Another shot of whiskey, can't stop looking at the door.
TITLE: Stolen Tarts - Guess I’d Rather Hurt
FANDOM: X-Men 919
CHARACTERS: Riley LeBeau, Andrew Raven
RATING: Teen [Death, emotional scarring, alcohol, mild language.]
SUMMARY: Memories make better prisons than any stone or iron ever will.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: scribble_mynameThis one came really quickly. I was actually quite surprised. Hopefully the speed hasn’t had any impact on the quality.
This is set post “Stolen Tarts” and pre “Sibling Rivalry”, and today’s title is courtesy of Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now”. Summary is a take-off from Richard Lovelace’s poem “To Althea, from Prison”.
The beach is cold and wet. The rain’s falling in sheets.
“This a friend of Riley’s?” a voice asked from the other end of the telephone line.
“Yeah,” Andrew answered, already suspicious. Phone calls to the Mansion at 1:15 a.m. were not especially uncommon, but ones asking about Riley? That was new.
“I got a Riley LeBeau at my bar, and this is the number she gave me when I told her she wasn’t driving home.”
Andrew’s stomach lurched.
“She’s down here,” the man continued. “Harry’s Hideaway. Girl’s been drinking pretty steady all night too. Can’t be sure, but I think she was kinda buzzed when she showed up. I’ve cut her off, but no way in hell is she riding her bike home or wherever after that much booze.”
Balling his hand into a fist, Andrew forced himself not to punch the wall.
“Harry’s Hideaway, down on Tompkins Avenue?”
“That’s the one. You might wanna hury. I took her keys, so she’s not going anywhere, but she’s not looking too good.”
“Yeah,” Andrew said. “Yeah. I'll be there in a few.”
Grabbing the keys to Jane’s pickup (she always left them in the top drawer of the second table in the foyer), he gunned it off the Mansion grounds and in to town, thankful for the empty roads of the very early morning.
The beach is cold and wet. The rain’s falling in sheets.
Riley isn’t aware of either of these facts.
He recognized Riley’s bike right away once he pulled into Harry’s parking lot, thanks to the flashy red paint job. Loading it into the cab of the truck was the first order of business. Once he’d gotten it in there and strapped it down for the drive home, he went in to the bar itself.
It was a Tuesday morning, which meant that the bar was fairly empty and that Riley was easy to pick out. She was sitting right up at the bar, her left hand curled in such a way that it appeared she’d forgotten there wasn’t a glass there anymore.
Andrew approached from behind and took a seat next to her.
“Hey,” he said softly. “You alright?”
She turned to look at him, and Andrew’s stomach lurched a little more at her hollow expression.
“I screwed up bad, Andrew.”
He would have made a flippant comment about how going out and getting drunk wasn’t that bad, but her haunted face prevented the words from coming out. This was about more than Riley going out and getting hammered.
“We all have.”
She didn’t say anything, and that frightened him more than her appearance did.
“Let’s go home, Riley,” he tried.
She shook her head. “Ain’t no goin’ home. Not now. She can’t.”
“Come on,” he told her, hoisting her off the stool. Riley obliged him even as she mumbled her previous statement one more time.
“Thanks for calling,” Andrew said to the bartender, who just nodded and passed over Riley’s helmet and keys to his free hand.
The beach is cold and wet. The rain's falling in sheets.
Riley isn’t aware of either of these facts.
“Breathe, Emmeline! Breathe! Don’t you dare die on me girl! You ain’t allowed! Just breathe!”
Riley managed to lurch her way to the truck and into the passenger seat with Andrew’s arm as support.
“Been fifteen years,” Riley said like it explained everything. “Fifteen years.”
He helped her into the truck, and she had the presence of mind to buckle herself in. Andrew took some tentative comfort in that.
“Fifteen years since what?”
She looked at him as though he’d asked her if water was wet. “Since her.”
Climbing into the truck himself, Andrew sat still in his seat. He looked over at Riley, who was fingering her seatbelt.
“Can I ask who she is?”
“Emmeline,” she answered, the majority of her attention still devoted to the seatbelt.
He started the truck up, seeing as he didn’t know exactly what to say, and pulled out to make for the highway that would take them back to the Mansion. A fragment of Riley’s memory rose up - Emmeline. Her cousin. Dead. He grit his teeth and forced himself to focus on the road.
After a few miles, Riley leaned her weight into the door.
“Was supposed t’look out for her. Couldn’t even do that right.”
What were you supposed to say to something like that? Nothing, Andrew realized. There was nothing you could say that wouldn’t make it even worse.
“She was only twelve,” she whispered. “Twelve goddamn years old. Shouldn’t’ve happened like that.”
Riley’s head started to droop. It could have been exhaustion, but Andrew figured it was more likely out of pain than anything else.
“I screwed up real bad, Andrew. Real bad. Emmeline? She can’t go home. It’s m’fault. She can’t go home.”
The beach is cold and wet. The rain's falling in sheets.
Riley isn’t aware of either of these facts.
“Breathe, Emmeline! Breathe! Don’t you dare die on me girl! You ain’t allowed! Just breathe!”
Emmeline doesn’t listen. Her body is still, her eyes starting to glaze.
Once they were back at the Mansion Andrew went to the passenger side of the truck and opened the door. Riley nearly collapsed out of it, falling into his arms in some sick parody of a romance novel cover.
“Woops,” she laughed flatly, if it could even be called a laugh at all, as Andrew helped her stand up. He forced one of her arms over his shoulder and grabbed hold of her hip.
The stairs up to the Mansion door were navigated fairly easily, but it was the stairs up to the third floor that proved the real trial. Keeping her feet only tenuously, Riley was completely silent. Her whole attention, as well as Andrew’s, was focused on getting her from one stair to the next.
It wasn’t until they got to her room that Riley spoke again.
“She’s twenty seven now, y’know,” she said as Andrew sat her down on the bed. “All grown up.”
Andrew winced. He didn’t have the heart to correct her tense. Not now.
He guided her body so she was lying down. She was already asleep as he shifted her on to her side.
The beach is cold and wet. The rain's falling in sheets.
Riley isn’t aware of either of these facts.
“Breathe, Emmeline! Breathe! Don’t you dare die on me girl! You ain’t allowed! Just breathe!”
Emmeline doesn’t listen. Her body is still, her eyes starting to glaze.
Riley continues chest compressions anyway, just like she was taught. One, two three...all the way to thirty. Pinch the nostrils shut. Breathe into her mouth, once, twice. Chest compressions - one, two, three...
Andrew went from her room to the kitchen, guided by the wisps of Riley’s psyche. It grew stronger as he drew closer to the kitchen, its desire and his own growing more and more twinned. Once there, he opened the locked liquor cabinet to pull out the bottle of bourbon that Riley had bought a few weeks back. Pouring himself a generously sized glass, he sat down at the table and threw back a mouthful.
It burned.
What little he could feel of Riley approved.
The beach is cold and wet. The rain's falling in sheets.
Riley isn’t aware of either of these facts.
“Breathe, Emmeline! Breathe! Don’t you dare die on me girl! You ain’t allowed! Just breathe!”
Emmeline doesn’t listen. Her body is still, her eyes starting to glaze.
Riley continues chest compressions anyway, just like she was taught. One, two three...all the way to thirty. Pinch the nostrils shut. Breathe into her mouth, once, twice. Chest compressions - one, two, three...
She does this for a good twelve minutes more, and stops only because she has no more breath to give.