Morphine (Complete)

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

"What's that you're making?"

Rannia leaned forward across the dining table, eyeing the mess of strings bundled into a heap in Mrs. Amir's lap. The woman lifted her dark eyes, then flitted them back down to her lap. A small smile came to her lips.

"Sewing a little pattern." Mrs. Amir lifted it with dainty fingers, laying the arrangement on the table. She ran the pad of her finger over the finer string work: blues, blacks, whites, browns. "It's crochet. I'm making a bluebird."

"Oh." Rannia tried her very best to keep any surprise from her voice. The blue shape looked anything but a bluebird. "My mom never taught me to sew. Is it fun?"

"Not really," Mrs. Amir admitted, picking absentmindedly at the fabric, "but it reminds me of my mama. She taught me as a young girl."

She didn't teach you very well.

"I'm bored." Rannia sat up from her seat and shifted to one closer to the older woman, smiling enthusiastically. Yes, being close to sharp needles was a good idea. Her eyes traced over Mrs. Amir's wrist, eyeing each blue and red vein showing through her pale skin.

Poke.

Prod.

Puncture.

"Mind showing me?"

Mrs. Amir laughed nervously, but nodded all the same. "You might as well just take what I've already started. Being honest, it looks nothing like a bluebird." The cloth was slid towards Rannia.

"You said it, not me," Rannia joked, picking it up. It felt light and airy. Her eyes scrutinized the tumbling strings trying to hold the image of a bluebird together. "Why a bluebird?"

"It was a tapestry at my house as a child," Mrs. Amir said. Her voice held buried memories, buried feelings. She held herself together surprisingly well. "I-I missed it, so I tried remaking it."

Rannia offered her a smile, something a sweet, loving, and caring girlfriend would do. Something Rannia would do if she were not a liar. Something she would do if she did indeed care about the Amirs. "Let me try. How do I do this?"

"You have to loop it around-yes, just like that. Then pull it through. I-oh. You're a natural."

"Look at that." Rannia beamed down at the strings in her hands, holding the two sticks between her hands.

"Mama would like you, I think," Mrs. Amir said, eyes falling to the table, a bittersweet look taking over her face.

"Moms are special, aren't they?"

"Yes. They'll sacrifice everything for you." Mrs. Amir waved a hand around as if to wave the topic away. "Come, now. Enough about me. What's special about your mama?"

Rannia began looping the strings around some more, fumbling with her movements, but somehow making a much more solid piece than Mrs. Amir ever had.

"Oh, nothing much. We didn't have tapestries when I was a kid." Rannia laughed. "I just had comic books and a load of Lego."

"Lego? Oh right, yes. Mykel played with those as a child."

"Mykel?" Rannia rose a brow. She found it hard to picture the brooding man as a small boy, sitting on the floor, sausage fingers pinching pieces of plastic together.

"All men were boys once, you know." Mrs. Amir, distracted, tugged on a string with her thumb and knotted it all together. Still unaware, she continued speaking, eyes glowing as she recalled one of her sons' younger years. "He loved snow, all cold things. He'd play with Lego in the middle of a storm. I remember being so worried. Now I know it was part of what made him...him."

"My mom would always worry when I played with knives with my brothers," Rannia said. Mrs. Amir's face paled at the words. Knives, the older woman thought, knives? "Oh-fake knives, sorry." She offered the shocked woman a soft smile. "Fake ones, of course. We weren't...we weren't like gangsters or anything." Rannia laughed lightly after she finished speaking, trying to cover up her mistake. "Like foam or plastic ones. You know."

She made a jabbing motion with her crochet stick, awkwardly moving it through the air. "Fun."

"You're not embarrassing yourself already, are you?" Carter joked, nearing them. "You've only just met my mom, Rannia."

Rannia glared at the 18 year old boy.

"What?" Carter replied sheepishly, raising his arms in defense, forgetting he was holding a mug of hot tea, and spilt it all across the floor. "Oh sh-" a glance at his mother "-shrimp. I'll clean that right up."

As Carter cleaned the floor, on his hands and knees, the rest of the family decided to wake up and enter the room.

They moved in a circuit, each move a routine, each move practiced, and each entirely expected. Rannia felt out of place for more than one reason, one being the growing appeal of the knives in the kitchen, and second being her lack of place in the room at all.

The twins, Lucy and Amelia, woke up at quite different times from the other. Upon exiting their shared room in the bungalow, one sported a chipper smile whilst the other slugged along behind, clutching their morning robe and tripping over their slippers. Lucy sat down right next to Rannia, inciting a conversation between the two about absolutely nothing. Amelia lay down on the couch and sipped on a cup of luke-warm tap water.

I could leave her alive last, if it's a morning ambush, Rannia noted.

Timothy-Toto, rather, seemed the least extravagant of them all, opting for a simple kiss to his mother's cheek in greeting, a grumble about being called Toto, and a quick snatch of untoasted-toast before he quickly retreated to the farthest seat in the room.

Riccard and Jared had yet to appear, and Rannia doubted they were home. Infamous for being the most active members of the Amir's business, it was no surprise they couldn't spare a moment for morning tea and half-burnt eggs.

Mykel remained outside.

"Toto, do you think Rannia would look good with red hair?" Lucy asked, alerting the ready stare of the twenty-some year old boy. Toto's look became a glare.

"It's Timothy, Lucy."

"Yeah, yeah, but red." The girl laced her fingers into Rannia's hair, pulling it out for effect. "Maybe pink. Scarlet?"

"I like it the way it is," Rannia said sweetly, slowly prying her hair from the girl's grasp.

"She's pretty with whatever," Toto remarked, earning a slap to the back of his head from his mom. "Ow-jesus-"

"That's my girlfriend," Carter cut in rather quietly, popping back up from his spot under the table. "But yeah, she's pretty." The boy, which Rannia was comfortable referring to as a puppy, turned towards her and gave the most pathetic smile; hopeful, sweet, and oh, oh so naïve.

"Thanks, both of you," Rannia replied, smiling at the two brothers. There were so many people in the Amir family, so many people to kill. She still had to make their deaths untraceable; her official alias under the government was a highschool graduate living under her parent's roof for free. She could not leave a trace at the murders, or she would be found out, her identity would be found out, and she'd have not only the entire crime world against her, but every cop and officer as well.

She needed a disguise, she needed a new name.

A unisex alias, with no relations to the Romero family. A cloak, an identity, a prestige.

She needed to use what she'd brought.

Her eyes fell to the open newspaper of the table. There were many words, printed with black ink, many meanings, many photos. But the face of a smiling man stood out. Garcia, he was called. Repair your cars here! it read.

"Garcia..." Rannia whispered quietly under her breath, fingers ghosting the edge of the newspaper.

"What's that?" Lucy asked, turning to face Rannia.

"Nothing," she replied. Her eyes fell back to the man on the paper. Garcia. Garcia. Garcia.

She smiled. "Nothing at all."

(a/n: what do you think of...knife play?)