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phormthevixdjinn"Thick as soup..."
Kayte let out a sigh from where she sat on the concrete curb. She was thoroughly exhausted. Vect had stepped out early the previous evening, and afterward Kayte had to be the one running the club for the remainder of the night. And well into the morning. And then clean up everything afterward, for that matter. She had closed the bar long ago, and it had been about two hours since she had finished scrubbing the last of the floors. Yet, despite her fatigue she couldn't bring herself to sleep.
Vect hadn't come home.
The massive wolf reached her right arm out, and then up. She grabbed her arm by the elbow with her left hand, pulling inward as she leaned, letting out a few grunts as she did. Kayte stretched for a good few minutes before switching sides and repeating. If anyone had been passing by at the time, they might've been startled by her sheer size - over seven feet tall when fully upright. Even sitting on the curb would render her at eye level for most folk of average size. What was more, beyond her startling height, her incredible strength was usually on full display. To call her muscular would be accurate, though she preferred to use the word 'shredded' - mostly because it was fun. Anyway, she was a wolf of few words, and one who preferred to let her appearance do the talking before her mouth really had to. The salt-and-pepper fur along her back, head, and arms didn't do much to obscure her musculature. Nor did the cream colored fur that swept down under her chin and along her torso. That fur did make her an excellent cuddlebeast when she wanted to be one, though.
Typically she would barely hide her physique behind a tank top and a pair of well-worn shorts. But this morning, she was huddled into a navy blue windbreaker and a set of matching jogging pants - mostly because it was miserably damp outside. Not to mention twice as cold. The fog had rolled in the previous night and it seemed to have no intention of vacating the streets any time soon. It was early yet, Kayte assured herself. Surely it'd all burn off later. Regardless, in the here and now, and after two hours in the thick of it, even the massive wolf was feeling chilled to the bone. Under normal circumstances she'd be upstairs, in her room, underneath a pile of blankets. Also, she'd be snuggled up to one of the sweetest little rabbits she'd ever met.
But these weren't normal circumstances.
Kayte stuffed her gigantic paws under the armpits of her jacket, hunching her gigantic frame over her knees as she shivered on the curb. Kayte knew that Vect was no stranger to spontaneous errands. But this was the first time she had disappeared the entire night without so much as a phone call. And without her phone, to boot.
Kayte was worried. Deeply worried.
Everyone from their... group... knew how important it was to keep in pretty constant contact. It was one of the primary rules to live by. You always ensured you traveled together. You always told others where you were going and how to find you. Vect slipping out the way she did the previous night was a nasty enough surprise on its own - After all, the mink clearly knew that the vacuum of her absence would cause more than enough chaos to ensure Kayte couldn't follow. But the fact that she hadn't even sent word back home yet was making Kayte uneasy. And the fact she had left her phone under the bar indicated she was worried about being tracked...
Kayte had felt this before: This lingering dread, this roiling anxiety that bubbled up from the unknown. It usually ended wi-
[Schuuuuf]
The scraping of shoes against concrete weakly dragged its way out of the fog. The wolf sat upright, ears perked high as she halted her breathing for a moment and listened hard.
[Schuuuuf]
In an instant, Kayte was on her feet and looking down the street. She could see the figure slowly emerging from monotonous grey mist. Her cream colored fur and bloodied jacket slowly came into focus as the wolf ran to meet her.
Vect limped forward one step at a time, pausing to lean against the wall of the nearby laundromat as she struggled. She was gripping her left side with her right arm, seemingly wracked with pain. The mink's left eye was swollen shut, bloodied and bruised. A streaked mess of matted, stained, dark brown fur painted down her chin, along her neck, and across her shirt beneath - Long since having dried, no longer so brilliantly crimson. She was clearly having a hard time walking.
Kayte bounded toward her.
"Hey," Vect tried to pretend she wasn't gasping from pain as Kayte bolted toward her. "Sorry. Missed the last train. Had to... had to walk it."
Kayte immediately bent down and scooped the mink up into her arms before Vect could collapse. An expression of pained concern washed over the wolf's face as she looked Vect over from head to foot. Vect was diminutive compared to Kayte - only slightly over five and a half feet tall - so for the wolf, hoisting up the mink was swift and easy.
"Christ, Vect," There were already tears in Kayte's eyes, "You should've let me come with you."
"Fuckin'... why, you wanted a beating too?" Vect coughed suddenly. A violent, full body spasm that faded into a thin laugh. "Forget it - there are better ways to get one. Ways with safewords, for starters."
Kayte shook her head slowly, voice quivering slightly as she tried to smile and found herself failing, "Well. I guess you can't be too banged up if you're joking about it. But I think you need a doctor on this one."
"Fuck that. No. Absolutely not. You know I heal up quick." Vect grunted her words at first, disarmingly. But then, her voice softened quickly. A thin, fragile whisper, "Just... get me to bed. And something to drink."
Kayte sighed deeply. She knew that Vect wouldn't actually go to the doctor even if she were dragged there. She also knew it'd be far too likely they'd get a visit from the cops if she tried. She didn't like it one bit, but Vect was right on this one.
"Okay then," the wolf softly muttered, trying to hide the slight sniffle in her voice. She carefully lifted Vect further upward, to her lips, where she planted a gentle kiss on the mink's forehead before fully enveloping her in a strong, warm embrace. "Just promise never to scare me like this again."
It took a few minutes to climb the stairs and get Vect to the upper floors of the building. While the ground floor of Transgressions boasted the bar and lively dance floor, the two floors above were repurposed living quarters, as well as a reasonably sized kitchen. Vect's office, the one that overlooked the club below through mirrored glass, doubled as her room.
Space was tight, after all. It wouldn't be fair for her to have a bedroom in addition.
The rush of adrenaline had long since left her body, and while the throbbing pain was starting to make itself unpleasantly welcome in her head and chest, Vect was nevertheless finding herself starting to calm at last. There was something uniquely awful, some combination of hopeless and mortifying, about being simultaneously severely injured and being completely alone while in uncomfortable, unfamiliar surroundings. She was at least happy to be home. The warm embrace of Kayte and the soft cushions of her familiar sofa were minor comforts, but they were comforts nevertheless.
Vect slowly reflected that they were all she really had.
"So," Kayte's soft rumble broke the silence as she lifted up Vect's shirt slowly to examine her wounds. Tender, giant fingertips probed her ribcage with measured care as she looked for broken bones. "What, exactly, was so important last night that you had to do it alone?"
Vect sucked in a sharp breath as Kayte's touch sent shocks of agony into her chest - and then choked momentarily as the sudden act of inhaling made it worse. She regained her composure eventually.
"Was checking on Alexis," Vect muttered through muted lips. "Was afraid the gal would be too spooked if I showed up with people in tow. Wanted her to feel at ease. But," the mink took a slow, deep breath to test the waters. A shock of pain. A shuddering exhale. "Turns out I wasn't the first to visit her."
Kayte did her best to localize the wounds on Vect's torso, noting with dismay that there were likely (at minimum) a few fractures. She turned to sort through the contents of the first-aid kit that she had splayed out across the coffee table, before instead grabbing the nearby ice bucket and pouring the contents into a ziplock bag. She knelt down carefully, navigating the size difference as best she could.
"Meaning...?" Kayte glanced upward at Vect as she bent down to apply the ice pack to the mink's bared torso. She did so with surprisingly meticulous care.
Vect grimaced slightly as the shock of cold and pain hit her at once. She sucked in a sharp breath over bared teeth.
Eventually, she let out another shuddering exhale. "Meaning our dear friend Andy got to her first." She paused heavily, breathing loud enough to fill the silence, "She was terrified from the moment I saw her. She told me to leave and never come back. Said she couldn't be Alexis anymore - But she sure refused to say she didn't want to be Alexis anymore. It was pretty clear Andy had been feeding her lies. Threatening her. Making her think his violence was her fault. You know, the usual bullshit."
Vect let out a labored sigh, "And then... Well, I guess he decided to stick around to jump me."
Kayte stopped immediately, freezing in place. The wolf tensed up, looking Vect directly in the eye.
"Remmington did this to you?" Her voice was hushed, muted.
Vect nodded slowly and silently. An immediate chill bolted up Kayte's spine in response.
For as long as the wolf could remember, Remmington had been a consistent and ever-present threat to anyone who called Transgressions home. Plus, from what she understood, he'd been hunting Vect for far longer than even that. His legacy of bloodshed and violence were well known by all. Kayte in particular was one of the few to have observed Andrew in action, and one of fewer still who had lived to tell the tale. Brutality was one word for it. Otherworldly was another. Kayte could remember Remmington moving with ungodly speed, striking out with malice that scratched at the edges of possibility. She remembered him shrugging off a blow to the head that would've crushed anyone else... Though, in honesty, the details were difficult for her to recall - Partly because it was so uncomfortable to remember, partly because she still wasn't sure exactly what the fuck had happened.
"I got some good shots in before he worked me over, at least," Vect's cocky boasting rang hollow from behind her swollen eye and battered body. "Cracked him right in the head, then unloaded about half a magazine in his jaw." Vect's words slipped off as her voice lost conviction. Even she wasn't buying her own bravado, "Not that it did much..."
"You're lucky to be breathing, babe." Kayte's muted tone belied the fear beneath her words.
Vect shrugged limply, resigned "Naw. I mean. He wanted me to live through it, right? Pretty obvious he wasn't looking to off me or he would've done it then and there. Guessin' he just... just wanted to hurt someone. Maybe just wanted to hurt me. Bad."
Kayte ensured that Vect's wounds were bandaged with care and delicate attention, before sitting on the coffee table directly opposite the mink. She folded her oversized hands in her lap as she leaned forward to kiss Vect's forehead. "You're home now, okay? Just get some good rest, and I'll be here for you. No exceptions, either. You need to heal. You're not getting off that sofa for a while."
Vect looked up at Kayte with uncharacteristic desperation, "Kayte... I don't... I'm thinking th..."
"I just..." Vect closed her good eye slowly as she sank into the sofa. Her breathing became notably more pronounced as she lingered in contemplation for a wide, heavy moment.
"How can I keep doing this, Kayte?"
Kayte paused momentarily, eyes seeming to flicker as she herself was lost in thought. "Keep doing what?" Kayte said softly, though it was obvious she knew exactly what Vect meant.
"This!!!" Vect became very animated, arms sweeping across the entire room, motioning toward the club below, and the to the rooms above. Her voice peaked in frustration - before she winced in pain and crumpled back into the couch once more. Her voice slowed, but was no less full, "All of this! Everything..."
The mink settled back down into the over-plush sofa cushion, "How long have we been at this? How long have we been struggling, convinced it was worth something?"
"How long have we been giving every single scrap of what we have to trying to make this work? How much have we poured into everything we do? How much of every fucking day of our lives have we devoted to this fight?" Vect let out a slow, exasperated breath that seemed to clog the air with a kind of hopeless fatigue.
She wasn't shouting. She wasn't flailing her arms or stomping her feet. She wasn't gnashing her teeth in the way that she always did, puffing up her chest and getting angry on display because someone threatened someone she loved - as if she felt she needed to make a show of it.
Vect's tone was different. A thick, viscous ooze of what felt like inevitable suffocation poured from her mouth, hushed and quiet despite her exasperation. Her muzzle turned down as her ears drooped slowly.
"It's a goddamn fight. It's always a fight. A struggle. Clawing our way to anything resembling progress. Always. A L W A Y S. There's never time for a rest, or for any kind of reprieve. Never a moment to stop. To breathe."
Vect's voice melted into a dim whisper, "Never time to heal."
The mink shook her head slowly, mouth partway open as her eyes began to shimmer with building tears on one side, and swollen, weeping crimson on the other.
"Even when we're happy, we're still looking over our shoulders. Even when we're sleeping, we're still on guard. Because we have to be that way. Because there's no other options. We struggle. We fight. We fucking fight. We fight every day of our lives, we fight with everything we have. Everything. Do you understand me? EVERYTHING!"
Vect's voice was quivering on the edge of cracking now, but not out of anger. "We put one hundred god damned percent of our resources, our attention, our very fuckin' souls into fighting for what we believe in. To keep people safe. To give them a place to be. To give them a community where they can be themselves. Every drop of cash we earn, goes into making this place what it is. Every single miserable city council meeting, or protest, or petition, or rescue mission, or scared new girl saved... Trying to find places for someone to live. Trying to get food to those that don't have it. Trying to just have a moment, a single fucking evening, where it doesn't feel like we're on the edge of disaster... It doesn't matter what it is, we put everything into it."
"And..." Vect turned to look Kayte directly in the eye, her cheeks damp with streaming tears and blood even as her jaw hung partway open in struggle. "And it's almost never enough."
The mink let out an uncharacteristic sniffle as her gaze dropped low. She sank deeper into the sofa, "When they come to fuck us up, we push back. With everything. We fight them on the ballot, with everything. We fight them in city hall, with everything. We fight them in the goddamned street, with everything. When the motherfuckers from the Alliance roll up on one of our girls, we never hesitate to put those assholes in the goddamned ground, because we know we have no other options. If we don't, we're dirt. And I'd sooner turn those fucks to mulch than let them perpetuate that suffering they relish."
Vect's eye slipped to the side, even as her voice grew to a thick, gravely whisper. It was a forced and choked tone, as if she were afraid of her own words. "We're doing all we can with everything we have, and we're doing it constantly."
"..."
"And what does it get us?"
Mournfully, Vect reached out to seize Kayte's gigantic paw with her own. Her fingertips gripped the wolf as if for dear life as she fought off sobbing, "What does fighting with all of our resources get us? Fighting with all our heart? Fighting with every tiny scrap of our money, our time, our people - our bodies AND souls?"
"..."
Vect's grip unfurled gradually as she slumped back into the sofa, as if there were no more strength in her at all as resignation flooded back into her limbs. An undercurrent of defeat carried her words forward on a sea of uncomfortable realization. "If we're lucky, things don't get worse. That's it. That's all. That's all we can ever hope to do: That if we succeed beyond measure, we stem the bleeding for a little while longer. We don't heal. We don't secure. We just... delay the inevitable."
"And if we're off the mark?" Vect was struggling to stay coherent now, constant streams streaking across her face, "If we give up any ground? Even a little bit? Someone's homeless. Someone's hurt."
"Someone's dead." She spat the word, heavy and dense.
"We can't make progress? We can't push back?" Vect's tone was potent with genuine disbelief. She shook her head slowly, the words unreal to her despite speaking them herself. "The best we can manage with everything we've got is the motherfucking status quo? After giving everything? After doing everything?? It's not fucking fair. It's not fucking right, Kayte! We have to make this our lives - We have to do this every day, and much more, just to get to this point! Just to hold back the flood of shit we're in! We have to be on high alert constantly. We have to sacrifice and endure and push harder than ever, just so it all doesn't implode further. We aren't making things BETTER, Kayte, even for all our righteous anger and fucking heroic efforts, we're not even getting a single fucking foot forward. We're putting every iota of ourselves out there just to hold on by our fingernails, and if we're wildly lucky, we get to hold on just for today. Because you know what happens tomorrow?"
The mink paused for a long, long moment.
She stared into the distance, through the wall, and into the future.
"Tomorrow, it all happens again."
"..."
"And meanwhile, the assholes who'd perpetrate this shit on us are barely lifting a finger. They spend some meaningless sliver of their time and attention, some insignificant portion of their wealth, and that's all it takes to hit us square like a fucking bomb. Or even a literal one."
Vect sniffled again, before leaning forward on the sofa. She put her face into her hands, before running her grasp upward and pulling her fingertips through her hair. "Do you think the Alliance invests all their money, all their manpower, all their resources into screwing us? Do you think Andrew fucking worked me over tonight because he was leveraging some goddamned tactical advantage? Some narrow window of chance that if he didn't take, he'd lose everything?" She wasn't shouting now, but her voice was enough to fill the room with rising frustration. "Do you think he poured everything he had into finding the right moment to batter me half to death? Do you think it mattered one way or another to him?! NO! It didn't matter one BIT! It didn't have to happen, and even if it went wrong, it didn't matter to him."
"The motherfucker was kicking me around for laughs."
"Because to ghouls like him, that's what's funny. That's what's hilarious. That's what's entertainment. That's what they get off on - Putting their boot on our neck and pressing down HARD. It costs them nothing, and it costs us everything."
"This conflict isn't survival for them!! You understand me?! For those assholes, it's not a way of life, or an essential necessity!! It's a tiny diversion, a disposable bit of fun. And for us it's our entire life! To them it's nothing more than the after dinner mint to their fucking meal, and even if you threw the whole seven courses in the trash they'd have fourteen more ready to go at any time!! You understand?!? Do you understand that at any moment, even if they lost, even if they slipped, they'd barely incur a cost?! That we're THAT far beneath them, that shit is THAT unlevel?! We're disposable entertainment for their sick, cruel amusement."
Vect's agitation was cut short as she let out another fit of violent coughing, clutching her torso as she let out pained cries of agony. Gradually she calmed down, and as she did her words sank back into thick, languid resignation, "They barely spend anything, and it fucking shatters our world. Meanwhile we spend everything, and we can't hold it together."
"..."
"And... And that's to say nothing about how the terror the perpetrate on us is somehow 'just' and 'moral'. How moment we do anything in our own defense, suddenly we're the monsters."
The tension left her body as she collapsed in a pile back against the couch.
"How can I keep going, Kayte?"
"How can I keep going, knowing it'll never get better? Knowing that even if we win the day, if we manage to keep people safe for now, they'll just roll over us again tomorrow? How can I keep going, knowing that the only reward for this goddamned mess is more pain and suffering?"
"What am I supposed to do?"
Kayte's vision had long since blurred with tears. Her soft sniffling had been easy to ignore amid Vect's pointed words, but it had nevertheless been there in the background. The wolf hung her head heavily.
Then, very slowly, she reached her gigantic paws forward, and encircled Vect once more. She lifted the battered and bruised mink just enough to slip onto the sofa beneath her, and gently set Vect down upon her lap. Vect felt the warm, soft presence of gentle strength, of delicate fur as Kayte encircled her in a tender embrace. She could feel the soft beating of Kayte's heart against her cheek as she rested her head against the wolf's chest. She could feel the tender touch of Kayte's lips delicate against her forehead, the simple soft contact filling her weary body with a flush of calm, and comfort.
"You do it with me," Kayte assured Vect serenely.
"You do it with all of us. Together."
Kayte let out a sigh from where she sat on the concrete curb. She was thoroughly exhausted. Vect had stepped out early the previous evening, and afterward Kayte had to be the one running the club for the remainder of the night. And well into the morning. And then clean up everything afterward, for that matter. She had closed the bar long ago, and it had been about two hours since she had finished scrubbing the last of the floors. Yet, despite her fatigue she couldn't bring herself to sleep.
Vect hadn't come home.
The massive wolf reached her right arm out, and then up. She grabbed her arm by the elbow with her left hand, pulling inward as she leaned, letting out a few grunts as she did. Kayte stretched for a good few minutes before switching sides and repeating. If anyone had been passing by at the time, they might've been startled by her sheer size - over seven feet tall when fully upright. Even sitting on the curb would render her at eye level for most folk of average size. What was more, beyond her startling height, her incredible strength was usually on full display. To call her muscular would be accurate, though she preferred to use the word 'shredded' - mostly because it was fun. Anyway, she was a wolf of few words, and one who preferred to let her appearance do the talking before her mouth really had to. The salt-and-pepper fur along her back, head, and arms didn't do much to obscure her musculature. Nor did the cream colored fur that swept down under her chin and along her torso. That fur did make her an excellent cuddlebeast when she wanted to be one, though.
Typically she would barely hide her physique behind a tank top and a pair of well-worn shorts. But this morning, she was huddled into a navy blue windbreaker and a set of matching jogging pants - mostly because it was miserably damp outside. Not to mention twice as cold. The fog had rolled in the previous night and it seemed to have no intention of vacating the streets any time soon. It was early yet, Kayte assured herself. Surely it'd all burn off later. Regardless, in the here and now, and after two hours in the thick of it, even the massive wolf was feeling chilled to the bone. Under normal circumstances she'd be upstairs, in her room, underneath a pile of blankets. Also, she'd be snuggled up to one of the sweetest little rabbits she'd ever met.
But these weren't normal circumstances.
Kayte stuffed her gigantic paws under the armpits of her jacket, hunching her gigantic frame over her knees as she shivered on the curb. Kayte knew that Vect was no stranger to spontaneous errands. But this was the first time she had disappeared the entire night without so much as a phone call. And without her phone, to boot.
Kayte was worried. Deeply worried.
Everyone from their... group... knew how important it was to keep in pretty constant contact. It was one of the primary rules to live by. You always ensured you traveled together. You always told others where you were going and how to find you. Vect slipping out the way she did the previous night was a nasty enough surprise on its own - After all, the mink clearly knew that the vacuum of her absence would cause more than enough chaos to ensure Kayte couldn't follow. But the fact that she hadn't even sent word back home yet was making Kayte uneasy. And the fact she had left her phone under the bar indicated she was worried about being tracked...
Kayte had felt this before: This lingering dread, this roiling anxiety that bubbled up from the unknown. It usually ended wi-
[Schuuuuf]
The scraping of shoes against concrete weakly dragged its way out of the fog. The wolf sat upright, ears perked high as she halted her breathing for a moment and listened hard.
[Schuuuuf]
In an instant, Kayte was on her feet and looking down the street. She could see the figure slowly emerging from monotonous grey mist. Her cream colored fur and bloodied jacket slowly came into focus as the wolf ran to meet her.
Vect limped forward one step at a time, pausing to lean against the wall of the nearby laundromat as she struggled. She was gripping her left side with her right arm, seemingly wracked with pain. The mink's left eye was swollen shut, bloodied and bruised. A streaked mess of matted, stained, dark brown fur painted down her chin, along her neck, and across her shirt beneath - Long since having dried, no longer so brilliantly crimson. She was clearly having a hard time walking.
Kayte bounded toward her.
"Hey," Vect tried to pretend she wasn't gasping from pain as Kayte bolted toward her. "Sorry. Missed the last train. Had to... had to walk it."
Kayte immediately bent down and scooped the mink up into her arms before Vect could collapse. An expression of pained concern washed over the wolf's face as she looked Vect over from head to foot. Vect was diminutive compared to Kayte - only slightly over five and a half feet tall - so for the wolf, hoisting up the mink was swift and easy.
"Christ, Vect," There were already tears in Kayte's eyes, "You should've let me come with you."
"Fuckin'... why, you wanted a beating too?" Vect coughed suddenly. A violent, full body spasm that faded into a thin laugh. "Forget it - there are better ways to get one. Ways with safewords, for starters."
Kayte shook her head slowly, voice quivering slightly as she tried to smile and found herself failing, "Well. I guess you can't be too banged up if you're joking about it. But I think you need a doctor on this one."
"Fuck that. No. Absolutely not. You know I heal up quick." Vect grunted her words at first, disarmingly. But then, her voice softened quickly. A thin, fragile whisper, "Just... get me to bed. And something to drink."
Kayte sighed deeply. She knew that Vect wouldn't actually go to the doctor even if she were dragged there. She also knew it'd be far too likely they'd get a visit from the cops if she tried. She didn't like it one bit, but Vect was right on this one.
"Okay then," the wolf softly muttered, trying to hide the slight sniffle in her voice. She carefully lifted Vect further upward, to her lips, where she planted a gentle kiss on the mink's forehead before fully enveloping her in a strong, warm embrace. "Just promise never to scare me like this again."
It took a few minutes to climb the stairs and get Vect to the upper floors of the building. While the ground floor of Transgressions boasted the bar and lively dance floor, the two floors above were repurposed living quarters, as well as a reasonably sized kitchen. Vect's office, the one that overlooked the club below through mirrored glass, doubled as her room.
Space was tight, after all. It wouldn't be fair for her to have a bedroom in addition.
The rush of adrenaline had long since left her body, and while the throbbing pain was starting to make itself unpleasantly welcome in her head and chest, Vect was nevertheless finding herself starting to calm at last. There was something uniquely awful, some combination of hopeless and mortifying, about being simultaneously severely injured and being completely alone while in uncomfortable, unfamiliar surroundings. She was at least happy to be home. The warm embrace of Kayte and the soft cushions of her familiar sofa were minor comforts, but they were comforts nevertheless.
Vect slowly reflected that they were all she really had.
"So," Kayte's soft rumble broke the silence as she lifted up Vect's shirt slowly to examine her wounds. Tender, giant fingertips probed her ribcage with measured care as she looked for broken bones. "What, exactly, was so important last night that you had to do it alone?"
Vect sucked in a sharp breath as Kayte's touch sent shocks of agony into her chest - and then choked momentarily as the sudden act of inhaling made it worse. She regained her composure eventually.
"Was checking on Alexis," Vect muttered through muted lips. "Was afraid the gal would be too spooked if I showed up with people in tow. Wanted her to feel at ease. But," the mink took a slow, deep breath to test the waters. A shock of pain. A shuddering exhale. "Turns out I wasn't the first to visit her."
Kayte did her best to localize the wounds on Vect's torso, noting with dismay that there were likely (at minimum) a few fractures. She turned to sort through the contents of the first-aid kit that she had splayed out across the coffee table, before instead grabbing the nearby ice bucket and pouring the contents into a ziplock bag. She knelt down carefully, navigating the size difference as best she could.
"Meaning...?" Kayte glanced upward at Vect as she bent down to apply the ice pack to the mink's bared torso. She did so with surprisingly meticulous care.
Vect grimaced slightly as the shock of cold and pain hit her at once. She sucked in a sharp breath over bared teeth.
Eventually, she let out another shuddering exhale. "Meaning our dear friend Andy got to her first." She paused heavily, breathing loud enough to fill the silence, "She was terrified from the moment I saw her. She told me to leave and never come back. Said she couldn't be Alexis anymore - But she sure refused to say she didn't want to be Alexis anymore. It was pretty clear Andy had been feeding her lies. Threatening her. Making her think his violence was her fault. You know, the usual bullshit."
Vect let out a labored sigh, "And then... Well, I guess he decided to stick around to jump me."
Kayte stopped immediately, freezing in place. The wolf tensed up, looking Vect directly in the eye.
"Remmington did this to you?" Her voice was hushed, muted.
Vect nodded slowly and silently. An immediate chill bolted up Kayte's spine in response.
For as long as the wolf could remember, Remmington had been a consistent and ever-present threat to anyone who called Transgressions home. Plus, from what she understood, he'd been hunting Vect for far longer than even that. His legacy of bloodshed and violence were well known by all. Kayte in particular was one of the few to have observed Andrew in action, and one of fewer still who had lived to tell the tale. Brutality was one word for it. Otherworldly was another. Kayte could remember Remmington moving with ungodly speed, striking out with malice that scratched at the edges of possibility. She remembered him shrugging off a blow to the head that would've crushed anyone else... Though, in honesty, the details were difficult for her to recall - Partly because it was so uncomfortable to remember, partly because she still wasn't sure exactly what the fuck had happened.
"I got some good shots in before he worked me over, at least," Vect's cocky boasting rang hollow from behind her swollen eye and battered body. "Cracked him right in the head, then unloaded about half a magazine in his jaw." Vect's words slipped off as her voice lost conviction. Even she wasn't buying her own bravado, "Not that it did much..."
"You're lucky to be breathing, babe." Kayte's muted tone belied the fear beneath her words.
Vect shrugged limply, resigned "Naw. I mean. He wanted me to live through it, right? Pretty obvious he wasn't looking to off me or he would've done it then and there. Guessin' he just... just wanted to hurt someone. Maybe just wanted to hurt me. Bad."
Kayte ensured that Vect's wounds were bandaged with care and delicate attention, before sitting on the coffee table directly opposite the mink. She folded her oversized hands in her lap as she leaned forward to kiss Vect's forehead. "You're home now, okay? Just get some good rest, and I'll be here for you. No exceptions, either. You need to heal. You're not getting off that sofa for a while."
Vect looked up at Kayte with uncharacteristic desperation, "Kayte... I don't... I'm thinking th..."
"I just..." Vect closed her good eye slowly as she sank into the sofa. Her breathing became notably more pronounced as she lingered in contemplation for a wide, heavy moment.
"How can I keep doing this, Kayte?"
Kayte paused momentarily, eyes seeming to flicker as she herself was lost in thought. "Keep doing what?" Kayte said softly, though it was obvious she knew exactly what Vect meant.
"This!!!" Vect became very animated, arms sweeping across the entire room, motioning toward the club below, and the to the rooms above. Her voice peaked in frustration - before she winced in pain and crumpled back into the couch once more. Her voice slowed, but was no less full, "All of this! Everything..."
The mink settled back down into the over-plush sofa cushion, "How long have we been at this? How long have we been struggling, convinced it was worth something?"
"How long have we been giving every single scrap of what we have to trying to make this work? How much have we poured into everything we do? How much of every fucking day of our lives have we devoted to this fight?" Vect let out a slow, exasperated breath that seemed to clog the air with a kind of hopeless fatigue.
She wasn't shouting. She wasn't flailing her arms or stomping her feet. She wasn't gnashing her teeth in the way that she always did, puffing up her chest and getting angry on display because someone threatened someone she loved - as if she felt she needed to make a show of it.
Vect's tone was different. A thick, viscous ooze of what felt like inevitable suffocation poured from her mouth, hushed and quiet despite her exasperation. Her muzzle turned down as her ears drooped slowly.
"It's a goddamn fight. It's always a fight. A struggle. Clawing our way to anything resembling progress. Always. A L W A Y S. There's never time for a rest, or for any kind of reprieve. Never a moment to stop. To breathe."
Vect's voice melted into a dim whisper, "Never time to heal."
The mink shook her head slowly, mouth partway open as her eyes began to shimmer with building tears on one side, and swollen, weeping crimson on the other.
"Even when we're happy, we're still looking over our shoulders. Even when we're sleeping, we're still on guard. Because we have to be that way. Because there's no other options. We struggle. We fight. We fucking fight. We fight every day of our lives, we fight with everything we have. Everything. Do you understand me? EVERYTHING!"
Vect's voice was quivering on the edge of cracking now, but not out of anger. "We put one hundred god damned percent of our resources, our attention, our very fuckin' souls into fighting for what we believe in. To keep people safe. To give them a place to be. To give them a community where they can be themselves. Every drop of cash we earn, goes into making this place what it is. Every single miserable city council meeting, or protest, or petition, or rescue mission, or scared new girl saved... Trying to find places for someone to live. Trying to get food to those that don't have it. Trying to just have a moment, a single fucking evening, where it doesn't feel like we're on the edge of disaster... It doesn't matter what it is, we put everything into it."
"And..." Vect turned to look Kayte directly in the eye, her cheeks damp with streaming tears and blood even as her jaw hung partway open in struggle. "And it's almost never enough."
The mink let out an uncharacteristic sniffle as her gaze dropped low. She sank deeper into the sofa, "When they come to fuck us up, we push back. With everything. We fight them on the ballot, with everything. We fight them in city hall, with everything. We fight them in the goddamned street, with everything. When the motherfuckers from the Alliance roll up on one of our girls, we never hesitate to put those assholes in the goddamned ground, because we know we have no other options. If we don't, we're dirt. And I'd sooner turn those fucks to mulch than let them perpetuate that suffering they relish."
Vect's eye slipped to the side, even as her voice grew to a thick, gravely whisper. It was a forced and choked tone, as if she were afraid of her own words. "We're doing all we can with everything we have, and we're doing it constantly."
"..."
"And what does it get us?"
Mournfully, Vect reached out to seize Kayte's gigantic paw with her own. Her fingertips gripped the wolf as if for dear life as she fought off sobbing, "What does fighting with all of our resources get us? Fighting with all our heart? Fighting with every tiny scrap of our money, our time, our people - our bodies AND souls?"
"..."
Vect's grip unfurled gradually as she slumped back into the sofa, as if there were no more strength in her at all as resignation flooded back into her limbs. An undercurrent of defeat carried her words forward on a sea of uncomfortable realization. "If we're lucky, things don't get worse. That's it. That's all. That's all we can ever hope to do: That if we succeed beyond measure, we stem the bleeding for a little while longer. We don't heal. We don't secure. We just... delay the inevitable."
"And if we're off the mark?" Vect was struggling to stay coherent now, constant streams streaking across her face, "If we give up any ground? Even a little bit? Someone's homeless. Someone's hurt."
"Someone's dead." She spat the word, heavy and dense.
"We can't make progress? We can't push back?" Vect's tone was potent with genuine disbelief. She shook her head slowly, the words unreal to her despite speaking them herself. "The best we can manage with everything we've got is the motherfucking status quo? After giving everything? After doing everything?? It's not fucking fair. It's not fucking right, Kayte! We have to make this our lives - We have to do this every day, and much more, just to get to this point! Just to hold back the flood of shit we're in! We have to be on high alert constantly. We have to sacrifice and endure and push harder than ever, just so it all doesn't implode further. We aren't making things BETTER, Kayte, even for all our righteous anger and fucking heroic efforts, we're not even getting a single fucking foot forward. We're putting every iota of ourselves out there just to hold on by our fingernails, and if we're wildly lucky, we get to hold on just for today. Because you know what happens tomorrow?"
The mink paused for a long, long moment.
She stared into the distance, through the wall, and into the future.
"Tomorrow, it all happens again."
"..."
"And meanwhile, the assholes who'd perpetrate this shit on us are barely lifting a finger. They spend some meaningless sliver of their time and attention, some insignificant portion of their wealth, and that's all it takes to hit us square like a fucking bomb. Or even a literal one."
Vect sniffled again, before leaning forward on the sofa. She put her face into her hands, before running her grasp upward and pulling her fingertips through her hair. "Do you think the Alliance invests all their money, all their manpower, all their resources into screwing us? Do you think Andrew fucking worked me over tonight because he was leveraging some goddamned tactical advantage? Some narrow window of chance that if he didn't take, he'd lose everything?" She wasn't shouting now, but her voice was enough to fill the room with rising frustration. "Do you think he poured everything he had into finding the right moment to batter me half to death? Do you think it mattered one way or another to him?! NO! It didn't matter one BIT! It didn't have to happen, and even if it went wrong, it didn't matter to him."
"The motherfucker was kicking me around for laughs."
"Because to ghouls like him, that's what's funny. That's what's hilarious. That's what's entertainment. That's what they get off on - Putting their boot on our neck and pressing down HARD. It costs them nothing, and it costs us everything."
"This conflict isn't survival for them!! You understand me?! For those assholes, it's not a way of life, or an essential necessity!! It's a tiny diversion, a disposable bit of fun. And for us it's our entire life! To them it's nothing more than the after dinner mint to their fucking meal, and even if you threw the whole seven courses in the trash they'd have fourteen more ready to go at any time!! You understand?!? Do you understand that at any moment, even if they lost, even if they slipped, they'd barely incur a cost?! That we're THAT far beneath them, that shit is THAT unlevel?! We're disposable entertainment for their sick, cruel amusement."
Vect's agitation was cut short as she let out another fit of violent coughing, clutching her torso as she let out pained cries of agony. Gradually she calmed down, and as she did her words sank back into thick, languid resignation, "They barely spend anything, and it fucking shatters our world. Meanwhile we spend everything, and we can't hold it together."
"..."
"And... And that's to say nothing about how the terror the perpetrate on us is somehow 'just' and 'moral'. How moment we do anything in our own defense, suddenly we're the monsters."
The tension left her body as she collapsed in a pile back against the couch.
"How can I keep going, Kayte?"
"How can I keep going, knowing it'll never get better? Knowing that even if we win the day, if we manage to keep people safe for now, they'll just roll over us again tomorrow? How can I keep going, knowing that the only reward for this goddamned mess is more pain and suffering?"
"What am I supposed to do?"
Kayte's vision had long since blurred with tears. Her soft sniffling had been easy to ignore amid Vect's pointed words, but it had nevertheless been there in the background. The wolf hung her head heavily.
Then, very slowly, she reached her gigantic paws forward, and encircled Vect once more. She lifted the battered and bruised mink just enough to slip onto the sofa beneath her, and gently set Vect down upon her lap. Vect felt the warm, soft presence of gentle strength, of delicate fur as Kayte encircled her in a tender embrace. She could feel the soft beating of Kayte's heart against her cheek as she rested her head against the wolf's chest. She could feel the tender touch of Kayte's lips delicate against her forehead, the simple soft contact filling her weary body with a flush of calm, and comfort.
"You do it with me," Kayte assured Vect serenely.
"You do it with all of us. Together."