An Exercise in Futility

Because this is so much older than my other fics here some references were beyond out of date and it was hard to gauge what went and what stayed. In the end, none of my obscure pop culture mentions were omitted because the stuff I watch today is every bit as obscure.

Fun fact: The character of Foundling as seen here bore little resemblance to the annoyingly maudlin milksop of the same name I was playing with in my notebook at the time, and eventually evolved into Mirth.

Foundling approached him with measured steps, like a tiger stalking a wounded gazelle. Getting down on her haunches, she twisted her fingers in the tough leather of his collar and lifted him up, pinning him to the wall with a strategically-placed knee.

"Don't you like me?" she asked innocently, putting a finger to her mouth. "Isn't this what you wanted? Someone tall, Amazonian and forceful? Someone who would instigate rather then stand meekly back and tremble with fear at your every touch? Someone every bit as sexy and tough and cruel as you?" She was slowly undoing the front of her longsleeved leather bodice, sliding the garment off her arms when she was done to reveal a sheer red corset. "This is sexy, isn't it?"

Strife swallowed hard and mutely nodded. Never look a gift whore in the mouth, he always said.

"Good," she purred, leaning so close her blue-tinted lips made the tiny hairs on his face prickle. "Now, if you want me," she said, taking his wrist and placing it on her backside, "you have to take me."

Hesitating only slightly, the godling crossed the fraction of an inch between them to kiss her deeply. His hand briefly caressed the curve of her buttock before giving the tight flesh a squeeze.

If Ares saw him he'd throw a fit. Strife was forbidden to even touch Foundling, let alone neck with her.

That thought quickly faded as the vamped up woman thrust her tongue into his mouth so far a normal man would have gagged.

He pulled away to fill his lungs. "Methinks I like forbidden fruit," he said with a grin, knotting his hand in her thick hair and pulling her hard against him.

He heard a throaty laugh dimly in his swimming ears, as her tongue darted from between her lips to lick at his, only to quickly recoil like a snake's.

Strife's hands slid across the smooth flesh of her back to fumble with the many laces and fasteners of her corset.

Suddenly she shoved him roughly against the stone, eliciting a muffled grunt of protest. Her whole demeanor seemed to change...well, more so. She wrenched his arms away from her body and forced them to his side, holding them there with an iron grip. Her teeth sank into the tender flesh of his tongue and didn't stop until they'd pierced his lower lip.

She tore her face away, a sadistic smile on her face, blood smeared as far up as her nostrils.

Strife felt sick as her carmine-tinged mouth blew gently in his ear.

"It's really too bad you can't have me. I like my men strong and virile, not indecisive and weak." She brought her knee up with bone-crushing force, cracking his skull against the wall with her hand at the same moment.

If he were mortal he'd be dead, and that surprised him; he'd never expected such ferocity from her.

He hit the floor hard, contorted in pain and gasping for breath. He looked up at her in disbelief and saw she'd pulled her bodice back on.

She shot a nasty smile over her shoulder. Then, batting her eyelashes at him coquettishly, she left the room, hips swaying double time, spine heels clicking maliciously.

Oh man that was bad. It just screams rewrite. Maybe this time with more nudity and more gore...

"Wait a minute. Wait a minute. More gore? I'm trying hard not to vomit as it is," Foundling complained as she came back into the room, hands on her hips.

Strife paused long enough to heal his lower jaw. "I was just saying I think she swallowed part of my tongue and about a pint of blood."

"No. I was smart enough to take it out before we did this scene."

Is it my fault she got a little overzealous? I don't recall the phrase 'Foundling gulped down the crimson flow like it was expensive wine' ever coming from my pencil.

"Well what'd you want me to do, choke on it? It was swallow or drown. Gods this is disgusting," she muttered, trying to scrub the stains off her teeth with a handkerchief.

"Yeah. You had the worst case of Roman palms disease I've ever seen."

"Shut up Strife. I am not stripping down to my skivvies, this place is freezing. Besides, I think we've had our daily dose of flesh. The last thing this piece needs is more raunch."

"Would you mind telling me how we're supposed to have a sex scene if this gal refuses to take off her clothing?"

Foundling pointed her finger at the godling and burst out laughing. "I *told* you you should have worn clean underwear this morning."

Strife sighed. "Do you see what I have to work with here? Do you see? Totally unprofessional. She is hardly the experienced character I'm used to being with."

"That's the point!! My behavior won't come as a complete shock if I'm a total slut to begin with. It's more dramatic if I'm a wallflower."

"You think I like it here? She hasn't even gotten around to writing my background and already she's throwing me into a Grecian 'Boogie Nights'. Nobody even knows what I look like!"

"So? It could work out to your benefit. You could end up a blonde siren with legs up to your armpits and great big..." he trailed off upon seeing the girl glaring at him and quickly addressed the air. "Well, I'd like to know how your going to explain Foundling's behavior."

"With all this blood and sex are you getting Bacchus involved?"

"What?!" Foundling exploded. "How'm I supposed to know what my motivation is?"

"Pretend it's earning a better name. I'm getting tired of calling you a lame noun."

"Language!" he chided. "If you're supposed to be such an ingenue how come you talk like a sailor?"

"Not if it involves going to the doctor's office. Which I'm pretty sure it will."

Okay, just calm down. How about we try something a little more character driven?

Lets just take it one sentence at a time all right?

"That's what it is isn't it?" Strife asked. "You aren't afraid of me, you're afraid of you. You're afraid that you'll care, let anyone into your heart just a little bit. You're afraid of falling in love."

"You don't want to feel anything but emotionally distant from people."

"How would you know? You've never been in love. You can't feel love."

"Look at Cupid and Psyche or Ares and his whack obsession with Xena, and you tell me Gods don't feel love."

"No it isn't. Trust me, it seems that way, but you weren't around to see Unc pining the days away when she first left. But you didn't hear that from me. And yes, I have been in love."

"By your definition it wasn't love. You said anything unrequited didn't count."

"She didn't love me back. I was just a minor deity, hardly worthy of being her doormat, let alone her lover. I don't blame her for wanting better. Still, she was my first and only..."

Foundling bit her lower lip. She felt guilty. Why did she feel guilty? He'd dragged her into a secluded part of the temple, sat her down on a satin draped bed and decided to have a talk with her after she'd broken into a warranted bout of the shakes. He was the one who should be feeling terrible, not her. She should keep her mouth shut, anything she said would just make the situation worse.

"What?" he asked, not able to make a single word out of her slurred muttering.

She sighed. One of these days she was actually going to listen to her inner monologue. "You're not that bad."

"See what I mean? You feel obligated to be nice to everyone, but you never put any real feeling behind it."

"But I do mean it. You're kind of a decent guy, once people get past that devil-may-care exterior."

"And I suppose you are pretty good looking. Nice body. Expressive face. Gorgeous eyes."

"You like my eyes?" he asked dubiously, running his fingers through his tangled mass of hair.

"Yeah, I guess. They're sort of icy, sometimes it looks like you have no pupils at all; it's disconcerting really. But they are lovely, soft and washed out, like I expect your skin to feel."

He took her hand and put it to his face, gently rubbing his cheek against her palm. "Like this?"

"Yeah," she drew the word out nervously. This would be almost laughable if it weren't so bizarre.

"I've always loved your mouth," he admitted, eyes half-closed in some sort of g-rated ecstasy.

"Mmm...yeah. It's...it...your lips...Oh this is too much, it really is."

"Your lips are like some exotic flower. Petal soft and," he swallowed hard in disgust, "fragrant."

"Okay, you know what? That's it. This dialogue is revolting. Fragrant lips? How does that even make sense? I would never *ever* talk like this!"

Hey, don't you make those little hand gesture quotation marks at me! I brought you into this world and so help me, I can take you out of it.

"Look," Strife complained, "if I don't get some heaving bosoms and quivering loins soon..."

"I'd watch what I'd say if I were you. Otherwise you might end up with a heaving bosom of your own."

"Ah!!" The godling clamped a hand firmly over Foundling's mouth. "Don't give her ideas!"

Come on you guys, I know this is hardly Shakespeare, but could you at least be serious for more then five minutes?

"If the speech weren't so cheesy and my co-star here wasn't such a pain."

Foundling pushed his arm away and made a face. "Your hand tastes like Sambuca," she complained, trying to scrub the top layer of skin off her tongue with her teeth.

Look, I just finished reading Beowulf for my English class and I would be in fencing right now if my teacher's flight hadn't been changed. So now I'm in the library, last period before vacation listening to the Clinton acquittal verdict commentary and in a bloodthirsty, simplistic speech kind of mood. I'd like to see you write like Danielle Steele in this kind of environment.

Strife snorted. "Y'know you can't always blame everything on your surroundings."

No, but I can blame it on difficult characters. Characters, I might add, that can easily be tortured, maimed and killed off in many nasty ways.

"Now lets not be hasty," the godling quickly interjected. "I'm sure I could work my way around purple prose. Maybe if I could make a few small alterations?"

The amorphous being sighed in resignation. Sure Strife, knock yourself out. I'll just be reading through this month's issue of Elle.

The pale god rubbed his hands together in childish glee, then pulled his co-star's back against him.

"Hold still. I'm just going to give you a slight wardrobe change." He hooked his hand in her shirt and tore downward.

"Gah!! You jerk!" She spun her body around and punched him hard.

Strife made a muffled squeak and clutched his hands to his face. "That was my eye!"

"I've got a five o'clock appointment in a girl's head in Wisconsin. I can't show up with a black eye!"

"Why not? It'll match that horrible dye job you call your hair."

Hey, rave pants are finally out of style. Guys can you keep it down? People are starting to look at me funny. Yeah, I'm gonna run out right now and buy some blue lipstick because your fashion page just told me to. Get to the pictures you stupid magazine.

"Yeah I'll just bet. And I bet that's not even your natural skin color."

"It is too! You should see how much zinc I have to apply at the beach to keep myself looking like this."

Foundling put her hand out. "Give me one of your safety pins, I want to fix this mockery of a bodice rip."

"These aren't safety pins, they're metal fasteners. Why am I the only one who seems to know this?"

"They are too safety pins. Now give me one before I come over there. It's not like you need all of them."

"I'll show you mean, you pale little prima donna!" She threw herself at him, tackling him to the bed. "Give me one of those pins!"

"No!" he squirmed, trying to keep the angry female from ripping his shirt off.

After a minor struggle, Strife managed to pin her to the bed by the shoulders, throwing a leg over her waist for good measure.

I can't leave you two alone for three seconds can I? Whoa! Hey you guys really do know what you're doing. You've got the sweat, the disheveled hair, the grappling, and the cleavage all in there and its not too sappy or sordid. You've got some real chemistry going on.

Foundling and Strife looked at one another, then at the narrator, then back at each other.

"Right with ya-Ahh!" Strife yelped as she kicked him off her and he landed on the floor with a thud.

Foundling got to her feet and stalked to the edge of the room. "I have been manhandled, groped, abused, beat-up, nearly drowned, made love too, sent to the underworld, sent to the alternate universe, and shipped off down memory lane all within the last week. And I am getting just a *little* tired of it! I am not your personal adrenaline rush. I am not someone for you to live vicariously through. I am not a way for you to vent. I'm a human being dammit!"

"I request, no, I demand some respect and a well-deserved vacation."

I'm sorry, what? I was temporarily incapacitated by the stench of these perfume ads.

"Arggghhhhhh!!!" Foundling shrieked in disgust, throwing herself face down on the bed.

"There, there." Strife patted her arm. "If it's any consolation, that speech really turned me on."

She grabbed a pillow and clutched it tightly around her head. "I am not listening."

The godling sighed and laid down on the floor, figuring that was the safest place to be at the moment. "You know," he said after a moment, quietly looking for shapes in the cracks of the ceiling, "at this point- just so I could get out of here mind you- I'd do Ares if the opportunity arose."

"You have already," she said, taking the pillow off her head and handing him a scroll.

"How'd you get that? It was under my bed." He snatched the scroll from her and clutched it to his chest. "This is private."

Oh hey, look at the time guys. Study's almost over which means vacation is five minutes away. We're gonna have to call it a day.

Sorry, maybe I can get back to it later tonight. After Sifl and Olly.

I've already missed it once this week and I'm dying to see what Precious Roy's selling.

"And what cute thing Chester's going to do," Foundling said dryly.

He looked over at his companion. "Can you believe that? Has her fun and just cuts out and leaves us wanting. That is so just like a... like a..."

"Now, now," she admonished, sitting up and stretching. "Don't stick it out unless you intend on using it."

She arched an eyebrow in his direction before getting to her feet. "Well I'm outtie. She's got therapy in an hour and I don't want to be here at the front of her mind when all that repressed anger comes flooding in. I'm gonna go take cover in the A-Team wing; she hasn't been using that an awful lot lately."

"Oh hey, come on, I've got three hours to kill here. We were just starting to have a breakthrough. We've got a real rapport going on."

"You were not! You were really warming up to me. We were developing a relationship."

He screwed up his face and held his arms tightly at his side, shouting his protest to the heavens. "Unprofessional!!"

Foundling's head poked poked back into the room. "You want to come with?"