#if you want someone to care. yer not showin us some holy light yer just annoyin and gonna get blocked

[ifridiot]

Spine

(For @spacepiratericky​ the sister wants a fic, the sister gets a fic. part of my NaNo project. Just call me Mr. NastyBadMan)

What Ricky came to understand about Teensy early on was that, under a deliberate layer of selfish whims and bitterness, they were an altruist. Teensy would bitch and grumble and complain, but they would move heaven and earth to do what they thought was the right thing for someone else. Especially for someone they cared about.

Ricky thought at first that this would be a useful thing to find in a friend. Someone who, if she played her cards right, would put all their passion to bear on anything Ricky might ask of them? Oh yes, that would be worth investing her time into.

Really, what she discovers, is that it was heartbreaking.

Teensy wasn’t frail, and they weren’t stupid or naive by any measure. Ricky never made that mistake. It was, in fact, Teensy’s razor intellegence and their piercing insight that attracted Ricky to them in the first place. And Teensy was sick, sure, they suffered through a kind of persistent agony that Ricky couldn’t imagine tolerating for any length of time, much less the breadth of a lifespan. But that pain put a sort of steel in Teensy that Ricky found almost enviable.

Certainly, Ricky lets herself relax a little, dropping the pretense that her attempts at friendship with this brilliant other was strictly for some kind of long term benefit, some nebulous future favor in waiting. Ricky lets herself see Teensy as one of her few genuine friends; eventually, Teensy is family.

Ricky discovers that under the bitterness and harsh tones, and under the oh-so-desirable altruism, there is a broken hearted young person, hearing the door eternally slam shut on a relationship they had thought would define their life. There is a trembling, frightened child, born to the slums of San Juan and pulled out to be raised in the suburbs of Dallas, who heard stern voices lecturing again and again, “you’re better than your roots. Smarter. Work and earn your place at the table”, but never heard that simple phrase, parent to child; never heard “Baby, we love you, succeed or fail”.

Teensy hides these things, these secret other selves, under acerbic commentary, under copious amounts of hedonistic indulgences. They hide behind make-believe apathy. Behind flat-toned dressings down of anyone who dares act the idiot in their presence.

Most people never saw under the first layer. Ricky knew that, in a way, she was privileged to know Teensy the way she did.

So to see Teensy this way, now, this was heartbreaking.

Teensy threw themself against the rocks again and again. They gave everything they had to any cause they chose to engage with; they refused to give less than their all to anything that mattered. There was a sort of grim fatalism to their deciding to involve themself in any given cause -- because they would see it through to whatever end any cause could have. To satisfaction, was how Teensy said it; “I will see this done to my satisfaction.”

Imperial. Commanding. Sometimes it was easier to believe Ricky was looking at an alternate version of herself.

Ricky had seen Teensy battered, bruised, bloody. Ricky had seen Teensy raging, Teensy wroth, Teensy in shock and in horror. She has seen Teensy in medically induced comas and in stasis tanks and carved open in surgery. And every time, she has felt her heart in her throat, concern so passionate it very nearly overwhelmed her.

She has seen Teensy push themself. Claw their way through anything asked of them. Seen Teensy on the edge of a mental breakdown from the stress they put on themself, frantic to made sure each tiny detail of some great grand scheme came together in the proper time.

The truth is, Ricky has thought about this moment a lot. She had an image in her mind, how this would go down, how she would compose herself. How she would handle it. Ricky is good at handling things.

A phone call, Teensy tired on the other end, “Come now, or don’t. You know, on your schedule. I’m not the boss of you.” It told nothing, but there was an air of finality to it that Ricky didn’t like, and so of course she’d gone. She’d even picked something nice to wear -- Teensy that tired sounded like they needed an outing, somewhere fun, somewhere noisy and crowded and energetic, where they could talk and get catty about the crowds and bitch about the stresses of being over sixty.

Finding Teensy bed bound, thinner than ever -- well, that didn’t fit with anything Ricky had concocted. This frail thing, sallow, eyes eating up their whole face… that beautiful hair, faded and brittle now. But the smile was the same, oh yes. That was all Teensy.

“Hey, bitch.”

Their voice, never melodic to begin with, was dry and soft, the whisper of skin against satin, and Ricky’s heart sank. She didn’t expect to feel so sad, when this moment came around.

“Didn’t pin any hopes on yer showin’ up. But it’s good to see you. Always liked th’ thought a dyin’ with someone ready t’ cry fer vengeance.”

“And who will I be killing in your name, dear?”

Her own voice is soft, like this is a private place, a holy place, solemn and secret. Not the bedroom where they’d collapsed together so many times, high or drunk out of their minds, laughing their asses off, triumphant and exultant in their own survival, the glory of being alive and getting away with some stupid thing or another.

“Well, you could start with Stan,” Teensy rasped, but the grin said it was just a joke, one more dig at their ex-husband.  

Ricky makes herself laugh, because it’s what she would have done if this were normal. If Morticia wasn’t sitting in the corner chair with red-rimmed eyes; if the quilt weren’t carefully tucked around Teensy to help insulate a failing body.

The sound dies quickly and Ricky doesn’t know how to fill the ensuing silence. She grasps for something light, something pithy, something uneffected.

“What happened,” she asks instead, and Teensy just smiles, slipping a hand out from under the quilt and holding it, palm up, toward Ricky. It could barely be raised over the surface of the bed, and shook with the effort of just that. Slipping to sit on the edge of the bed, Ricky laced their fingers together.

“It’s the punchline, that’s all.”

The punchline. Teensy had once talked about their life in the terms of a joke where the timing was always just off. Ricky had asked, dryly at the time, finding the line of the conversation a little bleak for her tastes, what the punchline was. “You don’t get one,” Teensy had said, and they’d laughed and laughed.

Squeezing that bony hand in her own, Ricky closed her eyes. Composure was important. Dignity. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Oh, just sit for a while, I ‘magine.” Already Teensy sounded tired. “And when it’s all done, make sure they do it right. I want my vigil. Novenas. Whole nine yards.”

“Of course, darling.”

“And do something fun. Go somewhere nice. Pretty. Come back and tell me about it, sometime.”

Ricky smiles, and she hopes the expression is sincere enough to pass. She never wanted this. She never pictured this. She’s not prepared…

So when Teensy falls asleep, minutes later or hours, Ricky certainly isn’t any position to be sure, she steals away. Hears Morticia try to say something, but the girl won’t shout, won’t speak up lest her grandmother wake, and Ricky is an opportunist. She can leave, and so she does.

The ship is quiet and cold, and Than welcomes her with his usual deadpan -- there’s a comfort in that, in the simplicity of it. She finds herself in her quarters, but the bed holds no comfort, the cool familiarity no relief. Ricky is good at handling things.

She doesn’t know how to handle this.

When she cries, the tears fall silent. She is alone, and it is bitter -- bitter.