[fic | dogs] AMOKLAUF ; the blood that's been pumping(STILL HASN'T MET YOU) ; giovanni+heine+lilly.
Title: AMOKLAUF : part one : the blood that's been pumping(STILL HASN'T MET YOU)
Fandom: DOGS: BULLETS & CARNAGE
Character(s)/Pairing: Giovanni, Heine and Lilly. Child-arc.
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 2470.
Disclaimer: not mine.
Feedback: yes please!
Notes: Part One of child arc "AMOKLAUF".
Summary: Just a personal sort of headcanon for Giovanni and Heine. How they became who they are now. And Lilly.
"My name's Heine. What's yours?"
Cold feet, skinny calves, bony knees, dirty smock, thin neck, pointy face -- in that order.
Neither of them look very different, until you get to the face. Heine is pale, even more so than anyone else here (or maybe the crackling lights of the institution bleaches him and drains him of blood more cruelly than anyone else, the twelve fingers and full smile of those cyanide lips rob him of the colours that he may have sported). His hair is pale too, but beneath the scraggly bangs his eyes burn red hot coals and fire but with none of the heat, only listless shifting of pupils.
(the place was always cold)
In turn, the boy turns his face down awkwardly back to his sketchbook, but he needn't have bothered; the pale milky-blond locks cover his eyes completely and most of his face too, only leaving a parting for his nose and mouth so that he doesn't choke on his own hair. From this angle he look like a puppy abandoned in favour of other more exciting and pliable toys. You can't do much with an animal, after all. They bleed and break and die and there's nothing you can do about it.
(become stronger, i will make you become stronger than you could ever have imagined. i will give you steel and bolts and thick metal coverings of armour that you will be invincible, you will never be hurt or feel pain ever again. just do whatever i say and everything i say. just be good children.)
(now stand up and fight.)
"Don't you have a name?" The boy presses, takes one step closer, and the blond's fingers tighten convulsively around a crayon. It is red, like his eyes.
"--No." He answers, almost cowering under this boy who stands over him. Heine's bearing is confused, like everyone else here but something is different; that's right, there is confidence. He is confident like no-one else can be, the kind of self-assurance that only children can have, the certain tilt of the head and the straight line of his spine that only boys his age can have (pampered by the Woman and fawned over by scientists; he hates them but praise fills him up like a warm drink).
Heine blinks, tilts his head, and beginnings of a frown creases his pinched pale face. "Why not?"
"I haven't got one." His hands tighten around the sketchbook, the papers turning clammy under his grip. Heine considers this, but shrugs after a moment. There were a lot of kids -- kids who rocked back and forth in a corner, kids who had jagged crying fits that sounded like the tinkering of broken glass shards, kids with wide eyes and grinning mouths who sank their nailsteeth into you whereever whenever you weren't looking --- compared to that, this tiny, quiet kid with his sketchbooks and broken crayons was nothing.
"Whatever." (indicating with one hand) "That's Lilly."
His eyes follow Heine's arm (elbow stretching wrist extended fingers breathing life into one bright figure on the other side of the room, lighting her up like a christmas tree). She is little, like him, but seems bigger for the energy (the life) bursting out from her, seeping out through her skin and bright blonde hair and wide smiling blue eyes and shiny white teeth. The boy sees all this but doesn't quite register it, his attention still fixed on the other boy in front of him.
"Lilly..." He silently mouths the name, the tags on his wrist jangling as he hugs the sketchbook to his chest (the crayons forgotten tumbling onto his lap).
"Are you gonna get one soon?" Heine asks, doggedly keeping to the topic and breaking the short silence that lasted between them. He scratches where the collar meets his neck, flinches a little, and lowers his hand so it hangs limply by his side. "What do I call you, then?"
The boy doesn't answer. Only shrugs a little that is more like a twitch than anything else -- he is sixty-eight, he is a failure, he is rubbish, garbage, nothing more than useless here.
He does not like it here.
"Well," Heine starts, a bit lamely, then a little annoyed (it's not because of him, but because of the silence, because he doesn't know how to deal with a boy when he can't even see his eyes). "I hope you get one soon. I 'spect they haven't gotten around to giving everyone one yet. Don't worry about it."
Don't worry---
He looks up (the mass of matted hair moving along with it) and studies Heine for a long time, watching the thin pale fingers clench and unclench, scratching at his elbow. "Yeah," he finally answers. "I won't."
(then the nightmare comes around again, all blood and screaming and words that don't make sense, and there's the strong fingers gripping at his shoulders hissing Stand up, trash and he's screaming--)
It's the screaming that wakes him up. The blood-red eyes burn him with a mix of emotions (sleep, confusion, worry, annoyance, and bewildered panic) and Heine slowly relaxes his hold on the boy's shoulder. "You okay?" He mutely nods, as if all the screaming in the dream has robbed him of his voice completely. He can still hear the echo of it in his ears, feel it in the way that the other children shift and roll in their sleep. He reaches up under his hair to shakily rub at his watering eyes. His neck hurt. His everything hurt.
There's a blonde mass cowering by Heine, the girl he'd seen earlier -- Lilly. Heine reaches out and gets ahold of her hand and she grips it tightly, her blue eyes not leaving the boy.
And Heine's lips are tight. "Nightmare?"
(not saying that what they're living through right now is one, as well -- awake but not awake, dreaming but not dreaming because just beyond the edge of consciousness they all know that you can't wake up from this one. no-one will bring you hot milk and tuck you back into bed. no-one will wake you up.)
The pale hands gather the blanket thrown off in the struggle and pulls it back over the boy. "Go back to sleep." He yawns, the red eyes disappearing and reappearing in the darkness as he blinks. After a pause, he rolls to his back next to the boy. His body is warm through the blanket. He yawns again. "It'll be morning soon."
So that's how they stay until the lights come on, until the scientists with their clipboards and white gowns come filing in, making their rounds. He curls his fingers around the hem of Heine's clothes, barely brushing his elbow. It is warm.
-----
They've moved onto fighting several of Them a day, now. They are gigantic and heavily armed, but they are quicker on their feet, they're able to (he is able to) tear sinews and chew through the muscles as if it were candyfloss and not livingbreathing human beings. It's easier to pretend that they are not. It's easier to live with, that way.
(and if you thought about it, neither were they)
And he is there as always, there but not there, cowering in the corner by the entrance.
(fight and kill, she said)
He hates it. He hates the change in Heine's eyes, when they grow sharper and fiercer and hotter than the collars they wear shooting electricsharp pain down the spine and back up again fightfightfightfightkill (dis)satisfaction hissing in his ears and he blocks his ears but it doesn't work because it's in his head the Woman is in his head and it feels like She's standing right
She's right behind him, half in and half out of the darkness. It cuts Her face in two like those paintings (one half is a smiling beauty and the other half is a monster) but he can still feel Her sharp gaze stick him helpless on the floor like needles and pins soaked in anaesthetic.
She steps closer, near enough to touch (but She never does, no, he's not good enough for that particular favour) but She stands over him as if She will grab him by the scruff of his neck and shake the Cerberus out of him.
"Why aren't you fighting?" He says nothing, only stares up through the dirty curtain of hair. He daren't raise his gaze any more than up to Her sharp chin, the full lips twisted into a sneer. The stark sterile chemical whiteness of Her clothes hurts his eyes when She bends down towards him, the cherry brown tresses of hair falling down over Her breasts. His neck hurts too. He can't breathe for the gleaming halo tightening and choking his throat, the smell of roses and lily-of-the-valley filling up the space around him.
She lowers her voice conspiratorially. As if to bestow(share) a secret.
(just between the two of us)
"Trash."
The boy chokes on his breath, wraps his arms around his torso and shivers. There's warmth, then-- slowly creeping dampness.
He'd wet his pants.
She turns away.
(and the mouth laughs the smiling riptearkill)
-----
"Why don't you fight?"
Heine asks the boy who sits shivering huddled under a blanket and he settles down next to him before handing over the extra set of clothes that he'd managed to sneak out of the showers. He fumbles with the clothing, fingers unsteady and faltering every time Heine takes a breath.
The boy hastily pulls the shirt over his head, tousled blond head emerging after a few minutes of struggling. The other boy watches him for a few minutes, idly scratching swirling random meaningless designs with a fingernail on his own leg. The question blurts itself out of his mouth like a frog, like something disgusting, slimey, and the boy has to resist the urge to flinch. Feeling the words stick to him filthyslimeshame(shameful like a torn bag of garbage).
"Are you scared?"
"No." He answers but he knows that it's been much too quick of an answer because he can see Heine scowl, the red welts of the circles and swirls darkening on the fleshy part of his shin.
Like all other princes, Heine hates being lied to.
"Don't lie."
He moves to stand up, the bloodred eyes blazing cold and his mouth set into a tight thin railway line. Iron and steel and wood nailed down into the rock.
"I know you're scared."
Heine stares down at the boy for a moment longer, and he looks down at the floor and counts his heartbeats (they grow faster and faster and the boy has to take slow deep breaths because there's the sudden terrifying thought that this is the blackout, this is what everyone else gets this is what he needs this is what would make Her look at him this is what would make him Belong-)
Then it's gone and he's left staring down at his hands with the left index finger smeared greenpurpleblue and it reminds him of
(knife goes in guts come out spilling beneath her feet)
(they are like)
He has a nightmare that night, of hands with razorblade nails (the smiling mouth with the cool double-edged confidence of a cat), and when he wakes up in the morning they are ready.
-----
what he sees is Lilly's little golden brain spilling out from between Heine's fingers
what he sees is a jaw with a row of perfect teeth still attached to it grinning widely from a puddle of blood
what he sees is a finger
what he sees is Lilly's little golden brain
what he sees is the hollow insides of Heine's eyes
what he sees is a torn slash bursting out across the front of his shirt, the cloth fraying whitegrey worms
what he sees are ropes and ropes of shiny glistening greenbrownpinkred spilling out of him
what he sees are his own legs thrown over a boy slumped face down two metres away
what he sees is his own shaking hand, his index finger missing the first two joints (and his thumb is a raw stub of bone with the flesh gnawed off, hanging in tattered strips)
what he sees is Heine's fingers spilling Lilly's little golden brain
what he sees is
black
------
In another minute, his heart jump-starts, kicks like a dying buffalo and splutters what's left of his blood around his body.
And there's light.
The arms the fingers the scalpels come around him inside him, the drips wrap around him like umbilical cords.
And it's warm. It's light and it's warm and that's how he knows that he's not There anymore (because it was always cold There always)
With another bright flash of light his whole body jerks, the ribs almost cracking then caving in on themselves as he takes a huge, gasping breath, coughs out yellowbrown fluid from his lungs. He lets out his first noise, a sort of hiccup that divides itself neatly between his nose and his throat.
All in all, it's almost like being reborn.
There's a frantic beeping echoing down his left ear and beating at the scrambled insides of his brain that matches the rabbit-heartbeat in his right, but there's a hand pressing down on his chest. Six thorns pierce and prickle him like a trap, like a vice, like claws, as the other hand combs his hair back (razorblade fingers like a crown of thorns in his egg-pale hair this is his to bear all the weight of the sins all the death all the blood and he)
The boy struggles, and he's crying bloodless nothing-tears it hurts it hurts but there isn't any more Heine with his stolen clothes and blankets, there isn't any more of anything anymore, there isn't any more of himself anymore either and she lets him know with the needleprick of her fingers (something wicked this way comes) he's only alive because She chose him, gathered all the bloodbonesguts into her arms and fixed him up as good as new, ground the bones into dust and made him in the fire of her children.
If She made me in his image, then he's a failure too.
"My darling Giovanni," Her voice pours thickdarkpoison in his ear as Her arms wrap around his head once more and he can't breathe for the smell the air smells of sicklysweetrank, of corpses piled in a rose garden, a little girl drowned in a lilly-pond
(and somewhere a boy crawls up through the smoke and sulphur of hellfire with nails bitten to the quick; maybe he'll meet the man with a bloody knife and maybe he'll meet the man with daredevil laugh but eyes of a corpse and finally the one who listens to all of their deepdark secrets their sins and their guilt but he cannot listen to god - he should have been born deaf, not blind)
But the boy is not deaf and though he may be blind, though he may not shed tears he stares up into the light into Her eyes. She smiles and puts Her hands over his eyes and whispers, like it's a secret, a surprise
(just between the two of us)
"Giovanni."
(and the mouth laughs the smiling riptearkill)
Fandom: DOGS: BULLETS & CARNAGE
Character(s)/Pairing: Giovanni, Heine and Lilly. Child-arc.
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 2470.
Disclaimer: not mine.
Feedback: yes please!
Notes: Part One of child arc "AMOKLAUF".
Summary: Just a personal sort of headcanon for Giovanni and Heine. How they became who they are now. And Lilly.
"My name's Heine. What's yours?"
Cold feet, skinny calves, bony knees, dirty smock, thin neck, pointy face -- in that order.
Neither of them look very different, until you get to the face. Heine is pale, even more so than anyone else here (or maybe the crackling lights of the institution bleaches him and drains him of blood more cruelly than anyone else, the twelve fingers and full smile of those cyanide lips rob him of the colours that he may have sported). His hair is pale too, but beneath the scraggly bangs his eyes burn red hot coals and fire but with none of the heat, only listless shifting of pupils.
(the place was always cold)
In turn, the boy turns his face down awkwardly back to his sketchbook, but he needn't have bothered; the pale milky-blond locks cover his eyes completely and most of his face too, only leaving a parting for his nose and mouth so that he doesn't choke on his own hair. From this angle he look like a puppy abandoned in favour of other more exciting and pliable toys. You can't do much with an animal, after all. They bleed and break and die and there's nothing you can do about it.
(become stronger, i will make you become stronger than you could ever have imagined. i will give you steel and bolts and thick metal coverings of armour that you will be invincible, you will never be hurt or feel pain ever again. just do whatever i say and everything i say. just be good children.)
(now stand up and fight.)
"Don't you have a name?" The boy presses, takes one step closer, and the blond's fingers tighten convulsively around a crayon. It is red, like his eyes.
"--No." He answers, almost cowering under this boy who stands over him. Heine's bearing is confused, like everyone else here but something is different; that's right, there is confidence. He is confident like no-one else can be, the kind of self-assurance that only children can have, the certain tilt of the head and the straight line of his spine that only boys his age can have (pampered by the Woman and fawned over by scientists; he hates them but praise fills him up like a warm drink).
Heine blinks, tilts his head, and beginnings of a frown creases his pinched pale face. "Why not?"
"I haven't got one." His hands tighten around the sketchbook, the papers turning clammy under his grip. Heine considers this, but shrugs after a moment. There were a lot of kids -- kids who rocked back and forth in a corner, kids who had jagged crying fits that sounded like the tinkering of broken glass shards, kids with wide eyes and grinning mouths who sank their nailsteeth into you whereever whenever you weren't looking --- compared to that, this tiny, quiet kid with his sketchbooks and broken crayons was nothing.
"Whatever." (indicating with one hand) "That's Lilly."
His eyes follow Heine's arm (elbow stretching wrist extended fingers breathing life into one bright figure on the other side of the room, lighting her up like a christmas tree). She is little, like him, but seems bigger for the energy (the life) bursting out from her, seeping out through her skin and bright blonde hair and wide smiling blue eyes and shiny white teeth. The boy sees all this but doesn't quite register it, his attention still fixed on the other boy in front of him.
"Lilly..." He silently mouths the name, the tags on his wrist jangling as he hugs the sketchbook to his chest (the crayons forgotten tumbling onto his lap).
"Are you gonna get one soon?" Heine asks, doggedly keeping to the topic and breaking the short silence that lasted between them. He scratches where the collar meets his neck, flinches a little, and lowers his hand so it hangs limply by his side. "What do I call you, then?"
The boy doesn't answer. Only shrugs a little that is more like a twitch than anything else -- he is sixty-eight, he is a failure, he is rubbish, garbage, nothing more than useless here.
He does not like it here.
"Well," Heine starts, a bit lamely, then a little annoyed (it's not because of him, but because of the silence, because he doesn't know how to deal with a boy when he can't even see his eyes). "I hope you get one soon. I 'spect they haven't gotten around to giving everyone one yet. Don't worry about it."
Don't worry---
He looks up (the mass of matted hair moving along with it) and studies Heine for a long time, watching the thin pale fingers clench and unclench, scratching at his elbow. "Yeah," he finally answers. "I won't."
(then the nightmare comes around again, all blood and screaming and words that don't make sense, and there's the strong fingers gripping at his shoulders hissing Stand up, trash and he's screaming--)
It's the screaming that wakes him up. The blood-red eyes burn him with a mix of emotions (sleep, confusion, worry, annoyance, and bewildered panic) and Heine slowly relaxes his hold on the boy's shoulder. "You okay?" He mutely nods, as if all the screaming in the dream has robbed him of his voice completely. He can still hear the echo of it in his ears, feel it in the way that the other children shift and roll in their sleep. He reaches up under his hair to shakily rub at his watering eyes. His neck hurt. His everything hurt.
There's a blonde mass cowering by Heine, the girl he'd seen earlier -- Lilly. Heine reaches out and gets ahold of her hand and she grips it tightly, her blue eyes not leaving the boy.
And Heine's lips are tight. "Nightmare?"
(not saying that what they're living through right now is one, as well -- awake but not awake, dreaming but not dreaming because just beyond the edge of consciousness they all know that you can't wake up from this one. no-one will bring you hot milk and tuck you back into bed. no-one will wake you up.)
The pale hands gather the blanket thrown off in the struggle and pulls it back over the boy. "Go back to sleep." He yawns, the red eyes disappearing and reappearing in the darkness as he blinks. After a pause, he rolls to his back next to the boy. His body is warm through the blanket. He yawns again. "It'll be morning soon."
So that's how they stay until the lights come on, until the scientists with their clipboards and white gowns come filing in, making their rounds. He curls his fingers around the hem of Heine's clothes, barely brushing his elbow. It is warm.
-----
They've moved onto fighting several of Them a day, now. They are gigantic and heavily armed, but they are quicker on their feet, they're able to (he is able to) tear sinews and chew through the muscles as if it were candyfloss and not livingbreathing human beings. It's easier to pretend that they are not. It's easier to live with, that way.
(and if you thought about it, neither were they)
And he is there as always, there but not there, cowering in the corner by the entrance.
(fight and kill, she said)
He hates it. He hates the change in Heine's eyes, when they grow sharper and fiercer and hotter than the collars they wear shooting electricsharp pain down the spine and back up again fightfightfightfightkill (dis)satisfaction hissing in his ears and he blocks his ears but it doesn't work because it's in his head the Woman is in his head and it feels like She's standing right
She's right behind him, half in and half out of the darkness. It cuts Her face in two like those paintings (one half is a smiling beauty and the other half is a monster) but he can still feel Her sharp gaze stick him helpless on the floor like needles and pins soaked in anaesthetic.
She steps closer, near enough to touch (but She never does, no, he's not good enough for that particular favour) but She stands over him as if She will grab him by the scruff of his neck and shake the Cerberus out of him.
"Why aren't you fighting?" He says nothing, only stares up through the dirty curtain of hair. He daren't raise his gaze any more than up to Her sharp chin, the full lips twisted into a sneer. The stark sterile chemical whiteness of Her clothes hurts his eyes when She bends down towards him, the cherry brown tresses of hair falling down over Her breasts. His neck hurts too. He can't breathe for the gleaming halo tightening and choking his throat, the smell of roses and lily-of-the-valley filling up the space around him.
She lowers her voice conspiratorially. As if to bestow(share) a secret.
(just between the two of us)
"Trash."
The boy chokes on his breath, wraps his arms around his torso and shivers. There's warmth, then-- slowly creeping dampness.
He'd wet his pants.
She turns away.
(and the mouth laughs the smiling riptearkill)
-----
"Why don't you fight?"
Heine asks the boy who sits shivering huddled under a blanket and he settles down next to him before handing over the extra set of clothes that he'd managed to sneak out of the showers. He fumbles with the clothing, fingers unsteady and faltering every time Heine takes a breath.
The boy hastily pulls the shirt over his head, tousled blond head emerging after a few minutes of struggling. The other boy watches him for a few minutes, idly scratching swirling random meaningless designs with a fingernail on his own leg. The question blurts itself out of his mouth like a frog, like something disgusting, slimey, and the boy has to resist the urge to flinch. Feeling the words stick to him filthyslimeshame(shameful like a torn bag of garbage).
"Are you scared?"
"No." He answers but he knows that it's been much too quick of an answer because he can see Heine scowl, the red welts of the circles and swirls darkening on the fleshy part of his shin.
Like all other princes, Heine hates being lied to.
"Don't lie."
He moves to stand up, the bloodred eyes blazing cold and his mouth set into a tight thin railway line. Iron and steel and wood nailed down into the rock.
"I know you're scared."
Heine stares down at the boy for a moment longer, and he looks down at the floor and counts his heartbeats (they grow faster and faster and the boy has to take slow deep breaths because there's the sudden terrifying thought that this is the blackout, this is what everyone else gets this is what he needs this is what would make Her look at him this is what would make him Belong-)
Then it's gone and he's left staring down at his hands with the left index finger smeared greenpurpleblue and it reminds him of
(knife goes in guts come out spilling beneath her feet)
(they are like)
He has a nightmare that night, of hands with razorblade nails (the smiling mouth with the cool double-edged confidence of a cat), and when he wakes up in the morning they are ready.
-----
what he sees is Lilly's little golden brain spilling out from between Heine's fingers
what he sees is a jaw with a row of perfect teeth still attached to it grinning widely from a puddle of blood
what he sees is a finger
what he sees is Lilly's little golden brain
what he sees is the hollow insides of Heine's eyes
what he sees is a torn slash bursting out across the front of his shirt, the cloth fraying whitegrey worms
what he sees are ropes and ropes of shiny glistening greenbrownpinkred spilling out of him
what he sees are his own legs thrown over a boy slumped face down two metres away
what he sees is his own shaking hand, his index finger missing the first two joints (and his thumb is a raw stub of bone with the flesh gnawed off, hanging in tattered strips)
what he sees is Heine's fingers spilling Lilly's little golden brain
what he sees is
black
------
In another minute, his heart jump-starts, kicks like a dying buffalo and splutters what's left of his blood around his body.
And there's light.
The arms the fingers the scalpels come around him inside him, the drips wrap around him like umbilical cords.
And it's warm. It's light and it's warm and that's how he knows that he's not There anymore (because it was always cold There always)
With another bright flash of light his whole body jerks, the ribs almost cracking then caving in on themselves as he takes a huge, gasping breath, coughs out yellowbrown fluid from his lungs. He lets out his first noise, a sort of hiccup that divides itself neatly between his nose and his throat.
All in all, it's almost like being reborn.
There's a frantic beeping echoing down his left ear and beating at the scrambled insides of his brain that matches the rabbit-heartbeat in his right, but there's a hand pressing down on his chest. Six thorns pierce and prickle him like a trap, like a vice, like claws, as the other hand combs his hair back (razorblade fingers like a crown of thorns in his egg-pale hair this is his to bear all the weight of the sins all the death all the blood and he)
The boy struggles, and he's crying bloodless nothing-tears it hurts it hurts but there isn't any more Heine with his stolen clothes and blankets, there isn't any more of anything anymore, there isn't any more of himself anymore either and she lets him know with the needleprick of her fingers (something wicked this way comes) he's only alive because She chose him, gathered all the bloodbonesguts into her arms and fixed him up as good as new, ground the bones into dust and made him in the fire of her children.
If She made me in his image, then he's a failure too.
"My darling Giovanni," Her voice pours thickdarkpoison in his ear as Her arms wrap around his head once more and he can't breathe for the smell the air smells of sicklysweetrank, of corpses piled in a rose garden, a little girl drowned in a lilly-pond
(and somewhere a boy crawls up through the smoke and sulphur of hellfire with nails bitten to the quick; maybe he'll meet the man with a bloody knife and maybe he'll meet the man with daredevil laugh but eyes of a corpse and finally the one who listens to all of their deepdark secrets their sins and their guilt but he cannot listen to god - he should have been born deaf, not blind)
But the boy is not deaf and though he may be blind, though he may not shed tears he stares up into the light into Her eyes. She smiles and puts Her hands over his eyes and whispers, like it's a secret, a surprise
(just between the two of us)
"Giovanni."
(and the mouth laughs the smiling riptearkill)