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Hands on her body and smiles above her face and she is bare to the world and her scars hurt they itch they sting there are fingers digging into her thighs and teeth on her neck and a cigarette hole on her collarbone and they will not listen they never listen she can cry for them to stop she can glare and scream and threaten and plead and they will not stop they will never stop there are things inside her body and poisoned liquid in her system and no matter how she tries no matter how she writhes no matter how she fights she cannot get out of the embrace she bargained for they wanted this they wanted her so she made them pay for it and still still still the price is never high enough to stop them still still still she is stuck here on sheets too expensive for her to own under a body too strong for her to shove off even if that wouldn't be going back on their deal she tried she tried she tries and it is never enough she is never enough they will never have e n o u g h
there is something inside her there is something inside her there is SOMETHING INSIDE HER SHE WANTS IT OUT
Purple shot awake, gasping and gagging on nothing. Her hands flew to her neck almost instinctively, even though there was no real danger, there never has been when it came to…
To…
She heaved at just the thought. With a hand pressed tight over her mouth, she breathed, and breathed, and breathed, and tried to get the phantom taste of someone else off of her tongue. Fuck. It never ended, did it? It would never end. She would always be forced into hands she couldn't fight without risking rent for the month.
It's better than it was before. The mantra she always repeated to herself. It's better than it was before. Before, when adults would take her carelessly because she didn't know how to bargain. When her body, even smaller back then, was sent through agony that lingered past a normal wound and risked consequences everlasting if she hadn't had the connections she did. If she hadn't done her research and sought out services that could prevent her from breaking.
She pushed her other arm against her stomach. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. There was nothing there. There was nothing inside her. There were pills in her inventory and water to take them with, and the feeling of hands on her thighs and a bigger stick between her legs and-
Shit. Purple bit her tongue hard on a whimper. She was alone in the room, but that didn't mean she wouldn't be heard.
… Wait. Why would she be heard?
She looked up. Up, and around, and… oh. She wasn't in her apartment. She was in an attic, lying on a mattress with a pillow and blanket, and really it wasn't all that different from her apartment except for… the mattress hadn't sunken into itself, and the blanket wasn't threadbare, and the pillow had a cover on it. It was almost nice.
Why was she in an attic?
… Right. Mango's house. This was Mango's house. This was the "room" he'd tried to set her up with, apologizing the whole time for not having anything better. He had tried to smile at her, and quip that it might be nicer than the floor by his bed, at least.
When he said that, Purple had thought of her lonely, lonely room, and the way she was beginning to actually doze off for a few hours every night next to him, and bit her cheek and laughed accordingly.
She wasn't laughing now. Cursors, she was on the verge of crying. It wasn't usually this bad. Why was it so bad tonight? She'd had to take another client's body on hers recently, yes, but the nightmares were so frequent that she thought she had gotten used to them. Used enough not to cry.
Why was she crying? Why was she acting like such a child?
She skimmed through the nightmare again in her mind. It was nothing specific, just feelings. Dozens, hundreds of experiences all meshed together into one display of awfulness. Her neck stung. She couldn't take her hand from her mouth long enough to try and soothe it.
Her legs twitched. She sunk her teeth into her fingers, desperately trying to stay quiet. One day, Mango's patience with her would run out. She did not want that day to be soon.
… She couldn't find anything out of the ordinary in that dream. It was already fading, too, which didn't help matters. Maybe the ending was different…?
Purple sighed, shakily, and decided she wouldn't be getting back to sleep this time. Carefully, ever so carefully, she slid her feet to the ground and stood despite the trembling, despite the weakness. The floor barely creaked beneath her. She knew where the floor was loudest, by now.
Slowly and silently, she lowered the steps from the attic and descended. They led right into the kitchen, which was nice; she could grab some water, maybe a snack, and sit at the table until morning. Not the couch; Mango might wake up and see her there. What would he think if he knew how ungrateful she was for her new room…?
She bit her tongue again. Cups were on the higher shelf, right next to the fridge.
The thought of Mango over her. It was one she'd had a few times, terror-fueled speculation on how to be useful inevitably falling into territory she'd been in too many times before. She hated it.
Thank code he had never tried. She wouldn't be able to win a fight against him. She wouldn't even be able to talk her way out of it. Here she was, being in his house more and more, using his things more and more. He would be able to hold it over her head so easily.
Something was being tickled in her head. Something about the nightmare, and him. What was it…?
The sink had two nozzles. The right one made it pour cold water.
(The left one got hot enough to burn her hands again.)
She narrowed her eyes in thought. The details were even hazier than they had been two minutes ago. She just knew there was no specific identity to the stick in the shadows, pinning her to a bed. Just a rough tangle of habits and preferences she had needed to cater to. She wasn't even sure they had a body type.
There was a door slamming, at the end, wasn't there?
Purple looked behind her. (The cup she always used took four seconds to fill up when the nozzle was turned halfway.) The house was silent, as always, dark with the dead of night. She had no idea what time it was. Too late to be reasonable, too early for anyone to wake up. The sun was a distant memory, at this hour.
The sun was a distant memory at all, for her. When was the last time she watched a sunset?
Whatever. She didn't time to watch sunsets.
Most of the ground floor did not creak. There was one spot, to the right of the stairs, where it did. She walked around the left side.
The dinner table was at the other end of the kitchen hall from the fridge. There were three chairs. They all made terrible noise when they were pulled out.
Mango often forgot to push his back in.
She settled down in his chair, sipping quietly at her cup of water. The thought of him… again, something was nagging at the back of her memory. He had some part in that dream that she couldn't remember.
The door had burst open. There was pounding on it, before that. Loud, but distant. Like a soundproofed room.
She took another sip. For a second, she had to set the cup down, eyes closed and breath leaving her body, as she felt the cool liquid flow through her veins, all the way down her arms and her gut. Her legs twitched again. Things weren't as awful, anymore.
The taste was still strong in her mouth.
She took another sip.
The door had burst open. What happened after that…?
She breathed, watching ripples on the water. Huh. She was actually fairly thirsty— maybe she'd fill the cup again once she was finished.
The door had burst open, and… there was shouting. No, there wasn't shouting. There was the anonymous stick, trying to be possessive of her like clients sometimes did. Fools, all of them, believing that she wouldn't sell herself to anyone else for a night. Not that she ever wanted to. Sometimes, she felt as though her whole life was spent in slavery even if no one truly owned her. She wouldn't let them. She had her limits.
She swirled the water a little, and tipped it into her mouth.
The door had burst open. There was whispering, harsh whispering, and then… and… then…
Then the stick had flown off of her. Been punched off of her. Why? Who did that? Who would do that?
She closed her eyes for a minute, tilting the cup on the surface of the table. Always careful not to spill it. Cleaning that up would make more noise.
The anonymous stick had been punched off of her. She didn't tell anyone about her jobs. Definitely not about the turns they sometimes took. They never started as a request for her body, but… she could tell when they would become that. Eyes lingered too long, tones took a smoother edge. She never told anyone. She never had anyone to tell.
(She told two people. One was simply because she didn't fear saying things worse than what he had already done. One was because he had noticed her habits, the times she would flinch and stiffen at any touch. The former grinned with sharp teeth and offered to kill for her. The latter had started their conversation himself, prefacing it with assurances that he wasn't mad, and he wouldn't touch her if she didn't want him to, if only she would tell him when that was. In both instances, she never went into detail. In the second one, she danced around the topic and only barely alluded to it as she had once before. His face had been horrified. Nauseous, almost. She had never wanted to bring it up again if he wasn't amenable to such things.)
The anonymous stick had been punched off of her. Then, the stick doing the punching had turned to her, all worried eyes and frantic tones, and asked if she was okay.
She took another sip of water. She tipped the cup back and drank the rest of it. There wasn't much left. Maybe she would get a refill.
The second stick had turned to her, and asked if she was okay. And he was all worried eyes, frantic tones, a big silhouette and bushy eyebrows that one would never expect such softness from.
She put the empty cup back down on the table, always quiet. Waking someone else was considered rude.
The second stick had asked if she was okay. Worried eyes, reaching out with the hand he hadn't struck with to pull her up from the sheets she hated feeling. She had reached back, and taken it. She had been pulled up. There was no bed. There was no first stick. There was no room she was trapped in. It was only her, in a tight and protective hug, in a sweater made of woolen lines and a barely-there beard tickling against the top of her head. The sense of warmth, coming from both the person and the realm around them. The sense of sulfur and smoke.
Mango.
Purple took a sharp breath and sat up straight. Mango. Mango, in her dream, had saved her. Fuck, Mango had saved her. He didn't know a damn thing about poster jobs in the city and he had saved her.
Obviously it wasn't in real life. He had never come to her aid because he wouldn't have ever known to. When or where or how, it didn't matter, she didn't share anything. Easier to hide from the police, that way.
But he had saved her. Code. The Mango in her dream had saved her.
Fuck. Why was she crying? She was crying. Cursors. Dammit. She fucking blinked, and tears were rolling down her face, her cheeks were wet, her breathing was getting unsteady, what was this-?
He had hugged her. He had punched the stick trying to use her body, and he had hugged her. Nothing but warmth. No intent, just warmth. It wasn't even the awful kind that made her want to scream and hide. Just… warmth.
She breathed, and it was loud. Dammit. She was going to wake the real Mango up at this rate.
She bent over the table, one hand nestled in her hair and starting to pull. The tears wouldn't stop falling. Her throat was wheezing. (The taste was gone.) He had saved her. Her vision was blurry. Droplets were beginning to dot the wood. She could see the glow of her eyes shimmering in them. (They were never affected by shadow. She tried to hide that from her clients. She hadn't hid that from Mango, since the war. Very often, he walked into the kitchen to see her staring back at him, tense and ready with reflective eyes. He never did anything to her.) He saved her.
Purple gasped. Purple pressed her hands against her eyes. Purple was starting to really, genuinely sob.
Why in the world was she crying so hard? It wasn't even a bad ending. A bad ending would have been Mango taking the first stick's place, spearing through her in a way that might as well have been lethal. A bad ending would have been Mango joining in on the torment. Instead, he defended her. He saved her. He hugged her. And there were no wandering hands, no building pain in her hips. No attempt to use it against her. Just a hug, and a whisper.
I'm so glad you're okay.
Her voice jumped out of her, all too audibly, and she slapped a hand over her mouth again. She couldn't wake him up. Not for something this stupid. How was she going to explain that she was in such a state over a good ending to a nightmare?
Code, she was a mess. A broken little mess, who could handle rough grips and hickeys and slaps to her thighs and a too-big stretch with too little prep without so much as wincing nowadays, but who crumbled like toast in the face of a dream. What was wrong with her?
She buried her face in her arms, and tried to breathe. She failed, obviously, but it was the thought that counted, or something like that. Her hands pulled at her sleeves with such vicious force that she was afraid she would rip them, and then she'd have to spend time repairing them. Time she could use to work.
Oh, cursors, she really was doing terribly. Just thinking the word "work" was enough to make fear spike in her chest anew, even though the poster jobs were never that bad, even when they took that turn. She was being a wimp. She needed to get her shit together and shut up before Mango noticed she was crying. There were no doors between her and him. There was a wall or two, but she'd heard him crying from the other end of the ground floor before.
Still, it took far too long to get herself under control again. Smothering the sobs was harder than she would ever admit, nevermind stifling the tears that were soaking through to her arms.
It took… so long. But finally, eventually, she took a deep breath, and it came in relatively stable, and she sat up again and breathed, and breathed, and breathed, and she picked up her cup, and she went to rinse it out in the sink.
And maybe she stalled, just a little bit, before placing it on the drying rack. Maybe there were still drops running down her face, even if the flow had nearly stopped by then.
Maybe she hesitated, in going back to the ladder into the attic.
Maybe she turned back, to the doorway of the kitchen.
… she walked through it.
Not quite as steady on her feet as she would've liked to be, Purple made her way over to Mango's bed. He didn't have a room, just a section next to the front door. There was one bedroom in the house, and she wasn't allowed to go into it. But that was okay. It meant he was more accessible in times like these. Even if she really hated times like these.
Just looking at him beneath his red blanket made her think of the hug, again. He had saved her, and then he had hugged her. He had hugged her, and whispered I'm so glad you're okay in a rushed voice that carried so much relief. Code, was she that selfish? He seemed to care for her, yes, but…
But…
…
Purple took a few more steps.
Purple sat down by his bed.
She did not have any blankets, nor pillows. She didn't need them, right now.
She just couldn't bear the thought of going back up to her room, alone.
So Purple settled her head in her arm, resting on the edge of the mattress, and reached with her other hand for one of Mango's, sprawled out with his messy sleeping position.
She was being so selfish right now.
… Fuck it. She could be a little selfish. Just this once. Just this one night.
Purple took his hand.
She pushed her fingers between his, and felt the tears and sobbing well up all over again, and squeezed her eyes shut and buried them in the sheets. She gritted her teeth hard and pressed into the warm, warm shape that she had so brazenly taken as though it were hers to hold at all.
Fuck. Fucking, shit. He was going to get rid of her for sure when the morning came.
Screw it, she just- she Wanted to believe that he cared. She Wanted him to care. She wanted him to save her. For real. She wanted to never have to worry about another damn client again, but-
She wouldn't get any of that. It was all just a pipe dream. So she'd have this one little bit, the ending to her nightmare and the warmth of his skin and the imagined sensation of a hug, and she'd be fine with it. She'd take what she could get.
Mango shifted, and she froze.
… Then he settled, with a light snore and a slight change in position. He didn't wake up.
Purple sighed. Relief came out on that shaking breath. And she closed her eyes again, and let her head sink into the mattress with her arm, and breathed a little more.
… her hand was so small in comparison to his.
Mango opened his eyes, and became aware of something on his hand.
He sat up. He looked down.
Purple was there. Of all the places Purple could be after the sun came up, Purple was there. Sleeping with her head on the edge of his blanket, one arm being used as a pillow though she could barely reach the bed's height as it was, and… and her other arm, outstretched. Outstretched towards him.
She was holding his hand.
Her eyelids looked so red. So raw. He'd been wondering if the crying he heard was a dream or not.
Oh, sweetheart.
He shifted onto his side. His hand pressed a little further into hers, their fingers twined together like woven threads. He patted them with his other hand.
Mango closed his eyes again. No harm in sleeping in a little bit more, if Purple needed it.
His thumb brushed over her scarred knuckles. She made a tiny sound, almost inaudible, and of course he looked up again because he would always look out for her. She was still asleep, it seemed, but there was a furrow in her brow and a twist in her lips.
He rubbed her little hand again. She made another noise, a whine, choppy and soft, and now she really looked like she was about to cry.
Mango shifted to lean forward. His hand brushed a lock of hair out of her face, and if he could have, he would've cupped her cheek and rubbed the impending tears away. But the way she was laying and the fact that his other hand was occupied meant he had to settle for just resting it on her arm.
"It's okay, sweetie," he mumbled. "I'm here."
And then he laid back down, now holding her hand with both of his.
"Sleep well, okay? I've got you."