Chapter Four

For once it wasn't dawn that woke Lance, it was darkness and above all, quiet. It was too damned quiet to be able to stay asleep; the fact that he hadn't been asleep so much as unconscious could for the moment be overlooked. A thin groan echoed in the damp warehouse and Lance nearly panicked before realizing it had come from him. For a while he remained still, staring emptily at the floor and trying to pinpoint potential injuries. No good...he'd have to do it the hard way.

Gritting his teeth, Lance gingerly shifted each stiff limb, pulling himself together and up to his knees. A muffled whimper strained through tight lips as pain throbbed sharply from all the wrong places. Gods...not again. Scraps of memory surfaced and were just as quickly buried: Kunnat's fist, a belt, a rope, a gun. Lance squinted around the bare floor. Too bad, he thought wryly and a touch bitterly, I should've asked him to leave the gun.

His jeans, at least, were close enough to reach; it took a considerable effort of will to pull them on, but such were the trials of being--what was it again--pretty. That word was really beginning to rankle. Not for the first time Lance toyed with the idea of taking a knife to himself, a creative burn...anything, really. Lying flat on the floor and panting to recover blurring vision and churning stomach, Lance decided against marring his face for now. Besides, Hanna liked it, surely that was worth enduring a certain degree of discomfort.

In any case, that was how he'd justify it for now.

After such point as he was able to rise, the next order of business was locating his shirt. Once his head stopped spinning Lance decided it was pointless to search and struck out for home again, caring little for his appearance. He'd yet to see a mirror, but from what he could assess he probably looked like death warmed over--like to see them call that too pretty to resist. Ugh.

The sky was still hung with smog-choked stars as Lance stumbled across the broken threshold of his apartment building and up the stairs, ignoring rude injunctions from the residents to keep the damned noise down, didn't he know people were trying to sleep? Of course they were trying to sleep. He'd be trying to sleep, too, if his skin weren't crawling: details, details.

The door slammed behind him as he grabbed another beer out of the fridge; alcohol wasn't what he needed, but it was cold and wet and he'd never trusted the water around here anyhow. Aida poked her head out of the bathroom, looking slightly pale and, as she took in Lance's condition, wavering somewhere between horrified and furious.

"I told you not to go out," she muttered, ducking back into the bathroom to the sound of crumpling paper; presently she emerged, dusting her hands and trying not to look at her son too closely. She'd done her level best to match his unfeeling attitude toward their relationship--and life in general, to use a broader brush--to lesser success. He was still her child and seeing him come home like this time after time, and knowing...just knowing what had happened to him (not that he'd deign to speak of it to her, oh, no) was...well, it wasn't always easy to bear.

Lance took a long sip of beer and rested the can against his forehead, eyes shut and pointedly ignoring her reproof; that or his ears were still ringing enough that he honestly hadn't heard. It wasn't always easy to tell, with him.

"You lost another shirt," Aida pointed out, trying to get close enough to see how badly he was hurt without being obvious. Finishing the last of his beer in a less-than-classy chug, Lance shrugged and edged away from her.

"Yeah, guess I did." What did she expect him to do about it, anyhow? Apologize? Did she think he'd just stripped out of it and cast it to the winds?

"You should clean those," she said, gesturing at the rope burns on his wrists and arms.

"I know, okay? Leave me alone. I can take care of myself."

"You make me wonder, Lansu, when you come home with marks like those."

"I told you to stop calling me that," he spat shortly, slapping the can down on the counter.

"And I told you not to go out last night."

Lance glared, trying to keep his eyes in focus. "Your point?"

"That apparently neither of us listens."

"If this is another of your 'communication' discussions, I don't have time, Aida," Lance sighed, brushing past her toward the bathroom; he felt absolutely filthy.

Aida's slim hand clutched suddenly at his arm. The reaction was immediate: Lance backhanded her across the tiny room before either of them had time to blink. He stared for a moment at the image of his mother hunched over the counter, hand hovering gingerly over her face. It was just a bit of a surprise, though which was more startling--the fact that she'd touched him or the fact that he'd hit her--wasn't immediately evident. Aida pressed her lips together tightly, eyes wet; Lance knew without checking that she'd have a bruise in a few hours. Stupid bitch was getting frail...

"Maybe now you'll learn to leave me the hell alone," he grunted, looking away and kicking the bathroom door shut behind him.

Having reached his mildewed sanctum, Lance sat on the edge of the tub and summoned the courage to look at his image in the cracked mirror. He almost smiled, then winced as it split open his lips again; well, he wasn't pretty now. Irritating, though...aside from the blood dried beneath his nose and now oozing from his lips, Kunnat really hadn't done much to his face. His skull, on the other hand, felt like it had been used to pound nails. Lance stood and abruptly hunched, hissing, as the pain increased sharply; that would be the drink hitting home, more than likely. The hell had--he paused and peered more closely at his reflection, specifically his eyes: one pupil dilated, the other constricted. Well, that explained the blurring vision.

Aida had told him once--however the hell she knew it--that it meant a concussion, when the eyes did that; logic would dictate that he lie down someplace dark and quiet and wait for the pain and nausea to pass. Bracing on the sink, Lance considered it for all of half a second before dismissing the idea: he'd never be able to rest like this. Certain rituals simply couldn't be put off.

The shower head hadn't worked properly in months, and Lance didn't trust the water to hold up long enough for more than a five-minute shower, anyhow. He'd need more than five minutes; with a resigned sigh, he dropped the plug in the tub and started it filling with the hottest water the gurgling pipes could provide...and if he got scalded, so be it.

He was in luck; steam began to fill the room as he edged painfully out of his jeans, shaking them out and tossing them over the back of the toilet. The mirror was too steamed-up now to see himself clearly, which was well enough; some things just didn't bear close inspection--at least, not when they were yours.

The tub was only half-full (or half-empty, depending on your ideology) when Lance stepped in, clenching his teeth at the temperature. Too hot...good. Laying out in what space the tub provided, he let the water climb up over his face before sitting up to turn it off. It might have been relaxing to merely have laid there, but there was still something else to do: he was still feeling soiled.

Grabbing a ratty washcloth from the edge of the tub, Lance started wearily on the job of scrubbing every inch of his body raw. The fact that some areas of skin were already raw was given no special consideration, and he worked automatically, numbly, until the water colored slightly with blood from newly-opened wounds. Even so, it would be a waste of hot water to drain it; with a slight mental shrug Lance washed out his hair with pink water. At least it was new blood--that made it...cleaner, somehow.

Duty done and feeling only slightly less disgusting, Lance groaned (to his credit, the only real sound he'd made throughout the ordeal) and rested against the back of the tub, trying to float and soaking in what heat was left in the water; he didn't feel like going back out there to face Aida just now. In the course of scanning the room (after spending several minutes observing the movements of a ladybug on the wall), his eyes fell on a crumpled cardboard box that had missed the wastebasket: another of those cheap little pregnancy tests. Lance knew them well enough. Both Aida and Hanna used them on occasion; Lance himself had spent tense minutes with Hanna waiting for results, back when they'd been young enough to be incautious. What Aida was doing messing things up at her age, he'd no idea. One would think after a certain amount of time in her profession she would have perfected her methods. Not his problem. Stupid woman with her stupid problems and not even a practical approach...it occurred to him detachedly that he really should be getting paid for putting up with such idiocy.

Paid?

Aw, hell. He'd almost forgotten. There was still that Alder guy to take care of: later...tomorrow night, just to get it over with, but he truly couldn't face much action just now. Besides, when he finally paid off Kunnat it simply wouldn't do to have it look like he was paying for services rendered...

Lance's stomach heaved again; he didn't bother to do much but keep his mouth shut. He hadn't eaten anything recently enough for it to be a problem, and this was, well, expected. Wasn't the first time--probably wouldn't be the last, he thought, cringing.

Maybe if this first job turned out well he could hire himself out to get Kunnat...holding onto that thought, Lance drifted into some place between sleep and unconsciousness as his blood coated the bottom of the tub.