Growth and Lust Ch. 04 - Banished

"I remember I cried so much the first time I saw this, I think I've seen it two dozen times." the woman on the couch said.

The man opened a door to exit the house, "Fuck this house, i'm goin out!" he yelled before he slammed the door.

Ginrar watched him leave as the whole house seemed to shake, then get quiet for a moment. Then Gin heard another sound coming from the upper level, she looked back to the stairs.

Wailing cries starting to echo out from upstairs, a broken woman beginning to bawl and scream her anger into whatever pillow she could get her hands on.

Ginrar looked back down, seeing the boy hadn't even flinched as he was now holding the bowl up to his lips. Tipping it back and gulping down the remnants of his meal, then quickly looking back to the screen.

"If I had my own, I would've definitely been watching this movie with them, I think I would've liked to have twins." the woman on the couch said with a bit of cheerful hope in her voice.

Ginrar furrowed her brow wondering what the human was talking about, wondering if it was actually Rokes sister? The cries still rang out from upstairs, 'Is that Rokes mother?' Who were these people in his family.

"Peter!...Dear!" the woman from upstairs shouted, her wailing cries being stifled as she tried to call out to the boy.

Roke stood up, his small legs seeming to shake slightly as he looked at the floor, he turned and walked to the steps. Passing by the blonde woman as he headed for the stairs, then pausing to look up them, an internal struggle inside tearing at him.

"Peter!" A shrill female voice yelled.

Roke shuddered, he slowly reached out and touched the hand rail, placing his right foot on the step and slowly climbing to the next.

Ginrar watched the young boy climb the steps, reaching the top and placing a hand on the wall as he began to walk down the hallway. She climbed the stairs, taking three at a time as she rushed to reach the top and continue following him. She loomed over the boy, sticking to his back like glue as an internal instinct to protect washed over her. Seeing him reach a door that was partially open, a dim light inside giving an ominous presence to the room.

"Peter, baby, come er' dear." A gentle shaking voice called.

The small boy pushed open the door, stepping inside and seeming to shake as he did so. Ginrar watched him as he cautiously stepped forward, hands held at his side as his head hung low.

"Oh baby, c'mon, climb on up here."

Ginrar stood in the doorway and watched the boy climb into the bed in the center of the room, moving to the woman sitting with criss crossed legs. She watched him sit in front of her, pulling his legs and crossing them like she did, biting his lip and shaking slightly.

"Oh, Petee, are you cold?" she asked, her eyes sunken into her head with large bags underneath. Her hair a mess as she looked at the child in front of her. She put one boney hand down on the bed and the other on Rokes shoulder. "Can you help me, can you do something for me dear?"

"But dad always gets mad when I come in here." The small version of Roke whimpered out.

"That's because he won't let me have the right medicine, but I know you can help me baby." She said with a tinge of joy and a smile.

Ginrar moved towards them, stepping to stand behind Roke as he sat on the bed, seeing the lady move her hand from the bed and put it closer to Roke.

"Dad said I'm never supposed to play with this." Roke said, his voice shaking as his back twitched and he oozed fear.

She smiled as she tilted her head, "Well it'll just be our secret, how bout that huh?" she put both hands close to Roke, putting something in his grip.

Gin listened to the woman speak, wondering what kind of illness she was suffering from and why she needed Roke to give her the medicine? 'Are her hands injured? Unable to work to her command, so they need his dexterity?'

She looked around the room, then at the dresser, trying to find clues as to what the problem could be and how it might have affected Rokes' upbringing. Placing extra burden on a child by making him provide the responsibilities of caregiving towards an adult who couldn't do it for themselves. After hearing the tirade of the father, she was positive he must not be helping as he should. Looking at the stack she saw a brightly colored paper with smiling faces on it, leaning over, she read.

'You have a choice in your treatment options, and System-say is her to help!'

"But mom...I'm scared..." Roke said.

Gin tilted her head and leaned down to read the smaller print, 'Initial dose in the deltoid muscle allows the medicine to last longer than oral doses.'

"Peter, if I take it myself, it won't work like it's supposed to. That's why I need you to do it dear." She said with happy understanding.

'Once taken, patients will notice drastic changes in body and temperament, allowing for the management and ease of living with Schizophrenia.'

"Dad will be mad...I don't wanna do it mom." Roke said with a shaky voice.

'Schizophrenia?' Gin thought, re-reading the last word in the sentence, she stood straight as she wondered what the illness did to the human body. Remembering that Roke and her were vastly different, she listened to them talk behind her. The coddling mother and the frightened son, her gentle tone trying to ease his heart.

*Shhhhh CLICK*

Ginrars hair stood on end, she remembered the sound instantly as something Roke carried in his memory. Something that haunted him to this day, turning around to find the source, her breathing stopped. Mouth hanging open as she tried to understand what was happening, watching the mothers finger slip from the hammer of the revolver. Rokes small child hands struggling to hold the weight of the weapon as her hands helped support it in his grip.

"I know you can do it Peter," she said with the softness that only someone completely content could achieve. Then leaning forward and touching the barrel to her forehead, "It won't hurt, and I'll feel so much better."

Rokes' eyes wept as he held the weapon, unsure of what to do, "You'll...feel better?"

"Yes dear, I'll feel so much better, it won't hurt a bit."

Ginrar broke from her shock and tried to reach for the gun, but her body felt like it was in sand. Her arms dragging through the air and unable to move forward as she commanded them, her legs binding and feet sticking to the carpet like she was sinking in wet concrete.

"I love you mom..."

"I love you too de-" *BANG*

The shot echoed off the walls, reverberating down her entire body as the room filled with the smell of burnt gunpowder and blood. The feeling had Ginrar frozen as she tried to process what she just witnessed, her mind frozen and the gears inside seized as her mental train of thought derailed and crashed.

"Did you think you could stop him, Ginrar?" The blonde woman who had been sitting on the couch asked, now standing right next to her. "This is only a memory, this is what you wanted to see."

Gin snapped her head to look at her, wondering how she was speaking to her, how she was in this memory and talking. "H- Human?" Gin mumbled out as she looked at her.

"Oh there are quite a lot of Tallhee on the other plane that would love to meet you, Ginrar." the final word having a waiving rise to the tone. A sarcastic reverence to the stunned Tallhee woman, "But I won out, the only human on the plane, to be the guide for the one like no other."

Ginrars eyes felt like they might burst from her skull with how wide they were, her mouth was dry and her brain was unable to keep up.

"Look, you both match." She responded.

Gin looked at Roke on the bed, blood splattered across his face and body, seeping into his wide and open eyes. Burning them as the tears inside swelled and fell, unable to speak as his breathing halted in his throat. Ginrars body convulsed at the sight of him, legs shaking and letting go as she crumpled to the carpet in terror like she had never felt.

"Abandoning him?" the woman said as she hunched down to look Ginrar in the eyes, "...Again?"

"Aband-" Gin tried to speak but was cut off.

The guide grabbed Gins horn and yanked her forward, dragging her across the floor and up against the bed. "Look." she seethed through gritted teeth.

Ginrars eyes were now held close to Rokes, the small child who quaked on the bed as the mind inside pieced together what happened by his own hand.

"Here it comes..." the guide whispered, directly into Ginrars ear as she held her in place.

Gins eyes burned but she couldn't blink, she didn't dare close them as she might miss what was so important to see.

"...The moment he realizes what he did."

Ginrar watched as the light inside the blue windows to his soul dimmed and his jaw hung limp, his breathing speeding and the whining cries of a child who was lost beginning to rise.

Gins own tears streamed down her face, "Roke..."

"Remember this Ginrar, memorize that look he has right now." The guide said in a condescending tone that cut into Gins heart.

Ginrar felt her head being pushed down and her face slamming into the bed, sinking and falling threw it into an icy abyss as it greeted her with shock and fright. She could feel the hand still on her horn, pushing her down further and further, the pressure rising then suddenly landing in ice and snow. Gasping and searching around her as she tried to figure out where she was now.

Ginrar was surrounded by brilliant white, her eyes struggling to adjust as she squinted and stared around her. Seeing a snow covered landscape at her feet as she frantically stood and spun around, looking for the guide and preparing for another tormenting show. Then she spotted it, the red truck with the quaint home on the back, the lights inside on and seeming to fight the biting cold all around it.

She stomped towards it, gritting her teeth and wondering what place she was taken too, she arrived at the door and reached for the handle. Blinking she found herself inside, but sitting from a different perspective than she was used to, she tried to turn her gaze and look around but was unable. She was looking through eyes that weren't her own, seeing clammy white hands that belonged to another human working in front of her. The sight made her stomach turn as she realized she was in the first person view of a human who was diligently working on some kind of powder.

"Hey Pete, you makin it?" a raspy voice said.

The eyes Ginrar peered through looked up, looking at the bed in the front of the camper, seeing blankets move and rustle as someone in the bed stirred. Then Ginrar felt her mouth move, lips speaking and a voice coming out that wasn't her own.

"Ya, ya I'm makin it." The man Ginrar saw through responded, then looking back down at the spoon in his grip with a lighter in the other, flicking it and holding the flame underneath the eating utensil.

A gruff snort came from the bed as the covers were thrown off, then a man sitting up and looking back at him, bloodshot eyes and a smile. Long facial hair adorning his face as his hair was a tangled and matted mess. He scooted along the bed, his appendages shriveled and small as if he hadn't eaten in months, weakly sliding down into the seating area. He shivered as his eyes squinted, holding his arms as tremors seemed to wrack him, then sitting on the seat next to the man Gin saw from.

"When we get there, I'll get clean of this shit and we'll be rollin in cash, a whole planet to ourselves and nothing but sunshine and clean air in our lungs!" the man said with a smile. "No more of this fucking cold, no more of this fucking barely getting by, just you and me Pete. We're almost there, I know I haven't been putting much money into the travel portion,man. But the ol girls runnin strong and she ain't let us down yet!" He said as he stomped his foot on the campers floor.

"I know man, you got the truck, I got the work, we'll get there soon. Just get some new I.D. cards and save up some more money to get to that shuttle port that deals with larger vehicles and we'll be off this planet." Pete said.

"Ya, yaaa we're so close!" the disheveled man said as he rubbed his hands together. "We're fuckin doin it, Pete." He said as he nodded, "Growth won't deliver this shit when you're on their working planets, so I'll be forced to get clean, I can do it!"

Pete nodded along, Ginrar inside seeing the man she was looking through hesitate as he held a syringe in his fingers. He touched the needle to the liquid that was now in the spoon and drew it into the measuring portion as he pulled the plunger back.

"You were smart man, you were smart not gettin on this shit." he said as he watched Pete work, then shaking his head and looking away. "I should'a turned it down, but...I guess I've always had an addictive personality." His voice was full of remorse, as if remembering past decisions that still haunted him.

The man on the bench held out his arm, tying a piece of tubing around the bicep and cinching it tight, "Why you so good to me Pete?"

"I don't know man, I'm not that good." Pete said.

"No no you are, dude. You're like a brother to me." the guy said with a laugh as he watched the needle touch his skin.

Ginrar observed the long lines on the inside of his arm, seeing the eager eyes of the man watching the syringe as he bit his lip and drew in a breath. Watching the needle press for a moment before puncturing his skin, then a cloud of red coming into the syringe before the plunger was pressed down.

He smiled and rolled his eyes back as he grit his teeth, sighing in bliss before speaking, "We could've really passed for brothers, nobody could ever guess we weren't!" he said with a giggle.

"Ya, Roke, we look a lot alike." the man said as he pressed the plunger, pausing for a moment and taking a deep breath. "Like family." then pressing his thumb down and finishing off the rest of it into the arm.

Ginrar was snapped out of the mans view, standing outside again in the cold with her eyes wide and her lips shut tight. She scrambled in the snow around the camper, making it to the window on the side and peering in, she could see the man on the bench. His body convulsing for only a moment before going limp, his eyes barely opened as they rolled to the back of his head. But she was more focused on the one next to him, the one that she had been seeing through. Her eyes burned, she watched as her Roke sat on the edge and watched the other Roke next to him die.

"You've met Roke now." the guide said in Gins ear.

She smashed her fist against the side of the sheet metal, her fangs bared as she tore inside over what she had just seen, "Stop your games, this isn't what I want to see!" Ginrar screamed, but was unable to see the guide.

"Those eyes again." she whispered.

Gin looked back into the camper, she watched as the blue eyes she had been struck by stared at the man in the small home. The nights they had both spent together in there, coming back to her, the inkling to ask where he had gotten his home, and how he had found Growth. Questions she had wanted to ask, but never pressed as she didn't want to put him through the memories. She hadn't been sure of what had happened, but she had a guess, had a suspicion he may have regretted how he had gotten there.

"When do you think he hurt the most?" the guide asked.

Gin scowled at the blonde woman, "Why are you doing this to me, I need to know where he's been to see if I can find him now."

The guide tilted her head, "That's the reason you've come up with?"

Ginrar snarled and lunged at the woman, swearing she caught her in her grasp before feeling herself land in dirt. She felt warmth again, smelled burning wood, along with it the copper smell of a humans blood.

"GINRAR!"

Gins heart nearly leaped out of her chest as the voice screamed in her ear, feeling all the pain and torment inside it, a gutteral pleading for her name ringing out in the night.

"I'm yours." a broken voice said.

Ginrars eyes widened, the familiar voice of her lover quietly whimpering next to her, she snapped her head to look. Her shuddering screams coming out in waves as she tried to scramble to him, his body parts littering the ground around him.

"I was supposed to be yours Gin," his pained mouth whispered.

Gins eyes couldn't believe what she was seeing, shining her cheeks as she tried to put her hands forward, mere moments from touching his pale face. She looked into the same blue pools she had just seen, watching the light inside them darkening as realization set in.

"Where did you go?"

"I'm here, I'm right here my love." Gin said as time slowed around her.

"You're mine, and I'm yours, please."

"Roke, I'm- I'm so sorry." she said, her shaking hands struggling to find the strength to connect. Her eyes burning as they saw the torment and fear that writhed in his eyes, begging for salvation as he shook.

"Please come back." he begged.

Gin felt a small hand palm the back of her head, another one gripping her chin as the guide huffed in her ear.

"The eyes, I told you before to memorize them, watch..."

Ginrar couldn't break away, her mouth dry as the knot in her throat became painfully apparent.

"...The moment where he realizes...what you did..."

She watched as the light inside those same eyes dimmed again, lifeless and understanding, only this time no wails of remorse. No screaming from being broken, just the mental collapse as realization set in. She felt the guide yank her backwards, dragging her through the dirt and then into it, her mouth filling with earth and root as she laid limp and let it happen. Then feeling emptiness around her, standing on the black pool she had so desperately tried to keep them out of the day before.

"You abandoned him."

Gin flinched, the words cutting her like a blade in the stomach, "-No, no I did no-"

"You came here looking for leverage."

"I came to seek out his past, to find where he had been so I can learn where to go!"

"You came here to learn of his darkness, to prove he was as bad as you and in turn convince him to stay."

Ginrars tongue fell silent as she tried to think of a counter to the strike she was just delt, anything she could muster to prove she was speaking lies.

"You thought he would leave, so you wanted to see his own darkness in hopes of bartering with him to stay. That if blood was on both sets of hands, he could not walk away, for if you were a monster...then so was he."

Ginrar stepped back in shock at the words that shook her being, 'No, no that's not true, that isn't what happened.' she thought to herself.

'Say it allowed or not,' the guide spoke in Ginrars head, 'I can still see through you.'

"After what I gave you?" the guide said, her eyes glaring as she stomped towards Ginrar.

Gin tried to take a step back but was dumbfounded as something from behind her pushed her towards the guide. Then gasping as she felt pain in her stomach, looking down to see the hand of the tormenter pierced through her skin. Her mouth went wide as she tried to scream, as she tried to remind herself this wasn't real, no matter how true the pain felt it wasn't real! Then she felt her fingers clamp around something inside her, tugging slightly as she looked up to her.

"I see you wasted no time in putting my gift to use."

Ginrars eyes widened as she remembered the old womans voice, 'Someone on the other plane has deemed you worthy.' She looked into her eyes, beginning to understand. "Gift yet to receive." Gin mumbled out through gritted teeth.

"I can take it back, Ginrar."

Gin felt something inside her fight, something primal inside her driving her to throw tooth and nail at the one who had her pinned. But not out of feeling fear for her own life, but out of a need to protect something.