Ancient Wounds pt 41 i
Author: yours truly, ExMaverick aka Jess
Title: Ancient Wounds
Rating: PG
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: none
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, 38, 39, 40
Deepest Shadows
Previous Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
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I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went --- and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires --- and the thrones,
The palaces of crownded kings --- the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
-Darkness,Lord Byron
..............
We had parted seven years into the past. Yet all my passion and heartache was resurrected the second I felt his presence. It was as if I could feel his tauntingly mothy touch through the very walls of his house, the cold defiant brick a punishing force towering out from its earthy foundations separating us as day from night. The Immortal Blood had been my reason (asides the crushing revelation of Mina) for leaving him in the first place, and now it fuelled my obsession for him once more with all the added hunger and cruelty of a predator’s longing heart.
What I thought of his bride made me sick and frightened of myself. Surely even in a fit of rage I could not kill her, could I? My lonely madness made me more animal than man when left alone to ponder their relationship. Yet I steadied myself on that account. I should not hate her, I dared not. Even if her voice sickly as a cling peach slithering from its tin made me shiver, if their intimacy made me wince, I should, nor could truly not bring myself to hate the young woman. Had I not asked him to love her? Had he not given me that last promise, had he not obeyed? Madness. I made a point to not dwell too hard upon the terrible union.
I stalked them quietly, as if I meant to taste both of them by daybreak.
I returned in my pathetic pale rage to watch over him once more, this time favouring the shadows closer to home, waiting in the darkness of the small courtyard that opened out from the building’s back door. The Autumn has just begun to show signs of taking over the land, I caught the faint spice of it in the cold air, saw the subtle changes in the night-time trees that only a blood drinker could know. The gentle rustle of a handful of fallen leaves across the flagstones in the blackness did little to disrupt the tranquillity of the stone-carved cherub fountain burbling somewhere behind me.
Quite literally, I was the serpent in the Eden all but ready to sleep.
I watched the glowing windows from my hiding place, listening to the peaceful rhythm of the hearts within. I caught the mocking stench of the blood in their veins and comforted myself with it chastisingly. I knew I didn’t have the courage to confront him again myself, and as I stood in my miserable contentment watching their happy lives busy away, I was close to giving up on the only thing tethering me to this world. But fate, seemingly as it often had in the past, had other plans for me that chilly night.
“Don’t think I can’t hear someone there,” came an accusing voice, causing me to jump with visible surprise as a figure stepped from the foliage into the lamplight pouring from the kitchen window onto the stone floor. A silvery stream of smoke arose from his left hand (for the voice belonged to a man), and he scuffed his shoe threateningly upon the paving. A million things flashed through my head. How had I failed to sense him? Was I so consumed in my own self-indulgent self pity that I hadn’t pick up on his presence? Good God, how long had he been standing there?
“Don’t think I haven’t been watching you,” the familiar voice rolled with a light laughter “or is it you watching me? Show yourself. I demand it”
I recognised him immediately and my heart burst into my throat with horror and bitter joy. The light was dim but my preternatural eyes did not lie, and though fine lines had grown from his icy eyes and shimmering yellow hair was tied back and dulled by the cold, it could not have been anyone but he. Standing with a cigarette in hand and harsh black coat stood the object of my hearts desire, now in his thirty-second year of life. I struggled to make my lips form words and hid away between the swaying trees my throat now tight and my stomach turning.
“For god sake speak or I’ll come back there and deal with you myself!”
I groped in darkness and blurted out the only words my mouth knew to speak-
“Emmanuel” I said coldly, forcing myself out towards the light, still keeping in the shadows “does she make you happy?”
His face froze immediately, for no one had called him by that name save his mother and I. He toyed with the cigarette between his lips and then his fingertips staring out into the blackness trying desperately with his human eyes to make shape of me from the shapelessness of the night’s sky before beginning to shudder softly
“Sweet lord,” he whispered casting the cigarette down to the floor “ can it really be you? Please, tell me your name”
“You knew it my dear one. Once you spoke it like a prayer in the nights I needed you most” I replied shakily “It’s Ville. I have been watching you, yes”
Standing merely ten feet apart we beheld one another in the blackness of the Autumn night for the first time in over half a decade. There were so many things I had wanted to say, and suddenly I could think of none of them at all.
“You did it. You cast me off because you saw it your sonly duty I suppose?” I blurted. I instantly regretted it. My voice was so full of anger, had I myself not asked him to be happy? What a fool I was being, such a fool!
He reeled back and sneered painfully “Oh, what would you know? To you duty is what one expects from other, not what one does one’s self! Sonly duty? Pah. Of course I was influenced by my mother. Everyman is when he is young.” He bit down into his lip, muttering bitterly “what would you know of a duty to your parents anyway”
My heart stung with such callous words, but I saw in his face how he realised his angry impassioned error.
“ How dare you even think such things. What I’ve suffered for my family-”
“Oh God, Ville! I didn’t mean-”
He made the emotional shunting move to embrace or touch me, but I swept my hand between us and held him away.
“No” I said “ we both know what this is. I refuse to be the one to fold adulterous fennel flowers in your bed sheets. We were in love once, I can’t live knowing you the way I once did. I don’t think I could bear to touch flesh that held another so intensely”
He drew back visibly disgusted.
“It’s easy for you to stand before me cowering in the dark and spin me your stories of morality and damned flowers. What do you understand of real intimacy, or rejection or failed love? The feelings I had with you were all I had ever desired! Would you have me shackled to you wrist to heart Ville, with your withering daisy chains of what we used to have?”
I swallowed hard and felt tears heat my cold lifeless cheeks. My voice became quiet, muted and weeping.
“ You make me hate you when you speak this way”
“Well that’s a dying shame” he said defiantly “ because I never stopped loving you”
“Come inside,” he added “ she’s away and I want desperately to see your face again, if only for a while”