Heartthrob

"...you end up as, well, a corpse?"

The blonde snapped from her sleep-haze instantly, their previously peaceful silence broken by the lilting Easterner's Mediterranean inflection. She blinked once, twice, thrice, setting down her chopsticks and looking up at her begrudging guest. Unable to get a proper read on her expression, EJ made her retort:

"Why?"

Est chuckled playfully, giving a shrug. Her ruby eyes darted down towards the remains of their meal: the herring was gone, some soy sauce had spilled onto the table and plates, and the rice was mostly finished. It was funny, in a way - watching the pair of them attempt to eat rice. Their teeth weren't made for it, and so much difficulty came in the way of chewing; EJ, more experienced, simply swallowed it whole. Swallowing was a skill one acquired when one's teeth were blades.

"Dunno. I thought it might be good to make conversation, you know? If I am going to stay with you for any amount of time, I'll need to get to know you. Wouldn't it be terrible for the pair of us to spend months together, cooped up in your apartment, practically strangers? Or maybe you'd think it exciting?"

Esthrielle bares her steels with a salacious grin, and Esper James shudders. In her heart, she's still disgusted by this other woman, but intrigued as well - dinner with a murderer, an evening with a scourge. Surely she was a sociopath. Surely she was evil. But Esper James still felt drawn forth in a strange way; a foreboding way. She couldn't quite take her eyes away even as Est's synthetic body hissed steam once more, the LEDs of her eyes brightening and darkening idly.

"...car accident. I got hit while crossing the street. They scraped me up and threw me in the morgue and I was back to life- back to consciousness in three days."

She muttered the words, not wanting to discuss it much - to deliberate one's death as a second-living was taboo, to say the least. It was like discussing a dead name, or an old lover, or a forgotten family: painful, meaningless, better left unsaid. Est wouldn't know that. She was from the East; she had no clue that the West even had such conventions. The Italian's smile faded, though, as she seemed to realize the weight of her words.

Est shifted in her seat, towel still wrapped around her, thick alabaster mop dried from the time it took for dinner. She still had a distinct artificial shine to her skin, making her seem soft and smooth, like a doll - like a plaything. Without the muscles she may have been just that, with how curated her appearance was. EJ tried not to think about the implications; Est seemed to know them and flaunt them, though she had reigned it in for now. An awkward moment was broken by the warrior, her mirth missing.

"Oh... huh. That's awful. Does it ever, uh... Does it hurt?"

"What? Dying? Does dying hurt? Fucking yes, duh. But..." EJ drew in a slow breath, eyes lowering to her hands. They were frail and trembling, the vivid memory - one of the only things she could truly remember of her life before death - coming back in terrible detail.

-

She had been walking to school, to university. Growing up outside of Vitus, she was a transplant to the uber-urban environment and still in awe of the modern conveniences it provided. That day was a school day, and she was walking from a rented apartment (with money her parents had funneled to her for their special little girl to get her education!) off to the Vitus Institute of Technology, Art, and Science. She had been studying for Event Planning - this being back when she still loved people, and felt comfortable in their presence.

Books in hand, dressed in a long black pleated skirt with a greyish sweater over a white blouse, thick-rimmed black glasses and some nearly-unnecessary braces finishing off her look, she stood at a busy crosswalk. She smiled, teeth a touch yellow from coffee and the occasional cigarette, but fangs were now molars, and canines, and all the normality of humanity.

Just an average girl.

Her feet click-clacked up to the crosswalk, black buckle loafers only lightly tarnished by Vitus's dusty air. It wasn't as bad then as it was now. To her left, men and women in business attire stood lined up for the bus. They checked watches, shuffled papers, rummaged handbags; they were stoic and unmoved, the movers and shakers of a city on the brink of beautiful modernity. They didn't pay her any mind, and she didn't mind that in turn. Surely, they didn't have time for a little bright-eyed and bushy-tailed collegiate like her.

To her right stood the intersection, busy as Hell and twice as torturous. This was the intersection of Tanakara Square, the naming rights purchased by Tanakara Technologies, a major player in Vitus's economy. They stood in a tall building of black and glass and steel and gold and red, one with a pair of door-handles that read 'T-T'. EJ had dreamt of working for them as a manager since high school, her parents' expectations of a proud capitalist daughter fueling a worldview that held such positions on high. But she was a realist - she never thought of herself as anything other than managerial stock, or perhaps a supervisor.

A pity.

She stood and waited for the light to go red, books in hand, smile on her face. She cast her beaming expression towards a nearby man she recognized from a Tanakara Tech TV spot - he looked away when he saw her. It was always like that. Sure, she wasn't perfect - but she tried, right? On her voice, on her jaw, on her brow... She had put in such work, and yet even a glance could make a stranger disdainful.

One of the blessings of her new life was the surgeon's knife, the cold embrace of chophouse steel. The memory had no such solace.

A scream rang out. It was down the street, towards the old Harris building - an apartment complex that had fallen into disrepair after a number of failed attempts at appealing to new residents. It was a blight on the 'nice' side of town, and anyone who lived in Vitus knew it housed low-life scum. Or, well, so they were told; few people actually went in to check it out, and regardless of what they said or described about the place, it was ignored.

The scream. Even now it made EJ's flesh prickle, not because of the sound itself but because of what it meant. Because of what came next. There was a terrible thump-thud as a beast of steel and diesel hopped the curb and mounted the sidewalk, it's front brakes screeching with laughable futility as it barreled towards the crowd. In slow motion it crept forward, a runaway semi with its trailer tailing behind at a strange angle. In hindsight she knew why - industrial gangs often tried to hot-drop the trailers of tech shipments to fence into the underground - but at the time, her brain couldn't even process what was hurtling down on her.

The scream had been a bystander, and soon it was joined by the crowd. Those to EJ's left darted away, rushing behind the safety of skyscrapers and subway stations; those to her right were in chaos and disbelief, their vehicles piling against one another in a frenzied attempt to escape the upcoming carnage. Ironic.

And then... blood. Esper James was frozen in place, possessed by fear which made all else pale, unable to even blink. She watched as the trailer's heavy steel box-frame crashed into the bodies of civilians, the sickening crunch of their bones as they were snapped like kindling, the way red-soaked white punched through innocent skin. She started a to pray as she saw ruptures in their flesh, blood and viscera pouring out as the trailer lost its wheels and began to tumble, rolling through the bodies like a thresher through grain. Metal began to tear apart from the force of impact and the other debris on the street, sending shrapnel flying through the already-doomed citizens.

One last breath before it hit her.

Steel kissed skull. It was a lover's first touch, a tender last embrace, a gentle word from a mentor. It was mercy, for her head to be shattered before the slaughter could destroy her. In life, her skull had been splattered and her brain matter scattered. Her teeth had been crushed against one another, the braces snapping and adding to the dismembering fury. Her spinal column had been dislodged in a way only describable as 'not good'. But in life, in her first life, none of that was remembered.

She had died, as was natural. As was meant to be. She would go to see what lay above and below.

But what they always neglect to tell you when they discuss second-living in schools is that despite conscious thought, sapience, leaving your body upon death, your brain continues to do it's duty until it cannot anymore. It records what it sees. What it hears. What it smells. What it tastes. What it feels. It is the first memory a second-living person is given of their new life, and it is burned into them eternally; they can never forget what made them how they came to be.

For Esper James, she saw her own gore. She heard her bones do a great impression of an empty snack bag. She smelled bitterness, foulness, burnt rubber and her own cloying blood. She tasted copper, like coins, hot and viscous. She felt pain.

The rest is a blur, and is almost worse to remember. The splitting of the brain matter into pieces creates fractured and strange memories, multiple accounts of the same simultaneous proceedings. She remembers the morgue. Remembers the pavement, little bits of it clinging to her stinging greys. The shots, the re-attaching, the soaking pool... The way she formed back together. The way her flesh knit itself up for the first time, and how she had cried and screamed at the pain of it.

When she had lived again, truly lived, she was bawling in a dimly lit pool of reddish liquid. It burned like alcohol and was cold as ice, the womb of wights, drawing her last breath back from across the aether to fill her breast anew. A mask sat on her face, hooked to a tube to let her breathe - otherwise, she was nude.

Suddenly, the top lifted away to reveal the blistering lights of the morgue. A mannish voice laughed amicably, but at the time she had thought it cruel; two hands likely attached to the voice's owner dipped fearlessly into the pool even as it sizzled and hissed and burnt away the hairs on his arms. Hands clad in medical gloves gripped her under either shoulder and began to haul her up and out even as she screamed and hissed and flailed, not understanding, not wanting to be touched, only desiring a return to the void that had been before. Through the fluid, garbled by its presence, she could hear the man speak.

"Welcome back, young lady!"

-

When the reverie finished, EJ was crying. Crying again. She kicked herself inside her mind for the pathetic show of emotion, for how often she cried. It was embarrassing to constantly be sobbing, regardless of if it was for valid reasons or not. Midway through her mental self-beration she looked across the table, noticing Est was frowning at her. Not a new expression for the ghoulette to see, to be frank.

"What?"

Esper James hadn't meant it, but the words left as a shaky, snappy attack. She felt more vulnerable now than ever before - normally she could confront the memories alone, could sob into a pillow or stuffie and let the pain ebb away on teardrop tides. Here, however, she was stuck. An audience of one was enough for a show, and stage fright had no easy cure.

"I'm... You look like it hurts to think about, blondie. I'm sorry I asked. I, uh, I didn't want to..."

Didn't want to bring up old wounds. Didn't want to hurt you. Didn't want to make you cry. Again.

Take your pick; whatever she had been meaning to say, it hung in the air with a weight that felt physical. This whole scenario was dreamlike in a sick way, and EJ could barely fucking take it. Her right hand stung in the palm from her fingernails digging in, subconsciously drawing blood. Est turned her head away, looking at the floor, face fallen.

"It's... fine. It's fine, it's fine. I'm feeling... better already. I'm gonna have a fucking drink. Help yourself if you wanna, but don't finish the bottle or I'll scream." EJ lied through her sharpened teeth, eyes still narrowed to prevent tears from forming. Her furrowed brows twitched involuntarily, sore from how hard they were flexing.

Est said nothing. Taking this as invitation to drink alone, EJ stood with a start, chair sliding out behind her, and stomped over to the cupboard. Here she allowed twins of tears to drip-drop down her soft cheeks and into the glass she prepared, away from where her house-Est could see. Thin fingers curled around a bottle of chilled plum wine from a small minifridge stocked with booze, the other hand procuring a lukewarm can of PhizKid lemon-lime soda. Both went into the tear-lined highball to make a sad little spritzer, one that had a tang of salt beneath the fruit and fizz.

Another one was poured just in case. That one got ice; EJ didn't want any in her own.

She turned, heading back to the table, only to see the tan-skinned tomboy standing close to her; she nearly bumped into her as she turned, in fact. The ghoul stumbled back, but Est's hands rushed out to catch her and stabilize her; when she was standing straight again, the assassin's expression turned sheepish.

"I, uh... Shit. I just want you to know that I get it. Feeling helpless, feeling... taken advantage of. I've been there. I'm still there, in a way - just a dog with a longer leash. Not quite freedom. Don't think I'll ever get there. But, EJ, you can't expect things to get better unless you do something about it. If you're feeling stuck, you've go-"

Slap!

Est didn't try to dodge it, though she could have - and in restrospect, she should have. EJ's open palm hit like a ton of bricks; not quite the blow a Vampire could have delivered, of course, but ghouls still gained quite a boost to their physical strength. EJ didn't take care of hers, so she was only humanly strong, but it was enough to make the Knight stumble back a few paces and hold her pseudoskinned cheek.

"FUCK you! What do you know, you psychopath?! I just met you fuckin' tonight! You're a crazywoman from some medieval technocracy thousands of miles away who butchers people just like me because you think God himself has somehow given you the A-OK! What in the Hell do you know about what I'm going through, huh?! Nothing! You know jack-fucking-shit, ok? Jack-FUCKING-Shit! You... You come into my home, and force me to house you like some kind of servant, make you dinner, give you my clothes that you still haven't put on...

It's obscene! It's nuts! It's fucked up! You're holding me hostage in my own fucking apartment and now you're lecturing me on how to improve my life?! Where the Hell do you get off on all this, you narcissistic god-damn serial killer? Huh? Should I be thanking you for this? Should I be kissing your fucking feet? Here, I've got a collar in my purse, lemme just go put it on!"

Est opened her mouth to reply, and indeed a stream of well-meaning protests began to babble forth with the intent to defuse the emotionally-compromised undead's sudden switch to firebrand ferocity. Each and every epithet fell upon deaf ears, a monologue for a brick wall, as the blonde-haired woman practically tore open her purse.

Fuck, she was really crying now. She didn't care this time, though - they weren't sad tears, or frustrated tears, or impotent tears. These were tears of rage, hot and pure and scalding with a righteous flame gifted unto only those most justified in their tearfall. She found the flat black case and opened it roughly, throwing the constituent sides haphazardly away to grasp the collar's length. Black leather, soft and pliant, was abused exactly as intended by her grip; the cold steel ring found itself a home upon her neck, memories of Adam long since gone but making her wince regardless. She pushed it lower.

EJ whipped around, fastening the choker-collar tight enough to make it live up to it's name. Red-flecked eyes glared with an inferno's wrath at the New Way warrior in her kitchen, moonlight piercing the smog to send one gentle shaft into the room to illuminate the pair. The only other light they found themselves in was hanging over the kitchen table, some five or more feet away.

"Well? Well? Esper-fucking-James, your personal little slave, reporting for duty! Now why not finish telling me how I'm living my life wrong while standing in my kitchen, mistress! Please, I'm dying to hear what words of wisdom some neurotic gearbody has to spit at me!"

Est rushed over, going to wrap her arms around EJ; it had worked before, it'd work again, right? Wrong. Super duper wrong. As wrong as one could get, actually. By time she had a chance to try and console the ghoul through her breakdown, another facet of ghoulish nature exposed itself:

A set of razor-sharp teeth.

EJ chomped down with all the force she could muster, burying ivory into silicone and kevlar, rewarded for her efforts by a spurt of bluish nutrio-fluid splashing straight into her mouth. It was hot and tasted foul, like marmite, and left a clinging film that slowly congealed to sandy consistency. Almost as soon as she bit down she regretted it, letting go and gagging on the essence that had entered her oral orifice.

Est, meanwhile, howled in pain as EJ pierced a synthetic nerve bundle and sent her staggering back. Her hand went up to her shoulder, panic flaring in her eyes as fluid spurted out between her fingers, ignoring their damming ability almost entirely. Without words she rushed to the bathroom, flinging open EJ's medicine cabinet and rummaging through for whatever she could find to patch the cluster of holes in her now-aching shoulder.

"Fuck! Fuck! EJ, what the Hell?! Are you insane? That stuff is toxic, not to mention, oh, my blood?! I don't care how fucking angry you are, I know, I said some dumb shit and I'm super sorry, but- fuck, where are your bandages?! How do you not have fucking gauze?!"

EJ didn't take the time to explain why she didn't need gauze. Stumbling to the kitchen sink she filled her mouth with water, swishing and spitting, trying desperately to clear her mouth of the vile and indigestible substance which filmed it. Thinking as she extradited the repulsive taint in her mouth, she considered what she knew of first aid. Stopping or slowing the bleeding should be their priority. She needed to find a tourniquet.

Too bad she didn't have anything even remotely resembling one. Unless...

The irony of it all was almost shameful in its own right. Trembling hands raced up to the buckle of her collar and slipped it free, her feet stumbling once or twice in her frantic, emotional dash, but carrying her true to the bathroom. The collar was offered, shaken like a rattle in front of Est's face to try and get her attention.

"Est - E-Est, here, use this as a tourniquet; we've- we've gotta stop the bleeding, I... I don't know what came over me, I'm so fucking sorry, I... please, here, use this, we can slow down your bleeding and get something over the bite-" The ghoulette's words were shaky as she said them. EJ's rage was draining fast, replaced with worry and doubt. Why had she bitten her? EJ had never bitten another person in all her time as a ghoul, not once. The simple act was enough to get you in jail, and now she had chomped down on someone hard enough to cause such damage. Why had she done that?

"A tourni- shit, yeah, that's smart! Here, give it to me!" Est babbled rapid-fire in her haste to staunch the bloodflow, taking the collar without second thought. She almost tore it from EJ's hands, curling it around her under-arm and using her teeth to tighten it like a heroin user; warnings flared in her head about losing usage of her right arm due to entering stasis mode, but stasis was better than bleeding out on the floor. She sprayed her face with her own nutrio-fluid as its flow became acute and then halted, now a mere slow beading that she had an idea of her own on how to deal with.

EJ gulped down air, trying to calm herself. Everything was happening so fast. It felt like it was all at once... Like she just needed to lie down alone, to think things through. She was about to tell Est as much when she saw the white of Est's towel ripple through the arm, torn away to now act as a makeshift bandage. She caught a full eyeful of the hitwoman's physique and found herself momentarily enthralled, though she slammed her lids shut and turned away once she realized how badly she was gawking.

Est was fit, of course - tight, toned abs, curated muscle tone and free of blemish or damage, her hips and rear much more forgiving than her chest. However, it was more than just her musculature that had EJ staring only moments ago: her torso was completely human still, only the arms and legs being truly mechanized. Beneath the flesh she doubtlessly had inorganic viscera, but barring those, she still held some of the humanity that supposedly was thrown away when one embraced the New Way. She wasn't a complete aug. She could go back, some day.

In the UNAC, there is a saying: "The New Way is more like the One-Way". Those who embody it often spring for full-body packages to allow for ease of optimization; if all parts are purchased and installed at once it's more like stuffing guts in a mech suit, rather than welding mechanica onto a flesh-body dummy. In the West, the idea was the opposite: get all your therapies done in a piecemeal format so your genes and body could adjust, letting every organic extremity catch up before a new therapy was applied. This is part of what created the rift between the two ideologies.

Est noticed EJ's embarrassment, but didn't seem to be too uncomfortable; she just grabbed another towel and bound it about her waist like a kilt, letting her perky chest hang free. She went to take a seat on the lip of the tub, sighing and looking at her right hand. Open, close, open, close, slower and slower each time - it was losing power, just as her support system had told her it would. Soon it'd be dead weight until she could seal the wounds. Normally they'd go on their own, but the nutrio-fluid needed to heal her vein first before it could focus on the flesh, and it would never be able to do that with bloodflow continuing as it had been.

Silence felt deafening. Est watched her hand and eyed her bite wound; EJ leaned against the wall and took deep and slow breaths to pace her weary heart, wishing she were in bed. They both languished in it, reveled in it, letting this moment of nonverbal calm cut through everything else that had happened tonight. Words were hard, anyways. Unnecessary. Undesirable, oftentimes. They got in the way.

EJ broke the calm first. "Est... I'm gonna head to bed. I think the both of us are tired and emotional and need to sleep. I'm... I'm sorry I bit you." She couldn't look up at Est as she said it, embarrassment and nerves keeping her from catching the other woman's eye. She was sure she'd get her words caught in her throat if she even tried.

"...yeah. Good plan. Where should I sleep, eh? I don't think I saw a couch here anywhere..."

EJ's nerves re-introduced themselves. Of course there was only one place for Est to sleep - EJ was rarely awake and home enough to make use of anything like a couch, so she didn't really have seating anywhere, or at least seating one could properly sleep in. Her only option was-

"-the bed. I'll put down two pillows, to divide us, and we can sleep with our backs to eachother. Then we'll figure out where to get you situated tomorrow, but for now, I can't be fucked to deal with making some kind of... shelter or something for you."

Est nodded. It was as good as anything; in fact, it was pretty damn kind of EJ. Her bed had to be the best spot in the house of what sparse few existed, and inviting her there without so much as a blink took guts. The Italian took to her feet and approached EJ, gesturing out with her one functional arm.

"Alright," Est said, "- lead the way."

-

EJ's room was kind of embarrassing. Her walls were white and plain, and her floor was padded with thick omber carpeting. Decor was modern art-deco and very sleek and stylish, offering a refreshing touch of style from the spartan landscape in the majority of the dwelling. The bed, in particular, was large; extremely large, in fact. California King. EJ was a restless sleeper, and the bed had come as a recommendation from a sleep analyst who was later busted for taking kickbacks from a mattress supplier. Regardless, EJ kept the enormous furnishing, thinking it a fun focal piece and potential conversation starter if anyone came over.

This was the first time in almost eight years since purchasing it that anyone other than herself had seen the damn thing.

The pair dipped to their skivvies, each facing away from eachother to preserve one another's dignities, the rustling of clothing and the gentle whoosh of an overhead fan contributing wholly to the bedroom ambiance. Finally, the pair were down to nearly-nude, each clambering up into the monolithic object's cushy abyss. Pillows were arranged to form a territorial line, and lights were shut off with the sound of two claps in the air.

EJ sighed as she settled in, silken sheets and downy comforters attempting to drown her in pleasant surrender. She was tempted to allow them. However, she took this time to try and reflect upon the past few days, to think of what all had happened - and it had happened so fast.

She was late for work. Her apartment was collateral damage from a dangerous terrorist attacks. She had been drugged at the club. She had lost her virginity to a woman she was starting to suspect was a cam-girl. She had been scolded by Judas (not uncommon). She had been... consoled, by Judas. She had nearly been turned into an unwilling relief. She had been saved from this fate by the same terrorist that torched her domicile. She had bitten this terrorist on the shoulder in a fit of rage.

She had cried a lot.

Not the worst. Not the best, either, and certainly a lot to take in... but something told her the worst and best were yet to come. And so, she snuggled into her side of the bed and let out a soft whisper which remained unanswered until she fell completely asleep.

"Goodnight, Est."

There was no indication the other girl had heard, but of course, it was crystal-clear to her. She waited and waited without a sound for EJ to fall asleep, to lower her defenses, and after nearly twenty-five minutes of staring into the darkness Est got her chance. She slithered over between the sheets, moving away some of the pillows, and sidled up to EJ. She couldn't see her normally, but she didn't need to for what she planned to do. Her hands went out, and...

...wrapped around the smaller girl's midsection, pulling her close. Est's lips parted gently to release a parting phrase of her own, one that made her smile sweetly, even after the night's turmoil.

"Sleep tight, EJ."

-

A little spoon and a big spoon formed a pair of dull cutlery in the bed's embrace. By morning, EJ was smiling in her sleep and her hair was like a veil for Est. They were snug and cozy and without worry for a few hours, and that was honestly enough. In their minds they dreamt of better times, and they slept well. EJ awoke only once during the night, and was soothed by the soft sensation of pseudoskin against her own. She didn't even register it was Est.

All seemed right with the world, for once, and they were happy. Together. Snoozing.

And then, at twelve PM, the phone rang.