Wolf's Rain Fan Fiction ❯ Saved ❯ Chapter Eight: Damn Complications ( Chapter 9 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Saved

Disclaimer: I do not own any of Keiko Nobumoto/Bones characters or ideas. This story is for entertainment purposes only and not for sale or profit.

A/N: This chapter is a bit choppy, but I felt I needed the various scenes to develop more plot for this little fic. Thank you once again for all the support. (Fate)

Chapter Nine: Damn Complications

Could life get any better?

Marie doubted it, she really did.

They had settled into something of a routine. Although Tsume didn't like it, she did have a life outside of the bedroom. Not much of one, and not nearly as enjoyable, of course, but she did need to go to work, and she was attending two classes this semester at the nearby university complex. Somehow, the rent needed to be paid, and she was still working on her master's degree.

Tsume's massive appetite had put a major strain on her budget. Raw meat was expensive, especially in the city and in light of the recent droughts that had wracked the countryside. Thousands of people were flooding the city, their farms dried up and their small communities turned into ghost towns. Rumors of war had the city buzzing, but Marie didn't really pay much attention to it.

The Nobles were always snarling at one another, nipping at the borders and circling each other like a pack of hungry jackals. The aloof elite had little to do with Marie's simple life. Their comings and goings were no concern of hers. Lord Okum had always kept the peace in Freeze City. He was too powerful a Noble for anyone to ever really want to mess with…or so she kept telling herself, just as every other citizen.

Despite her nagging worries over the Lunar Project, which had them all working long hours with complex programs, nothing much had changed in her unexciting life---except that it had gotten infinitely better, with Wolf now in it.

Marie's fingers tapped the small calendar on her desk thoughtfully. Had it really only been three weeks? Marie could not believe how short the time truly was that she had known her Wolf, and yet the calendar didn't lie. She mused over the past three gloriously wondrous weeks in which she had come to realize how much her life was wrapped up in Tsume, how much she had come to depend on his strength and his presence.

Her life before that fateful night---when a golden-eyed wolf had rescued her from a terror-filled nightmare that still gave her the shivers in recollection---now seemed an empty blur of busy days and lonely nights. She now lived in a magical world of wonder and comfort, laughter and exasperation. She felt as if she could dance and whirl and laugh and scream all at the same time, and the sudden realization that the manic emotions whirling around inside of her, making her heart giggle with glee, had an explanation that she hadn't ever thought could be remotely possible.

She was in love.

*Get a hold of yourself, Degre!* Her mind snapped at her, but she wanted to chuckle with the reaction of her more logical side. She couldn't be in love with a man who wasn't even a man...a person who she had only known three short weeks that had seemed to stretch into forever they were so wonderfully full and enlivening in recall.

Shaking her head, her fingers tapped out the sequence of commands that shut down her computer for the day, and her heart seemed to beat faster in anticipation as the thought occurred to her that in just a few minutes she would be free of the lab and greeting her Wolf, who came to walk her home every day from work or school. His eyes would glow with molten gold the moment he saw her, and as she would snuggle against him with a soft smile when he snaked his arm around her shoulders and hauled her closer to his side. He often kissed her, much to the amusement of her colleagues, and would shrug indifferently when she scolded him for it. Not that she really minded all that much...

A distracted smile curving her soft mouth, Marie fumbled with the papers that lay scattered over her desk. She ignored Dr. Davigny's grumbling good-bye and breezed past the other technicians who worked for the grizzled old professor. Pulling her spectacles from off her nose and slipping them into her pocket, Marie all but ran from the building.

Her heart sped up when she caught sight of him. He leaned casually against the wall, his stance speaking of relaxed and stoic patience, but the narrowed glint of golden vigilance beneath half-lowered lids spoke volumes about the tensed readiness that was so much a part of Tsume's gruff character. Marie's eyes softened to a dewy indigo as she devoured her Wolf visually. The muscles on his flat stomach tightened and his head whipped around, his golden eyes caught by hers.

Marie flung herself at him, and laughed when he growled at her for nearly knocking him off balance. Hard thighs flexed and took her slight weight. She stood up on tip-toe and gave him a warm kiss of greeting before nestling herself against the hard strength of him with a dreamy sigh.

"Woman..." Tsume growled at her in exasperation, although his fingers made circling caresses against her lower back and the hot promise in the golden eyes made her insides squirm and her belly do flip-flops. Her heart was trying its best to match her stomach's acrobatics, and she grinned like an idiot at her Wolf.

Logic be damned. He was hers, and she loved him.

"I'm done. Let's go home." Marie whispered to him, and he hauled her next to his side in a perfunctory way as they walked from the decrepit University building and turned their steps toward home…

"Degre!"

Marie's head jerked up in surprise and blue eyes widened as she realized several people were staring at her as if she had grown a third eye or something.

Flushing slightly in embarrassment, Marie cleared her throat. "Er...yes, Doctor?"

Dr. Leed's bushy grey brows drew together in a frown. "Miss Degre, I would like you to play at some semblance of attention when I am speaking. I know my class isn't as important to you as whatever it is you are thinking about, but you are here on my time, not yours, and I would appreciate it if you would consider actually paying attention to the subject we are discussing."

A spatter of snickers greeted the testy professor's sharp set-down, and Marie's color heightened in annoyance, at both herself and the pompous professor who delighted in making the students under him squirm.

*Jerk.*

She dropped her eyes and straightened in her seat, trying to appear both attentive and invisible all at the same time. Dr. Leed grunted and began espousing his lecture in a loud voice, as if volume could make up for the dullness of the subject matter.

*Come on, Degre. Focus.* Marie mentally chided herself, but her brain didn't care about mathematical theorizing. She was distracted by counting the days, and what the lack of a certain monthly visitor portended.

There was no way. No way. But it had been at least forty-one days. Forty-one days in which the agony of realization had slowly uncoiled inside her gut, making her stomach churn uneasily at the thought that there just might be the possibility, faint as it was, that she could be…that she might be…that she could very well be…pregnant.

Shit.

That particular complication wasn’t the only shock she received that day. After Dr. Leed’s course, she had a half-day’s work to do in the computer lab under Dr. Davigny, and that was where she got her second stunner of the day. Marie could only stare at Mish in utter astonishment as the other tech accosted her just as she arrived and was setting her books down on her desk.

“We’re what?”

“We’re off the project. It’s been cached. Cut off. Cancelled. Kaput.” Mishelle Lantry-Dowles replied with ironic emphasis.

“Not me.” Don Evans chose that moment to look smugly superior.

Mishelle gave the lanky, red-headed tech a sour glance. “Well, all of us but Mr. Modest here.”

It was Don’s turn to look sour. “I don’t deserve that, Mish. You know how hard I’ve worked on this thing. I haven’t gotten a decent night’s sleep in over a month---”

“And whose fault is that, hmmm?” Mishelle gave him a sappy-sweet smile that had the other tech scowling, to Marie’s distracted amusement.

“Jealousy doesn’t suit you, Mish.” Don spat, folding his skinny arms over his chest. The dark circles under his glowering brown eyes spoke eloquently of just how many hours he had really put in, the brown-nosing shit.

“Presumption doesn’t suit you either, darling,” Mish retorted. Glaring, Don beat a none-too-gracious retreat back to his desk. With a dark flash of her black eyes, Mish muttered, “Arrogant little ass hole, isn’t he?”

Rolling her eyes, Marie agreed with the willowy technician’s assessment of their fellow student, but quickly steered the topic back to what interested her more. “So we’re off the Lunar Project---”

“All of us but Mr. Ass Hole over there.” Mish sent the red-headed tech another glare.

“Why?” Marie demanded. She had nearly completed the rather complicated, theoretical model of a program that would have saved them many of the long hours that Don had been putting in, scanning those stupid DNA strains code by sequential code.

Mish shrugged. She hadn’t been as involved as some of the other student-techs on the genetics project. “Word came down from the Head that the project was being pulled. Dr. Davigny didn’t say much; just told us that we were to stop where we were, and that the project was now solely Don’s responsibility. We’re to concentrate now on those boring inter-gradient ratios on crop-production for Galwin’s group instead.”

Marie frowned. “I don’t like it. Why yank it, when we were just starting to get somewhere?”

Mish shrugged, eloquent as ever. She was a tall, handsome woman, with a dark beauty that had turned more than a few heads, even with her reputation for a sharp, acidic tongue. If she wasn’t so firmly devoted to her husband, Les Dowles, she could have had her pick of those interested in keeping her company…

Marie frowned, unhappy with this abrupt change of her workload. “This came direct from the Head?”

“Yep.” Mish examined her manicured nails, affecting an air of disinterest that did not fool Marie in the least. The other woman was just as disturbed as Marie over the news, and who and how it had come down the wire. The Head---Dr. Allan, the Director and head of the University Complex---rarely stirred himself to do much of anything, let alone send down a direct order to call it quits on a project the comp-tech department was doing as a favor to an outside research firm.

“I don’t like it,” Marie said, still frowning, flicking through the obsolete paperwork she now held in her hand. All of her hard work and time right down the tubes---it was a bit insulting, though she didn’t know why she was taking it so personally. Abruptly coming to a decision, she added, “I think I need to go talk to Dr. Davigny about this.”

Mish smiled slightly. “Let me know what he says, will ya? This disturbs me, more than I can say, and for more reasons than that it’s just so damn unexpected.”

Marie nodded absently, too busy wondering just what the heck this meant on top of everything else going suddenly wrong in her once easy, uncomplicatedly simple world...

“Sir?”

 220;Come in, Miss Degre,” Dr. Davigny invited, clearing off the only other chair available in his small, cluttered office. Looking around with a somewhat exasperated air, he finally stashed the messy pile of papers he had pulled off the chair’s seat upon the overflowing piles covering the length of his dented, metal desk.

Marie gingerly perched herself on the chair’s edge, expecting it to rock back on its broken wheel at any moment. The chair, like much of the university’s sagging buildings and aging equipment, was in desperate need of repair, but there was never quite enough money to go around, let alone to see getting it fixed.

“Doctor, I wanted to ask you about the sudden cancellation of the Lunar Project.” Marie got straight to the point, uncomfortable with dancing around the subject when the chair beneath her might give way at any second.

The professor regarded her for a long moment behind his thick, bottle-bottomed glasses before saying slowly, “You mean, the Lunar Flower Project?”

*Lunar Flower?* Marie blinked. Was that the particular plant the genetics team was trying to breed? It couldn’t be---the idea was just too ludicrous. Moon-flowers were the stuff of legends and fairytales, not practical science. The notion that lunar flowers could be real, and could somehow be genetically bred from scraps of DNA was just---ridiculous. Damn crazy and completely absurd.

Her expression must have given her surprise away, for Dr. Davigny actually fidgeted in his seat, and would not meet her eyes. “I know, Miss Degre, it must seem a bit…startling…to realize the true purpose of the project, but I assure you that the notion is not as far-fetched as you might believe...”

Marie stared at his hands, oddly fascinated that the usually unflappable professor was actually tapping his blunt fingers against the worn cover of an old book in nervous agitation. Unobtrusively, she tried to read the title engraved on the front as the professor picked it up, flipping it open to caress the musty pages with a reverent touch, as if seeking reassurance from the faded print.

*‘The Book of the Moon’? What the heck does that mean?*

It hardly looked like a gardener’s how-to on growing flowers. It rather resembled one of those old books on fairytales she had been ready to dismiss just a minute ago. Dr. Davigny looked downright strange, sitting there holding it open like it held all the wisdom of the Ancients within its worn pages.

Catching sight of her dubious expression, the professor abruptly snapped the book shut. Opening a drawer, he slid the book inside and closed it firmly. Marie could almost hear the faint, metallic click of the drawer’s lock engaging as Dr. Davigny clasped his thick hands on the desk between them and looked at her gravely. “What, exactly, can I help you with, Miss Degre?”

“Ah…sir, I was wondering why the…the project…was suddenly cancelled…” Marie felt rather stupid under that steady regard.

“The project has not been cancelled, Miss Degre, merely the personnel involved have been re-evaluated, and it has now been placed in other, more capable, hands.” Dr. Davigny replied, his voice cold.

“Don, sir?” Marie blurted that out before she thought.

The professor didn’t like her questioning of his authority. “Do you have a problem, Miss Degre, with my decision?”

“No, sir.” Marie hastily replied, trying to cover her faux pas. “I just…it’s just that I was nearly finished with that projective program I set up for the faulty DNA sequences, sir, and---”

“For which I and the research team are deeply grateful, Miss Degre. I was able to implement your program with Mr. Evans’ evaluations, and it has greatly reduced the effort needed to finish up this stage of the Project. Dr. Allan desired that I extend personal thanks on his behalf to you for your hard work and effort.”

It was clearly a dismissal, if ever she heard one, and if she hadn’t gotten the hint, than Dr. Davigny’s abrupt rising from behind his desk would have been the signal that this interview was now over. Feeling stupid, Marie stood up as well. She couldn‘t help but frown as she said unhappily, “Er, thank you, sir.”

“Miss Degre?”

Marie paused at the door, glancing back at the professor who she thought she had known so well and was just now realizing with quite a bit of distinct discomfort was hardly the case. “Yes, sir?”

“Miss Degre, you are a bright and clever student. A brilliant programmer, and a competent technician. I enjoy having you in my lab, and believe that you have a good career ahead of you some day. I also know your weaknesses, and that you are sometimes unwilling to listen to authority. I suggest, however, that you take my advice, and forget that the Lunar Project ever existed. You tread dangerous waters, Miss Degre, with your questioning of the intent of this project, and there are those above me who are now watching you closely, to see what you might do. I might have made a mistake in allowing you to know as much as I have, and I beg your pardon for that, but please, take my advise, and forget we ever discussed the subject. Understand?”

“Y-Yes, sir.” Marie beat a hasty retreat, grateful to hear the door clicking shut behind her. Leaning against it, she took a deep, steadying breath to try and calm her nerves before going back into the lab, where a pile of unfinished work still awaited her. She felt queasy, and her heart beat in a fast tempo she did not like.

Just how in the hell had her life become so damn complicated all of a sudden, and why the hell did it all have to happen in one damn day? She suddenly felt like crying, and that was such an unnatural reaction for her that she just knew that she had to be pregnant. Didn’t pregnant women cry all the time? Didn’t they over-react to dumb situations, blowing them all out of proportion? Was that why her hands were shaking? Was that why she suddenly had a fierce desire to run away, far away, and never come back?

Like that would solve anything.

Tightening her shaking hands into fists, Marie took a deep breath and set her shoulders. She was made of sterner stuff than that. So Dr. Davigny had a flare for the dramatic. So he had some strange fascination with stupid fairytales and moonbeam pipe dreams of exotic flowers and dusty old books. So Don was such a kiss-ass that he was willing to humor the old prof, and whatever other fools were involved in that stupid project. She had better things to worry about than some stupid venture into the ridiculous. She had to find a way to break the news to Tsume that she might be carrying his child---or was it his puppy? She felt a sudden, hysterical urge to giggle, and all she really wanted to do was cry.

Damn Dr. Davigny for trying to scare her. Damn Dr. Leed for his snide remarks, and damn Don Kiss-Ass Evans for his smug superiority. He was stealing her work, her program, her credit. Damn her for even caring, and damn her for her own stupidity---in questioning the professor’s decision, in truly being frightened by his dire warning, in even taking it seriously, when it was all so stupid, really, not using protection with Tsume, damn that was stupid, damn stupid.

Damn. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.

Biting her lip and fighting back tears, Marie came to an abrupt decision, and fled. She could make up some lame excuse later, right now she needed some fresh air and some time to think, without anybody else intruding. Her brain was going in circles, muddling everything together so that she wasn’t even thinking straight right now.

Life, which had seemed so beautiful and blossoming with such wonderful potential before, seemed to just suck right about now.

Damn it.

It was chilly for early fall. Last winter had been a hard one, with unplowed snow piling up to twelve feet outside the city walls. Her mother would often reminisce over her own childhood, when a ‘blizzard’ had been one that left only six inches on the streets, providing an excuse to play rather than causing any true hazard to people. Weather patterns had drastically changed since then, though, and the met lab predicted that this winter would be even harder than last year’s. Marie could more than believe it, feeling the icy bite in the wind that tugged her curling blond hair this way. Burying her hands in the deep pockets of her lab coat, she hugged the thin fabric around her as she shivered.

She wasn’t ready yet to go back to the lab, however, and her mind was still in such an unhappy turmoil of emotion that she kept on walking, wandering the college complex with no particular purpose or destination in mind. It felt good to walk, to feel the bite in the wind, and the light taps of her heels on the cracked pavement as she let all of her troubling questions fade into numb oblivion.

Wandering aimlessly, and not watching where she was going, she was surprised when she was abruptly stopped half-way across the sprawling campus by a security guard. Blinking up at him as he demanded her ID badge---which she automatically retrieved from her pocket---she realized with some surprise that this guy was hardly a retired rent-a-cop, but one of the specially-trained men who made up Lord Okum’s personal guard. They were sometimes used as a policing force in the city, but she had never seen one on campus before.

“Is something wrong?” She asked, worried that there was.

“No, ma’am.” The helmeted guard was courteous enough. “Just routine.”

He looked young; perhaps this was only some type of training exercise. He studied her ID with particular care, but smiled briefly as he handed it back to her, thanking her politely with a casual warning for her to stay away from any restricted areas.

“Restricted areas?” Marie couldn’t help but stare at him in astonishment. Since when had any part of the college been proscribed?

He humored her, even smiling slightly, as if she should know better. “Nothing to fret yourself over, ma’am. The Council has just decreed that certain vulnerable parts of the city should have restricted access because of the growing threat of home-grown terrorism. Tighter security measures prevent any internal dissidents from causing any real trouble.”

“What?” Marie felt like an idiot, but the idea was just so ludicrous. Home-grown terrorism? Internal dissidents? Since when had any of the fat, happy, little sheep of Freeze City ever questioned, let alone threatened, the authority of Noble Lord Okum and his Council? The denizens of the city were more than content with their Lord. Agreed, he wasn’t as philanthropic as his father, and he had allowed much of the public funds---from street maintenance to educational programs---to go short in favor of building up the military, but most people didn’t think it was all that much to worry about. There was a few grumbles, of course, but there was always grumbling among the less forgiving. For the most part, people were willing to believe that Lord Okum had good cause to pad up the military, the rumors of possible war with other, greedier Nobles was a threat they could appreciate.

He actually laid a gloved hand on her shoulder, patting the holstered weapon at his side with fond assurance. “Nothing for you to worry yourself over, Blue Eyes. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in meeting up with me after I get off patrol? I’m off-duty after six…”

“What?” Marie couldn’t believe the guy, fishing for a date in the middle of the sidewalk. “Ah…thank you, no. I…ah…have someone.”

Thank the Fates Tsume wasn’t here to see this little exchange. He’d have gone after the guard without a qualm, and might have been hurt. That blaster holstered at the guard’s side might be made mostly of plastic, but it was no toy.

“Oh? Shame, that. Would’ve been fun.” There was real regret in his voice, and Marie bit her lip as she hurried away, perfectly conscious that the guard stood watching her as she fled for the nearest building, whose entrance was thankfully hidden behind some weedy trees.

Thankfully, because to her shock, she found the doors to the Arts Building locked tight, a bar placed across the double-bolted doors with the Lord Okum’s insignia positioned clearly above a simple sign saying, “No Admittance.”

“Just what the hell is going on?” She stood there, gawking, as another guard in helmet and dull-grey uniform rounded the corner, blaster at his hip, and mouth a grim line.

“Excuse me, miss. This building is off limits.”

Frustrated, Marie demanded, “Since when?”

“Permit?” He replied with cool detachment, and Marie fished her ID badge back out of her pocket with a sigh.

Glancing over her shoulder, Marie all but ran toward the far edge of the college complex. If she didn’t hurry, then Wolf would come sauntering up to meet her, and she didn’t want him to cross snarls with any of the ubiquitous guards now patrolling the campus. For one thing, he didn’t have any identification that she knew of, for another, he wasn’t one to take too well to being stopped and questioned.

With dawning unease, Marie noted there were quite a few buildings that bore the Lord Okum’s personal insignia above barred doorways, most of them dealing with the more ‘unnecessary’ collegiate programs. Like the Arts Building, the Archaeology and the Political Sciences buildings both stood empty and deserted, their windows dark holes in the chipped brick edifices. When the hell had all this happened? Had she been so wrapped up in her own little world that she didn’t take note of what was going on around her? True, there had been few enough students interested in taking a degree in any of those programs---which had become rather superfluous when the growing need was for more technologically-oriented majors---but the fact that the buildings were now closed, the programs shut down was…frightening.

*Dissidence would be a convenient excuse to shut the Political Sciences down. Noble Lord Okum could just say the program was fermenting a ‘rebellious element.’* Marie’s eyes flashed at the thought, though she was careful to keep her head down, so no one could see it and take exception to it. Who knew what they might use as an excuse to take in another ‘internal dissident.’

*Oh, Fates, has it already come to that in Freeze City?*

She felt very much afraid that it had.

*What a horrifying time to even think about bring a child into this world. Shit.*

Caught up in her own dark unhappiness, Marie actually bumped right into him. “Oof!”

Strong hands grabbed her shoulders as she tried to jump back, blue eyes wide with fright as she stared up at him---only to slump against the broad, leather-clad figure in relief.

“Tsume! You scared me!” She scolded breathlessly, her arms wrapping around his waist as she lay a tired head on his shoulder.

He tensed at her embrace, his eyes narrowing on the untidy crop of windblown curls as she snuggled into his solid strength like he was an anchor in a sudden storm. “What is it? What’s scared you?”

Hearing the warning growl in his hard voice, Marie tensed up as well, casting a wary glance around them before she relaxed again. The quiet, shadow-crept street was deserted. They could have been the only two people in the world right now---though a distant siren squealed a poignant protest at her idle fancy. Stiffening, she tugged at her Wolf, eager to get home and off of the streets where she felt so vulnerable.

He wouldn’t move, but stood his ground and looked around him like he would have her nameless fears creep out from the shadows by stubborn will alone.

“It’s nothing, truly.” She lied to him. “I’m just…glad to see you.”

His yellow eyes stared into hers, until she had to drop her gaze from the intensity of his. Plucking at one of the metal snaps on his black leather jacket, she whispered, “Please…I just want to go home.”

He didn’t like it, and growled aloud his irritation, but finally complied with the silent plea in her voice, and hauled her close to his side as they turned toward her apartment. Marie huddled into his warmth, feeling silly but needing him and his comfort right now, his presence solid and familiar in a world gone suddenly shadowed by frightening revelations…

Eyes narrowed, Tsume glared into the twilit silence around them above her blond head, his eyes searching the darkness for the unnamed enemy that now seemed to stalk her uneasy mind.

She had clung to him, seeking comfort and strength in his arms as soon as the door had slipped shut behind them. Her loving was fierce and fervent, a hungry need to push back the inner turmoil of the day and silence both the unanswerable questions and the darkness of her own doubts, if for just a little while longer…

Afterwards, she lay sated, content to lie nestled against him and his strength, her eyes dreamy and soft.

“I love you...” She whispered to the darkness, her voice trailing off into quiet slumber.

His eyes glowed in the darkness, a light of burning intensity. He said nothing, but his arm came up to hold her tightly against him as the night encroached and he kept watch over her.