I disclaim. I don't own the characters etc. Follow-up to "In The Streets".

Unclean.

All her life, all she wanted was to be clean.

As a child she wanted to be one of those pristine china dolls that people thought she resembled. Her skin might look porcelain, and her hair may be curly and her eyes gray-blue with magical sparkles, but she is no china doll. She's not weak enough to be made from china.

Her material is a thick coat of nerves. She's made of metal. Icy-cool. Strong. Unbreakable. She bends and yields and twists herself in all different ways for the people she loves. Even for the people she doesn't. On the outside she gleams and shines, but she still lives with the tarnished brand of feeling dirty inside.

She is dirty.

She feels so incredibly dirty. Even before the rape, before some huge, greasy man dragged her into the bushes and forced himself on her, she felt dirty. She thinks she was chosen to be brutalized. That people could tell she felt unclean and chose her for that reason.

She has always felt dirty. Sometimes it fades. Sometimes she forgets herself and can't remember the sick feeling that sits in her stomach most of the time. Those are rare occasions. Most of the time she feels less than human.

Now she's dirty again.

All she can feel are Ric's manicured hands on her. Those olive-dark, refined hands that she thought she could trust. They aren't the hands of a rough mobster, someone that prides himself on dealing with filth and the scum of the earth. They are clean, freshly polished and almost soft.

She hates his hands.

Hates the way his fingers wrap around a pen as he does his dealings and covers his tracks. Hates that she knows what he is going to do and has no real power to stop him. Hates the possibility that the man she loves could be hurt or even killed by those clean, polished fingers.

She's not naive. She just wants to have faith in people. She wants to have faith in Ric. She knows now that Ric is not worthy of her trust. Of her body that she so willingly gave to him or of the tears she cries over him.

He's made her dirty again.

She can't stand it when he looks at her now. When his eyes roam over her body and he gets that faraway look in his eyes, as if he's remembering their night together. It makes her feel like throwing up. She would, in fact, throw up, if she didn't have tables to wait on and dishes to clean.

It's good that she has things to do. It keeps her mind occupied and it keeps the butcher's knife out of her hand and far from Ric's throat. Not that she hasn't thought about it or sampled the weight of the blade a few times. She has.

There is a darkness that leads her to obscurity. She's like a partly rusted coin. There are two sides to her. One sweet and innocent -the mask she wears. The face she allows people to see. The other side is much darker, less sugary and far less innocent; blemished from neglect. It is the side that keeps her from feeling clean. The side that stays with her on nights when she is too terrified to even close her eyes. The side that won't let her accept love she so desperately wants and the side that pushes away the only man that never wanted to mar her.

Maybe it stems from her lonely childhood and the favouritism her parents showed her older sister. She always hated the elegance of her sister and the careless way she hid her imperfections -however little they were. Unlike her duck-like stride, Sarah knew how to be glamourous and glide like a princess on the prowl. Of course, Sarah was never burdened with a conscience and so knew nothing of feeling dirty.

Sarah only knew that she was loved and that she was pretty and the one the boys always stopped to check out. She didn't care that her little sister had to struggle through life. Didn't know about the void that lived inside of her, eating away at all that was safe and real.

She didn't feel dirty when Jason touched her though. And that's why she couldn't sleep with him. He made her feel clean and that scared the shit out of her. Because she wants it so bad and she's afraid to taste the cleanliness; afraid of the fragrant aroma of it, the pure, sour-sweet lemon scent of it.

Jason got too close.

He washed away her feelings of inadequacy. He gave her a voice to protest with. Gave her strength and hope when they both had none. He took away those damn feelings that left wide, gaping holes in her world when Lucky 'died' and he replaced them with so much, she could never count all the emotions.

It doesn't matter how Jason makes her feel anymore. She is with Ric. Cold, conniving, clean Ric.

She lets him think they are solid. Lets him believe she still cares for him and suspects nothing. It's easy for her to pretend. Her entire life has been one extravagant lie after another.

Except with Jason. What they had was real and unsoiled. And in her heart, he will always matter and they will always have real, immaculate love locked up tight there. But the rest of her continues to slide toward profanity.

At night, when Ric thinks she's asleep, she watches him scheme and plot and does nothing. There is nothing she can do. Even though he thinks he fools her, she knows what his real agenda is. Knows that he uses her and she lives with it. Lives with the stain that makes her feel invisible.

Lives with feeling dirty.