Ancient Wounds pt 38
Author: yours truly, ExMaverick aka Jess
Title: Ancient Wounds
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Prequel to my vampire fic Deepest Shadow. Ville recounts the events of his mortal life growing up in the poverty of 20th century Finland, wrought with grief, sex, romance, passion and abuse leading into his birth to darkness.
His lengthy tales are imparted to the sleepy mind of his young lover, but only in the seclusion of his own darkest thoughts does he begin to relive the greatest obsessions and deepest hurts rooted in his bygone and decadent time.
Warnings: emtionalness
A/N: I have no beta, please excuse any mistakes herein
Pairing: Vam,Ville/Jonne, Ville/OC (in parts)
Previous Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5i, 5ii, 6, 7, 8, 9i, 9ii, 10i, 10ii, 10iii
11, 12i, 12ii, 13, 14i, 14ii, 14iii, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20i, 20ii,
21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32i, 32ii, 32iii, 33,
34, 35, 36, 37
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...I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.
-Wilde
…..
December soldiered on with myself and my young charge once again united, and she accompanied me with much enthusiasm for cut-throat conversation and witty converse to the inevitable slew of publishing-related parties in full formal dress. By Christmas I was some what of a celebrity , invited to all the popular and fashionable functions of Helsinki’s literary elite. I was absolutely ecstatic, and Flowers of Evil had yet to even see the light of day ( if you will parson the pun or sorts). I began to even wonder, was my work worth all this sensationalism? All the authors and poets that revelled in my company were praising my star quality on the basis of Armas and Jarno’s word alone.
But surely enough my preconceptions and small worries were expelled once it had be revealed to me that Jarno had, in the course of his publishing career, been one of the greatest critics in the city. In fact, a selection of the high-flying writers I spent nights joking with had been at least ten years into their work before getting his approval, and so my immediate acceptance into the firm even with my family connections was nothing less than astonishing proof of my abilities. I felt the strangest sense of being proud of myself, something that I very rarely have experienced. But, I digress.
Christmas eve saw another one of Jesse’s extravagant parties, and after taking my fill quietly under the arch of a derelict building on the edge of the busier district, I was among the many dressed for an evening of amusement. I must say one can never truly get used to fine clothing and rich music, though still very much appreciate it, when you have come from a rural cottage where Christmas dinner was your father hunting a deer and wine was available in small measures. But I enjoyed myself immensely as always, dancing with Suvi in her rich red satin between being appointed the judge of various drinking games to which my brother always lost and Armas would claim victory only to fall asleep in the corner like some eccentric old uncle.
Lydia, who was due now any day, watched the frivolity from the comfort of an armchair laughing with the scores of other young women, presumable her cousins and her ever delightful youngest ( who once again took up the duty of dancing on my shoes, remarking at my inability to waltz as well as her father).
I was glad to see too that Suvi and I were at ease with one another again, and gladder still to see that she had taken a certain liking to a particular number in our company by the name of Klaus Halonen. I smiled to myself as I watched them smile and laugh with one another, typical of young people, we spend almost every evening with professors, writers and brilliant scholars and she’s falling in love with the boy who painted our parlour ceiling. I laughed at myself lighting another cigarette, looking after her and all this fame was making me feel old.
That was another matter as well, my age. I was twenty-seven years old, but had become what I was around the age of twenty-four. I hadn’t changed physically an inch. I wondered, would I look this way forever or would I perhaps grow old, merely at a much slower capacity? I banished those thoughts as quickly as I could and resumed politely fending off the flirtatious advances of Lydia’s many sisters who were intent on resuming their hunting of me from the wedding party previous.
Christmas came and went, and on the twenty-sixth day of December Flowers of Evil hit the many booksellers of Helsinki. I was an instant success, and immediately put a deposit down on a gorgeous five-bedroom terrace house in the centre of Helsinki approximately ten minutes walking distance from my current place of residence. This came just in time it would seem, as by prediction on the first day of January 1917, Lydia Maria Valo gave birth to a healthy baby son in the early hours of the day.
“Ville Tobias Valo,” Lydia said when I met both she and Jesse at her bedside that night, as he was place in my arms for the very first time “His first name for you, his middle name for my father”
As I stared down at him sleeping in my arms I was overcome with a plethora of emotions I had never imagined possible. He was absolutely perfect. Dark brown hair tinged with subtle red undertones of his mother’s, light skin and the most amazing hazel eyes. Before that moment, I never thought it was possible a person could care about someone they had just met so very much. Jesse was in tears of joy, and seeing the new family together made my heart swell. That’s what we were again, a family.
That night after dispatching with a sleeping and violent drunkard, I sat on the pavements edge and felt a strange drift of melancholy descend upon me. A certain melancholy which would later fuel a poem Wedded to Helsinki. It would seem that my immortality did not just take from me the light, but also the chance that I should know the happiness my brother knew that day.