In Your Time of Need--REPO FIC

He'd been robbing since before she was born, before her mother's death. To the graveyards every night, in and out, and weaving among the cold gray tombs and the stones that marked forgotten, failed bodies. It was usual, ritual--always the same. Quiet like a mouse and hope they don't find you. Keep all the variables the same--keep control, always stay in control--know the patterns of things and don't change them--and you'd be fine.

Simple, really. A tenet that wasn't hard to come up with and even easier to adhere to, just like drawing that glow from the bodies of the deceased.

Then things got out of his control. One night, just one, and it only happened ever the once but that once changed the routine forever. Suddenly nothing was quite as comfortable as it was before.

It was late, at night, nearly 10 years before she even knew about his existence that he had heard a small, stifled cry in the dark corner of a stony tomb. That the light of the glowing vial he held in his hand, half-full and needing one more draw to make it competely, had illuminated the smallest of children curled up in the shadows with her eyes closed and her arm wrapped around a ratty old teddy that was in dire need of surgery.

A child. His eyes had visibly widened, glinting from the center of the dark circles of his lined and shadowed lids, and an involuntary step back had taken him spinning over the marble headstone to land flat on his ass. The sound echoed throughout the tiny enclosed chamber, and for some reason, he held his breath. The child stirred, face folding into a frown, and shifted on its hard rocky bed, then gave another small whimpering cry--in its sleep, he realized--before settling back down.

His curiousity piqued, he left the satchel with its Zyringes and vials where it was, and crawled on hands and knees to look at the child more closely. Tiny eyelashes fluttered against cheeks that were far too taut to be healthy for a girl her age--and a girl it was, he realized--and her hands were bunched into fists, tucked in close to her thin frame which was shivering in the night cold. A strange feeling enveloped him, something like pity, something like what he felt for the poor addicts who crawled into his den begging for their fix, begging for something, anything that would take them there. But this pity wasn't laced with disgust, or distaste, or a desire to have its object shot and just put out of its snivelling excuse for human misery. Almost foreign to him, this feeling of pity was born from nothing more than some primeval, primordial instinct. With a shock, it came to him that he was feeling protective for this small, insignificant, frozen child.

His night's collecting forgotten, he reached over for the shoulder bag that must have belonged to the girl, and started quietly rummaging through it, searching for some ID. His fingertips lingered over the small leather wallet, hesitating for a quick second before pulling it out. A few plastic bills disappeared into his pocket, but he ignored the sudden sense of guilt as he found what he was looking for.

"Shilo Wallace," he mouthed quietly to himself, replacing the ID card into its slot and tucking the wallet back into the bag, glancing over at the sleeping girl once more. His eyes strayed to the headstone, making out the words engraved there from the filtered moonlight that came in through the window. Marni Wallace.

"Ah." He nodded with understanding and stood, slightly relieved he wouldn't have to do anything quite as heroic as taking the little girl home. She was with family, obviously; she had to know where she was. In fact, he wouldn't be surprised if this was a regular visit for the little thing. He could leave without any guilt at all.

The girl sighed again, her elbows tightening against her emancipated ribs, her chin ducking lower and a frown creasing her eyelids. Her shivering was noticeable even from a distance now, and he bit his lower lip for a moment in indecision. He wanted to leave. Wanted out of there, before she woke up and saw him, started crying, or screaming, and alerted the GenCops out on the streets to his presence. But that nagging instinct held him there, pushed at his mind to do something, anything, for that small sick child.

A resigned sigh, laced with frustration, escaped his parted lips, and he shook his head. "Fine," he muttered to no one in particular, and began emptying the pockets of the greatcoat he was wearing. "Fine," he repeated. A handful of filled vials and a Zydrate gun disappeared back into his satchel, and he shrugged out of the heavy coat. Being careful, gentle, and hoping to whatever gods were left on this desolate earth that she didn't wake, he laid the coat over her sleeping frame. The sigh that came this time was happier, and he watched, slightly bemused, as she snuggled deeper under the heavy wool.

Shaking his head and marvelling at his own weakness, the Graverobber had left the tomb as quietly as he had entered, shutting the door and marking its location with his sharp memory. Taking from the pits of forgotten dead, the bodies that had been dumped and left there with no one to mourn them--that was one thing. But he had no desire to steal from those corpses that still had someone to love their cold, dead memory. Marni Wallace wouldn't be hearing from him again.

Yet for some strange reason, every time he passed through that particular cemetery, he stopped by the tomb of Marni Wallace and glanced in the window. 9 times out of 10, that child was there, and it gave him a strange feeling to see that she kept the coat as a blanket, folded neatly in the corner when it was warm and draped over her body like a familiar comforter when the nights were chill. He ignored the questioning remarks from his own psyche as to his sudden protectiveness towards the girl, eventually rationalizing it as a need to preserve something in that dead and dying world that was still pure, alive, and innocent.

He watched her grow, over the years. Rejoiced when she seemed healthier. Felt saddened when she lost weight, or when he found her crying over her mother's body and he couldn't risk opening the door to go in and comfort her, not even sure why he would want to. Not the Robber, who cared for nothing and no one but himself. Yet wish he did.

When she was older--11, he thought, based on the year that had been listed on her ID those years ago--he watched as she became fascinated with the only life that could thrive in those dead grounds. Insects amused her, became her friends, and he was jealous of them--the care she took with catching them, the gentle way in which she killed them, the reverence in which she mounted them to her boards and cases and put them neatly away in her bag. He began to keep an eye out on his rounds, showing the same care as he'd catch a bug and keep it in his satchel, waiting for the next night he'd see her there, to let it go in the window of the tiny tomb. He loved the look in her eyes when she'd see whatever new treasure he had brought her that day.

He loved being able to bring happiness to someone. Real happiness, not the fake sort that surGens and Genterns and Graverobbers sell with their surgeries and their Zydrate. It reminded him that he was human. Because sometimes...sometimes he forgot. "Shilo Wallace," he'd whisper to himself whenever he was alone, finding himself thinking of the little girl he'd unofficially taken into his charge, the little girl that was slowly growing into a young and beautiful woman. And that was a strange thought, too.

Sometimes she would sing quietly, to herself and her mother's corpse, the reverberations echoing around the tomb and lending strength and resonance to her pure tone. A lot of it was Blind Mag's songs, he knew, but he still thought of them as Shilo's songs. Those times, he would sit with his back to the stone and listen, just for a few minutes; later he would find himself wandering among the graves in other cemeteries and humming those songs quietly to himself.

She never knew he was there. He took care to ensure that. He was a criminal, after all, a Graverobber and a drug dealer and a thief--he still felt guilty, sometimes, about the money he'd stolen from her wallet. It would be dangerous for him to be seen; it would be dangerous for her to know he was there. And he didn't want to sully her purity with his disgusting, rancid, sinful self. So he watched, and he collected insects, and he sang quiet songs, and it wasn't until she was seventeen and staring at him from across a mummified corpse with fear and pleading desperation in her eyes that he realized he couldn't, actually, live without her.

And still she never knew.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Her hands were stained with blood, and for some reason she found it odd that it was red. Somehow, his blood didn't seem like it should be the red of the rest of humanity, those corrupted fools, whores and politicians and commonfolk who were only pieces of themselves and too much of others.

It was a silly thought, but she had thought it would be blue, and glowing, like the Zydrate that made up his existence. And all she could do was stare at it, on her hands and her dress and splashed over the side of her mother's tomb and seeping out of the surgical gashes that had opened up his chest.

His normally bright eyes were dim, and the oily paint ran down his cheeks in tears of pain. He clutched at one of her hands, tight, almost bruising, and she gripped it back, trying to hold back her own tears.

Too much death. There had been too much death. Her mother, Mag, her father, and not even two days later the one person she had left in the world, who happened to be a perfect stranger. But he had saved her, twice, and she had thought maybe he could save her from the pieces of her world that were crashing down around her. Only to find him bleeding to death on Marni's headstone, his too-red blood filling the grooves and spelling out her mother's name in crimson letters.

"Please don't die," she begged helplessly, knowing it was no use. He would die, and she'd be alone--truly alone, this time. "I need you."

Graverobber gave her an attempt at a grin, and reached bloodstained fingers up to trace along her cheek. "Don't cry, kid. I'm not worth crying over." She chewed her lip, shaking her head silently with tears streaming down her face, her shoulders shivering with sobs. He turned his head slightly, coughing with the effort, and weak fingers picked up what he'd been carrying when he had come to the tomb.

"Here." Shilo took the glass jar in her hands, sniffling, and peered into it to see a small insect fluttering about in vain, crawling over the sides of the glass and the underside of the sealed lid and the folded edges of a few small plastic bills that had been stuffed into the bottom. A memory came back to her--an empty wallet, and a warm woolen coat draped over her body.

She looked away from the futilely struggling insect and into Graverobber's face. "You?" she breathed out quietly, her voice shaky, and her hand swiped across her nose as she sniffled again.

Graverobber's eyes were closed, and she could feel his heartbeat flickering under his skin as her hand clenched tightly around his. He nodded, almost inperceptibly, a groan of pain pushing its way out of his tightening throat. With a great effort, he opened his eyes, and looked straight into her face.

"Love you, Shi," he whispered, and his eyes slid shut again, his hand going limp in her grasp.