[Etienne] - Reunion
It’s nearing midnight when I ease through the doors of La Basilica de Notre Dame de la Garde.
I meant to come earlier, to keep more of the night free and open in case... well, in case any number of things... but I found myself obsessing over details in a way that amazed me. What I would wear, how I looked, whether I should feed first. Should I straighten my apartment, should I bring this or that along, should I, should I... I finally realized what I was doing, got thoroughly annoyed with myself, and lit out from my tiny sanctuary in short order.
The Basilica sits on a high hill in the city, with many a wandering path leading up to it aside from the main avenues, and it was one of the smaller paths that I found myself taking, a meandering route of many stairs. I spent the climb thinking over what I was about to do, of possible consequences... but most of all of M-A. Memories, reflections, moments frozen forever in my mind’s eye.
“See anything interesting?” She leaned in the library doorway, splendid in burgundy and black, and all I could think was how infernally I’d misstepped, how fascinated I was by her things, how delectable she looked. No room in my head for savvy, not in that instant. Amazing she kept me around, with how much I stuttered during that first talk.
Her red-gold hair fanned over the sheets, waves of it unbound. Her serpent wrapped all around her, stark contrast to skin like pale cream, ridged and rippled with scars. Seeing her nude surprised me, that first time, but only for a moment. Her body was always been so perfectly an extension of her mind... no wonder I could never tire of exploring it, testing it.
“You’re changing, I told you,” she cried over the wind and the surf. ”Let it happen...” I remember her voice while my body died, the misery in it. A part of her always hated what she did to me, and that kept me from truly hating her for it. She took so much from me... but she tried so hard to give back in equal measure, and it made all the difference in the world.
I climbed higher, vignettes spooling themselves out in my thoughts, until I reached the plaza that stretches in front of the Basilica. As any human climber might have, I paused there as if to catch my breath, but what I was collecting was equilibrium, focus; bringing myself up from the distant past. It was difficult with the soft pulse of her in my head, the knowledge sure and certain that I would find her close at hand. Other moments leapt to mind as I passed them by.
The library, with M-A folded into it in a hundred ways; curled into chairs, leaning on shelves, bent over the tables, sprawled on the floor. That room was her as much as any place could be said to be; a collection of knowledge, and snippets from a hundred places. Ironic that she wasn’t as well-travelled as it first suggested.
Our endless talks, on subjects as varied as one could imagine. My second education; as whimsical and sometimes fragmented as she herself. I could wish she’d been a little more thorough... but that’s part of growing up... both times. Learning that your parents aren’t infallible.
Her rituals, her faith. The greatest part of her, which she so often kept hidden behind flippant demeanor and ribald image. More fools, the throng of Invictus and Lancea who believed that mask; to think her only a callow socialite or a slightly mad witch was the gravest of underestimation. To feel the forces she called and influenced, to know the strength and clarity of her belief... that was to know her as something primal and powerful, as exactly what she was meant to be.
I’d looked up at the stone facade of the church, lit here and there by the lights of the plaza; up at the high tower with the golden statue gleaming atop it. It crowned Marseilles like the beacon it once was, with the city spread beneath it in a blaze of light. I know why they built here, why she came here. I lifted my left hand to my mouth, slashed open my palm, and shed my blood there in the center of the empty plaza. Watching it seep into the stones, I felt an unexpected sense of reverence, and I spent a few moments standing still in the breeze. Then I walked purposefully for the front doors.
Slipping through them now, I’m arrested by the ancient church. The stonework is old but strong; solid and powerful in its architecture, soaring into delicate carvings. Where once there were candles and torches, now electric wall sconces illuminate the inlaid marble, the frescoes and mosaics. But far beyond the construction or the art is the sense, as with every church of real age, that here is a place of faith. A place where countless people have come to offer their words and hearts to something intangible. As I pass through the entry hall and into the hushed murmur of the nave, I start a murmured prayer of my own.
“Lady of the mountain and the shrine and the church; maiden today, mother before, and crone before them both. Accept one who came to you first a child, and comes back grown and diminished and grown again.”
I walk to the font, and dip my fingertips gently into the water, letting it trickle down my fingers and mingle with the dribs of blood from my torn palm.
“Grant me my sacrament, accept my offering in the coin of my kind, and bless me with your good will.”
Suddenly calm, I start to move down the central aisle, letting my eyes fall where they will among the pews, and find her almost immediately. A figure in scarlet, she sits sideways in a pew, one booted foot up on the bench, looking carefully through a mess of papers in a double-thick cardboard filing box. Her hair shimmers gold in the muted light, falling about her like a veil as she sits bent over the box. The position would have made any human woman move after moments, stretching the aches from strained muscles, but I doubt Madeline-Antoinette was even conscious of it. I suspect she’s not even moved since she sat down, but to look at the next document. Some habits don’t change.
“Take my thanks for granting your aegis to a priestess and welcoming her to your home. Take my thanks for guiding me, like a ship to harbor, here to find my home again.”
I sidle down the pew, step soft and voice stilled. The rest of the church has disappeared. Were I human, my heart would be pounding fit to burst my ribs... but I haven’t been that for a long time. I sit, some ten feet down the pew from her, and join my hands together, letting my sacrifice drip between my palms to the marble floor between my feet. My eyes trace over her golden hair and then flick up to the altar as I complete my prayer, this time allowing my voice to carry.
“And thank you, Lady, for watching over we lonely travelers, as we make our way through the night.”
Amen. M-A’s posture changes, a thrill running down her spine just as one runs across the bond. Her head raises, and she turns slowly to look for my voice. I can feel myself smile despite all my efforts at nonchalance. I could no more stop it than stop the sun from rising.
It takes her a long moment, but when she finally speaks, her voice is collected, tone even. “How long have you been in Marseille?" There’s a part of me that wants to be hurt by the casualness of the question, as if twenty years had vanished and we were sitting down on the terrace over coffee. A more rational part notices how careful the question is, watches her tug at her scarf and fidget with the file she’d been reading.
I smile, cover the anxiety with my pleasure at seeing her, layer on a bit of cockiness and a little tease. I’m being careful, too. "Two nights. I got settled and made myself known to the Hound, and then just imagine what I found out from the first Acolyte who crossed my path?” Well, the fourth, technically.
She arches her eyebrow, precisely as she always did. "I suppose you're going to tell me," she says, a note of wry humor in her voice.
I make a contemplative sound and tap my finger against my lips. As I do, I catch a glimpse of the blood still streaking my palm, and lick the wound closed before I forget about it again. My eyes turn upwards as if in deep thought. "Was it the second or third rumor she told me? She was very excited to tell me about the other visitor, the one who came to learn and research some of the city's history." I lean against the pew she’s sitting in, shrug casually. "I pressed for a few details."
Madeleine-Antoinette snorts, amused. "Oh, I'll bet she gave you an earful. 'And do you know what she said to me? She told me that she was researching the Notre-Dame de la Garde cults. Isn't that something? Well, I told her that if there was anything to be found about them, they would be in the Basilica - they keep all sorts of information there, but you have to be careful about those Lance.'" The imitation of Angela’s conspiratorial tone is uncanny, and makes me chuckle.
"Pretty close. Perky little thing. Enthusiastic." Under any other circumstances I might have shown her some of what she wanted. But now... I let myself look over my sire carefully, study her changes in fashion, the small details of expression. "How long ago did you get here?"
"Marseille? A few weeks. I've been in France for a bit longer than that." She shrugs, flicks her eye around the grandeur of the nave. "Have you been here before?"
"Quite some years back. My parents brought me up here a few times when I was young." I follow her look, eyes tracing the fine lines of the galleries and the delicate arches in the ceiling. Parts of me are girding themselves for this to be painful... we’re both playing a cautious game. "It's a beautiful church."
"It is, at that. Christianity builds some beautiful buildings." She lapses into silence for a moment, then smiles serenely at me. "There are some rather interesting similarities between the reverence of the Notre-Dame de la Garde and Iemanja. It's the basis of my research."
Ah, of course it is. I ought to have guessed. I find myself smiling despite discomfiture, as we fall inevitably back to at least this old pattern. "I've done some similar research myself lately, looking into various places Christianity has borrowed symbols, imagery and ritual from. There are quite some number." I’ll tell you of all I’ve learned, but...
She returns my smile and interrupts my thought. "Have you seen the crypt yet?"
"Only a glimpse, when I was young." Long galleries, lined with ex-votos. I don’t remember much of it.
She nods, starts to rise, nodding to the box she was looking through. "C'mon. I need to return these to the office and it's worth seeing when you can appreciate it."
I stand to match her, move down the pew until I’m no more than a few feet away. In the intervening years, I’ve perfected the politician’s mask, the interested, slightly amused face that I now wear all the time when among other Kindred. It feels as natural as my own skin, most times... but now I actually have to work at keeping it up. It threatens to crumble in the face of genuine interest and a foolish outpouring of emotion. Keep it, if not for her, then for the Sanctified who are surely watching. That thought sobers me neatly. "Lead on."
She lifts the box of files to her hip and moves on without further comment, going through an unobtrusive pair of doors to the side with me shadowing her. The box is deposited in a darkened office, and then we keep on down the hall, to the stairwell at the end, and down several steep, narrow flights until the worked stone opens up into the crypts.
This is one of the oldest parts of the basilica, and suddenly I remember the brief look I had when I was young. I was curious then, but had time for only that glimpse before I was brought away by my parents’ schedule. It’s a long, low room, branching off into others, and packed with innumerable things. Candles by the dozen, which shed the only light. Handwritten notes, engraved plates, chiseled stones. Sculptures, paintings, small models of ships and airplanes. Even clothing; there’s a succession of football jerseys on one wall. All the old votos left at the shrine, over hundreds of years, are gathered in the crypts, and it’s a truly magnificent collection. Madeleine-Antoinette pauses on the threshold and looks up at me, but I let my eyes trace slowly over the room.
Even as it feels like nothing has changed... everything has. She may seem much the same, but I’d be a fool to assume that’s the truth of it. I’m so terribly different myself, even than when I left her last. I’ve been through other teachers, other trials, learned new magics and old secrets. How could we not be wary around each other now?
I let myself turn to look at her. The candlelight glimmers in her hair, flushes her pale skin a rosy gold. My heart lurches, and I decide just then that caution can be damned. "Hello, M-A."
“I’ve missed you, love.” She reaches out sideways, opening her hand for mine, and I knit our fingers together. The pulse of the bond as our skin finally touches makes me shut my eyes for a moment, wanting to roll in the feel of her like a cat with catnip.
"I missed you too, cherie. Letters aren't quite the same, are they?"
"No. I- I'm not certain what to say, really." She smiles ruefully. "And usually I'm so good at words."
You and I both. I tug lightly on her hand, pulling her towards me, and to my relief, she doesn’t resist. "Sometimes they're a bit overrated. Let's start here.” I draw her against me and wrap my arms around her, and she winds hers around my waist and molds to my chest.
She lets out a small sigh, and murmurs, "Let's never do that again, shall we?"
Tiny alarms go off in my mind, nagging voices that keep me from agreeing to that as blithely as I want to. I rest my cheek on her hair and smile ruefully. "Can't see that it'll be necessary again. But I don't think that's a promise either of us can make."
She keeps talking into my chest, and now there’s a tiny pleading note. "Just... talk to me. Always keep talking to me. Please."
"I won’t pull so far away again.”
"Thank you, Etienne." She squeezes gently, then pulls away a little, waving at the panoply of votos. "I love this place."
The crypt is beautiful, but its mystery and intrigue are both overshadowed by her, by the sound of her voice, the feel of her skin on mine and her scent in my nose. I want to do something more drastic, right where we stand, but we’re too exposed at the bottom of the stairwell. I nod further into the crypts, take her hand again. "Walk with me. It's been too long since... anything, where you're concerned."
"As you like."
We walk further in, standing close enough to press a line of our bodies against one another. We move together simply, easily, and I wonder at it before I realize that this is just how we used to move. Without thinking about it in the slightest, we’re still falling into old habits, old niches; fitting ourselves one against the other.
We walk slowly, past the countless votos both ancient and new. There are objects both mundane and extraordinary, a beautiful menagerie of devotion. It is a testament to faith and diversity, a composite sculpture with a single beautiful form. How fitting that I walk through it now, with M-A by my side again at last. Apart for so long, now knitting back together... we’re become votos ourselves, part of this tableau.
We finally reach the end of the crypt and slow to a stop. The candles here have mostly burnt out, and we’re shrouded in darkness and silence. It’s a long moment before she breaks the quiet with a question. "Penny?" she asks softly.
Unlikely that anyone is watching us here, and damn them if they are. "What could I possibly say? I thought of you under strange stars; in bright cities, in cold deserts and on mountaintops. I missed debating and talking with you... lying tangled up in one another and reading until dawn... your eyes, your lips... I just couldn't seem to forget about you out there in the world."
Her cool fingers come up to trace my jaw, pale brands in the dimness. What light there is limns her profile, and her private smile is just as I remember; beautiful and strong and somehow winsome all at once. "You've always been in my thoughts, love. Always, always."
God. I flick my eyes over room swiftly, almost cursorily. If anyone really is watching, they’ll be hidden. The hell with them all. I grab a fistful of M-A’s Oxford shirt right at the small of her back, drag her into me, and kiss her as I’ve been wanting to since I first saw her sitting alone in that pew. No. Since the first night I woke up alone on the Filha do Mar, sailing away from Sao Paolo.
She molds against me, crushes her lips to mine with a throaty alto chuckle, and tangles our tongues together a heartbeat later. I’d been nervous, but she met me halfway, willing and strong, and I find in myself a strength to match hers, a passion that shreds my prior worries and carries them away like dry leaves in a hurricane. For a while, I stop paying attention to things other than the kiss, and the feel of her cool lips heating against mine.
It’s a long while, as it happens. You can kiss someone awfully long and deep when you don’t need to breathe. The bond throbs and pulses and threatens to rob me of my reason completely, but I’m not a stripling anymore. Michael taught me better, and so did Sigrid and Engel. The kiss is hungry, and my right hand is still tight in her shirt, but my free hand moves with langorous purpose, tracing from her cheek to her thigh in a slow investigation. I explore the feel of her with a new perspective; when I left Madeline-Antoinette in Sao Paolo I was in every way her childe, her student, hers. Now I’m my own, and that may change everything between us.
I finally pull back a little, and it has more to do with checking the rising tide of heat than anything else. I want more, I want to shove her against the nearest table and... but no. Not here, and not now. Instead, I bank my hunger like a bed of coals, shift it in my mind until it pulses and throbs against the bond. Our foreheads touch, and there’s a silent moment. You feel just the same, but that’s a pretty trap for my will and my volition... one I’ve no intention of falling into, no matter how easy it would be on me. I want to know you again, everything about you, everything that’s changed, but I’ll do it on my terms, as well as yours.
"You're different," she finally murmurs. Her eyes are closed, and she’s poised as if she’s scenting me, or maybe listening.
“Yes.” Oh am I. I can hardly wait to show you.
M-A nods, slowly opens her eyes again. Her pride crackles across the bond, along with a sense of anticipation like summer lightning in the air. "Good. I want to know this new you. There's a bar on the waterfront that I like. Join me for a drink?"
I reach up and trace a fingertip over one of her golden eyebrows. I’m feeling marvelously possessive, and I allow myself to, for a while. It makes me suggest something giddy, something that would never have occurred to the reserved young man she knew. "I have no intention of letting you go until you do. Walk to the terrace, run the rest of the way?”
“If you like.” She grins, and I wrap my fingers around hers. It’s a beginning, and far from disaster or pain, I feel almost buoyant.
“I like.”
I meant to come earlier, to keep more of the night free and open in case... well, in case any number of things... but I found myself obsessing over details in a way that amazed me. What I would wear, how I looked, whether I should feed first. Should I straighten my apartment, should I bring this or that along, should I, should I... I finally realized what I was doing, got thoroughly annoyed with myself, and lit out from my tiny sanctuary in short order.
The Basilica sits on a high hill in the city, with many a wandering path leading up to it aside from the main avenues, and it was one of the smaller paths that I found myself taking, a meandering route of many stairs. I spent the climb thinking over what I was about to do, of possible consequences... but most of all of M-A. Memories, reflections, moments frozen forever in my mind’s eye.
“See anything interesting?” She leaned in the library doorway, splendid in burgundy and black, and all I could think was how infernally I’d misstepped, how fascinated I was by her things, how delectable she looked. No room in my head for savvy, not in that instant. Amazing she kept me around, with how much I stuttered during that first talk.
Her red-gold hair fanned over the sheets, waves of it unbound. Her serpent wrapped all around her, stark contrast to skin like pale cream, ridged and rippled with scars. Seeing her nude surprised me, that first time, but only for a moment. Her body was always been so perfectly an extension of her mind... no wonder I could never tire of exploring it, testing it.
“You’re changing, I told you,” she cried over the wind and the surf. ”Let it happen...” I remember her voice while my body died, the misery in it. A part of her always hated what she did to me, and that kept me from truly hating her for it. She took so much from me... but she tried so hard to give back in equal measure, and it made all the difference in the world.
I climbed higher, vignettes spooling themselves out in my thoughts, until I reached the plaza that stretches in front of the Basilica. As any human climber might have, I paused there as if to catch my breath, but what I was collecting was equilibrium, focus; bringing myself up from the distant past. It was difficult with the soft pulse of her in my head, the knowledge sure and certain that I would find her close at hand. Other moments leapt to mind as I passed them by.
The library, with M-A folded into it in a hundred ways; curled into chairs, leaning on shelves, bent over the tables, sprawled on the floor. That room was her as much as any place could be said to be; a collection of knowledge, and snippets from a hundred places. Ironic that she wasn’t as well-travelled as it first suggested.
Our endless talks, on subjects as varied as one could imagine. My second education; as whimsical and sometimes fragmented as she herself. I could wish she’d been a little more thorough... but that’s part of growing up... both times. Learning that your parents aren’t infallible.
Her rituals, her faith. The greatest part of her, which she so often kept hidden behind flippant demeanor and ribald image. More fools, the throng of Invictus and Lancea who believed that mask; to think her only a callow socialite or a slightly mad witch was the gravest of underestimation. To feel the forces she called and influenced, to know the strength and clarity of her belief... that was to know her as something primal and powerful, as exactly what she was meant to be.
I’d looked up at the stone facade of the church, lit here and there by the lights of the plaza; up at the high tower with the golden statue gleaming atop it. It crowned Marseilles like the beacon it once was, with the city spread beneath it in a blaze of light. I know why they built here, why she came here. I lifted my left hand to my mouth, slashed open my palm, and shed my blood there in the center of the empty plaza. Watching it seep into the stones, I felt an unexpected sense of reverence, and I spent a few moments standing still in the breeze. Then I walked purposefully for the front doors.
Slipping through them now, I’m arrested by the ancient church. The stonework is old but strong; solid and powerful in its architecture, soaring into delicate carvings. Where once there were candles and torches, now electric wall sconces illuminate the inlaid marble, the frescoes and mosaics. But far beyond the construction or the art is the sense, as with every church of real age, that here is a place of faith. A place where countless people have come to offer their words and hearts to something intangible. As I pass through the entry hall and into the hushed murmur of the nave, I start a murmured prayer of my own.
“Lady of the mountain and the shrine and the church; maiden today, mother before, and crone before them both. Accept one who came to you first a child, and comes back grown and diminished and grown again.”
I walk to the font, and dip my fingertips gently into the water, letting it trickle down my fingers and mingle with the dribs of blood from my torn palm.
“Grant me my sacrament, accept my offering in the coin of my kind, and bless me with your good will.”
Suddenly calm, I start to move down the central aisle, letting my eyes fall where they will among the pews, and find her almost immediately. A figure in scarlet, she sits sideways in a pew, one booted foot up on the bench, looking carefully through a mess of papers in a double-thick cardboard filing box. Her hair shimmers gold in the muted light, falling about her like a veil as she sits bent over the box. The position would have made any human woman move after moments, stretching the aches from strained muscles, but I doubt Madeline-Antoinette was even conscious of it. I suspect she’s not even moved since she sat down, but to look at the next document. Some habits don’t change.
“Take my thanks for granting your aegis to a priestess and welcoming her to your home. Take my thanks for guiding me, like a ship to harbor, here to find my home again.”
I sidle down the pew, step soft and voice stilled. The rest of the church has disappeared. Were I human, my heart would be pounding fit to burst my ribs... but I haven’t been that for a long time. I sit, some ten feet down the pew from her, and join my hands together, letting my sacrifice drip between my palms to the marble floor between my feet. My eyes trace over her golden hair and then flick up to the altar as I complete my prayer, this time allowing my voice to carry.
“And thank you, Lady, for watching over we lonely travelers, as we make our way through the night.”
Amen. M-A’s posture changes, a thrill running down her spine just as one runs across the bond. Her head raises, and she turns slowly to look for my voice. I can feel myself smile despite all my efforts at nonchalance. I could no more stop it than stop the sun from rising.
It takes her a long moment, but when she finally speaks, her voice is collected, tone even. “How long have you been in Marseille?" There’s a part of me that wants to be hurt by the casualness of the question, as if twenty years had vanished and we were sitting down on the terrace over coffee. A more rational part notices how careful the question is, watches her tug at her scarf and fidget with the file she’d been reading.
I smile, cover the anxiety with my pleasure at seeing her, layer on a bit of cockiness and a little tease. I’m being careful, too. "Two nights. I got settled and made myself known to the Hound, and then just imagine what I found out from the first Acolyte who crossed my path?” Well, the fourth, technically.
She arches her eyebrow, precisely as she always did. "I suppose you're going to tell me," she says, a note of wry humor in her voice.
I make a contemplative sound and tap my finger against my lips. As I do, I catch a glimpse of the blood still streaking my palm, and lick the wound closed before I forget about it again. My eyes turn upwards as if in deep thought. "Was it the second or third rumor she told me? She was very excited to tell me about the other visitor, the one who came to learn and research some of the city's history." I lean against the pew she’s sitting in, shrug casually. "I pressed for a few details."
Madeleine-Antoinette snorts, amused. "Oh, I'll bet she gave you an earful. 'And do you know what she said to me? She told me that she was researching the Notre-Dame de la Garde cults. Isn't that something? Well, I told her that if there was anything to be found about them, they would be in the Basilica - they keep all sorts of information there, but you have to be careful about those Lance.'" The imitation of Angela’s conspiratorial tone is uncanny, and makes me chuckle.
"Pretty close. Perky little thing. Enthusiastic." Under any other circumstances I might have shown her some of what she wanted. But now... I let myself look over my sire carefully, study her changes in fashion, the small details of expression. "How long ago did you get here?"
"Marseille? A few weeks. I've been in France for a bit longer than that." She shrugs, flicks her eye around the grandeur of the nave. "Have you been here before?"
"Quite some years back. My parents brought me up here a few times when I was young." I follow her look, eyes tracing the fine lines of the galleries and the delicate arches in the ceiling. Parts of me are girding themselves for this to be painful... we’re both playing a cautious game. "It's a beautiful church."
"It is, at that. Christianity builds some beautiful buildings." She lapses into silence for a moment, then smiles serenely at me. "There are some rather interesting similarities between the reverence of the Notre-Dame de la Garde and Iemanja. It's the basis of my research."
Ah, of course it is. I ought to have guessed. I find myself smiling despite discomfiture, as we fall inevitably back to at least this old pattern. "I've done some similar research myself lately, looking into various places Christianity has borrowed symbols, imagery and ritual from. There are quite some number." I’ll tell you of all I’ve learned, but...
She returns my smile and interrupts my thought. "Have you seen the crypt yet?"
"Only a glimpse, when I was young." Long galleries, lined with ex-votos. I don’t remember much of it.
She nods, starts to rise, nodding to the box she was looking through. "C'mon. I need to return these to the office and it's worth seeing when you can appreciate it."
I stand to match her, move down the pew until I’m no more than a few feet away. In the intervening years, I’ve perfected the politician’s mask, the interested, slightly amused face that I now wear all the time when among other Kindred. It feels as natural as my own skin, most times... but now I actually have to work at keeping it up. It threatens to crumble in the face of genuine interest and a foolish outpouring of emotion. Keep it, if not for her, then for the Sanctified who are surely watching. That thought sobers me neatly. "Lead on."
She lifts the box of files to her hip and moves on without further comment, going through an unobtrusive pair of doors to the side with me shadowing her. The box is deposited in a darkened office, and then we keep on down the hall, to the stairwell at the end, and down several steep, narrow flights until the worked stone opens up into the crypts.
This is one of the oldest parts of the basilica, and suddenly I remember the brief look I had when I was young. I was curious then, but had time for only that glimpse before I was brought away by my parents’ schedule. It’s a long, low room, branching off into others, and packed with innumerable things. Candles by the dozen, which shed the only light. Handwritten notes, engraved plates, chiseled stones. Sculptures, paintings, small models of ships and airplanes. Even clothing; there’s a succession of football jerseys on one wall. All the old votos left at the shrine, over hundreds of years, are gathered in the crypts, and it’s a truly magnificent collection. Madeleine-Antoinette pauses on the threshold and looks up at me, but I let my eyes trace slowly over the room.
Even as it feels like nothing has changed... everything has. She may seem much the same, but I’d be a fool to assume that’s the truth of it. I’m so terribly different myself, even than when I left her last. I’ve been through other teachers, other trials, learned new magics and old secrets. How could we not be wary around each other now?
I let myself turn to look at her. The candlelight glimmers in her hair, flushes her pale skin a rosy gold. My heart lurches, and I decide just then that caution can be damned. "Hello, M-A."
“I’ve missed you, love.” She reaches out sideways, opening her hand for mine, and I knit our fingers together. The pulse of the bond as our skin finally touches makes me shut my eyes for a moment, wanting to roll in the feel of her like a cat with catnip.
"I missed you too, cherie. Letters aren't quite the same, are they?"
"No. I- I'm not certain what to say, really." She smiles ruefully. "And usually I'm so good at words."
You and I both. I tug lightly on her hand, pulling her towards me, and to my relief, she doesn’t resist. "Sometimes they're a bit overrated. Let's start here.” I draw her against me and wrap my arms around her, and she winds hers around my waist and molds to my chest.
She lets out a small sigh, and murmurs, "Let's never do that again, shall we?"
Tiny alarms go off in my mind, nagging voices that keep me from agreeing to that as blithely as I want to. I rest my cheek on her hair and smile ruefully. "Can't see that it'll be necessary again. But I don't think that's a promise either of us can make."
She keeps talking into my chest, and now there’s a tiny pleading note. "Just... talk to me. Always keep talking to me. Please."
"I won’t pull so far away again.”
"Thank you, Etienne." She squeezes gently, then pulls away a little, waving at the panoply of votos. "I love this place."
The crypt is beautiful, but its mystery and intrigue are both overshadowed by her, by the sound of her voice, the feel of her skin on mine and her scent in my nose. I want to do something more drastic, right where we stand, but we’re too exposed at the bottom of the stairwell. I nod further into the crypts, take her hand again. "Walk with me. It's been too long since... anything, where you're concerned."
"As you like."
We walk further in, standing close enough to press a line of our bodies against one another. We move together simply, easily, and I wonder at it before I realize that this is just how we used to move. Without thinking about it in the slightest, we’re still falling into old habits, old niches; fitting ourselves one against the other.
We walk slowly, past the countless votos both ancient and new. There are objects both mundane and extraordinary, a beautiful menagerie of devotion. It is a testament to faith and diversity, a composite sculpture with a single beautiful form. How fitting that I walk through it now, with M-A by my side again at last. Apart for so long, now knitting back together... we’re become votos ourselves, part of this tableau.
We finally reach the end of the crypt and slow to a stop. The candles here have mostly burnt out, and we’re shrouded in darkness and silence. It’s a long moment before she breaks the quiet with a question. "Penny?" she asks softly.
Unlikely that anyone is watching us here, and damn them if they are. "What could I possibly say? I thought of you under strange stars; in bright cities, in cold deserts and on mountaintops. I missed debating and talking with you... lying tangled up in one another and reading until dawn... your eyes, your lips... I just couldn't seem to forget about you out there in the world."
Her cool fingers come up to trace my jaw, pale brands in the dimness. What light there is limns her profile, and her private smile is just as I remember; beautiful and strong and somehow winsome all at once. "You've always been in my thoughts, love. Always, always."
God. I flick my eyes over room swiftly, almost cursorily. If anyone really is watching, they’ll be hidden. The hell with them all. I grab a fistful of M-A’s Oxford shirt right at the small of her back, drag her into me, and kiss her as I’ve been wanting to since I first saw her sitting alone in that pew. No. Since the first night I woke up alone on the Filha do Mar, sailing away from Sao Paolo.
She molds against me, crushes her lips to mine with a throaty alto chuckle, and tangles our tongues together a heartbeat later. I’d been nervous, but she met me halfway, willing and strong, and I find in myself a strength to match hers, a passion that shreds my prior worries and carries them away like dry leaves in a hurricane. For a while, I stop paying attention to things other than the kiss, and the feel of her cool lips heating against mine.
It’s a long while, as it happens. You can kiss someone awfully long and deep when you don’t need to breathe. The bond throbs and pulses and threatens to rob me of my reason completely, but I’m not a stripling anymore. Michael taught me better, and so did Sigrid and Engel. The kiss is hungry, and my right hand is still tight in her shirt, but my free hand moves with langorous purpose, tracing from her cheek to her thigh in a slow investigation. I explore the feel of her with a new perspective; when I left Madeline-Antoinette in Sao Paolo I was in every way her childe, her student, hers. Now I’m my own, and that may change everything between us.
I finally pull back a little, and it has more to do with checking the rising tide of heat than anything else. I want more, I want to shove her against the nearest table and... but no. Not here, and not now. Instead, I bank my hunger like a bed of coals, shift it in my mind until it pulses and throbs against the bond. Our foreheads touch, and there’s a silent moment. You feel just the same, but that’s a pretty trap for my will and my volition... one I’ve no intention of falling into, no matter how easy it would be on me. I want to know you again, everything about you, everything that’s changed, but I’ll do it on my terms, as well as yours.
"You're different," she finally murmurs. Her eyes are closed, and she’s poised as if she’s scenting me, or maybe listening.
“Yes.” Oh am I. I can hardly wait to show you.
M-A nods, slowly opens her eyes again. Her pride crackles across the bond, along with a sense of anticipation like summer lightning in the air. "Good. I want to know this new you. There's a bar on the waterfront that I like. Join me for a drink?"
I reach up and trace a fingertip over one of her golden eyebrows. I’m feeling marvelously possessive, and I allow myself to, for a while. It makes me suggest something giddy, something that would never have occurred to the reserved young man she knew. "I have no intention of letting you go until you do. Walk to the terrace, run the rest of the way?”
“If you like.” She grins, and I wrap my fingers around hers. It’s a beginning, and far from disaster or pain, I feel almost buoyant.
“I like.”