Inamorata

Chapter Seventeen - Distant Deeps or Skies

Chapter 17. Author's note - sorry this is late. I've been terribly busy and schoolwork just has to come first. My apologies, but here it is! Comments and votes are always lovely!

Nightingale could not describe her emotions with words the next morning. They were high above the city, she and David, in his hovercraft, only a few minutes away from arriving back at the bordello, and Nightingale was contemplating the city with a mixture of sorrow and anger.

She belonged there, as a free woman, there in the sky, the pinnacle of freedom. She did not deserve to be locked away again the bordello, deep in that hellish place.

"You're quiet, Nightingale," said David.

"I know," she replied.

He nodded but said nothing, either not caring enough to pursue it, or not wanting to hear Nightingale rage or weep. David was ever the conversationalist, she observed with more than a little internal sarcasm.

"I suppose you know what's bothering me," she said softly.

"I have some idea," he returned coolly.

"I suppose I should be grateful," snapped Nightingale. She was staring out at the city with a hunger and a longing that was almost obscene.

"To me?" asked David.

"Yes. But not for the reason that you think," said Nightingale. "I've made my gratitude for my possible impending freedom very clear, but there's something else, something more I'm thankful for."

David looked over at her at the bitterness of her words.

"You know, this is the longest - since my first client - that I've gone without having to fuck a man," she observed acidly. "At the bordello, I get one night a week off, and even then Bobby still likes to have fun. But now...I haven't fucked a man since Friday, and it's Monday now."

"Friday...but I was with you on Friday, Nightingale," said David, the pulling together of his brows in evident confusion the only slip he made in an otherwise perfect mask of indifference.

"Bobby got to me first," said Nightingale. "Before I went out into the Club."

David did not flinch, as Nightingale knew Michael or Robin would have. Instead, he simply nodded mutely.

"Well, the faster we get you out of there, the better," he said, nodding along with his own words.

Nightingale didn't respond. She knew that, based on the fact that they had just passed the Corporation's building, they were getting closer to the bordello. She gave a sigh and her eyes fell upon the identity anklet.

She saw it in that moment, not as a simple piece of technology, unfeeling, unoffending, and incapable of, in itself. doing harm. She did not see it as a small piece of metal and plastic, utterly innocent, simply designed and used by those with malevolent intentions.

Instead, she saw everything she hated in that inky manacle. Her clients, her and her sisters' slavery, Bobby, Robin's rejection, David's coldness, even her strange frustration with Clarence, all seemed to be concentrated in that small device.

"I hate it," she snarled through gritted teeth. She was more angry in that instant than she had ever been in her life. Even in the moments where she'd wanted to murder her clients, strangle Bobby or beat the shit out of the people who hurt her, she'd never been as angry as this. 

"Nightingale," said David, looking over at her.

She began to shake, little growls and groans escaping from between her clenched teeth. Her display of fury must have been very alarming, for David immediately stopped the hovercraft, letting it float in midair, and turned to her.