[A/N: Consider that your content warning.]
When Amelie awoke late that night she saw that Claire was not there, and so she decided to go look for her. Delinquent's cycle made it quick; she checked a few bars, then was paused by a scene she saw in a nearby parking lot.
A man was pressing a half-nude woman against the hood of his car. His pants were pulled down around the back of his knees, and he seemed to be pressing himself hard against her. He had her arms, like two antenna of an insect, pressed against the windshield, and his right arm held over her mouth. Her legs were wrapped around her back, and her cheeks screamed, yet her toes curled. Her body tensed, then relaxed. Amelie was reminded of her own orgasms with Iris, only whereas Iris had a gentleness to sex that had surprised Amelie yet beget more attraction, this was brutish and did not seem requested.
She was weeping and trying to pull herself off, but she could find no leverage in the metal. It was then that Amelie noticed this was a rape. It did not seem to match what she knew of it, however; it was being committed by a stranger rather than a partner. Then again, she thought that perhaps it had never been a real present threat in her life. Her mother had explained from the time she was a host that a traumatizing experience would fuck up her entire trajectory, so if a man ever did something untoward to her, she needed to go full force on him. She hated these constant little lessons.
Oh, this was a rape, she noticed again. Then she saw Claire pulling him off from her, and throwing him into another car. The ease with which she did so, even in her drunken state, made her pathetic to Amelie. A host of this strength was frittering it away on helping stupid women who walk around alone late at night and mingle with strange men. What had she expected?
The woman screamed and threw her shoe at the man, part of its heel broken off. "ASSHOLE!" She looked to Claire. "You saw what he did, right? You saw it?"
"Yeah, and I'll gut his ass like a fucking flounder. You just head home, okay?"
The woman was hesitant to leave now. She said something to Claire, then tugged at her arm. Claire shouted her away again, then glared back at the man, who was still rubbing his head. "Head home, okay?"
Still the woman did not leave and now seemed nervous. "I-I - well, I-"
Claire shoved her away with enough force that Amelie knew she had put her host strength into it, then yelled at her again: the woman quickly left, hobbling until the concrete swallowed her image.
The man pushed himself up and spat at Claire. "Oh, someone's getting some tonight, eh? Stand up for her and think she'll give you a crumb of pussy?"
"Don't try that with me, you disgusting prick. You raped her. You RAPED her!"
"Eh? That's what you think that was? She say anything about rape to you? She was having fun. Looks to me like she was trying to explain that to you before you ran her off."
"Keep talking, asshole. You don't have much time left."
"I ain't scared of you, bitch. I know you dykes can't kill a civilian without getting expelled. Even this country ain't gone that far to shit yet. Accusing me of all this bullshit when you're just some drunk bitch with a Revenant."
"This drunk bitch with a Revenant could skin you alive with a rusty knife."
They continued to argue, and Amelie merely stood there. She thought the whole thing idiotic and foolish, and however interesting the encounter might be for you, she was apathetic. She had felt a sense of urgency at one point, when she would encounter Claire in situations like these, to respond to Claire or pull her away. But she realized that so long as Claire was alive she would always be getting caught in encounters like these and with people like this.
Many times she had defended Claire from civilians calling her a drunken loser, saying that their tax dollars went to fund this addiction and that she was a waste of a host. But she hated now that the undergirding of Iris's attitude, that Claire was indeed just a drunken loser, who likely would permanently attempt to craft happiness from her decaying tether to reality, was proven right. She knew Claire would never be a good host, but she had hoped she could at least be a functional one.
But, she didn't really care.