http://clampfix.fanworks.net/others/solitaire.txt </head><body><pre>Hey all, I posted this a little while back on my site, but I'm not sure anybody found it. Or maybe people did, but were too traumatized to say anything. So I thought I'd throw it at you directly and see if anybody starts whimpering. ^^; Comments would be welcome.... - Kristin Warnings/Disclaimers: Spoilers for Volume 4 of Clover. All characters are copyright CLAMP and Kodansha. This is a fanwork for entertainment (!?!) purposes only. * * * * * Solitaire * * * * * I think A is going to kill me, and probably soon. C is gone at the moment. Doctor S and that new woman researcher took him a while ago, for tests. Was it minutes? Hours? I never know. Time moves strangely here, if it moves at all. As always, C went quietly. With A it's different. Sometimes they have to drug his food and carry him out unconscious. Right now A's over in the corner, playing cards by himself. Lately he's been spending a lot of time that way. Where he got the deck, I'm not sure. Every so often he looks up from his spread and smiles horribly at nothing in particular. It might be unnerving to someone who wasn't used to it. He used to save all his attention for C, ignoring me as though I were a piece of furniture, no more worthy of comment than the bars of this cage that the three of us share. But recently his gaze has been fixing on my back when I'm turned away, and not just fixing but burning, like a cigarette fallen on cloth. I can feel his eyes on me, the same way I can feel Doctor S's hands reaching before they've even touched my clothing. Even without the bond between A and I, it's easy to tell that the thoughts lurking behind his eyes are not brotherly. I doubt C has realized how bad things are. He knows that A's been hostile to me lately, but then, A's usually hostile to anyone but C. And C tries so hard to think the best of A, caring for him with a devotion that I can partly understand, but can no longer share. When your brother turns into a monster, you must make a choice: love the monster because he is your brother, or hate your brother for what he has become. C and I chose differently. Although I can't even say that what I feel for A is hatred anymore. The door to the corridor opens, casting bright light across the floor with painful suddenness, like a camera's flash. In comes C, pale and unsteady. They must have drawn blood this time, maybe a little too much. A and I both watch as he wobbles across the room to come and sit down near me, clutching a juice box in one hand. They always give him one afterwards. We try not to think about what might be in it other than juice. C sucks at the straw, squeezing the box as though to wring some kind of comfort from it. The little slurping sound ripples through the stillness. A's eyes narrow for an instant, then darken and lower once more to his cards. "Are you okay?" I ask C. He nods and smiles wanly. "What did they do?" "Nothing really bad." He looks up at me. "I heard them talking," he says. "I think it's your turn next." "Just physical stuff?" "Yeah." "Okay." C leans back against the pillar at our backs and closes his eyes. His face is mine, is A's, is ours--but it's impossible for triplets to be identical, for all that we might look like mirror images of one another. Sometimes I think that these years of imposed closeness have only aggravated our differences. A was always forceful, even when he was very small. He used to manhandle C and I, pulling and shoving, grabbing whichever toy he wanted most. C has always been gentle. Maybe I've always been in a kind of shifty place in the middle, struggling to find solid footing. Sometimes I even envy A his willful violence. There are times when I wish I could strike out like he does, to snarl and snap at the hands that violate. But my own anger never builds enough to amount to rage--the heat seeps out of my veins as if drained, and in the end my limbs become limp and useless, my body a foreign thing that no longer belongs to me. And I don't have C's kindness, either. Maybe I have nothing at all. Another panel of light appears across the room as the door opens. The backlit figure standing there is white-coated. Shadow hides his face, but I know him. "B," he calls. C's eyes open wide, and he looks up with transparent worry as I get to my feet. "I'll be back," I say, and walk towards the shadow standing in the light. Over in the corner, A puts down another card and begins to smile. "Good morning," says Doctor S pleasantly. He ushers me out into the hallway with one hand behind my shoulder. He's tall, dark-haired, the sort of man whose lab coat is always immaculate. I don't know his real name. We don't know any of their names, although we could find out easily enough by infiltrating the research complex computer systems. Somehow it hasn't seemed worth the effort. "Good morning," I repeat. "And how are you doing today?" "Fine, thank you. And you?" "Oh, I'm a little sleepy, but it's nothing coffee won't fix." He chuckles. "You're not a coffee drinker, are you?" "No." He shakes his head. "Well, you're young yet." Too soon the corridor ends, and he opens the door to a familiar examining room. In here there's no one-way window disguised as a mirror, as there are in many of the other places we're taken, and I know from experience that the walls are soundproof. I must have stopped in the doorway. The pressure of the hand on my back intensifies, propelling me forward, and then I am inside. "Let's get to it, shall we?" The doctor's voice is calm as always, and I hear the tiny click of the door's automatic lock behind him. Mechanically I strip off my shirt. He checks weight, blood pressure, heart rate, reflexes, humming tunelessly to himself. The instruments are cold on my skin, and once or twice I shiver. Only when he weighs me and checks the readout on the scale does the doctor frown. "You've lost two kilos since our last check-up. Is there a problem with the meals? Is the food unappetizing?" "No," I say, "I just...I don't get very hungry." He gestures for me to get down from the scale and back on the examining table. "I'll make a recommendation that your physical exercise intensity level be increased. That should take care of any appetite problems. Now, as C may have told you, we need to take some blood samples today. Which arm would you prefer?" I stare at him for a moment, wondering how he can so cheerfully offer the illusion of choice, like candy to a child with a sweet tooth. Finally I answer, "Left." Smiling, the doctor nods and turns aside to prepare the needles, laying them out neatly on his equipment stand. There are two of them gleaming on the clean white cloth. One is for taking blood. The other is not. He pushes up my sleeve and ties a band around my upper arm, every motion steady. Plenty of marks dot the line of the vein already, making it easy to find. I barely feel the prick of the needle. The doctor fills one vial, removes it, then reaches for another. My head swims a little as he draws the second vial, and he looks at me intently. "Feeling dizzy?" he asks, and I wonder if it was meant to sound concerned. "No, I'm okay." I look down at the blood seeping from my arm. Maybe there'll be juice for me afterwards, too. "You really haven't been eating enough. We'll work on that from now on, won't we?" "Yes." "All right." He removes the needle, staunches the blood with a pad of gauze, and then carefully bandages the spot. "Now, just one more thing...." He picks up the other needle. If I'm going to try for the door, it has to be now. Once the drug is in me, I won't be able to stand, let alone control my power with enough skill to unlock the computerized bolt. But I don't run. The doctor's eyes glint like the hypodermic as he pushes it in. I close my eyes and count to ten. By the time I reach seven, the doctor's grasping hands are far away. The battering of my heart slows then, and I begin to fall. Maybe I like this. Maybe that's why I don't run. I could escape if I wanted. We could all escape, at any time, but what would the end of that be? Beyond the door is a corridor. Beyond that are more rooms, and more corridors, and more walls. Beyond those is the outside, but what's there? Other rooms, other corridors, other walls, a thousand mazes. A thousand white-coated men with gloved hands. Here at least I know what to expect. Nothing is surprising. I know what will happen, without even needing to open my eyes. If I look up now, for instance, I'll be blinded by the lights on the ceiling. I actually did it once before. They are fluorescent, and vaguely blue, in some pale mockery of sky. When was the last time I saw sky not through glass? I can't remember. Somewhere, far away, someone's breath catches and rasps. "Good boy," a voice coos. "Good boy...." It's a lie. How can I be good, letting something like this happen to me? C's the good one, who does as he's told and what he ought. Maybe there was a time when all of us were good, or when we might have been. But the simple fact of being caged drives some creatures mad, and others to self-destruction. Sometimes I wonder why Doctor S hasn't tried to do this to C. Wouldn't C do just as well for his purposes? We all have the same face, slender limbs, ponytailed dark hair, pale skin--the same body hesitating just on the verge of adolescence. Despite that, I can tell from C's eyes that he's never been touched, not like this. Maybe the doctor is afraid that the woman researcher who works with C would find out. Or maybe it's fear of A. However mad he is, A won't tolerate C being badly hurt, and the scientists are afraid of A, no matter how carefully they try to hide it. But either way, I'm glad C has escaped this, at least. He doesn't deserve it. I hope he never has to feel the second needle and what comes after. Like the injection, it's over quickly, the white coat once again buttoned up and straightened. I can't move; my limbs are heavy under the weight of the drug. I hear the click of the door opening, and then, for a long, blissful while, there is nothing at all. * * * The examining room appears around me, fuzzy and piecemeal. I tilt my head, and everything slides sickeningly out of focus. The doctor is gone. In his place stands one of his research assistants, a young woman with short hair dyed red, her lips painted nearly the same shade. In one hand she holds a drink box. If I strain, I can begin to read the label: Peach Flavor, 20% Real Juice! She smiles at me reassuringly, and reaches out to help as I flail and struggle to tip upright. "Are you feeling better now?" Her hand at my elbow is tentative, but I flinch from it anyway. "The doctor said you got a little over-anxious, and he gave you something to help you calm down." I nod vaguely, and the motion makes me dizzy. Maybe if I look groggy enough, she'll give up on the chatter. "Really, a few little blood tests aren't such a big deal, are they?" Her voice is chiding now. "With you getting to be such a big boy." Ignoring her, I slide down from the examining table and wince. Well, it does hurt, after all. The doctor cleans up, of course, but it feels like a certain dirty slickness still coats me, and every step jars. The research assistant opens the door and offers her hand, cocking her head perkily to one side. I shuffle past her out into the hallway, taking small steps, but fast ones, forcing my legs to obey. The clatter of her heels on the hard floor echoes down the corridor as she hurries after me, perhaps miffed. All I want now is to go back to the darkness and rest, to wipe the traces from my body, and let sleep do what it can to erase the ones in my mind. We reach the door, my door, our door, the gate to our cell. I tilt toward it crazily, feeling ready to topple. The woman presses her palm to the key panel on the wall, and the mechanism hums. Looking down with mild coldness, she hands me the juice box. "Drink this up and you'll feel better," she instructs. I feel the box being pressed into my hand, and then I slide into shadow. The door closes behind me with a whisper and hush. "B!" C cries. He is on his feet, rushing towards me. He may not know exactly what happened, but he must have felt some of it through the bond between us. Seeing his face, I wish I could wall off my heart better. I've tried, but there are chinks, and things slip through. Across the room, A is still sitting; he seems not to have moved since I left. He is leaning back against the wall now, leisurely, at ease, a card dangling idly from between two fingers. He knows, I realize then, but no feeling comes with the certainty, not even a twinge of nausea. My belly is numb. Heedless of A, focused only on me, C is pulling me over toward a cushion, trying to get me to sit down, to rest, to heal. "I'm all right," I say, or try to--my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. I fumble at the juice box. My fingers are too clumsy, and at last C takes it from me, gently. He peels the straw from the box, pries it from its clear plastic wrapper, and pokes it through the foil seal. When he hands it back to me, there is a strange, aching light in his gray eyes, eyes the same color as mine. "You got peach," he says. Even his teasing is like that, soft as a caress. "They gave me apple." "Don't get to pick," I mumble. The juice runs cool down my throat, feeling almost good for an instant, then vanishes into that unfeeling lump at my center. I take a few more shallow sips and hold out the box to C. He blinks. "You have it. I'm not thirsty anymore." He hesitates, and I push it toward him. At last he takes it, and his lips close where mine did, around the tip of the thin, white straw, to draw a little sweetness from it. Across the room, A's eyes sharpen to slits. Soon, I think. He'll do it soon. Nothing is surprising here. And maybe I'll let him. * * * * *</pre><p><a href="./">Back</a></p><p><a href=http://www.dreamhost.com/donate.cgi?id=216><img border=0 alt="Donate towards our web hosting bill!" src=https://secure.newdream.net/donate1.gif></a></p></body></html>