Spoilers: This is a Star Wars/Trainspotting x-over,
contains many spoilers for Trainspotting.
Summary: Mark Renton finds his
way back to an old friend.
Feedback: Yes please, and mature criticism
welcome.
The sickness
has started: the cramps, the chills, the nausea, the delusions. At least I'm not
so far gone that I can't tell that they're delusions. Unless I'm imagining that
they're delusions.
Shite.
They're all here with me, everyone,
they won't go away, I close my eyes and they're still here. My room, with the
trains dancing drunkenly on the wall, has suddenly grown the size of a football
field; the angles are all wrong and shifting. I think I'm going to vomit.
Begby's beside me under the sheets, stinking of scotch, threatening to
kick in my head unless I get off the junk. Sickboy mocks me from the corner,
while Spud sits chained to the doorframe, silently blaming me for not getting
sent off to gaeol with him. Baby Dawn's crawling along the ceiling, looking so
alive until her head does a 180, staring at me with those dead eyes set in that
rubbery shrunken face, mouth open. She's hungry.
Oh God, I'm so hungry
for a fuckin' hit.
Somebody get me a hit. I'll do anything.
Oh
God!
MOTHER FUCKING CHRIST!
It hurts...My guts are eating
themselves, chewing out through my skin.
SOMEBODY HELP ME FOR GOD'S
SAKE!
Help me.
Then everything spirals, Tommy, Begby, Sickboy,
Spud, spinning so fast, then it grinds to a halt like a bad Underworld video.
Everything freezes, warped and silent, then I feel hands on my skin. The
touch sends a jolt straight through my body, awakening the sex drive the heroin
had killed off. Not Diane's young hands, bigger, but not Sickboy's either.
They're strong hands that cool my skin and warm my insides. I hear a voice,
soothing in my ear, piecing my shattered head back together. He sounds like a
Brit. Fuck why I'd dream up a Royal wanker while I'm coming down.
He
whispers to me, like he's inside my fucking mind. Pada-something. Sounds like a
side dish in a curry-shop.
Then, images more fucked up than anything
I've dreamed up while high, start flashing through my head from some spastic
film-projector.
Me with some 80's poofter haircut wearing some white
costume, looking like a House of Style fashion victim.
What the hell
would I have to shoot up with to wear a ponytail and a braid?
Fighting
someone with a flashlight.
Fucking some guy, only it's five million
times better than fucking.
We didn't have enough time.
For a
second I feel like I've just taken a pure shot of junk straight to the heart,
attaining the perfect high I've been trying to get all these years. The feeling
that everything around me is being separated into tiny microns, and I can feel
every single one. I can feel completely part of all of the air and the bed and
whoever the fuck is sitting beside me, touching my forehead. It's what I've been
looking for all this time and then-
"Mark!"
I'm jerked back to
hard, cold, reality, with dad standing over me, rambling about getting me an
AIDS test. I should close my eyes to sink back into the sweat-soaked sheets, but
incredibly, I feel fine. I feel fucking great. I feel healthy and strong, like I
can control every -- what's it called -- synapse in my body.
But I'm cut
off now, alone, though the craving has waned. I'm depressingly sober. Fuck.
Three Months Later
Yeah, so I'm walking down some crowded street in New
York, which is a hell of a lot more confusing than London. After making my
fortune by the whole business of ripping off Begby's drug money, I figured it
would be best if I stayed out of Scotland and London, especially because I don't
fancy letting Begby make my balls into lampshades.
I'm feeling better.
I'm HIV negative, I eat, I've got a fucking boring real estate job selling
shitty apartments to naive pricks, a shitty apartment, a normal life. Still,
I've gained weight, and I feel myself getting stronger every day. Though, every
once in a while when I can't sleep, I start to get this feeling. Like I'm
wonderfully high, seeing every piece of the universe coming apart and wrapping
around me. Like I'm not alone for a moment. I think it's something in the water.
My mum always did warn me about America.
I look around me, and I try to
immediately spot the junkies, my former brethren. Yellow skin, clouded eyes,
twitchy skin, and hungry stares. When I first wandered into this city, I was
amazed that everyone walked right by them, never looking down, blind to anyone
outside of their world. Now, I find myself doing the same thing, deliberately
looking away from the shaking meth addict on the corner, and not even spotting a
dealer until someone makes a buy right under my nose. Still, this is what I
chose, though sometimes I wonder why. I'm so fucking bored.
I'm on my
way to do some grocery shopping, believe it or not, and I plan to by more than
tins of soup. I made a list and everything.
Suddenly, something in my
head screams, "Turn around you prat!" The same scream that used to warn me of a
copper heading right straight for me.
I turn around, getting jostled by
the moving pedestrian traffic that doesn't even pause for me. Sure enough,
there's a copper, plainclothes, leaning against one of those ridiculous looking
square American squad cars. I almost turn right around to run like hell, out of
habit, until I remind myself that I'm a fine upstanding citizen here, with a
temporary American Visa and everything. I even pay taxes.
The cop is odd
looking, with a short beard and moustache, and long hair pulled back in a
ponytail, though I've become accustomed to seeing strange sights in New York.
The cop's eyes are piercing as he meets my stare, and smiles slightly in
recognition. He starts walking towards me.
