[FIC]An Alternative To Love, Repo! The Genetic Opera, Luigi/Shilo, R, 18,688 words

[person4]

Title: An Alternative To Love (part one)
Fandom: Repo! The Genetic Opera
Pairing:Luigi/Shilo (eventually)
Rating: R (for language)
Words: 18,688
Requested by scifiroots here (previously filled)
Notes: For June fic-a-day. Draws from the official Myspaces and twitter on top of the movie, but the one thing you probably need to know from them is that if you're looking at Pavi's dialog and going "Shouldn't that be signora?" not with Pavi it shouldn't.

Amber thought she had them all wrapped around her little finger. With their dad dead and not one of them named his rightful heir she actually thought she could slip under the radar in all the confusion and steal the whole fucking company right out from under his nose.

Well, he'd let her go right on thinking that. She seemed to have forgotten that he was Luigi fucking Largo, the only one of the three of them to inherit a god-damned brain from their dad instead of somehow finding a way to wander through life with an empty skull. If she'd had any sense at all she would have realized that he'd only be playing along like a good boy if he had a plan of his own running in the background; it was useful for him that she didn't.

He'd realized how useful it would be to let her take the spotlight first practically from the minute she'd started grabbing for it. Every sycophantic organ-junkie who would have fallen all over themselves just for a chance to lick up the sweat from his dad's nuts and couldn't stand to see anyone else (especially anyone who Rotti hadn't chosen himself) leading GeneCo would pile their hate on the first person to take his spot, and be a hell of a lot less bitchy about whoever kicked the 'usurper' out of their seat. Every fucking peasant who started throwing around words like 'evil' or 'monsters' every time they had trouble scrounging up enough cash to make a payment would be softened up by Amber's 'kinder and gentler GeneCo' campaign without Luigi himself having to do any of the hard work, and once he announced that his first plan as president was getting rid of the Repo Men they'd practically be creaming their pants over him. They were all too afraid of the big, bad, organ-stealing boogeyman to focus on the fact that he'd be getting rid of the payment plans along with them. And it would give Pavi a chance to get used to the idea that he was the last and least of their family in business affairs, the spot that should have been his right from the start even if Amber was younger, and once the idea was firmly in what passed for a mind with him it wouldn't matter if the people in first and second place switched.

As for Amber herself... well, she was the best possible choice as the buffer between his dad's presidency and his own. No matter how good of a face she was managing to keep up in public, she was still a Z-junkie. It wasn't hard to wrest control from someone who spent most of the day as a complete fucking zombie.

Besides all that, it gave him time to work on his very own secret weapon, and for once that didn't mean a knife.

His brother and sister were both content to completely forget about little Shilo Wallace. He couldn't blame them; it was fucking enraging to think about how close they'd come to losing everything because of some god damned game their father decided to play. But thousands of people had watched Rotti declare her his chosen heir from the audience, millions more saw it as that night's opera went on to become the most popular holorecording in history, and that right there lead to the potential for one hell of a tool in the hands for anyone who knew the right way to use it.

And not only was Luigi the only one of them smart enough to realize that, he was also the only one of them with a chance in hell of winning her to his side. He'd watched the security recordings his dad had kept of the girl and had seen that Amber lost any chance of winning the kid over with her bitch fits about Blind Mag; the look on Shilo's face the second she spotted Mag made it obvious that she was practically getting wet in her panties over any attention at all from their pet singer. And Luigi had seen for himself that Shilo reacted with the same amount of disgust any sane person would give Pavi; Luigi had been the one who'd needed to pull her safely away from the freak, after all.

And it had been in that moment, when he'd had his arm wrapped tightly around her shoulder, that he'd realized that all the batshit insanity that had gone on that day had been enough to distract her from the one little thing he'd done that might get him on her shit list as well. She'd seen Nathan go down, but hadn't noticed just who had shoved the knife in his back; she was the type of girl who would never have let Luigi lay a hand on her after stabbing her beloved daddy otherwise, no matter how pissed off she'd been with him.

And that was the only thing he'd needed to know.

• • •

It took him too damned long to find her, because he'd been wasting his time searching sane places for a seventeen-year-old who'd just inherited enough money to almost be considered higher than peasant class to be. Her own damned house, decent hotels, popular vacations spots abroad in case she just wanted to get away; he even kept an eye on who went through every fucking half-decent surGEN in the city so he'd catch her if she went in to get sliced and diced. That had lead to him learning way the hell too much about Amber's most recent modifications from idiots who thought he was poking around because he gave a shit about her addiction in the process.

Who the fuck would have expected that the little idiot would turn up sleeping in dumpsters, cuddled up against the same graverobber that Luigi knew for a fact his sister had her surGENs tighten her disease-ridden cunt up for whenever she decided that paying for her black-market zydrate was just too fucking banal back before she took over the company and could get the real drug freely.

When the GenCop who'd found her passed Luigi the pictures of her cozy new sleeping arrangements he'd just about given up on her then and there. Anyone stupid enough to let a cock that had been in his sister anywhere near them was too fucking dumb to live, as far as he was concerned. The only reason he didn't drop his old plan that second and start working on a new one was that he'd put too damned much time into hunting her down not to at least keep an eye on her for a couple of weeks and see if there was anything worth working with there.

And what he found was... hilarious. It quickly became obvious that her nighttime cuddling sessions were completely innocent--Luigi decided that the fucking graverobber probably didn't even know what the hell to do with a piece of ass if it didn't throw itself at him like a slut the way Amber did--and the truth was both a thousand times funnier and less disgusting. Who would ever have imagined Nathan Wallace's precious little daughter, whom he'd tried to keep locked up safe in her room for her whole damned life, learning how to drain corpses of their glow from some man-whore of a dealer? It made Luigi wish to god that his pop was still alive so he could rub his face in what had become of his little protegee. The sheer spite of that desire, after months of wishing to god that his pop was still alive just because he missed his daddy like some sniveling little baby, made him feel more like himself than he'd been since that night at the opera.

She wasn't on zydrate herself, again managing to dodge doing something stupid enough for him to stop paying attention to her. In fact, she seemed just as disgusted by the mindless bastards who came seeking her wares as Luigi himself was. She was polite enough to their faces, a blandly pleasant smile plastered so neatly across her face that Luigi might have thought his father had actually taught her a thing or two about doing business while grooming her as his heir if it weren't for the fact that she didn't even try acting interested, or caring, or any of the other pathetic fucking pleasantries that needed to be faked when you had your business face on. She didn't even keep hiding her real feelings for longer than it took to turn away from the pathetic Z-zombie of the moment, showing her disgust in the twist of her lips or the wrinkling of her nose the second she thought nobody was watching who wasn't too damned out of it to be paying attention.

She sure as hell didn't play with the addicts the way her filthy fucking mentor did. In fact, he watched her get better at skittering away from any of them that tried to put their hands on her by the day, and the more obviously they whored themselves out for their fixes the more distance she tried to keep from them. She sent them over to the graverobber to get their injections, or let them do it themselves, but she never touched them herself. Not a display of good goddamned business sense, handing over one of the Z-guns that could only be gotten by stealing from GeneCo, but it didn't matter all that much when anyone hunting down black market Zydrate would be too fucking desperate to shoot up as soon as possible to think of just running off with the gun.

It was only after Luigi was positive that he wouldn't end up with another Amber fucking Sweet on his hands with her that he decided to drop in for a little chat.

He waited until one of the rare times when her nanny was gone, off fucking a junkie or chasing down corpses somewhere that he'd decided was too dangerous for his little apprentice, before making his way to her trash heap. He kept to the shadows until he was sure that he had his most charming smile fixed firmly in place, the one that he only bothered with when there was some reason that he needed to avoid making the fucking peasants scream 'Murderer!' or 'Monster!' or 'Run away, he'd got a knife!' It was only when he was sure that he'd be able to hold the expression, keeping his temper as steady and calm as it could ever possibly get, that he stepped out of the alley he was lurking in and called out to her.

She didn't recognize him at first, his face shadowed by fedora he wore pulled low (a fucking fabulous look on him; Sinatra could eat his heart out) to keep any goddamned peons from noticing who he was and possibly passing the word on to Amber or Pavi. Luigi counted it to her credit that as soon as he got close enough for her to make out his face she was immediately wary and on guard, shifting until there was street behind her instead of a wall, but she lost points for being so obvious about it. If he'd wanted to he would already have had his knife in her chest the second he'd seen she was skittish, before she even had a chance to decide to run. Though she might not be entirely to blame; the last time he'd seen her she'd had piles of hair to hide behind when she needed to mask her expression, but there was nothing left of it but a half-inch of fuzz, leaving her face wide open.

"Shilo Wallace, so it is you!" he said, smiling, jovial, for all the world like he'd just happened to be passing through her crapsack slum and boy wasn't it a pleasant surprise to see her, no, he didn't know she'd be there, no need to even think that.

"I'm not--" she started, but her voice cracked with fear and she needed to swallow it down before she could continue, her eyes darting around like she was searching for GenCops in every shadow. He hoped that she didn't notice the way his smile widened just a tick at her alarm. "I don't want anything to do with GeneCo, so if you're here because Amber's worried I'll try stealing it, you can tell her I... I wouldn't be living in the trash if I was planning on trying to make people think I'd be a good company president."

His smile became a little harder to keep in place at her assumption that he'd be there for his bitch of a sister, but he was able to hold it. "Of course you don't. Nobody expected you too after everything Pop did to you," he said, with the perfect notes of understanding and concern in his voice. If things had gone according to plan he would have began working on gaining her trust then, but instead she seemed to feel like his agreeing that she wasn't a threat was all that she needed from him. She nodded at him like they'd reached an agreement, then turned tail and fled.

He'd assumed that he'd be able to catch her easily if he'd needed to, sickly thing that she'd been after seventeen years of chugging down poisons, but she was gone in moments, vanishing into the crowd of addicts who always swarmed her street. Not that he'd have been able to chase anyway, when frightening her by hunting her down could make his work on her a hell of a lot harder.

Knowing that didn't make him any less pissed off that'd she'd gotten away when he'd hardly had a minute to talk to her.

"Fucking hell," he growled, searching for a way to vent his anger as he whirled back towards the alley he'd arrived through. And luckily the one he spotted was already hidden by the wall, where Shilo wouldn't be able to spot it if she was lurking in the crowd watching to see his next move.

He grabbed the junkie slut by her hair as he walked past her, not even breaking his stride as he dragged her further away from Shilo's dumpster; if he was going to play Mister Nice Guy for the brat it'd be better not to leave any messes near her 'home'. He could tell that the bitch he'd grabbed was already out of her mind on Z--she didn't scream or struggle as he dragged her along, her bloodstream flowing with too much glow for the pain to even make an impression--which was good for keeping a low profile but a fucking disappointment in other ways.

The fact that she was in trouble was only just finally starting to force itself into her brain when he decided that they'd gone far enough, but she didn't have enough time to do more than feebly squirm before he slid a knife from his sleeve and drove it into her chest. He wanted blood and he got it, aiming to tear through veins and arteries as the woman gasped and twitched. The fucking idiot couldn't even pull together enough sense to realize that screaming for help might just be a good idea, even if her nerves were too dead to let her know that she should be in agony.

Not that it would have done her any good. He was a Largo; nobody was going to stop him from doing whatever the fuck he wanted.

His mind was clear by the time the body finished its twitching and he left it to be swept up with the rest of the human waste. He might not have had much time to work on the girl, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It meant that there also hadn't been enough time for his temper to slip even the slightest bit. When she looked back on meeting him that day she would remember him as friendly and composed, and should feel silly for fleeing him for no reason. He'd leave her to reflect on that for a few days.

In the meantime, he needed a clean shirt.

• • •

She was angry the next time he approached her, pissed off at some asshole hassling her because she was out of zydrate. He found her in the graveyard, jamming the needle of her syringe into the skulls of corpses with far more force than necessary, her face twisted into a scowl. It was a much better look for her than the timid confusion she'd shown through most of the previous times he'd seen her.

"That needle's going to break soon if you don't go easier on it," he told her. It wasn't the greeting he'd planned on, but damn if he didn't hate seeing a good sharp instrument ruined.

She jumped at the sound of his voice, scrambling around to face him. Her angry expression wavered for a minute when she saw him, but she managed to hold onto it. It looked even better seen head-on, and Luigi added a few underlines to the mental note he'd already made to keep Pavi the hell away from her; her face had already drawn the freak's interest when she was just being mousy, and if she started showing spirit he'd only want it more.

"You again?" she asked, trying to sound bold though there was a quaver in her voice that she couldn't quite hide. "What, does Amber send you to buy her zydrate now because she's too busy to come on her own?"

Luigi was going to get really fucking sick of it fast if she kept assuming he was playing Amber's gofer all the goddamned time. "One thing we've gotta get clear if we're going to keep running into each other like this," he said, doing his best not to let much annoyance show. "I don't play errand boy for my sister."

"Or tell her who you just happened to meet?"

"What I do after business hours is none of her business."

"And... and, what? You're just spending your free time in the graveyard for fun?"

"One of my bodyguards was buried near here today," he said smoothly, and, like all the best lies, truthfully, allowing her to draw her own conclusions. As he expected, after a moment her face softened a little, undoubtedly imagining the man dying by heroically protecting Luigi in the course of his duty, and that Luigi was showing a hidden softer side by sneaking down to visit his grave and honor his sacrifice. And, hell, if she bothered grabbing a newspaper to do some fact checking it would even corroborate that version of the bastard's death; letting it slip that Luigi had stabbed him a dozen times for splashing tea on his shoes would have been bad publicity.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Um, if you want to show me which grave is his, I could make sure to leave it alone."

It was possible that he should have bothered finding out which grave they'd stuffed the guy in before using him as an excuse, but it was a simple matter to wave it off with a snort. "We're not stupid enough not to realize that anyone buried down here's going to be dug up again within a week, no matter how many laws we make. Might as well let you have as much of a chance at him as anyone else." He stepped closer to her, keeping a sharp eye on her reaction as he approached. She watched him just as closely, her muscles tensed like she was ready to flee again if needed, but a little of the tension drained back out when he stopped at a gravestone that looked sturdy enough to lean against. Not too bright of her, to relax at all, but just what he was hoping to see. "You realize that telling a Largo that you're a graverobber isn't the brainiest move to make, don't you?"

She looked at him like she had no idea whether he was being serious or not. "You're the one who just gave me advice on doing it. It would have been a little late to try denying it when you found me with a needle in someone's skull."

"You'd better be ready to try if anyone else catches you out here. Not everyone will be nice enough to turn a blind eye to a felon."

"So why are you?" she asked, the anger she'd been displaying when he first approached her flaring up again as she tossed the body she'd been draining back into its coffin. "You don't know me, you've got no reason to help me, and I don't have anything left for you people to try to take from me."

"Don't group me together with Amber and fucking Pavi!" he snapped, the insult of her 'you people' tossing them all together too great for him to entirely keep his temper steady. But when she flinched he managed to pull it together again. "Maybe I'm just curious about how the hell Nathan Wallace's daughter wound up living on the streets and robbing graves. I know Pops paid him enough to give you a decent inheritance."

"I'm not touching that blood money," she all but spat, a shudder shaking her body so strongly that Luigi could see it from where he stood. He was tempted to point out that being a drug dealing graverobber didn't give her a fucking moral high ground to stand on if she felt like getting preachy about killing, but it would probably just make her bitch more. He watched her as she struggled to get the coffin's lid neatly back into place, then scrambled back out of the hole to stare at him considering. After a second her expression firmed, and she grabbed a shovel off the ground and thrust it out at him. "Okay, if you want to know so much, you can help me work while I tell you."

His eyes narrowed as he looked at the shovel. "'Help you work,'" he repeated, keeping his tone perfectly flat. She wanted Luigi fucking Largo to dig in the ground like some filthy commoner?

"I can't shovel as quickly if I'm having a conversation, and I need to get through at least a few more graves before I'm done for the night," she explained, keeping her own eyes steadily on his face. "It's your choice, Mr. Largo. If you really want to know why I'm doing this, you'll help me fill in this grave. If you don't, you can just leave me alone and not get mud on your suit."

He tore the shovel out of her hand and quickly transferred his scowl to the pile of dirt she wanted him to move before she could see it. It would be so fucking easy to just swing it around and smash her skull open, to leave her in the pool of her own brains and blood for her disgusting companion to find for daring to ask this for him, but god-fucking-damn it if she wasn't still the easiest path he'd been able to find back to his rightful place in the company and if getting her to want to open up to him wasn't an important step in winning her over.

He doubted that he'd ever completely forgive his father for putting him into a situation where there was someone from outside of the family who he couldn't just gut when if he got pissed off.

"Well?" he snapped over his shoulder at her when he'd scooped up his first few shovelfuls of dirt and thrown them into the hole. The last time he'd dug in the ground he'd been nine-years-old, and he'd buried Pavi in his sandbox up to his neck and left him there in the hopes that nobody would find him. The freak's entire face had wound up badly sunburned, and he'd thrown a bigger fit about that than about having been abandoned in the first place.

Now he tried to imagine that it was Pavi he was burying again, or Amber, or, best choice of all, both of them crammed into one shallow grave. The beautiful mental pictures that thought gave him made the labor almost worth it.

"Sorry," Shilo finally said quietly, picking up another shovel--the graverobber's, he figured--and joining him to do her half of the work. "I... I just thought I was going to make you go away. I never thought you'd actually do this."

"Looks like I'm just full of surprises today," he said, experimenting to see how much he could slow down before she'd start complaining that he wasn't doing his share of the work. It was really goddamned embarrassing that he was already starting to get tired from the digging while she, the little girl who'd spent seventeen years locked in a bedroom with her blood flowing with poison, had emptied the hole out to begin with and still looked fresh under all the dirt. "Why the hell are you wasting energy putting this corpse back in the ground instead of moving onto the next one?"

Luigi had actually thought he was just asking a harmless simple question--if he was going to be dragged around on shoveling duty for long he wanted to know why she expected him to do twice as much work as necessary when most of the robbers that swarmed the cemetery just left bodies lying around behind them--so he wasn't expecting it when her face suddenly screwed up like she was fighting down the urge to cry. She closed her eyes tightly, drew a deep breath, and seemed more steadied when she opened them again, but there was still a quaver in her voice when she said, "Look, I know I'm doing a really horrible thing here, okay? But I can at least keep enough basic human decency to make sure these poor people go back to resting in peace once I'm done."

It was hard for Luigi to hold off a snort that might send her down into new depths of self-righteousness. 'Basic human decency'? He could tell her whole fucking stories about what that would get her. You actually try treating someone nicely and it might be easier to get something out of them, but nine times out of ten it wasn't long before they started thinking that they could walk all over him; being asked to dig a hole by someone who didn't expect him to do it wasn't nearly as annoying as people who actually thought he'd empty out his wallet for them if they spun him some sob story. And it wasn't like the newspapers would ever put out the story that 'today Luigi Largo tried out being a 'decent' guy, so if niceness is what you're looking for when you're doing business look him up and give him one more business deal to shove in the face of everyone that needed evidence that he was the most worthy heir' to make it worth it.

Terrifying the hell out of everyone might not win him any hearts, but at least they knew better than to try any shit with him if they didn't want to learn what their innards looked like. Besides, it was a hell of a lot more fun to just cut down any peasant who pissed him off and not care about being diplomatic.

"The only thing I know really well is entomology, but it's not like I can make a career out of that when I don't even have a diploma," she said suddenly, keeping her eyes on her work. "And Graverobber's the only friend I have. I don't know anybody else who could help me stay on my feet without using dad's money or going back to living in that prison."

She stabbed her shovel into the ground and looked at him with big sad eyes. "So you can stop now. That's the whole story; I'm doing this because I don't have any other choice."

• • •

He'd thought things were going well, after two meetings and not a drop of Shilo's blood being spilt even when she'd really deserved it the last time. So he was a little surprised by her look of complete exasperation the next time she saw him.

"Are you a Z-addict too? Is that what this is about? Do you keep coming out here looking for someone who won't know you to buy from, and running into me instead?" Faster than he would have thought she could move she had her zydrate gun unstrapped from her leg and pressed against his neck, the needle of it pricking at his skin. Maybe he'd been too nice to her in their past meetings; this time she met his eyes without nearly enough fear. "If that's it, you should just tell me; if I cared enough to go to the papers I'd have already let them know that they're right about your sister."

"Get that shit the fuck away from me!" Luigi snarled, hardly even listening to her. He grabbed her wrist and yanked her hand away from him almost hard enough to dislocate her arm before her finger had any chance to twitch on the trigger. "Didn't that fucking graverobber teach you not to shove that thing into someone's neck?"

"Let go! That hurts, Luigi," she said, struggling to pull her arm out of his grip, and there was the fear that had been missing in her eyes.

It was tempting to squeeze just a little more tightly, twist just a little further back, give her a lesson that she wouldn't forget about why she shouldn't take his goodwill for granted. But then she would run, and never let him get close enough to talk with her again. Slowly, one finger at a time, he forced himself to release her.

She yanked her hand to her chest at once, and backed off a few feet to regard him warily. "I don't give people the injections, so I never let him teach me anything about them," she admitted after a minute.

"Well, aren't I just a fucking lucky bastard, that you decided to make an exception," he said, and she flinched back another step at the way he glared.

"You could take it as a compliment," she said in a conciliatory tone. "You're not too... too gross to touch, like all of them," her eyes darted sideways, to down the road where her customers, the filth of the earth, slumped on the street in drug hazes, or piled around an oil can fire for warmth, or searched for anyone who hadn't completely blown their own cash on glow who might trade a few chips for a quick fuck and a lifetime dealing with STDs. "And I didn't plan on pulling the trigger, so whatever you were worried about wouldn't have happened."

"Well whoop-de-fucking-doo. Now listen up, and I'll tell you why you don't fuck around with that garbage with me. Better count yourself lucky; you won't find many dealers who've gotten a lesson from somebody who knows what the hell they're talking about and read the medical research to back it up." He reached out to snag the gun out of her hand, tossing it back to her after he'd snapped the vial of zydrate out of it. "This shit usually just sits around in your brain," he said, tapping the vial against his temple as illustration. "You'd better know that by now, you drain it often enough. You want to guess what happens to someone when they've suddenly got twice as much zydrate as normal in their head because some idiot jammed it into an artery that takes it straight there? One little change of plan, and tomorrow you'd have started finding out how much worse the world would get when fucking Pavi and Amber got to do whatever they wanted because you ruined the only brain left in the Largo family!"

"Okay, I get it! I'm sorry; it's not like I purposely picked your neck to freak you out, the way you dress just doesn't offer many spots with bare skin to pick from. You don't need to get so angry about something that didn't happen." She held out her hand until he passed back her zydrate vial, which she slid into place under one of the straps wrapped around her thigh. "You still haven't told me why you're here. It would be really neat if you tried telling the truth this time; I was willing to buy that you just happened to be in the same place as me twice, but three times stops being a coincidence."

Luigi forced himself to calm down, his face to smooth out, before feeding her another lie built out of the truth. "Fine, fine. I knew both of your parents, you know."

Shilo groaned and pressed her hands to her eyes. "Please tell me you haven't decided that the best way to honor your father's memory is to finish up his work of ruining my life to punish them."

Luigi snorted. "Are you kidding me? Your mom used to come into my room at night boo-hoo-hooing because she hated being with Pop so much. I was glad when she ran off with Nathan and I didn't need to put up with that anymore. I don't know why she agreed to marry Pop to begin with." He had his suspicions though, mostly involving Mag's sight. He didn't know for sure whether or not it was true, but he liked to believe it was; it was the type of beautiful fucking irony you didn't usually see in real life, if she'd gotten herself killed as a result of a plot to get Mag the eyes she'd ended up hating so much. "As for your old man, you really think any of us were in on Dad's plan to toss out our inheritance to get back at him? We always just thought he was a family friend, and Pop's favorite employee, even after Marnie."

Favorite punching bag was still a type of favorite, and they had always thought that their father was content just making sure old Weepy Wallace never let go of his guilt for second as his revenge.

"So now your story is that you're hanging around because you liked my parents so much? It sure didn't seem like you were such good friends when I was the only one trying to help my dad at the opera."

"You wouldn't have been on my pop's side either, if yours had been the one to take the advantage out there, so don't you even try getting self-righteous about it." He pulled back out his charming smile, the one he hadn't used since their first conversation, and flashed it at her. "Don't start thinking I'm going to drag you in off the streets, but I can waste an hour now and then making sure you haven't died in an alley yet for them."

She looked at him silently for a moment, and he did his best to radiate earnestness as she judged the bullshit he'd fed her. Finally she said, "Has anybody ever told you that you have Rotti's smile?"

For just a moment a touch of honesty entered his expression. If there was one person Luigi'd known in his life whom he'd given more than two shits about it was his father, no matter how pissed off his final act had left him. One person that he could be proud to be compared to. "Haven't heard that one before."

"Well, it's true. You look just like he did when he was trying to trick me into thinking he was my friend." She turned from him and began walking away. Just as he was fantasizing about how good it would feel to plunge one of his knives into the wide clear target of her back she paused and, without turning back around, added, "If you're not going to stop bothering me, maybe you should just stop trying to convince me you're such a nice guy instead. You're a lot more sincere when you're swearing at me every other word."

• • •

It took him too damned long to start wondering why it had taken so many weeks to first find her. The GenCops were pathetically bad at ever catching the damned graverobber, but they could usually at least keep track of his movements from one step behind. Even before he'd set them to looking for her, they should have reported in that he was suddenly bringing an apprentice to the graveyard, and once Luigi had sent out pictures of her they should have been able to recognize her for who she was even with her missing hair throwing off her appearance.

What he found when he investigated their failure was proof that he'd been absolutely right in his suspicions about how certain people would react to Rotti's almost-heir. Amber, brainless bimbo that she was, had seen restaffing the branches of GeneCo with people loyal to her as too much effort when they already had enough workers, and Luigi sure as hell hadn't put much effort into convincing her otherwise when it would hopefully be one more thing in his favor when the day came to make his move.

On days when the front pages of all the tabloids were dedicated to trying to convince the world that his whole family was made up of some kind of monsters (an insult that didn't especially bother Luigi; better a monster than a 'creature') a person could almost forget how damned much most of the peasants still loved his father. Terror of the Repo Man and rumors a few dirty deeds weren't nearly enough to overwhelm the well-deserved adoration they'd heaped on him for providing a solution to the plague of organ failures. And there weren't many people who felt that adoration more then the ones who looked at every branch of law enforcement and military available, and decided that the one they wanted to fight under was GeneCo.

In fact, that loyalty had been one of Rotti's unspoken requirements when he was choosing new members of the GenCops; he'd had no desire to arm any bastard who just wanted to play with cutting-edge weapons or get paid to fight. It would make it too easy for someone to turn them against him. That carefully searched out loyalty lasted even once he was in the grave; the girl might never have officially been named his successor, but after Luigi's dad had publicly denounced his own children the fuckers put the person he'd come closest to declaring his heir before the orders of his own flesh and blood. Just as Luigi had thought some people would, although he'd misjudged just how many.

He was definitely going to need to make sure she ended up dead if he couldn't win her over. Couldn't have them know he was the one who caused it though; maybe he'd be able to slip the idea to Amber or Pavi and have them face all of the fallout.

The next time he decided to allow her into his presence, he figured he'd test the limits of that loyalty instead of bothering to make the effort of driving out to see her. "Whoever catches Shilo Wallace the next time she sneaks into the graveyard and brings her to me gets their next paycheck doubled," he'd announced through a comm transmission to every GenCop in the city, and then after a second's thought had added, "and keep your fucking mouths shut about it around Amber and Pavi, unless you want to lose your fucking tongues. The kid too, when you're dragging her in."

It was just a matter of waiting then... and of keeping an eye on who suddenly showed an abnormal interest in working overtime in an attempt to bump up the amount of cash in their checks.

She must have started keeping a decent drug stockpile after the day he'd talked to her in the cemetery, because it was well over a week before one of the grunts finally showed up and told him that she was in custody. "And, uh... you might want to know, Mr. Largo, sir, that some of the other officers tried to keep me bringing her in." He rubbed a cut on his cheek, it and a bruise above his temple his only visible injuries though his uniform was enough of a mess to make it likely there were more bruises beneath it.

He didn't even notice Luigi pulling out a knife until he lashed out to slash open his throat. "I'll make sure to look into that!" he let the cop know as he wiped the blood off his blade, then he slipped it up his sleeve and left and locked the room. Most people in GeneCo wouldn't be stupid enough to help someone they saw with knife wound and risk having him come after them next, but he wanted to be sure the bastard bled out before anyone found him. If the fucker was willing to sell her out to him so easily he'd pass the information on to Pavi or Amber just as quick, and probably let them know Luigi whad been after her first when he did it. It was almost a shame, he'd been smart enough to wait until Luigi was alone to let him know she'd been caught and to make sure to hide her in a private holding room where nobody else would know she was around--a detail Luigi himself had forgotten to put in his orders--but Luigi made it a point never to regret his kills.

He'd need to take care of the others who'd seemed likely to go after her soon. He usually preferred to off the people he needed killed himself, but this time he though it might be fun to let their names 'accidentally' slip to the other GenCops and then sit back and watch the hunt begin.

He stopped for a moment outside of the room she was being held in to work himself up to a proper level of anger before greeting her. It was a novel feeling; usually when he was putting on an act for the peasants it was all about faking a smile and not letting them see how damned much wasting his time on them pissed him off. Just being at a baseline level of annoyed when he needed to present 'what the hell do you think you were doing, you idiot?'-level rage wasn't a problem he usually needed to take care of, but it was one easily fixed just by thinking for two second about how GeneCo's upper tiers were currently ordered.

"I can't fucking believe you let yourself get caught!" he shouted as he slammed open the door.

From the way she flinched and wrapped her arms around herself, he could tell that she hadn't been expecting that type of entrance from whoever came to interrogate her. "It's not like I was planning on it," she said sullenly when she was done being surprised. "They must have changed their patrol schedule since the last time I was there; nobody should have been in the area for another twenty minutes. And it's not like I could do something against a guy with a gun."

Luigi made a mental note to ream the GenCops out for setting patrol schedules obvious enough for the gutter trash she was getting all her information from to memorize it as he readied himself for his last big attempt to win her over. If she didn't show at least a hint that she was starting to trust him by the time she left the building he was going to start thinking up a new plan, because winning her over would obviously take way the hell too much time if it ever happened at all. "Do you realize how fucking lucky you are that I was the first person they found to report to?" he asked, glaring at her. "Amber knows damned well many people want to see her booted from the position she's grabbed. How the fuck do you think the selfish little cunt is going to react if she finds out the heir Pop wanted has been lurking around on GeneCo property even if it is just the fucking graveyard? And that would still be better that what you'd get if fucking Pavi found out that you were trapped in a room that locks from the outside, but whatever the hell he did you'd have to just be glad that now that he's become Amber's lapdog he wouldn't maim you too much before dragging you to her."

Her eyes had grown wide and she'd begun to worry her bottom lip with her teeth as he spoke. "You make it sound like your brother and sister are monsters."

Luigi snorted. "Pop got one or two things right his last night. Those two things."

"I think that he didn't have many nice things to say about you either," she said, her eyes dodging away from him to stare off at the corner of the room when she said it.

"And he tried to say you were a fucking killer."

After a long stretched-out moment of silence she gave a small nod and Luigi needed to hide the surge of triumph seeing it gave him. "Yeah. He got a lot of things wrong that night."

He pressed his hand between her shoulder blades, watching the way she flinched but didn't pull away, and pushed her towards the door. "Time to get you the hell out of here before word spreads."

Getting her out should have been the easy part. It wasn't that much distance to a side door that he could shove her out without much worry about anyone important seeing her leave, and none of the nobodies they met on the way there would spread rumors about the company Luigi Largo chose to keep. Not that it kept him from grabbing her whenever he saw someone coming and pulling her into a position where his body hid her identity from whoever it was; making her think that it was important she stay hidden, and that he was doing his best to make sure that she was, was an easy way to earn more brownie points.

It went perfectly well right up until he spotted a shadow on the wall ahead of them warning of someone coming around the corner. Someone who's shadow Luigi had, luckily, learned to recognize years before (primarily by the lumpy shape the Genterns constantly hanging off of him caused) so he could dodge into a room when the little freak was coming. Unfortunately there were no convenient rooms he could reach in that stretch of the hall before Pavi came around the corner, so he did the next best thing.

He pulled Shilo against him until her head was pressed against his shoulder. "Don't pull far enough away for Pavi to see your face," he hissed at her when she tried to yank straight back away in her surprise. For once he didn't need to rely on any acting skills at all to get the urgency in his voice; all the time he'd put into this plan would be wasted if his brother got a good look at her. She seemed to realize just how serious he was being because she went still as he draped one side of the large overcoat he was wearing across her, holding it in place with his arm across her back and effectively hiding her body. Faces were Pavi's main interest, but Luigi wouldn't past him to memorize bodies too, just so he'd be able to recognize any girls who got away from him unmutilated from any angle.

Besides, she dressed like a slum prostitute, and he didn't want Pavi thinking he was spending time with one of those either.

"What the hell are you doing down here, Brother?" he asked as soon as Pavi turned the corner, trying to take the advantage in the conversation by getting the first word in.

"Ah, it is so tragic!" Pavi said, smiling as blandly as he could with his horror show of a face. "The family of a singora who kept the Pavi company last week came to tell him that she disappeared after her time here! Of course the Pavi offered to have our GenCops search right away."

Luigi rolled his eyes. "They're going to think to try the fucking morgue sooner or later," he said, and felt Shilo stiffen against her. It had taken her long enough to realize that he wasn't just fucking around when he warned her about Pavi.

"The Pavi will be sure to send a bouquet if that happens. Gladiolus, as lovely as she was!" Otherwise known as the Paviche Special, Luigi knew, to the florist who would arrange them. It was the same fucking thing Pavi always sent to any families brave enough to approach him about their daughters going 'missing'. Then the moment Luigi had known was coming arrived, as Pavi turned his attention to Shilo. "But I see now my brother is the one with a singora. Come, let the Pavi see you, m'bella."

"Back the fuck off, Pavi," Luigi growled at him, pulling his coat across her a little more fully. It was a little tempting to close the other side over her as well and hide her completely, even though his coat really wasn't large enough to close around a second person comfortably, but that would just look fucking stupid and make Pavi even more curious about her.

"You must be a lovely bella indeed, if Luigi hides you so jealously!" Pavi said, laughing his stupid fucking twitter and stepping behind Luigi to try getting a glimpse of her over his shoulder. At least she was clever enough to duck her head a little more and press it more closely against Luigi's shoulder. "Ah, don't be so shy, singora! The Pavi only wishes to have a look."

"Pavi, I swear if you don't get the hell away now..." he let the sentence trail off menacingly, though there wasn't actually all that damned much he could do at that moment without giving Pavi exactly what he wanted by revealing her. Didn't matter; Pavi should know him well enough to realize that Luigi could wait patiently to take revenge when it came to people he couldn't just kill outright.

Of course, Pavi was also way the fuck too persistent when he was chasing pussy. "Wouldn't you rather come with the Pavi, bella?" he cooed at her, though he backed up enough to no longer be hovering over them. "You'll find more pleasure from Pavi's cazzo than from being pierced by Luigi's little knife, this is a promise."

Luigi was just starting to think that lunging at Pavi would be worth the mess it would make of his plans when Shilo suddenly startled him so much that he almost choked.

Her body, which she'd been holding so stiffly that it hadn't moved a centimeter from where he'd first positioned her, suddenly went soft against him, closing the hair's-breadth she'd kept between them everywhere but where her forehead pressed against him and leaving her pressed tightly against him from his shoulder to his thigh. She turned her head upwards and tilted it to the side, her lips grazing the cloth of his shirt the entire way due to the necessity of keeping her face close enough to use his body as a mask, until it was buried in his neck. One hand slid up his side until she could drape her arm over his shoulder and curl her fingers into the fabric of the back of his coat.

"It's so flattering to have caught the interest of both Largo brothers," she said, her mouth moving against his skin. Her tone was clearly trying to be a sultry purr, but it was just as clear to anyone who wasn't a teenaged virgin how much of an inexperienced impression it was. "But it would be too rude for me to leave Luigi now. I'm sorry, Mr. Pavi."

"So disappointing, m'bella. If you change your mind, ask any Gentern the way to the Pavi's room; they all know the way well." The two he had with him twittered and cooed like the fucking animals flocking to his wealth that they were, making Luigi roll his eyes again.

It was probably even completely true, which was the main reason why Luigi would take a vow of chastity before he ever got desperate enough to fuck a Gentern no matter how sexy they modified themselves to be.

Little whore-loathing Shilo was apparently just as disgusted at Pavi for the implication that she'd spread her legs for someone who so blithely admitted that he'd fucked an entire company department's worth of women as Luigi was; she was close enough that he could feel her hand curling into a tight fist beside his hip. But she kept her voice steady as she replied, "I'll remember."

The Genterns finally decided to make themselves useful then. "Oh, Pavi," one of them all but moaned, "are you done with her yet?"

"We'll make you forget all about that little girl," the other said in the exact same tone. "You're making us wait so long, Pavi."

"Ah, forgive me, singoras! The Pavi would never mean to leave a beautiful woman yearning!" He wrapped one arm around each of them, and gave Shilo one last look, "We will see each other again later, bella? If you are still here to see then."

Luigi waited to release her until Pavi had gone far enough that he could no longer hear him and the Genterns chattering. The second his arm was no longer holding her in place she jerked away and didn't stop stumbling backwards until there was a good yard separating them. She began rubbing at her arms like they felt dirty from holding him, an insult only slightly dulled by how flamingly red he could now see her face was.

"Sorry," she muttered, as if he were really going to get angry about a hot girl pressing up against him, even if his tastes didn't usually run to jailbait. His rage wasn't that irrational. "I do the same act with Graverobber when someone starts hanging around who won't take no for an answer. It usually works, so I thought I'd see if it would help... even if Pavi doesn't have as much reason to avoid making you angry as the addicts do with him."

"Now that the fucker's gone we're gonna need a change of plans. Come on," Luigi told her and turned to backtrack to the last hallway they'd passed. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and flipped it open as he walked, not bothering to look back to see if she was following. He was Luigi Largo; when he told someone to heel, they damned well did it.

He dialed GeneCo's main security office. "South hallway of the GenCops department, heading for the residential area. See the girl I'm with?" he asked as soon as someone picked up, then plowed right along without waiting for an answer; even if whoever he was talk to wasn't already sitting in front of the feed from the security cameras, they'd be scrambling for them as soon as they heard him talking. "Erase every second of footage you have of her here, and keep it up until she leaves. And don't fucking forget that it will take me two seconds to find out who was on duty tonight if you fail."

He no longer tried keeping her hidden; let everyone they passed tell Pavi that, yes, Luigi did have a girl with him when he went to his room that night if he asked. It would be a bitch if they ran into Amber on the way, but, as long as Shilo kept her mouth shut, not the disaster it would be with Pavi. Unlike Pavi, whose entire brain was dedicated to his disgusting obsession with women's faces, Amber only bothered to remember someone's voice until after she'd seen them four or five times with the same face. She just couldn't get it through her fucking head that there were people in the world who didn't change their appearance more often than their clothes.

"Pavi is a nosy fucking pervert," he explained to her as they walked. "Once you're our of here you'll be fine; he's got the brain of a goddamned magpie, so even if he tries hunting you down he'll get distracted by something shiny and forget all about you two seconds after he steps out the door. GeneCo he's used to, so he can get down to the monitoring room if he'd curious enough, which he will be after that fucking masquerade, but they'll put my orders first, so it'll be fine." They reached his door and he unlocked and opened it for her. "Get in."

She took two steps into the room, then immediately backed out again. "I-I thought you understood!" she said, her eyes far more panicked looking than he thought the situation deserved. "I didn't mean to be a tease or anything, and I really appreciate what you're doing for me, but I'm not going to just--"

He cut her off by shoving her into the room and quickly stepping in and closing and bolting the door before she had a chance to trying darting out again. When he turned back away from the door she was staring at the bed with an expression of outright horror on her face. Even if he couldn't afford to do anything more, he really wanted to smack her upside the head hard enough to replace that look with a grimace of pain, but he forced himself to just throw himself into his desk chair with enough force to almost topple it backwards. "Stop looking like you think I'm going to fucking rape you," he snarled, glaring at her. After everything he'd fucking done for her, never once giving into the temptation to hurt her no matter how much she practically goaded him towards it at times, she went and put him on the same level as Pavi. "If I was looking for a fuck, I could snap my goddamned fingers and be swimming in willing cunt. I don't need to force myself on a scared little girl."

God, if anything his bedroom was the safest fucking place in the entire building. Nobody else was allowed in without his permission--which meant Amber and Pavi never got to so much as stand on the threshold--and Luigi wouldn't murder where he slept anymore than he'd shit where he ate.

She at least had the decency to look contrite as she relaxed enough to sit down on his couch. "I'm sorry. I'm just... really unused to this, still."

"Unused to what, being stuck in a room with a guy who won't try to rape you?"

"Being stuck in a room with a guy who's not my dad. Or any person who's not him. Or any room that's not my old bedroom, or at least in my house." She rested her elbow on the arm of the couch, and covered her face with her hand. "Maybe you don't know this, but the first time I even saw a person who wasn't him in the flesh, and they weren't just a little speck I was looking at from my balcony, was just a couple of nights before the opera. I'm getting okay at understanding Graverobber because we're together almost all the time, but you just suddenly show up every so often and act bizarre at me and I have no idea what it's supposed to mean." She cracked open her fingers wide enough to peer at him through the gap with one of her eyes. "Is this friendship? Am I being a horrible bitch for acting like I don't trust a friend enough? I really, honestly, don't know because this isn't something I've ever done before."

She actually managed to catch Luigi off guard, which just plain wasn't something that happened. He'd had lackeys, flunkies, toadies, employees, gofers, pawns, clients, victims, and, of course, family, but he was pretty sure he'd never met anyone who'd actually call him a friend before, even as a question. Definitely nobody who'd call him one to his face. They wouldn't have dared; someone would have to have been a lifelong shut-in to not realize just how high a Largo was above them.

He just avoided the question entirely in the end. "Fine. I'll pretend you didn't act that way, this time, as long as you never do it again. But only because we're stuck in here for an hour before we can have anyone Pavi might ask seeing you leave."

"An hour?" she asked incredulously, and he had to force himself to remember that she'd just told him that she didn't know what the fuck she was talking about to keep from blowing up at her all over again over the implied slight to his prowess. And it was a good thing, because it became obvious that she hadn't meant it that way when she went on to say, "What are we supposed to do for an hour?"

He looked her over while considering--scrawny little thing that she was his not-all-that-big couch completely dwarfed her--then shoved himself to his feet. "Food?" he asked, already walking towards the small fridge he kept in his room's connected living area. "You'd probably like something that wasn't dug out of the trash bin for once."

"I don't eat trash!" she exclaimed, turning in her seat to keep watching him as he walked past the couch. "...But something that's not greasy fast food or preserved stuff would be a nice change."

"Yeah, well, wait a minute." His fridge wasn't the best place in the world to go for food--it mostly existed as a place to chill booze when he wanted to, and make ice for same--but he always made sure there was enough in it to keep himself from going hungry for a few meals during those times when one of his siblings did something so overwhelmingly enraging that he couldn't stand the thought of even leaving opening his door when there was a chance of them passing by. There was enough to slap together a couple of sandwiches for her and toss an apple onto the plate for good measure. A drink was a little harder to come by, since he'd be damned before he wasted even a drop of his liquor on an underaged kid who wouldn't be able to appreciate it, but with enough searching he was able to dig up a bottle of lemonade from a pack he'd gotten on a day when it had been hot enough for him to care more about being refreshed than about getting drunk.

"You're not getting anything else, so you'd better not complain if you don't like something," he said, dropping the plate and bottle onto the coffee table in front of her. While she tucked in he went back to his desk, figuring he might as well get some paperwork done while she was busy.

"So, you guys really live in the GeneCo building?" she asked after a minute, and he grunted affirmatively in reply. "Huh. I would have thought that you'd have a mansion somewhere. Mansions, one for each of you."

"Pop wanted us available at any time of day or night; he always said GeneCo is ours so we had to be around if there was ever an emergency. Of course, with Amber off getting stoned out of her mind and Pavi hunting faces you can guess who 'we' meant most of the fucking time." By the end of the explanation his hand was clenched around his pen and the corner of his eye was twitching, though she wouldn't be able to see either from her position. He, not Pavi, not Amber, and certainly not Shilo, had been the one who'd always done everything Rotti had asked of him. And he'd been happy to do it because, fuck, he'd loved his pop, and he'd loved his pop's company, and he'd loved the money the company made that they wouldn't have as much of if anything ever fell apart, but he'd just been tossed aside when the time came to pick an heir, and for what? Because they had to replace a few employees because of him... per day? There were always hordes of people hoping for a job at GeneCo, he just cleared places for them. At least he wasn't as fucked in the head as Pavi, and didn't pour their money down the drain on surgeries and zydrate the way Amber did.

"That kind of sucks," Shilo said, summing up everything he'd been thinking in a nutshell.

He nodded, once, then gestured towards a door in his back wall. "When you're done, there's a bathroom through there. Take a shower; I don't want my rooms stinking of garbage by the time you leave."

"Oh, thanks!" she said, sounding way more happy and grateful than most people would have been at an insulting brush-off. Just a couple of minutes later, fast enough that she must have completely torn through her food which made him glad that he hadn't been watching her and the appalling table manners she must have been showing, he heard her stand up. Instead of heading straight for the bathroom she walked up behind him, and his chair leaned slightly back when she rested her hands on top of it. "You know, Luigi? Being around you kind of doesn't suck."

He probably would have taken it as more of a compliment if she hadn't sounded faintly surprised at the thought herself.