Entry 01 : Wish You Were Here
Title: "Wish You Were Here"
Entry Number: 01
Author: saraste_impi
Original: Before Dawn- series
Rating: PG-13 (mentions of suicide, violence, vague references to sex)
Genre: angst, fem!slash, horror
Warnings: horror
Word Count: 1296
A/N: This ficlet is set in my Before Dawn verse, which tells the story of a group of vampires set in 1912 London. I've wanted to write out the stuff revolving around the pair of vampire lovers depicted here, Priscilla and Iris, for a long time now. However, seeing as I've had most of what happens to either mostly in my head, I'm still getting the hang of writing Pris in particular. Also, the subject matter might be a little bit dark. This entry takes place after my last years last BD entry A Reason for Revenge.
Priscilla sat there, agonized. She could feel Iris' eyes upon her, those kind gentle grey eyes she had grown so fond of in their far too few decades together. It was so laughable that they had not even gotten to be together as long as some mortal couples, even when they had both been immortal. Granted that that immortality always came with a few caveats, a possibility of a final death always looming in the edges of any immortals thoughts. The things that would be the end of a vampires life had been known to both and one of them had been the end of Iris.
Priscilla clung to the blouse in her lap, her fingers gripping the material tight as she closed her eyes. It was easier to fool herself that Iris was looking at her, was there not only as a memory of an anguished mind.
”Please... why can't you just... be here, Iris, love...” she softly whispered into the lingering darkness surrounding her. No single candle marred the gloom of her bedroom, their bedroom. The bed where they had spend hours twined around each other, making sweet love. God, Priscilla could almost feel Iris there beside her, her lover's weight dipping the mattress, her gentle hand on her shoulder. It was almost more than what she could bear, for Priscilla knew with a gut-wrenching certainty that she would never ever see Iris again, not for as long as she might live. Most of her wanted to simply end it, be rid of an eternity which was now damned, marred irrevocably by Iris' passing. Priscilla was so weary of life, even when she had not even lived a mortals life-span, that had an almost painful urge to follow Iris into her fiery death.
A death Iris had chosen because Priscilla had strayed in her love.
Priscilla's head sank down and her arms rose to press the blouse against her face, her senses trying to gleam whatever lingering scent there might be left of Iris. To no avail. All she accomplished was agonizing herself more.
Priscilla had often sat like this, alone and fleeing from her Mistress, in the darkness of her room in the house she shared with the others. For the most, Morgan left her be. But Priscilla did not fool herself and think that it was an act of kindness. Everything Morgan de Wispelaere did was a part of some scheme. But whatever was the cause of the space which she was allowed, Priscilla was grateful for it.
“I would follow you, my love, but for one thing,” Priscilla murmured into the lace, flopping down on the bed to curl up around herself. She exhaled deep, to steady herself, not because she was in any need of air to continue on living. There was a brink she was afraid that she'd topple over if she let herself. A border between grief and madness. She could not cross it yet. Not yet. So she let her eyes close tight and made herself remember that dawn when she had woken with a terrible pain piercing through her, knowing there was something terribly wrong with Iris, wanting to go to her but being held back. Being punished. She made herself remember the empty feeling suffusing her soul when her fingers had skimmed through a pile of ashes laying on a rooftop somewhere in London. The agony ripping through her as she had cried bloodied tears and let her mourning echo from the rooftops... As bad as it hurt her, she remembered.
Because there was someone who was responsible for that pain, for Iris doing what she had done, someone who had to be taught a lesson. Images of Iris smiling, her blonde curls tumbling free around her face, her grey eyes full of love were marred with memories from that abandoned rooftop, the awful disgusting feel of Iris' ashes on her fingers, the clinging of wet clothes to her body as she'd lamented over her loss.
“She will pay,” Priscilla said, promising herself once more, letting herself give in to the darkness slumbering within her. Like most of their kind, she often fought with the darkness which had been mostly dormant deep inside her soul until that night, now some thirty years in the past when she had lain in Iris' forever girlish arms and received the kiss. In that intimate moment, her old life slipping away being replaced with a new, Priscilla had been afraid. Only for a moment but enough for her to struggle. But Iris had carried on, giving her the night, giving Priscilla her very own soul in return for her mortal life. A soul and love Priscilla had stomped onto the ground with her dalliance with that damned girl. Priscilla blamed the darkness within herself for that, it had somehow connected with the newly-woken Blood coursing through Gwen's veins, making the fledgling desirable for Priscilla. In a moment of madness Priscilla had had to have her, and so she had hurried back to where the young woman had lain bleeding into a gutter, slipping past Morgan's watchful eye.
It had been messy and not at all intimate. A foul-smelling alley really had not been a place to bring anyone back, tempt them with the Blood. Yet Priscilla had done it, had forced it upon a girl she had known would maybe have chosen to die. Gwen had been conscious enough to be aware of death approaching, her mucked and bloodied hand clinging to her dress, as if trying to shield something. Priscilla had made herself forget what she had heard the young woman say that night, had not listened to the voice of her own reason and had done the unthinkable.
Wallowing in her grief and letting it fuel the darkness residing in her, Priscilla made her forgo all feelings of compassion for Gwen. Gwen was the one she was angry at, even when, deep deep down she knew that she was most angry at herself. Priscilla refused to think about Iris, coming into the very room she was in now, catching her and Gwen on that very bed where she now huddled on, entwined in relative passion. Priscilla refused to think about the tears on Iris' face, on Gwen's face when she had realized what had been done to her, even when she had clung to life and acquiesced just moments before death would have taken her from the world for good. When Gwen had realized what the blood soaking her skirt and petticoats had meant.
Priscilla only remembered Iris' hands gently cleaning the wounds on her skin, bone-deep cuts after her lashing from Morgan. Iris sobbing that she was sorry. That she would do anything to make it better for her, for her own darling Priscilla.
By then, Priscilla had realized the whole extent of her actions. Yet only that one terrible morning, waking up inside her coffin, in agony over her loss, had Priscilla really understood the full consequences of her disobedience.
She let the terrible passion of revenge wash over herself, revelling in it's sweetness. Shifting on the bed, Priscilla searched for the cameo hanging around her neck on a golden chain. Her fingers curled around the ornament still stained with Iris' blood and she focused herself. Slowly, she finally got up from the bed and walked to the door. She stood in front of it for a few moments, clinging to Iris' memory, slowly vowing to her dead love that she would revenge her death, feeling the lie of Iris encouragement in her ears. Then, with a wicked smile curling her lips up, Priscilla opened the door and stepped into the hall beyond, ready for the revenge that was mere moments away.