Flora And Fauna Pt Alt

•Note• This is all the alt pov/Claude and Marko stuff I mentioned at the end of the Final part of Flora & Fauna. It's all over time-wise since I wrote it predominantly to help myself feel them out as characters. No clue how much sense it makes on its own and separate from F&F, but wanted to post it on the off chance anyone would be curious. <3

●Pith●

Something under his back creaked loudly. Too soft to be the floor of the caravan. Too lumpy and hard to be anything that could be legally marketed as a bed. His stomach felt too full, painfully so, and every slight motion, even the motion of sucking in a breath, made the heavy contents slosh. His tongue stuck out to drag along his lips, only to find that his tongue was as coarse as sandpaper. Something crumbled, falling into the seam of his lips and tasting vile. The coating falling away left the split lines on his lips raw and exposed. The metallic tang of blood muddled with the repulsive crumbs and he let his head fall to the side. Papery fabric crinkled under his face. His stomach suddenly lurched, shoving its contents up toward his throat. At the inevitability, he folded over the edge of whatever he was laying on and opened his mouth so wide he heard a pop in his jaw.

Black vomit poured out, the acid burning his already sore throat. The amount seemed beyond what his stomach could feasibly hold before he was finally empty. He ran his tongue over his teeth, spitting over and over again to get the burning, repugnant taste out of his mouth. Desperate to see, he rubbed the heels of his palms vigorously over his eyes until the crust was scrubbed away and he could open them.

Other than the inky puke filling an expertly placed metal bowl on the floor, everything was gray cement. The ceiling too, he realized as he looked up. And he was on a bed. The basic metal frame was dented on one end. All around the bed, so close to the edges of it that there was only enough space to stand up to dress, were white curtains. The hems were murky, stained from dragging on the floor. Someone yelled a string of curses and Marko flinched at the sound. Another voice yelled a name in an exasperated tone. It was all far away, down a long hall, based on the echo. Both voices vanished behind the distant slam of a door.

What happened last night? He wondered groggily.

He could remember setting up the stage for the performance at the bar. The name of the bar or the town they'd been in evaded his slurring mind. But he could remember the taste of the cheap beer someone had bought him. The feel of the same hand that had given him the beer sliding down his waist with the suggestion of a trade he was accustomed to acquiescing to. Usually the places the traveling musicians he worked for played at weren't the kind of places that had any qualms about serving someone his age. But this place had been different. The bartender had made a face when he ordered alcohol, then shoved a glass of ginger soda pop at him and walked away. That alone had made him want to rebel, to make a problem of himself.

So, when he was offered a pill half-way through the show, he swallowed it instantly. It didn't matter what it did. It hadn't mattered to him the first time either. But now, it seemed like it had mattered. His memories after that were a mess. Vague feelings of sickness, of his head being so light it was floating away, his feet so heavy that he couldn't lift them. The difference tearing him apart in the middle. A feeling like he was drowning and flying. Immense pressure crushing his chest even as he evaporated from his body and felt blissfully free from himself.

Somewhere down the other side of the long room, a door slammed open and hit the rough wall before two quick sets of steps came closer. Two shadows grew until they stood on the other side of the thin curtains. A hand reached out and gripped the fabric, whipping it open hard enough that the metal rings scraped across the rod. The noise made his brain shudder in the confines of his skull.

Two middle-aged women in wrinkled white outfits, the edges stained much like the curtains, entered the cramped space. Marko pulled his legs up to his chest uncertainly. He looked down at himself for the first time. Black crust was dried on the front of the pullover shirt he was wearing, the pockets of his dark green trousers were turned out.

Fuck. What if I owe them money? he thought nervously.

One of the nurses yanked the pillow out from behind his back and pulled off the case. Just as roughly, she took the blanket and the crinkly sheet, yanking them so fast that it pulled out from underneath Marko before he could move. She bundled them up under one arm and took the bowl with no reaction to its contents, then hustled out of the curtained circle and was gone again.

"Time to go, honey," the other said, her features were all more round and friendly than the other one. Her face was framed with a barely contained bundle of frizzy brown hair.

"Go?" Marko repeated as he looked back down at his emptied pockets. "I..."

"We need the bed."

"But I...I don't even know where I am."

"Pith," she answered simply as she took a thin stack of papers that were clipped to the end of the bed frame. Her eyes scanned the top sheet, then she gave him a sad look.

"Did any of them stay?"

"Them?"

"The people I was traveling with." More black peeled off the fronts of his teeth from being exposed to the air as he sneered.

"We have a waiting area in the hall, but no one is in it."

Marko huffed out a bitter laugh and hung his head. It made no sense for him to have expected them to stay and worry over him, but it still found a way to sting. "Can't I stay here? For a little longer?" he asked quietly.

She pursed her lips uncomfortably. "Where are your parents? I can send a messenger and there are places you can wait for them to come get you."

Marko shook his head. "They're not... I can't do that. They won't come."

"Is there anyone we can contact or-"

"No," he croaked. "Please let me stay."

The nurse sighed and clipped the papers back on the frame with a hopeless expression. "We need the bed. I'm sorry, honey."

The finality of the words made his body feel heavy. His eyes flickered over the bare mattress as he struggled to piece together a plan to escape a town he had never even heard of. He pulled in a shaky breath as he stood and walked around to the opening in the curtains. She moved past him robotically and sprayed something out of a glass bottle onto the mattress before putting on new sheets.

"Um... Is there somewhere I can clean up? A shelter or something?"

She turned back to look at him and the big eyes in her soft face were shiny with tears even as her hands continued to work. "It's Pith. Pick a street."

Keeping his pockets turned out at that advice, Marko turned and exited the ramshackle hospital.

Not that the hospital had been notably clean or welcoming, but compared to the outside it might as well have been Paradise. As soon as he stepped out from the double doors at the front and saw the town, he turned back to the building he'd just left. The sound of a heavy bolt sliding into place on the other side made it clear that going back in wasn't an option. The hospital was exclusive invite only, apparently.

Everything was formed out of such filth that he was afraid to walk on the street. It looked like the kind of mud that sucked people down until they were too trapped to even struggle. The unnaturally hostile environments he'd read about in scary chapbooks back in a simpler period of his life. The edges in some places were covered in a layer of ice that made the slimy dirt look coated in jagged, sparkling cobwebs. The metallic, sour stench of urine and blood made him wrinkle his nose as it overwhelmed the smell of vomit from his own breath. A smattering of people existed in view. Most of them were slumped over on wooden or cement porches of the buildings, wearing jumbled layers of every kind of garment to stay warm. Very few of the buildings had signage of any kind, making it impossible to know what any of them were. The eerie quiet split when a man wrapped in countless layers of threadbare coats and scarves approached with an outstretched hand.

"Hey, kid, you-" The man's battered, red-flushed face was obscured by white fog with each word he spoke, except for his eyes that darted down to Marko's turned out pockets. Whatever he'd been about to say, he decided against it and angrily dismissed Marko with a grunt and a handwave.

All the streets looked the same. The signs that anyone had bothered to put up were old. The paint split and faded, wood cracked, corners broken off. Nothing was maintained. One building finally stood out, purely because of the lack of damage to it. The structure was mundane, soulless cement like the rest of them. But it was newer. No chunks bashed out of it or stains embedded in the grit. Marko stood in front of it and tilted his head back to read the words above the square doorway. Embedded in the arch was a sparsely detailed shape of a robed angel with open arms. Underneath the angel, the stone letters read: The Lady Grace.

The inside was so comparatively clean that Marko felt filthier for simply entering and standing in the foyer. The floor was speckled tile, making the whole space automatically look more sanitary than the gritty floor of the hospital. There was a semicircle shaped front desk with double doors on each side of the wall. The room was ominously quiet and each cautious step he took forward echoed in the empty space. A man suddenly stood up behind the front desk, the motion bouncing the ends of his tightly woven, dark braids that were bundled on top of his head.

"Can I help you?" he asked quickly but kindly, as if he was mentally juggling a thousand other responsibilities and had only so much time for an uncertain guest.

"Um. Yeah. I was told I could get cleaned up here? Like a shower?"

"Okay, yes." He ducked back down, reemerging quickly with a sheet of paper and a pen before setting them in front of Marko on the upper portion of the desk. "I need you to go over this. That's all the information you need about rules while you're here and time limits for the amenities. We can probably get you in sometime this evening. The minimum donation is-"

"The what?"

"Uh." The employee pointed at a list of prices. "It's only-"

"I don't have-" Marko interrupted and shook his head in confusion. "I thought this was a shelter?"

"It is. Government funding only covers so much, so we have to...." He trailed off uncomfortably at his expression. "Where are your parents?"

He was sick of that question. So sick of it he wanted to scream. And might have if he opened his mouth. So he pursed his lips and shook his head instead.

With a sad sigh, the man put the contract back down on his side of the desk. But then he stood and walked around to the front to stand in front of Marko who watched the floor in silence. He looked up just enough to see the copper pin on the front of the man's cable knit sweater that housed his name in thin, painted letters. Amari looked both ways at the doors on each side of his desk, then lowered his voice to a whisper. "Is there really not anyone I can contact for you?"

Marko was sick of that question too, he shook his head again.

"Okay. Look. I'm not supposed to do this but, we have a block of time carved out for some maintenance on the showers. If you can wait here very quietly and not be a troublemaker," his voice turned harsher on the last few words. "I can sneak you in right after they leave. You'll only have... I don't know, maybe five minutes but-"

"Five minutes is fine. That's fine. I can wait." Marko nodded frantically at the offer. "I won't be a problem. I promise."

Amari pointed toward a wooden bench pressed against the wall beside the front door. "You sit there and be invisible until I say otherwise."

Marko was already backing away, still nodding as he headed for the bench.

"Don't make me regret this. I mean it."

.

Hours passed with painful sluggishness under constant ticking of a clock somewhere behind the front desk, punctuated with moments of chaos. Some of the people that burst in or yelled slurring curses as they exited, Amari and other workers recognized and knew by name. Marko pulled his legs up to his chest and waited. Whenever he was alone in the cavernous room with Amari, he sat up with his knees on the bench to peek over to him. Each time, a stern shake of the head was the only response he received.

Finally, two maintenance workers arrived with long, metal toolboxes. They were led into the back, then led out an hour later. As soon as they were gone, Amari looked pointedly at Marko and subtly gestured for him to follow. Marko's legs were half-asleep under him and wobbled as he leapt up from the bench and rushed after him through the gateway on the left side of the front desk.

The long hallway echoed even more than the waiting room and made Marko flinch with every loud step he took. A bundle of fabric sat under Amari's arm as he led him past metal doors, each with a single square window, until they reached another set of windowless double doors at the very end of the hall.

"Here." He shoved the pile into Marko's hands. "You have five minutes before more scheduled appointments are going to show up. You have to be out by then. These might be too big for you but they're the smallest things we had in the donation bin. Go."

With a quick nod, Marko darted into the shower room. Several shower heads lined each side, made slightly private with knee-length metal walls between each stall. The clothes he draped over one of the metal partitions before quickly scrubbing away the filth of the lost hours. He bathed with his mouth open, swishing all the water he caught and spitting it out until his tongue no longer felt caked with charcoal.

The wool sweater was so stretched out the neck hole sat on the curve of his shoulders, but it was warm and smelled refreshingly clean. The trousers he secured to his waist with his own simple belt that he'd arrived with. While still hopping into his boots, he headed out toward the front, not wanting to stay too long and deal with whatever consequences there may be for using the showers without donating.

Amari wasn't waiting for him outside the showers, apparently trusting well enough that Marko would keep to the time limit. He instead sat behind the front desk again, a ledger open on one side and organized stacks of coins on the other. Marko paused beside the open curve of the desk and cleared his throat, the sound coming out gruffer than he'd wanted it to.

"Thank you."

Amari paused to look him up and down. "Listen, kid. Of all the fucking places in the world, you shouldn't be in Pith. Muchless alone like this. Whatever your parents did, it's worth forgiving them and going home just to get out-"

"It's not what they did." Marko clenched his jaw and shuddered as the heavy shroud of reality settled over him again. "It's what I did."

"Oh... I have another hour on my shift, if you want to rest on the bench for a little longer. But you'll have to be gone by-"

At the sound of the opposite doors slamming open, they both spun toward them. A petite nurse was on her back, her bright red hair exploding out of its bun around her face. Someone in the hall was yelling and, based on the even thumps, punching the walls. She called out to Amari for help with the patient, though he was already on his feet and rushing to her aid. With a muttered curse, he helped his coworker stand and positioned himself in front of her before they both ran into the hallway.

Even though he was far from the chaos, Marko's breath sawed in and out of him as he stared at the closed doors. He fought to get control of his breathing. And when it was finally calm, he was left with the hollowness of not knowing where to go or what to do next.

Curved shine caught his eyes and directed them back down to the inner portion of the desk. His mouth went dry as the metallic gleam led his gaze to the stacks of various denominations of coin. The room was deathly silent as his conscience and his self-preservation warred.

Holding a breath, Marko rushed behind the table. The baggy sweater he pulled out to make a basket at his front. A single swipe of his arm loudly poured all the coins into the space. The clang of all the metal slamming into each other was the loudest thing he'd ever heard. He spun and ran for the front doors, slamming them open with one hand while he used the other to cradle everything he'd stolen. Guilt threatened to open under his feet like a deep, fang-filled maw to rip him to shreds for what he'd done as he sprinted through Pith.

On a train, clutching the one-way ticket so hard in his sweaty grip that the paper turned pulpy and left a mirrored print of its ink on his palm, he watched the muddy, miserable place disappear through the murky window. Maybe he would make this right some day. Somehow. But for now, for today, he just needed to survive.

He needed to survive.

●Last day in Sirmont●

Nausea twisted deep in Marko's gut as the familiar lips pressed to his own, to the sharp edge of his jaw, the delicate side of his throat under his long blond hair. His tongue swam in watery saliva that he swallowed over and over again. Nothing defused the growing sickness spreading through his body at the contact. The supple hands went over his chest and selfishly took in every contour. He bit his lip to not speak aloud, hoping the gesture would come off as teasing and sultry if Charles looked at his face. The word no pushed insistently at his lips, like it had the first time. But there had been plenty of times between then and now. He swallowed the protest and the spit. Even the smell of Charles' expensive cologne, that had been so pleasantly decadent to Marko's senses before, now pierced and poisoned him. One of the hands sank lower, finding the waistband of his trousers. Marko tore the no apart and quickly constructed something else from the shreds.

"I... I don't think I can do this tonight."

Charles pulled away and looked down at him, the annoyance in his face slowly morphing to disgust. "Then what are you doing here?"

You said you loved me. Marko nearly answered aloud. But he had never said that. Not quite. What was he doing here? What the fuck was he doing anywhere?

"I can't do this," he repeated, shaking his head and looking at anything else in the grand bedroom.

The soft hands left him and Charles scoffed. "Then get out. I don't have time for another hour of your dramatics tonight."

"Anymore," Marko amended in a whisper.

"What?"

"I can't do this...anymore."

"Look me in the eyes."

His head shook back and forth, too heavy to bring up and too scared to look. "I can't do this anymore."

Charles' tone suddenly changed, turning sweet and placating. He took Marko's hands and pulled them close to his own chest. "Marko. You need to understand the position that I'm in if we're ever going to be happy together. You're focusing on the wrong things. I am here with you right now, not her. You know I have lo-"

"I can't do this!" He tore his hands from his grasp and spun around without looking back, heading for the gilded doors.

The simple turn of the lock seemed impossible in his shaking grasp. The few seconds it took to turn the metal latch felt like eons. Behind him, he could feel Charles shift to who he really was. As he finally swung the door open, he heard the crumpling of paper behind him.

"Don't forget your check!" Charles yelled and Marko felt the paper ball hit the back of his head as he exited.

The air outside the mansion was freeing and stifling in unison, increasingly with every breath. Shame burned hot in his ears as he stormed down the bustling sidewalks. The words spoken around him were a cacophonous thrum lost behind the heartless repetition in his head.