[Etienne] - Blood in the Water
I’d been waiting for her most of the night. I’d come a couple hours after sunset, hoping to talk and not entirely sure what I was going to say, but needing to have something out. After greeting Roberto, who told me she wasn’t there, I took a book and a few candles out on the terrace to sit, read, and watch for her. Thankfully it was a clear night… though there was something in the air, a stirring and a foreboding. I leaned closer to my candles and did my best to ignore the feeling.
I end up sitting out there for quite a few hours, long enough to get engrossed in a rare account by a Haitian vaudun priest. By the time I stand up and stretch, it’s getting close on dawn, and there’s still no sign of M-A. I draw a few conclusions, feel freshly put out, and decide to walk home. I have things to put into place anyhow; it couldn’t hurt to start. I realize I’m hungry - ravenous, really, how many days since I fed? - and resolve also to eat before dawn.
Book returned to its place, I gather up my jacket and set out. Really, I should know better.
I get to the end of the drive, my shoes crunching on the gravel, and glance at the road by habit. There, also on foot and coming from the direction of town, is a familiar figure. Perhaps I’ll get that talk after all. "M-A? What are you-?" And then, I cut off, because I can see the blood soaking her shirt, her shoes and coat in her hands and her feet leaving bloody prints behind her. A sudden rush of concern hits me, and I call, louder, "M-A?!"
She looks up at me, and it’s the non-recognition on her face that both makes me run to her, and makes me stop before I touch her. She’s well dressed, but worn. Bloody tears trickle down her cheeks, smeared by her hands… blood is all down her blouse, on her cuffs, in her hair. How long have you been crying? What’s happened to you, and why would you walk home? It must be something to do with St. Julian, but... "...what happened?" I don’t get an answer; she only shakes her head and hugs her shoes and coat close.
I quash whatever anger flares in me at that, instead step into her and put my arms around her. She’s my sire, my closest friend; what else can I do? There’s a tiny part of me that notices the blood soaking into the cream-colored linen of my suit, and how good it smells. A larger part’s waiting for her to shove me away, but instead, she dissolves, folds herself against me and sobs in earnest against my shoulder.
It’s that which makes me do as I do; that complete release, the helpless crying. It’s a thing I’ve never once seen in her, not in four years, and I sweep her off her feet, cradling her against my chest. I forget how small she really is. She always seems taller. I nestle her against my shoulder and she clings there, burying her face in my neck, crying hard, wracking tears. I whisper French into her hair, the French of my childhood, tiny comforting things that my mother murmured to me when I was a crying boy. I sing, just a little, rocking her gently in my arms, and walk up back up the long drive to her front door. I get it open with my hip, nudge it closed with a foot, and then I’m hurrying cautiously through the halls toward her room.
I collect Roberto with a glance, though perhaps it’s M-A held in my arms that commands his attention; no matter, he follows me. I try never to presume on his obeying me; he belongs to her, not me, and he’s made that plain on rare occasion, in private. But tonight, I don’t even think about it, I simply fire orders at him in Portuguese, and he does as I say, moving off into the master bathroom to draw the hottest bath he can. I put my sire down on the edge of the bed, keeping her legs - and her lacerated feet - elevated with one arm.
Finally, Madeleine-Antoinette looks up, and seems to register where we are. Though her shoes are still firmly in her grasp, her coat slips out of her fingers, falling across her knees. Her voice is wondering, confused. "It's almost dawn."
I take the coat from her gently, toss it aside, and cover her fingers with mine. Her skin actually feels warm, and I realize how hungry I am, that my own skin must be freezing cold. "Sunrise is perhaps half an hour away. And your curtains are thick." God, what did he do? Could it have been someone else, or is he dead…? No, anything serious and she would have called. This is all emotion, which means it’s all his goddamn fault. I uncurl her fingers from the shoes, take them from her and drop them to the side as well. She looks alarmed when I take them, as if surprised she were still holding on, and then her eyes widen.
"Oh! What happened? Are you all right?" She points at my chest with a bloody finger, worry in her voice, and it takes me a moment to realize that she’s talking about the blood, her blood, all over my suit. She doesn’t know she’s crying? I wet a fingertip in my mouth, and rub it over her cheek, collecting a bit of her bloody tears, and hold it up where she can see. "Oh," she says, hollow-voiced and wide-eyed. "Oh. I'm sorry." She looks away. Damn it, what is this? She’s never like this…
I move that finger and cover her mouth, a feathery touch that unconsciously smears blood on her lips. "Shh. No apologies from you."
I look over my shoulder and Roberto is standing there in the candlelight from the bathroom. He looks stricken and worried, and I pull away from M-A to speak with him in quiet Portuguese. “Roberto, please, let me see to her.”
“You may be part of the problem, senor,” he says. “I’ll see to her, and you should go if you’re to have any hope of getting to your own home tonight.”
He’s right, but that doesn’t change my determination. “I’ll stay in a guest room if I have to. Please, Roberto…” I make a snap decision, and quietly say, “I may not be with her much longer, but you will. Please let me mend this.” He looks at M-A, gives me a glance that says clearly how it worries him, and then nods and withdraws stiffly from the room.
I relax the tension in my shoulders, and move to kneel next to her, my hands going to her bloodstained blouse. Another time, such a thing might have stirred me, but tonight, there is little enough time and no inclination. I want only to get her clean, and safe… to not inflict anything more on her than she’s already gone through. At his hands, you know it. His hands that she turned to in trust, damn it all… I dismiss my anger again, tug gently at her clothing. "Let's get these off of you."
She helps me with the jerky motions of a marionette, performing the action by troubled rote, but the buttons seem to confound her, and soon enough I simply move her fingers away and do it for her. The shirt, the pants, her undergarments; I remove it all with gentle, efficient motions, not letting her feet touch the floor, and after that first hopeless effort, she just sits there and lets me. Occasionally another tear will trace its slow track down her cheek. Her silence, her helplessness, worries and wounds me more deeply than I can say.
I lift her bodily again, carry her into the bathroom, where Roberto has drawn a steaming bath and lit a candle for illumination. Kneeling with a small grunt of effort, I lower her carefully and gently into the hot water. It soaks my sleeves and shirt, but I can’t be bothered to care.
I strip my coat off, and note the blood all over it as I do. I may be able to save it, but it will take a lot of cleaning. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I drop the coat, and the shirt is even worse; soaked with her blood all down the front. I start to roll the sleeves up, and suddenly the Beast snarls inside me. It all boils up in an instant; St Julian, M-A, all my fear and anger and jealousy tears at me. I rip the shirt from my shoulders, tearing cloth and popping buttons in my sudden fury. I drop it and stare at M-A for a moment; she’s cringed back into the bath water and her face crumbles in fear. After a confused, angry second, I realize what I’ve done, and also that I’m about to cry, the blood gathering in my eyes as it hasn’t since just after my Embrace.
I spin away, groping for a washcloth on the counter. Stop, Etienne. The talk is going to have to wait. You’re here for her now, or you should have let Roberto do it. Calm. For her. When I turn back, kneel beside her, the crimson mote is gone from my vision and I’m composed. "It's well, dear one." And she winces, but nods slowly.
The cloth is soft, light, not too rough of texture. It will serve. I soak it under the water, and glance to M-A apologetically. I have some idea how much this will hurt. I lean close, lift one of her legs; her long walk has left the pads of her feet abraded and torn, has ground dirt and flecks of rock deep into the wounds. I curse Christopher St. Julian in the privacy of my head, keeping it out of the bond as I have learned to do, and gently press the cloth to her foot. She tenses, and at the first cleansing stroke, she hisses in pain. Thereafter, she’s quiet, and only flinches occasionally. I wince sympathetically as I clean the wounds, slow and as gentle as I can be, and by the time I’ve moved away from her feet, the cloth and water are both tinged pink.
Dawn cannot be far now, but I take my time at this, cleaning the dirt from her legs, moving up to her thighs and stomach. Most of the blood that caked her upper body has come free in the hot water, but I’ve let myself become engrossed in this, in the simple ritual of cloth over skin. I realize at some point, distantly, that I’m doing this for myself as well. It shadows my face as I think about why. I try hard not to think on how lost her face looks, and how distant. Instead, I wear my sympathy and caring as best I can.
Finally I have to edge up the tub to reach her better. My arm slips behind her head, raises her face more to the candle’s light, and I brush a freshly wetted cloth over the blood on her pale cheek. The water is cooling by then, only warm, and here I am even more careful. She turns her eyes, at long last, to look at me after only one stroke.
One of her arms comes up to catch my wrist, and she moves with the same slowness I have been; in a lethargic sort of time she turns my hand over and rests it against her cheek. Her eyes find mine, and I can see in them, in those liquid depths catching the candlelight, that it’s with utter sincerity and no small love that she whispers, "Thank you."
You’re welcome, M-A. I would do this and anything more I could for you; anything to keep the fire in your eyes and banish that awful emptiness. And I would do it, I swear, through all the ages of this world. But you don’t want me with the same fire you want him, I can see it in you plain as day. And I pray God it’s the time, the empathy, the need for a creature who better understands you. Else I fear I will never have it, and that would destroy me.
I want to say it. It’s there in my mind in the flicker of an eyelash, and by the next, I’ve banished it away. She’s not ready to hear it. She may not ever be ready to hear that. Instead I lean close, smiling as gently as I may. I kiss her cheek, and flick my tongue across the blood ¬- her blood - that’s caked there, because I want to and I can’t help it. It’s the ghost of a half-remembered nectar, the taste of her salty and powerful and tingling with magic on my tongue. I whisper, against her cheekbone, "Je t'adore, ma soliel." And she leans into my lips, bringing the taste of her to my tongue yet again.
"It would be easier if you didn't." You don’t mean that.
My voice catches. "Would it truly?"
Her arms wind around my neck then, trickling warm water in trails down my back, and she nods against my shoulder with a small sound of misery. "Our existence is easier when we don't care for each other." No. I won’t accept that so flatly.
I slip an arm into the water to curve about her waist. "I wouldn't know. I've had no time as a vampire without someone I loved near to hand." I draw back so I can see her better, and take her jaw in my other hand, because I want, need, to make this point to her. "Easier, perhaps... but I imagine also emptier."
She only nods. "It is." She pauses, seems to search vainly for something, and then says, in the most fragile tones I’ve ever heard from her, "Will you stay the day with me?"
I glance at the curtains and the small light growing at the edges, and speak the truth. "I don't have a choice now." My fingers tighten on her jaw, because simple truth here is not enough. "And even if I did, I would stay with you." I would always stay with you… but I don’t think I can.
As if drawing herself away from a precipice, she murmurs wonderingly, "It's late."
I smile, brush her damp hair away from her face. "Yes. The sun will be up any minute."
"Help me to bed, Etienne. I'm tired." She tries to lever herself upright, and slips on the porcelain. Only my hands spare her neck from slamming into the edge of the tub.
"Stop," I say, and I can’t help but smile at how stubborn she is, even in the dregs of her weakness. The blood surges in my arms, and I bend to pick her up again, lifting her effortlessly this time. Water sheets down off of her, soaking my chest, my stomach, my pants. It’s the water, only the water, but she feels furnace-warm against my icy skin, and she wraps her arms close again, pressing her face into the curve of my neck.
"I'm sorry," she whispers again.
I swallow, hard, and carry her out into the bedroom, pausing at the foot of her bed to cradle her just a bit closer. I huddle against the warmth of her, and I realize that it’s me who’s at the precipice. "What are you sorry for?"
She doesn’t raise her head away from my neck. "I've hurt you. And I'm going to keep on hurting you."
Slowly, I move to the side of the bed, and lay her down there, being careful of her feet. I pluck the sheets from where they lie at the foot of the bed, and draw them carefully up to cover her in a cool swath. Yes, you have. And yes, you will. God, I’m hungry. I bend, remove my shoes, and unbuckle my belt as I walk around to the other side of the bed. Pain, torment, hunger. Tribulation. It brings wisdom with it, that’s what you’ve taught me. My pants are soaked, and I have to bend again to peel them off my legs. But is it only me that needs to learn?
I stand straight, looking away from her and towards the tall windows and their muffling drapes. The faint predawn light seeps around them, doing nothing but lending slight definition to the darkness. From the bathroom, the rapidly-dying candlelight is what gleams ever so faintly off the water on my skin and hers. No.
I whisper it aloud. “Tribulation brings enlightenment, mon coeur." We both have things to learn from this. Maybe I can finally teach you something, too.
The weight of dawn crashes over me then, like a sudden wave in the ocean. I drag myself under the covers beside her, and gather her to my chest, needing this small contact. My last thoughts are of her arms slipping around me, of the scent of blood and her subtle perfume, of winding my fingers into her beautiful hair. And one thing more.
I have to go away now, cherie.
I end up sitting out there for quite a few hours, long enough to get engrossed in a rare account by a Haitian vaudun priest. By the time I stand up and stretch, it’s getting close on dawn, and there’s still no sign of M-A. I draw a few conclusions, feel freshly put out, and decide to walk home. I have things to put into place anyhow; it couldn’t hurt to start. I realize I’m hungry - ravenous, really, how many days since I fed? - and resolve also to eat before dawn.
Book returned to its place, I gather up my jacket and set out. Really, I should know better.
I get to the end of the drive, my shoes crunching on the gravel, and glance at the road by habit. There, also on foot and coming from the direction of town, is a familiar figure. Perhaps I’ll get that talk after all. "M-A? What are you-?" And then, I cut off, because I can see the blood soaking her shirt, her shoes and coat in her hands and her feet leaving bloody prints behind her. A sudden rush of concern hits me, and I call, louder, "M-A?!"
She looks up at me, and it’s the non-recognition on her face that both makes me run to her, and makes me stop before I touch her. She’s well dressed, but worn. Bloody tears trickle down her cheeks, smeared by her hands… blood is all down her blouse, on her cuffs, in her hair. How long have you been crying? What’s happened to you, and why would you walk home? It must be something to do with St. Julian, but... "...what happened?" I don’t get an answer; she only shakes her head and hugs her shoes and coat close.
I quash whatever anger flares in me at that, instead step into her and put my arms around her. She’s my sire, my closest friend; what else can I do? There’s a tiny part of me that notices the blood soaking into the cream-colored linen of my suit, and how good it smells. A larger part’s waiting for her to shove me away, but instead, she dissolves, folds herself against me and sobs in earnest against my shoulder.
It’s that which makes me do as I do; that complete release, the helpless crying. It’s a thing I’ve never once seen in her, not in four years, and I sweep her off her feet, cradling her against my chest. I forget how small she really is. She always seems taller. I nestle her against my shoulder and she clings there, burying her face in my neck, crying hard, wracking tears. I whisper French into her hair, the French of my childhood, tiny comforting things that my mother murmured to me when I was a crying boy. I sing, just a little, rocking her gently in my arms, and walk up back up the long drive to her front door. I get it open with my hip, nudge it closed with a foot, and then I’m hurrying cautiously through the halls toward her room.
I collect Roberto with a glance, though perhaps it’s M-A held in my arms that commands his attention; no matter, he follows me. I try never to presume on his obeying me; he belongs to her, not me, and he’s made that plain on rare occasion, in private. But tonight, I don’t even think about it, I simply fire orders at him in Portuguese, and he does as I say, moving off into the master bathroom to draw the hottest bath he can. I put my sire down on the edge of the bed, keeping her legs - and her lacerated feet - elevated with one arm.
Finally, Madeleine-Antoinette looks up, and seems to register where we are. Though her shoes are still firmly in her grasp, her coat slips out of her fingers, falling across her knees. Her voice is wondering, confused. "It's almost dawn."
I take the coat from her gently, toss it aside, and cover her fingers with mine. Her skin actually feels warm, and I realize how hungry I am, that my own skin must be freezing cold. "Sunrise is perhaps half an hour away. And your curtains are thick." God, what did he do? Could it have been someone else, or is he dead…? No, anything serious and she would have called. This is all emotion, which means it’s all his goddamn fault. I uncurl her fingers from the shoes, take them from her and drop them to the side as well. She looks alarmed when I take them, as if surprised she were still holding on, and then her eyes widen.
"Oh! What happened? Are you all right?" She points at my chest with a bloody finger, worry in her voice, and it takes me a moment to realize that she’s talking about the blood, her blood, all over my suit. She doesn’t know she’s crying? I wet a fingertip in my mouth, and rub it over her cheek, collecting a bit of her bloody tears, and hold it up where she can see. "Oh," she says, hollow-voiced and wide-eyed. "Oh. I'm sorry." She looks away. Damn it, what is this? She’s never like this…
I move that finger and cover her mouth, a feathery touch that unconsciously smears blood on her lips. "Shh. No apologies from you."
I look over my shoulder and Roberto is standing there in the candlelight from the bathroom. He looks stricken and worried, and I pull away from M-A to speak with him in quiet Portuguese. “Roberto, please, let me see to her.”
“You may be part of the problem, senor,” he says. “I’ll see to her, and you should go if you’re to have any hope of getting to your own home tonight.”
He’s right, but that doesn’t change my determination. “I’ll stay in a guest room if I have to. Please, Roberto…” I make a snap decision, and quietly say, “I may not be with her much longer, but you will. Please let me mend this.” He looks at M-A, gives me a glance that says clearly how it worries him, and then nods and withdraws stiffly from the room.
I relax the tension in my shoulders, and move to kneel next to her, my hands going to her bloodstained blouse. Another time, such a thing might have stirred me, but tonight, there is little enough time and no inclination. I want only to get her clean, and safe… to not inflict anything more on her than she’s already gone through. At his hands, you know it. His hands that she turned to in trust, damn it all… I dismiss my anger again, tug gently at her clothing. "Let's get these off of you."
She helps me with the jerky motions of a marionette, performing the action by troubled rote, but the buttons seem to confound her, and soon enough I simply move her fingers away and do it for her. The shirt, the pants, her undergarments; I remove it all with gentle, efficient motions, not letting her feet touch the floor, and after that first hopeless effort, she just sits there and lets me. Occasionally another tear will trace its slow track down her cheek. Her silence, her helplessness, worries and wounds me more deeply than I can say.
I lift her bodily again, carry her into the bathroom, where Roberto has drawn a steaming bath and lit a candle for illumination. Kneeling with a small grunt of effort, I lower her carefully and gently into the hot water. It soaks my sleeves and shirt, but I can’t be bothered to care.
I strip my coat off, and note the blood all over it as I do. I may be able to save it, but it will take a lot of cleaning. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I drop the coat, and the shirt is even worse; soaked with her blood all down the front. I start to roll the sleeves up, and suddenly the Beast snarls inside me. It all boils up in an instant; St Julian, M-A, all my fear and anger and jealousy tears at me. I rip the shirt from my shoulders, tearing cloth and popping buttons in my sudden fury. I drop it and stare at M-A for a moment; she’s cringed back into the bath water and her face crumbles in fear. After a confused, angry second, I realize what I’ve done, and also that I’m about to cry, the blood gathering in my eyes as it hasn’t since just after my Embrace.
I spin away, groping for a washcloth on the counter. Stop, Etienne. The talk is going to have to wait. You’re here for her now, or you should have let Roberto do it. Calm. For her. When I turn back, kneel beside her, the crimson mote is gone from my vision and I’m composed. "It's well, dear one." And she winces, but nods slowly.
The cloth is soft, light, not too rough of texture. It will serve. I soak it under the water, and glance to M-A apologetically. I have some idea how much this will hurt. I lean close, lift one of her legs; her long walk has left the pads of her feet abraded and torn, has ground dirt and flecks of rock deep into the wounds. I curse Christopher St. Julian in the privacy of my head, keeping it out of the bond as I have learned to do, and gently press the cloth to her foot. She tenses, and at the first cleansing stroke, she hisses in pain. Thereafter, she’s quiet, and only flinches occasionally. I wince sympathetically as I clean the wounds, slow and as gentle as I can be, and by the time I’ve moved away from her feet, the cloth and water are both tinged pink.
Dawn cannot be far now, but I take my time at this, cleaning the dirt from her legs, moving up to her thighs and stomach. Most of the blood that caked her upper body has come free in the hot water, but I’ve let myself become engrossed in this, in the simple ritual of cloth over skin. I realize at some point, distantly, that I’m doing this for myself as well. It shadows my face as I think about why. I try hard not to think on how lost her face looks, and how distant. Instead, I wear my sympathy and caring as best I can.
Finally I have to edge up the tub to reach her better. My arm slips behind her head, raises her face more to the candle’s light, and I brush a freshly wetted cloth over the blood on her pale cheek. The water is cooling by then, only warm, and here I am even more careful. She turns her eyes, at long last, to look at me after only one stroke.
One of her arms comes up to catch my wrist, and she moves with the same slowness I have been; in a lethargic sort of time she turns my hand over and rests it against her cheek. Her eyes find mine, and I can see in them, in those liquid depths catching the candlelight, that it’s with utter sincerity and no small love that she whispers, "Thank you."
You’re welcome, M-A. I would do this and anything more I could for you; anything to keep the fire in your eyes and banish that awful emptiness. And I would do it, I swear, through all the ages of this world. But you don’t want me with the same fire you want him, I can see it in you plain as day. And I pray God it’s the time, the empathy, the need for a creature who better understands you. Else I fear I will never have it, and that would destroy me.
I want to say it. It’s there in my mind in the flicker of an eyelash, and by the next, I’ve banished it away. She’s not ready to hear it. She may not ever be ready to hear that. Instead I lean close, smiling as gently as I may. I kiss her cheek, and flick my tongue across the blood ¬- her blood - that’s caked there, because I want to and I can’t help it. It’s the ghost of a half-remembered nectar, the taste of her salty and powerful and tingling with magic on my tongue. I whisper, against her cheekbone, "Je t'adore, ma soliel." And she leans into my lips, bringing the taste of her to my tongue yet again.
"It would be easier if you didn't." You don’t mean that.
My voice catches. "Would it truly?"
Her arms wind around my neck then, trickling warm water in trails down my back, and she nods against my shoulder with a small sound of misery. "Our existence is easier when we don't care for each other." No. I won’t accept that so flatly.
I slip an arm into the water to curve about her waist. "I wouldn't know. I've had no time as a vampire without someone I loved near to hand." I draw back so I can see her better, and take her jaw in my other hand, because I want, need, to make this point to her. "Easier, perhaps... but I imagine also emptier."
She only nods. "It is." She pauses, seems to search vainly for something, and then says, in the most fragile tones I’ve ever heard from her, "Will you stay the day with me?"
I glance at the curtains and the small light growing at the edges, and speak the truth. "I don't have a choice now." My fingers tighten on her jaw, because simple truth here is not enough. "And even if I did, I would stay with you." I would always stay with you… but I don’t think I can.
As if drawing herself away from a precipice, she murmurs wonderingly, "It's late."
I smile, brush her damp hair away from her face. "Yes. The sun will be up any minute."
"Help me to bed, Etienne. I'm tired." She tries to lever herself upright, and slips on the porcelain. Only my hands spare her neck from slamming into the edge of the tub.
"Stop," I say, and I can’t help but smile at how stubborn she is, even in the dregs of her weakness. The blood surges in my arms, and I bend to pick her up again, lifting her effortlessly this time. Water sheets down off of her, soaking my chest, my stomach, my pants. It’s the water, only the water, but she feels furnace-warm against my icy skin, and she wraps her arms close again, pressing her face into the curve of my neck.
"I'm sorry," she whispers again.
I swallow, hard, and carry her out into the bedroom, pausing at the foot of her bed to cradle her just a bit closer. I huddle against the warmth of her, and I realize that it’s me who’s at the precipice. "What are you sorry for?"
She doesn’t raise her head away from my neck. "I've hurt you. And I'm going to keep on hurting you."
Slowly, I move to the side of the bed, and lay her down there, being careful of her feet. I pluck the sheets from where they lie at the foot of the bed, and draw them carefully up to cover her in a cool swath. Yes, you have. And yes, you will. God, I’m hungry. I bend, remove my shoes, and unbuckle my belt as I walk around to the other side of the bed. Pain, torment, hunger. Tribulation. It brings wisdom with it, that’s what you’ve taught me. My pants are soaked, and I have to bend again to peel them off my legs. But is it only me that needs to learn?
I stand straight, looking away from her and towards the tall windows and their muffling drapes. The faint predawn light seeps around them, doing nothing but lending slight definition to the darkness. From the bathroom, the rapidly-dying candlelight is what gleams ever so faintly off the water on my skin and hers. No.
I whisper it aloud. “Tribulation brings enlightenment, mon coeur." We both have things to learn from this. Maybe I can finally teach you something, too.
The weight of dawn crashes over me then, like a sudden wave in the ocean. I drag myself under the covers beside her, and gather her to my chest, needing this small contact. My last thoughts are of her arms slipping around me, of the scent of blood and her subtle perfume, of winding my fingers into her beautiful hair. And one thing more.
I have to go away now, cherie.