the kid.
“You’ve been shot.”
“I’ve been shot before,” he snaps, stepping back, “And how the fuck do you know that? Have you been following me?”
“I’m a doctor. I can help you.”
“I don’t need any more fucking debt. Screw off.”
“No strings, call it payment for the directions.” She takes a step closer, and he rears back, hands up, defensive.
He’s scared. Carmilla realizes.
She switches her approach.
“Look,” she says, softer, “Watching you drag that leg behind you is freaking me out a bit, you need help.”
“I don’t,” he insists, stiff, and well…
Carmilla knows a liar when she sees one.
Also, the sheer fucking amount of blood he’s trailing behind him is a pretty major tip-off.
“You do. My ship isn’t docked far from here, I can fix you up there.”
He’s quiet, and fuck is he pale. Carmilla knows the stages of exsanguination well, and he’s pretty far along.
“You’re bleeding. Badly. How far are you even headed? Too far?”
“I don’t trust you,” he snaps, “First you– you show up out of nowhere when I kill a guy, then you’re at my ma’s shop. Now you– you just fuckin’ appear.”
“….I saw you limping, a while back,” she admits, “I got worried. You’ve been slowing down for a few blocks now, and honestly? You’re not exactly going towards that shop,”
He shrugs.
“Come with me, Jonny, you’ll bleed out if you don’t.”
She can tell he knows, because hesitantly, hesitantly, the kid nods.
She brings him back to her ship. By the end, it’s more like she’s carrying him, than him walking, but the same difference, really.
He’s quiet, too quiet for a teenager who got shot in the leg. He just sits there on the chair, biting at the inside of his mouth, hardly wincing as she cleans out the bullet hole in his leg.
(subtly, she tastes his blood, as she turns away, AB+, which is fucking convenient, she’ll set up a transfusion as soon as he gets settled.)
It’s obvious he’s been shot before, and honestly? It ticks her off a little. Sure, she’s seen her fair share of violence, but he’s what? 15? 16? What the fuck kind of teenager gets shot often.
She doesn’t like it.
“So,” she starts, sanitizing a needle to stitch him shut. “Are you in some sort of gang?”
“….I’m not tellin’ you shit.”
“Humor me?”
“Fuck no.”
“You mentioned someone named Jacks? That first time we met?”
“…You know, Doc, you still haven’t explained that, why the fuck were you there?” He’s dodging the question, Carmilla can tell, arms crossed over his chest.
He is the definition of guarded.
“Oh. I was going to kill him,” she admits, pulling a thread through the eye of the needle. “Rob him a bit, that sort of thing.”
“Ah,” he exhales, wide-eyed.
“So are you in a gang?”
“…”
“What? I’m curious, and also, I’m saving your life here.”
He shrugs, small.
“….I’m leaving in a few days, what’s the worst that happens?”
“You turn me into the sheriff?”
She laughs, sharp and hard, “And why would I do that, Jonny? How about this, you answer me, you get to ask something back, how does that sound?”
“…Fine.”
“Are you in a gang?” she repeats, tying off the thread she’ll be using.
“No- I’m uh, not in a gang,” he says, quick, vague, “My turn, why are you helpin’ me?”
“You’re quite young, and you were bleeding everywhere. I wanted to. Do I need another reason?” She pulls the first stitch through his skin, and he cringes. Yet he doesn’t pull away. “Who is Jacks?”
“He owns the casino down the road, um, One Eyed Jacks. He’s….. my boss, I guess? What do you want with me?”
“Conversation, mainly, you seem nice enough. Why do you work with him?”
He sucks in a strangled laugh, tensing. Carmilla gets the feeling that he doesn’t have much of a choice. “My dad-“ His entire face spasms as he says it, and he grows half a shade paler, “Owed um, Jacks a lot of cash, so my dad uh, sent me, to work it off? But I decided to stay after uh, settlin’ the score? I uh, owe ‘im. For board and shit. Food.”
“Mmn. That sounds like bullshit. So… you’re an errand boy, then?” Carmilla pulls another stitch taught, “He have you kill people?”
Jonny nods, stiff.
“Sucks,” she confirms, almost done with the stitches.
He shrugs. Small.
“…I killed my father, earlier,” he admits, and that-
That strikes a chord, huh?
She looks up at him.
“He deserved it,” Jonny snaps, arms crossing about his middle and- and those sure are tears beading in his eyes.
Oh.
Oh this is a child.
“Fuck, man,” she says eloquently, setting down the roll of bandages she had been about to wrap his leg with.
“He shot me, as he fuckin fell, last words were that he expected this of me, and he shoulda killed me when he had the chance. I don’t-“
He crumples forward, over his arms, and Carmilla does not know what the fuck to do, suddenly.
“Jonny?”
“Fuck, fuck I can’t go home, my ma doesn’t give a damn about me, never did, I need to get back to Jacks, tonight he’ll be pissed if I’m late-”
“Hold up a second, wait wait, you’re going back to the guy who made you kill your father?”
“Yes?” he says, strangled, choked up, “Where the fuck else would I go? To the house I just killed my father in?"
“You could stay here?” she offers, an impulsive decision upon impulsive decisions, but well,
Space does get pretty fucking lonely between planets, why not?
Why not?
He goes stiff. “What the fuck?”
“….Space gets pretty fucking lonely, y’know, and you don’t seem to like it here much, so….”
He shrugs, wordless.
She doesn’t know why she’s offering either.
“…I’ll finish up your leg, and you can spend the night, we can sort it out in the morning?
He nods, and well…
He stays.
They talk, the two of them, with a bit more prompting and a warm drink, the poor kid pours his heart out. How Billy Vangelis, his father, was a drunk who’d hit him more than he’d ever spoken to him, and how his mother couldn’t give less of a shit about him. He’s been fending for himself for years, he says and it breaks her heart a bit.
(And, importantly, it reminds her of herself.)
He stays.
First the night, then the morning, she fixes him breakfast then, hours later, lunch.
My leg hurts too much to walk back, he says, still laying on her couch, I’ll leave in a while.
Then it’s dinner again, and he still hasn’t gone.
The second day, he talks about Jacks, it’s in all contradictory ways, ‘he’s nice to me, he cares about me’ Jonny says in one sentence, ‘he’d have sent me out to the street to starve’ the next.
And then, about a week into their whole operation, the day before the power cells are set to deliver, Carmilla asks a question.
“You ever thought about just… killing that Jacks guy?” she asks, swirling her ‘wine’ in the glass.
“ No?” He looks over, half-eaten slice of spwater spmelon in hand, “What the fuck, Doc, no.”
“I mean, think about it,” she shrugs, sipping her ‘wine’, “He’d just be gone, and he was fucking awful to you, we’ve been over this.”
“I mean, yes, but..”
“You’re leaving with me, aren’t you?” She asks, “Don’t you want him dead? Yesterday, you told me you wished he was dead.”
He shrugs, “….I mean, yeah.”
“He fucked up your entire life.”
“….I guess I could kill him.”
“You should. He sucks.” Carmilla takes a long drink from her glass. “There is really no downside here.”
“Mnm..”
“Just, hey, I’ll even write a prescription out, half an ounce of lead directly to the brain, you can tell him a doctor told you to do it.”
“…That’s good,” he says, small smile pulling at his lips as he takes another bite of the spmelon, “…Fuck it. Why not? I don’t need a father. Much less fucking him.”
“That’s the spirit!” She holds up her glass, grinning, cheers-ing the air, “Send the fucker to… hell, right? That’s where you send them?”
“Yes. Wouldn’t want to keep the devil waiting.”
And so he does, he comes home that evening, and well,
He’s grinning.