A Dirge For Her, The Doubly Dead
Title: A Dirge For Her, The Doubly Dead
Summary: Written for the spn_las challenge. Lenore and Eli fight for their lives.
Characters: Lenore, Eli ("Blood Lust")
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 950
Disclaimer: I'd kind of like to have Lenore for my own, but alas, she doesn't belong to me either.
Warnings: Uh, socially responsible vampires? Implied violence.
Neurotic Author's Note #1: Written for the spn_las challenge. The prompt was "Life is life. Fight for it." ~Mother Theresa. This was a hell of a difficult prompt, because, well, it's kind of generic and applies in seventeen thousand different ways to SPN.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: Unbeta'd, obviously, since that's part of the challenge. Shameless exploitation of secondary characters for my own nefarious purposes, but I have always really liked Lenore (Amber Benson, mmm.) and am sad we never saw her again.
Neurotic Author's Note #3: I quite like what I did here, even if it was a bit rushed. Apparently others felt the same way, because I managed to win this round. Maybe it was because this time I didn't write a really wacky state of fugue only marginally comprehensible to people who'd seen the show. ;)
Neurotic Author's Note #4: Title shamelessly ripped from Edgar Allan Poe because of the obvious connection.
It’s ridiculous, to get attached to things. Things are impermanent, made only to break and decay. Lenore knows this, better than most, and yet somehow here she still is, sitting on the floor of the kitchen she will never see again, cradling a teacup in her lap.
“Leave it, Lenore,” Eli says from the doorway.
Outside, a woman hurries by on the sidewalk. Lenore can smell her sweat, hear her heart skittering in her chest, trying to keep up with the pace she’s set for herself. Perhaps she’s late for work. Blood pumps through her veins, rushes and swirls through the ventricles of her heart. Eli senses it too, although the only indication he gives is a slight tilt of his head in that direction.
“We can’t take it with us.”
“I know.” But she doesn’t move, tracing her fingers over the delicate china. “These were the first cups I bought, when we moved here. Can you believe it’s been five years?”
“What I can’t believe is that you actually bought teacups. We don’t drink tea.”
“They’re pretty.”
“And that’s the only reason you bought them?”
“Reason enough.”
It’s the same reason she painted the kitchen yellow. The same reason she bothered picking out curtains for the windows, furniture for the rooms.
“Vampires don’t need furniture,” Eli had argued, and that’s where she disagreed. Perhaps it wasn’t a physical necessity, but it was a necessity nonetheless. It’s good for the soul, she’d told him.
“Do we even have souls?”
“Of course.”
When they moved here, Lenore decided to learn to bake. She joined a committee at work, and participated in the bake sales. Everyone at the office loves her cupcakes, and they keep telling her she should do it for a living. Lenore just smiles at them, thanks them quietly for the compliment, and ignores the way the sugar makes their hearts speed up, their blood smell that much sweeter. She hasn’t tasted human blood in well over fifty years, not since hunters wiped out three-quarters of her nest during the McCarthy era, but sometimes she lets herself think about what it would be like to let her teeth sink into warm, yielding flesh, just for a moment. To feel that fresh burst of warmth on her tongue, just one more time.
Instead she has learned to smile and buy coffee in the morning that she doesn’t drink, and she ducks her head and pretends to be shy when the middle-aged ladies at the office cluck about how young she is, and how at ‘her age’ she wouldn’t understand some of their problems. They don’t know how right they are. Sometimes she laughs, and they think she’s adorable. They tease her about having perpetually cold hands.
“It’s because I’m secretly dead,” she told them once, and they giggled at the absurdity of her statement.
“I don’t want to leave,” she says, turning the cup over in her hands, threading her index finger through the slim handle. “This is our home. How can they do this?”
“They’re hunters,” Eli quits his post in the doorway, pads to her on silent feet, and drops to sit beside her. “They don’t care what they destroy, just so long as they get to destroy it.” He still remembers the flames, she thinks, although he was only newly-made and confused and hungry. It’s made him angry, but he follows her lead anyway, because he loves her.
She buries her head in his shoulder and allows herself the indulgence of tears, and he wraps his arms around her shoulders and pulls her close while she cries. She can feel the anger simmering inside him, as much on her behalf as his own, and she understands it. They’ve worked so hard for this, to build this life with its yellow kitchen and its blue and white china teacups, its bake sales and ordinariness. Every teacup has been bought with days spent squinting against the sunlight, with pints of cow’s blood choked down under the cover of darkness, with secrets and lies, all in the name of preserving life.
“It’s not fair,” she moans helplessly into Eli’s collarbone. Lenore is one hundred and seventy-three years old, one hundred and forty of which she has spent as a vampire. She of all people knows that life is never, ever fair, and yet it always takes her by surprise.
“Let me kill them for you,” Eli offers, and she laughs through her tears, wipes at her eyes with the tips of her fingers until there are only a few drops clinging to her lashes.
“No. That will just attract more of them, you know that. We’ll never be able to stop running.”
“We’re always running. When the hell are we going to stop and fight these assholes? We’re fighting for our lives, here, Lenore!”
For the first time Lenore thinks she feels the full weight of her one hundred and seventy-three years, dragging her down and pinning her to the ground like a butterfly to a card. If she lets it, it will trap her here, like this, forever. She takes a deep breath, then in one smooth motion she rises to her feet, whirls around and whips the teacup she’s holding at the wall, where it shatters in a shower of blue and white shards. She smooths her skirt with both hands, then turns to look at Eli’s shocked expression, and smiles.
“There’s more than one way to fight,” she says calmly.
Then she walks by him, and goes to pack up the rest of her belongings.
Summary: Written for the spn_las challenge. Lenore and Eli fight for their lives.
Characters: Lenore, Eli ("Blood Lust")
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 950
Disclaimer: I'd kind of like to have Lenore for my own, but alas, she doesn't belong to me either.
Warnings: Uh, socially responsible vampires? Implied violence.
Neurotic Author's Note #1: Written for the spn_las challenge. The prompt was "Life is life. Fight for it." ~Mother Theresa. This was a hell of a difficult prompt, because, well, it's kind of generic and applies in seventeen thousand different ways to SPN.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: Unbeta'd, obviously, since that's part of the challenge. Shameless exploitation of secondary characters for my own nefarious purposes, but I have always really liked Lenore (Amber Benson, mmm.) and am sad we never saw her again.
Neurotic Author's Note #3: I quite like what I did here, even if it was a bit rushed. Apparently others felt the same way, because I managed to win this round. Maybe it was because this time I didn't write a really wacky state of fugue only marginally comprehensible to people who'd seen the show. ;)
Neurotic Author's Note #4: Title shamelessly ripped from Edgar Allan Poe because of the obvious connection.
It’s ridiculous, to get attached to things. Things are impermanent, made only to break and decay. Lenore knows this, better than most, and yet somehow here she still is, sitting on the floor of the kitchen she will never see again, cradling a teacup in her lap.
“Leave it, Lenore,” Eli says from the doorway.
Outside, a woman hurries by on the sidewalk. Lenore can smell her sweat, hear her heart skittering in her chest, trying to keep up with the pace she’s set for herself. Perhaps she’s late for work. Blood pumps through her veins, rushes and swirls through the ventricles of her heart. Eli senses it too, although the only indication he gives is a slight tilt of his head in that direction.
“We can’t take it with us.”
“I know.” But she doesn’t move, tracing her fingers over the delicate china. “These were the first cups I bought, when we moved here. Can you believe it’s been five years?”
“What I can’t believe is that you actually bought teacups. We don’t drink tea.”
“They’re pretty.”
“And that’s the only reason you bought them?”
“Reason enough.”
It’s the same reason she painted the kitchen yellow. The same reason she bothered picking out curtains for the windows, furniture for the rooms.
“Vampires don’t need furniture,” Eli had argued, and that’s where she disagreed. Perhaps it wasn’t a physical necessity, but it was a necessity nonetheless. It’s good for the soul, she’d told him.
“Do we even have souls?”
“Of course.”
When they moved here, Lenore decided to learn to bake. She joined a committee at work, and participated in the bake sales. Everyone at the office loves her cupcakes, and they keep telling her she should do it for a living. Lenore just smiles at them, thanks them quietly for the compliment, and ignores the way the sugar makes their hearts speed up, their blood smell that much sweeter. She hasn’t tasted human blood in well over fifty years, not since hunters wiped out three-quarters of her nest during the McCarthy era, but sometimes she lets herself think about what it would be like to let her teeth sink into warm, yielding flesh, just for a moment. To feel that fresh burst of warmth on her tongue, just one more time.
Instead she has learned to smile and buy coffee in the morning that she doesn’t drink, and she ducks her head and pretends to be shy when the middle-aged ladies at the office cluck about how young she is, and how at ‘her age’ she wouldn’t understand some of their problems. They don’t know how right they are. Sometimes she laughs, and they think she’s adorable. They tease her about having perpetually cold hands.
“It’s because I’m secretly dead,” she told them once, and they giggled at the absurdity of her statement.
“I don’t want to leave,” she says, turning the cup over in her hands, threading her index finger through the slim handle. “This is our home. How can they do this?”
“They’re hunters,” Eli quits his post in the doorway, pads to her on silent feet, and drops to sit beside her. “They don’t care what they destroy, just so long as they get to destroy it.” He still remembers the flames, she thinks, although he was only newly-made and confused and hungry. It’s made him angry, but he follows her lead anyway, because he loves her.
She buries her head in his shoulder and allows herself the indulgence of tears, and he wraps his arms around her shoulders and pulls her close while she cries. She can feel the anger simmering inside him, as much on her behalf as his own, and she understands it. They’ve worked so hard for this, to build this life with its yellow kitchen and its blue and white china teacups, its bake sales and ordinariness. Every teacup has been bought with days spent squinting against the sunlight, with pints of cow’s blood choked down under the cover of darkness, with secrets and lies, all in the name of preserving life.
“It’s not fair,” she moans helplessly into Eli’s collarbone. Lenore is one hundred and seventy-three years old, one hundred and forty of which she has spent as a vampire. She of all people knows that life is never, ever fair, and yet it always takes her by surprise.
“Let me kill them for you,” Eli offers, and she laughs through her tears, wipes at her eyes with the tips of her fingers until there are only a few drops clinging to her lashes.
“No. That will just attract more of them, you know that. We’ll never be able to stop running.”
“We’re always running. When the hell are we going to stop and fight these assholes? We’re fighting for our lives, here, Lenore!”
For the first time Lenore thinks she feels the full weight of her one hundred and seventy-three years, dragging her down and pinning her to the ground like a butterfly to a card. If she lets it, it will trap her here, like this, forever. She takes a deep breath, then in one smooth motion she rises to her feet, whirls around and whips the teacup she’s holding at the wall, where it shatters in a shower of blue and white shards. She smooths her skirt with both hands, then turns to look at Eli’s shocked expression, and smiles.
“There’s more than one way to fight,” she says calmly.
Then she walks by him, and goes to pack up the rest of her belongings.