The Five Uses of Love-Lies-Bleeding

[darkfaerieclaw]

Title: The Five Uses of Love-Lies-Bleeding (And One Reason They Will Remain Unknown)
Author: darkfaerieclaw
Prompt: Blue Raspberry #11: spring cleaning, Pralines & Cream #24: one of a kind
Extras: Malt (11. spring cleaning : Cyprian - you want to try and tear me down?)
Story Continuity: Battle For the Sun
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 8,000+ (!!)
Summary: Cyprian reunites with a man he's loved and killed for, and then gets drafted along with his group and the love of his life into a mini-war against vampires. Also, Kristen learns a lesson and teaches it too, and somebody dies. A lot of somebodies die. But you don't care about that. After all, this is, at its essence, a story about living and humanity. It just happens that life and death tend to cross paths quite often. They meet at the end of every path, in fact. (Warning: I fail at Latin forever. Possibly because I've never taken lessons.)

Spring cleaning. The phrase fills terror, revulsion, and just a little bit of fascination in the hearts of mothers of messy, lazy, disobedient children everywhere. I know because my mom made me part of a social experiment involving gender, the shaping of young minds, and a froofy dress that features heavily in my nightmares to this day. Before I settled in Daldain, spring cleaning meant getting my slate cleaned by packing up and heading into the sunset for unknown destinations. Maybe emptying the liquor cabinet in whatever way I felt was proper. But some people take spring cleaning too seriously. I never would have pegged vampires for the type; too disorganized, too easy-going. But I was wrong in ways even I am seldom ever so wrong.

We were taking a break on the road to Wraybrook on the way to Soonah - Cliff had twisted his ankle and was vying miserably for Kristen's attentions, and Jaida would not let him forget just how much of a girl he was being. I was sorting through the seeds and plants I brought along with me while we were taking a break a little ways off the road, and Kristen took an inordinate interest in my stash.

"What's this one?" She said, and moved to touch the flower that had caught her attention. I smacked her hand away from it, and said, "That's a new type of poison ivy I bred. It doesn't even have a name yet. It needs to be handled with special gloves. But I just may name it Kristen ivy, because you're being irritating."

"You were wildly unpopular in high school, weren't you," Kristen said.

"I had many friends in high school," I said, deciding to plant some yellow roses along the road. Most people would appreciate it, not the least because they wouldn't be able to hear them sniff in their general direction. And, more's the better, neither would I, being far away. "Of course, all of them but one preferred their meals straight from the sun."

I examined another bag. Green tomato seeds. I tossed them; green tomatoes are horribly disgusting.

"Oh my god," Kristen breathed. "What is this? It's absolutely stunning."

"It's something I started making in my early teens. I perfected it four years ago. Scientific name sorensentia intemporalitus. I call it love-lies-bleeding," I said. The flower was a new kind, something as perfect as an orchid and as hardy and long-lived as an ironduke tree. It was personally urbane, but with the kind of biting edge of wit that most beautiful flowers are too simple and vain to come by. I had only ten fully blossomed and three seeds. "I named it in a time of my life when I was too embarrassingly young to realize the name wasn't cleverly dark, and I never really got around to renaming it. I'm still working out its uses. I've only got four, and that's stretching things far enough that something's bound to be sore in the morning."

"You've finally finished the plant," a gentle, amused male voice said. "And it took you exactly forty years earlier than we thought."

"Sorensen Carter Knox," I said. My voice may have cracked like I was thirteen again, and I might have heard it and Kristen might have giggled, but Sorensen was smiling, bluish green eyes crinkled in amusement, and when you're presented with something that appealing after six years of separation and a possible lifetime without again, you can only try and sear the image into your brain and hope that no one hears you yammering on internally, a stranger in your own head, like a lovestruck moron. He was there, and it was fucking with my inner zen. He didn't look the same - his hair was prematurely graying, and he looked about five years older than he was instead of five years younger, a very handsome, boyish man instead of a twenty-one-year-old with a teenager's face.

"Cyprian Mellodeth Corvo," Sorensen said, still with that lovely smile. "It's been too long."

"Too long," I agreed. "I see you've gone through puberty and hit middle age since we last met."

Sorensen giggled. He said, "As I recall, you were, shall we say, witness to when I went through puberty."

"Yeah, repeatedly. Fine times," I sighed. "Think I could "witness" it again sometime?"

Cliff said, seeming to appear appropos of nothing, "Dude, who's your boyfriend? If you're going to make creepy homoerotic passes at each other, the least you could do is introduce him to your friends!"

I wouldn't have called any of my group friends, but I didn't say anything so as not to send Cliff into a crying fit, fragile little girl he was acting that day. I said, "Cliff, this is Sorensen, my oldest human friend. We were wildly unpopular and devastatingly awkward in school together and fought together in the Sangria-Demonia war."

"You fought in a war?" Cliff said, and to my annoyance, got a little starry-eyed. "Why didn't you say so?"

"The war's not something you talk about," I said. "Sorensen, this," I pointed to Kristen, "is Kristen, who is essentially our distressed damsel rather than our damsel in distress. Cliff here has already filled the role of damsel in distress quite nicely. And this," I pointed out Jaida, who was eying him like he was for eating, "This is Jaida. Keep any appendage you want to keep away from her mouth at all times. Guys, this is Sorensen, the only man I've ever known who could solve a Rubik's cube with a blindfold and act modest about it afterward."

"It really is quite uncomplicated," Sorensen said, looking embarrassed. I smirked, and said, "See?"

"So that's the final version of the love-lies-bleeding," Sorensen said, looking at the chronologically-sealed bag in my hands. "It's lovely. May I see one up close?" Sorensen said, stepping closer. I handed him the finest. I said, "Are you kidding? Keep it. I wouldn't even have started making them if it wasn't for your goddamn nagging."

Use the first for love-lies-bleeding: establishing an awkward rapport with potential friends.

"As I recall, you were wanting to make them in the first place," Sorensen said, turning the flower in his hand gently. From the look on his face and the way he handled the flower, it had his approval. "I only gave you a shove in the proper direction."

"You did that a lot, you metaphorically handsy bastard," I said. "Sometimes I thought you got some sort of strange kick out of being the angel on my shoulder."

"I was your angel?" Sorensen said, with a small, secret smile on his face, eyes shining. I returned it, though surely about eighty percent less pretty. I said, "You were more of a devil with an angel's face. Don't think I haven't forgotten my eighteenth birthday in Tessla."

Sorensen blushed, and Cliff said, very loudly, "Gee, suddenly my ankle is feeling better! Let's get to Wraybrook and far away from here!"

"How fortuitous," Sorensen said. "I seem to be heading there as well."

"What the hell do you want with Wraybrook?" I said. Sorensen smiled abashedly and said, "I've got a home there. It's...it's really time for a bit of spring cleaning."

"It's the middle of September," Jaida said with a raised eyebrow. Sorensen's smile turned wry, and he said, "Yeah, I get that a lot."

"It's early spring in Demonia," I said. "Apparently, Demonia is the world. I do it, too. It could be ten below out and my eyes could be turning into ice spheres, but in my head, I'll be thinking, "this is the coldest fucking summer ever, fuck you, wind gods, fuck you." I'd be thinking it less eloquently, of course. And possibly there might be a bit of blaming humans for bringing the cold with them from Canada."

"I thought humans came from Earth," Cliff said, just about the same time as Jaida said, "What's a Canada?"

"Earth is a planet. Canada was a nation, which planets tend to have," I said. I packed up my chronologically-sealed bags - and the yo-yo I'd been playing with earlier, though I could've left it and lived happily anyway - in my terribly careworn backpack and we all left together, to Cliff's irritation. I walked beside Sorensen, catching up, and hoped my joy at seeing him wasn't terribly apparent.

"Stop glowing!" Cliff hissed in my general direction. I snorted, and said, "You first, future Mr. Kristen Morrow."

And I was happy. It felt like it always felt - like nothing short of whatever rogue spark of magic had created the Executive Power could tear me down, and that any monster, any demon, any god was welcome to try and fall. It was an odd sort of feeling, because usually I liked to hide behind whatever largish rocks I could find whenever a snake monster - or really, if I'm honest, regular snakes - showed up.

"You know what I forgot?" Jaida said. "What it feels like to be a third wheel and not the boyfriend-stealing skank. You know what else I forgot?"

"No," Kristen said, glancing exasperatedly at Cliff, who was hanging off of her like he had a broken leg and not a twisted ankle. "What?"

"I don't know. I forgot. Duh."

This was just dumb enough to garner a laugh from Kristen, which itself became the reason for Cliff's goofy, starstruck "Kristen smile."

"Cliff is a cute kid," Sorensen said, smiling wistfully. "He reminds me of my brother."

"William's anniversary is coming up soon," I said. Sorensen said, softly, "You remembered."

"Could hardly forget it," I said. "I was the one who saw him die."

Sorensen became transfixed on something in the distance. Jaida noticed it, too. "What the hell is that over there? A - a bunch of campers?"

Sorensen let out a shuddering breath, then ran towards the people-shaped things.

"Hey, crazy guy! Wait up!" Cliff yelled. He made to run, then began cursing prolifically as the pain in his ankle spiked. He wasn't important at the moment, however, and I ignored his pain, which I was beginning to learn was generally a good idea. I ran after Sorensen. It took me longer to get to the bodies - and they were bodies, shriveled and terrible in death - than Sorensen, me being not quite in the vicinity of at my physical peak. The bodies had been a family. Three children, the youngest maybe ten, the oldest perhaps sixteen. The mother, who had no legs, was holding the youngest, who had no head. The father was nailed to the ground with a sharp javelin made of wood too large to be called a stake. The other two children died harder than the others. They'd been tied with twine - their hands were blue from lack of oxygen - and there was blood everywhere, body parts everywhere. Sorensen, who had seen death before, had inflicted it and regretted every loss on both sides of the war, was more rattled than I'd seen him since the last time one of his men died in his arms. He was beginning to hyperventilate, and his eyes - he wasn't near tears. He was, however, on the edge of something words aren't any good at describing. I guided him towards a rock a good ways away, my hand at the small of his back.

He was shaking. There was one thing I could do for him, and I would do it.

I took the pack off of my back and began making drugs. Soon, I would be down to eight love-lies-bleedings and one more dirty dish.

Use the second of love-lies-bleeding: making earlingea, a fast-acting mood relaxant.

I put the drug, a sedative called earlingea, in some green tea.

"Drink this," I said, holding out the cup, and thoughtlessly, Sorensen did. He made a face, and I said, "Sorry. I didn't have any sugar. Just drink it, you'll feel...not really better, but less shitty."

Sorensen smiled weakly, showing his gratitude without words. "I'm sorry I'm being such a-"

Cliff screamed. I glanced in their direction to make sure none of the family was rising from the dead and gnawing on him - they weren't - and turned my attention back to Sorensen. Kristen would take care of Cliff; she always did. And Jaida had assured me many times she was capable when I tried to dissuade her from joining in Amlaine; let her prove herself, because, yeah, I am that petty.

"Sorensen," I said. "You've got nothing to be sorry for. I was there, too. I know what you were seeing."

"How do you..." Sorensen said, looking lost. "How do you not let it affect you? The little girl, the stench, I - couldn't save her, either. There were so many people lost. Don't you sometimes think that the only thing you'll ever be is an executioner?"

"You didn't kill that family. I don't know what did-"

"Vampire," Sorensen said, sounding desolate, but very certain. I paused mid-rant, and said, "Okay, I'll bite - uh, no pun intended, because that would be tasteless as well as dumb. How are you so sure?"

"The wooden spear through the heart," Sorensen said. "It's something they would do. It's ironic. They'd find it entertaining. Also, the only blood there wasn't in the bodies."

"Ah," I said, feeling like I would be right at home in a conical dunce cap. Sorensen looked me in the eye and said, "We should bury them, Cyprian. They don't deserve to be found like this. Anyone who would find them probably don't deserve to see this sort of human misery. Especially when their deaths were so hard. They deserve peace."

"Yeah," I said, glaring at Jaida from across the way. She appeared to be looking for shiny things, and I knew just what her justification would be. I said, "I haven't seen anything like this since the war. This was personal, or this was the sort of sadism I don't want to see face-to-face."

"It's times like these I feel like the war is still going on," Sorensen said, with such a look on his face that I wanted so badly to hug him, but that wouldn't do anything. I said, "Yeah. I don't think the war will actually ever, you know..."

And he knew. He knew even as he fainted.

(addendum re: use the second: side effects may include abnormally vivid dreams, month-long anemia, hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia, and 'beer dick.')

"Well, shit," I said. "The tea wasn't that bad."

As far as I could tell, Sorensen did not agree.

"Of course you'd be the one in sixty who suffered side affects," I said, kneeling beside Sorensen. "You just have to be unique in every possible way, don't you? And now you've got me talking to you even though you're probably as out of it and as deeply unconscious as if you've spent the last three hours chugging Everclear. Fucker. You better hope this works on humans."

"Minuo," I began, and faltered. Collected myself. Reviewed the spell in my head ten times, then started again. "Minuo lucis ex aeris. Pater ex lucis, ego, Cyprian Corvo, ex vita liquidus seco hoc homo, Sorensen Carter Knox, e. Hoc hemo tameris mei hemo, hoc hemo e tu hoc homo hemo."

"I love that you're hovering over his body and repeating the word homo," Cliff said from behind me. I ignored him. I continued: "hemo tameris hemo, ego arcesso potentia tameris terra, potentia tameris aquor, potentia tameris vita intemporalitus. Abs ego mei potentia, repleo hemo! Repleo conscientia!"

Nothing seemed to happen but Sorensen waking, but I knew from the rush of magic that still tingled all over and the fact I felt like kicking back half a nightcap and crashing right then and there that the spell worked. I said, "How do you feel?"

"Oddly enough, I feel like I've been wrapped in an electric blanket," Sorensen said. "What happened?"

"Unexpected side affect of the special tea," I said. "Anemia. I cured you."

"You can do that?" Sorensen sounded doubtful. I only grinned.

"Curing a blood sickness that has confounded scientists for centuries? Why yes, I am that amazing. But the anemia from the tea only lasts a month, and so does the cure. Can't find a way to make it last longer or make me feel less like pulling a Rip Van Winkle, but there you have it. I originally made the spell for a vampire under duress, but it came in handy when I found out about the tea. It replaces what blood you have - or haven't - with healthy, fresh blood that stays fresh for as long as the spell is in effect. Your heart won't beat until the spell wears off, I'm afraid."

"Well," Sorensen said. "I...don't know whether I should be thanking you or hurting you."

"Yeah," Cliff said brightly, "I didn't pay attention to a word of that, either. Magic cure with a side of gloating and a lot of blah-blah-blah, and that's pretty much all I got out of it."

"I like to ignore Cyprian when it sounds like he's about to go into professor mode," Kristen said. "Sorry, Cyprian, but you have to accept it. You're boring."

"Don't worry, Kris," I said, helping Sorensen to stand. I knew he could stand on his own strength, but I'd been fighting the urge to touch him ever since I saw him earlier. "I accept that I'm the only one of us with a higher IQ score than a product of serial inbreeding."

After we buried the family, and Kristen said a few words and suggested I leave some flowers - which I did, leaving white lilies, common hollyhocks, and baby's breaths - we continued towards Wraybrook. A little farther down the road, a man who looked like he'd been avoiding the sandman as if he owed him money greeted us.

"Are you the Corvo party?" he asked. Cliff looked offended, and said, "No way, we're the Knight party," which somehow didn't seem childish enough, so he smiled and said, "Corvo party, right," and made a raspberry and pointed both thumbs down. I still don't know what the hell that was about.

"The oracle said you might say that," the man said. "Well, no, he said you would say that. He was somewhat clear about that. It was the only thing he was clear on, the cryptic bastard. I hope he chokes on his quartz crystal ball. Anyway, come on, you're gonna help us."

"Why?" Cliff said. The man rolled his eyes, and said, "Because we're paying you fifty thousand."

"We'll be glad to work for you," Cliff said, glaring at Jaida when it looked like she was going to say something. "What's the problem, bunyip infestation?"

"Yes, exactly that, we're paying you fifty thousand for an infestation of sodding bunyips," the man said. "No, you're going to earn this. Our town is being invaded by vampires, and the king isn't sending soldiers to help us because he's a dick who can't take a joke. All we've got are a squadron of vacationing soldiers, a harpy, and a few retired veterans."

I looked at Sorensen, and his eyes were impassive, but I knew he was thinking of the family we buried. "Sir, it would be an honor to fight alongside your men."

"Was hoping you might say that," the man said with a smile. "Rick Schmaltzman, mayor of Wraybrook."

"I'm-" Cliff started to say, but Mayor Schmaltzman - and isn't that an unfortunate name - waved him off. He said, "I know, the oracle told me. Blond kid with the bad haircut's Cliff Knight, pink-haired man's Cyprian Corvo, pretty brunette's Kristen Morrow, blonde chick's Jaida Lenore Ames. Come on."

"I feel a little forgotten," Sorensen said with a small, self-deprecating quarter-smile. "Do you suppose I'm psychically invisible?"

"If you are, that oracle's really missing out," I said. "Or maybe she gave up trying to think of a way to describe your hair."

"There was a definite hair color theme," Sorensen said. "Maybe the oracle works full time at a beauty salon and only oracles on weekends and at parties. Maybe he couldn't find work as an oracle, graduated bottom of his class at the Psychic Academy. It would explain how he didn't mention me."

"Our oracle is a great oracle," Mayor Schmaltzman said. "Don't insult him."

When we reached the town, it was nightfall, and the vampires were tearing into a group of young soldiers. Without being told, we started in on them.

"Flammorbis," I said, loud enough that they'd sight me. It worked, because your average vampire fledge is stupid with the constant hunger and lack of blood, and they're even dumber in groups. They glided towards me - it's this weird thing they do, where their feet move but their bodies seem to float rather than walk - and just as I was about to rattle another fire spell off, the melee fighters - in other words, everyone else but the mayor - dove into the fight. "You're dust!" Jaida yelled, and promptly staked two different vamps. She laughed maniacally, and said, "I knew this thing would come in handy! I am so awesome! Hey, Kris, catch!"

Jaida tossed another stake at Kristen, who caught it, and changed into a completely different fighter. She didn't get any kills in, but she did it a lot less clumsily. The body count was this: Jaida killed ten, Cliff killed two, I got fifteen, and Sorensen got twenty, including a group of vamps that were planning on ambushing us that I also helped eradicate. Five vampires fled and escaped us. And there were even more than that left in the city. Our body count was this: Cliff twisted his other ankle, Kristen pulled a muscle she couldn't put a name to, Jaida had multiple cuts all over her body, I had bruises, a mild concussion, and a burn from a miscast spell thanks to being thrown against a wall in the middle of it (which might have had something to do with the concussion), and six soldiers out of the eleven who were originally fighting were dead, and two more would die by the end of the night unless they received immediate medical attention. Jaida knew white magic, but she claimed she needed cedar bark and more hollyhock than what I had left for the spell that would save the second man's life.

We were led into a compound just outside of town that served as a base of operations and temporary living quarters for the humans. Sadly, what was left of the entire town fit into the mansion cozily. Sorensen and I shared a room with a man who had been wheeled in from the hospital and had been in a coma for eight years, so we pretty much had a room to ourselves. That first night, Sorensen was quiet.

"Tea?" I suggested in the silence. Sorensen smiled, and said, "I think I've learned my lesson."

"No, not drugged tea," I said. "I was thinking, say, orange blossom tea."

"Orange blossom?" Sorensen said. "That's not proper tea."

"Well, dandelion wine isn't proper wine, but you won't see me refuse a glass ever," I said. "Especially as dandelions made into dandelion wine can never Rick-roll an innocent mystic ever again. Come on, Sorensen. Have a drink with me."

"Well," Sorensen said, "I don't see how the results of taking tea with you could be worse than suddenly finding myself anemic."

"Well said," I said. "You're just lucky I didn't suggest strawberry lemon lime kiwi tea."

"I can hear my mother screaming her disapproval from here," Sorensen said. "Never accept tea that has more ingredients than you do rivals to the throne."

"How many now? Has Yasmin been doing any more assassinating?" I said, getting up to make the tea. Thankfully, there was a kitchenette in our room.

"Yasmin is dead, Cyprian," Sorensen said. "She was executed for treason. I'm getting a little too close to the top than I'd like these days. I'm third in line now."

"Damn," I said. "I thought Yasmin would live forever. It would be her and the cockroaches and the bunyips."

"She did so love to spread rumors of her immortality," Sorensen said quietly. "I was always rather convinced she was, myself. She was one of those girls who the thought of their being anything other than completely alive seems so preposterous at the time that your brain shuts down the moment you hear they aren't. I must have asked the man who told me to repeat himself seven times. He really thought I was partially deaf."

"You're not next to die," I said. Sorensen said, soft as a sigh, "I know. That's what I'm afraid of."

And that was the way it was. By night, we slew vampires while Kristen and Jaida made pithy comments about their style of dress and manner of speaking and Cliff tried his hand at one-liners, much to the dismay of anyone who could hear them, and by day, we slept and relaxed and waited, and Sorensen took the kind of tea that didn't typically result in fatal disease or sexual impotence with me, and he'd smile that beatific smile at me and we'd pretend that everything was in its place. Sometimes, we'd even pretend we never parted ways, and suddenly, my right hand wasn't getting 100% of the action anymore. If coma guy would have woken up, he would have gotten quite the show, and I think Sorensen got a little rush from that. He was full of strange surprises like that.

"You've given me more than you know," Sorensen said after the first time, appropos of nothing, eyes warmer than I thought I'd see them again. I snorted, and said, "I know I'm not that good. It's okay, you can tell me I suck at this."

"I forgot what it was like with you," Sorensen said. "For all your admonitions about my modesty, you take compliments just about as well as I do. There's a word for that. I think it starts with an H. There might be a Y at the end, I don't know."

"Oh, yeah, call me a hypocrite," I said. "See if I do this again."

Then he kissed me, and we did do it again, I being only human, or at least fundamentally human with a libido that had been ignored for six years.

There came the day when all of the vampires were eradicated. There was no celebration; there was only the gathering and burial of the fallen, the closing of the town. There weren't enough people to make a town, and there wasn't one person who wanted to stay, besides. War is hell. I understood it, Sorensen understood it, and now these people understood it. Kristen, Jaida, and Cliff, mystifyingly enough, still didn't quite seem to understand. It was as if they really were the children I'd assumed they only played at being. Kristen, on the morning of our victory, seemed to realize she was on the edge of something much greater. I still don't know why she came to me.

"Cyprian," Kristen had said in greeting, but it sounded almost like a question. After a moment, I said, "That is in fact my name, yes."

"I mean - I know that, I knew that," Kristen said. "But I wanted to talk to you about something."

"You're not doing a very good job. You're talking, but definitely not about something," I said. "You should probably fix that. Getting bored. Waiting for Sorensen. His month's experience in having a horrific disease and fake blood is over, so the sex is guaranteed to be even more out of this world than it usually is. You know how it is."

"What - how can you be so - so flippant about what happened here?" Kristen said. "I don't think Cliff has it figured out yet that this isn't a game, and I have ample reason to believe that Jaida is a sociopath, but you...you're not, and here you are, making jokes. You understand everything."

"I don't understand why wraiths can't cross water," I said. "There's stuff that's beyond even my ken, Kristen. Don't be naive."

"I didn't mean it like that," Kristen said. "I mean people died today, and you're as cool as a cucumber. You have a date, for crying out loud!"

"Well, since I'm clearly over the rainbow-crazy, how about we ask Daniela," I said, and pulled out a love-lies-bleeding out of the vase I'd kept it in.

Use three: getting wise counsel.

"What do you think, O Daniela, of the tragedy of war?" I asked, clearly aiming the question at the flower.

Kristen looked a bit shell-shocked. I made sure to put a listening face on to show her my sincerity.

"When the sun rises in Soonah, Asguard in the morning, it sets for those in Shang, Demonia. Even though the wily cherry blossoms in Shang may long for the warmth of the sun, the sun can't shine on both cities and both countries at the same time. No amount of crying, plotting, pleading with the gods, or boycotting the outdoors can change that, but sometimes, you can switch on a special light and everything is well again, for a time. But the sun makes a habit of coming back to spare you from the darkness, if you stick around. Sometimes, you need to reach into your chest and pull your own heart out to examine it, but when you do, you will find that everything is clear, even if your heart doesn't look like everyone thinks it looks on Valentine's day."

(addendum: if by 'wise' one means 'slightly less intelligible than a car manual written in Engrish.')

"Daniela says," I said after a while, "That this is - was necessary. The deaths. We may not like that people died - and we may mourn it, and want it not to be true, but there's no changing it. Nothing we can do will change a thing - we can pretend that we're unaffected, but something changes inside of you when you see war. It's not something that can be named. It's fear, and it's sorrow, and it's anger and frustration, and it's all sorts of things, but if I had to name it, I guess it would be world-weariness. Everything seems dark, and it feels like the world has changed, but it's really you all along. The world is the same as it's always been, fucked up. It's got its good points and its bad. It's up to you to deal with that feeling of world-weariness in whatever way you see fit. But the sun - you will feel happiness again, Kristen. It may take you six weeks or six years, but you'll feel it again. You'll know just how dark the world can be, you'll always carry that with you, but you'll remember what it's like to feel joy and love, all the good things, again, and you'll know that life goes on, even when you think it's going to come to a crashing, screeching halt." I paused. "I, uh. Hope that helps you."

"Wow," Kristen said. "I...didn't know a plant could be so smart."

"For the love of god, don't feed her ego," I said. "It took me three years and the thirty silver I had to shell out for "An Idiot's Guide to Completely Destroying Another Person's Self-Worth" and another year to convert that to flower breeding theory to weed out the massive egos these girls get."

"I'll be here all week," Daniela said cheekily. "I accept water. Clean water, not water I've been soaking up since last Thursday. Also, trips outside during sunny days are peachy keen by me."

"Ha, ha," I said. "Goodbye, Kristen."

Four hours later, and Sorensen still hadn't shown up. I looked all over the mansion, and he was nowhere. It took me the second check of our room to remember that Sorensen said he had a place in town. He'd probably be packing his things and planning to head home to Demonia. On the way out of the mansion, I ran into Jaida. Literally.

"Hey, Cyprian," Jaida said, looking disgusted. "Next time you play a little sex game with your man, leave Cliff out of it, or make sure I'm not around to witness it. I mean, ew. Barely legal, threesome, and role play? One kink at a time, please."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, Sorensen was dragging Cliff off while Cliff was screaming for help in this totally hammy voice," Jaida said. "And here you are, all rushing about like a hero. So I figure, you know, it's a game of 'villain, hero, and damsel-with-dick get exposed to libido-increasing spores which villain's vengeful secretary supplied him with instead of the flesh-eating spores.' Don't looked so shocked, sugar. You and Sorensen are lovers, and Cliff is obviously curious, being college-aged and all. A hint for next time? Stick to your strengths. You're totally built like a damsel in distress, and Cliff would totally be more eager if you let him play at hero. He seems to enjoy that. Ooh, can I be the vengeful - where are you going?"

"Saving my damsel and hopefully my villain," I said, running off. I hated running, but this was one of those times when nothing else was an option. Cliff wasn't curious. He was disgusted with Sorensen's graying hair, didn't appreciate the male body and knew it. Sorensen - I wanted to think, needed to think - was a one-man man, and we'd both made fun of Cliff's hair and commented on his little boyishness. And for Christ's sake, Sorensen thought of Cliff as his little brother - or at least, that was what he'd said.

Oh, god, I thought, every god who can hear me, please answer this, my only prayer, and I will be a churchgoer forever. If you won't make Jaida less oblivious, please let Sorensen not be the world's most charming fan of dub-con. Please make him see that murdering Cliff is not good. Please let Cliff come out of this all right.

And, more to myself, I thought: Please, let Sorensen be all right. Please don't make him be suffering more than he already has.

As far as prayers go, it needed work. Gods are assholes. The first atheist in this world was clearly a wishful thinker.

By the time I got into Sorensen's apartment unit, I was breathing heavily and feeling like my heart had immigrated into my skull and was fighting my brain for dominance. Maybe it was.

"Sorensen?" I yelled, and my heart skipped a beat - a very brief beat, because it was beating a mile a minute, but a beat nonetheless - when Sorensen yelled, "I'm in here, Cyprian!"

And I relaxed. Kidnappers didn't casually tell you where they were and sound glad that you were there with them. Jaida had probably found a completely new species of mushrooms and eaten them, and now she was tripping out worse than if she'd taken acid, and I would kill her for eating uncatalogued plants and lecture her about taking hallucinogens later, because Sorensen was here now, and he was probably the only person I could willingly spend the rest of my life with and I decided then and there that I would do just that, and I'd tell him as soon as I was in the same room as him again because-

Because he was in the bedroom, and-

"Fuck my life," I groaned, because as soon as I entered the bedroom, there Cliff was, pale and with bleeding puncture wounds in his neck, and there Sorensen was, with blood staining his lips, and there my heart was, breaking in my chest but pounding in my head.

He looked at me, licked his lips, because in vamp land apparently it's rude to speak with blood on your lips, and smiled, and it was his smile, angelic and warm and more beautiful than the harvest moon at its fullest in a glittering sky and breaking my heart where the blood hadn't done its job, and, most telling of all, making me dissolve into waxing poetical even when lives were at stake. He smiled his smile, not the crooked, evil smirk of comic book villains or play villains, and he didn't break out in maniacal laughter, not even in jest, as he said, "Oh, you've been running. Your face is as pink as your hair."

That was it. That was his answer to the question that was surely on my face that was surely, "What the fuck is going on?"

That was something he'd told me many times before this after I'd ran, something he never got tired of.

My face was as pink as my hair.

"Sorensen," I began, and stopped. Because there were no words. Everything was gone. There was only his name, and the synchronicity of the beating and breaking of my heart.

This was really happening. I was thinking in cheese.

The words I wanted never came. The vitriolic expressions of the rage I didn't feel at being betrayed - I was hollow now, no rage worth its salt would have me - the devastatingly sarcastic, hard-hearted one-liner that would break his heart as he had broken mine. Even the simple question of "Why did you help us kill the vampires here if you're one of them?" was beyond my ability. How long have you been a vampire, what the hell are you thinking, what are you doing with Cliff, am I dreaming, did you plan on killing me, can you even feel anymore, will I ever be able to again, nothing came.

"Cyprian, please," Sorensen said, his voice still that same gentle, patient angel's tenor, with that normally endearing awkwardly intelligent weight to his tone. "We need to talk. Don't kill me yet. Listen to me. Okay?"

I nodded, because even if I had a stake on me, I couldn't do it, because this was not a monster I was facing. It wasn't some villain. This was Sorensen. This was the same boy who could charm the cold-hearted cafeteria ladies into giving him the best cookies of the batch; this was the same boy who hid out in kitchens to avoid making a fool of himself by talking to other people, who would rather fight in a war than deal with his peers and who yet still mourned every soldier he killed. This was that man. When he smiled, it was gentle, beautiful, angelic; he didn't spill his master plan like some Bond villain but played his cards close to his chest; he didn't laugh like a monster with a human skeleton, he giggled like my best friend. This was Sorensen Carter Knox, the man who refused any compliments, who could call people out on their bullshit with an almost surreal sort of genial politeness and was always prepared to fight for what he believed in, even if it meant his death. Sometime during our separation, it almost certainly did.

"I imagine you have questions," Sorensen said, "about why I'm feeding off of Cliff, and why I helped kill the small army of vampires here. Why I can walk and live in the sun. Why I'm offering to explain all of this and not killing you. Right?"

I nodded.

"I was turned last year by a vampire of a prestigious clan that has special powers. They call themselves Sensors, with an S. I can survive in the sun because of that. Sensors modified their genetic code to prevent combustion in sunlight. I feel the cold of my body more acutely than the average vampire, and it's never far from my mind that I'm dead. I can see the heat from your body, the heat of the walls. I can smell diseases, even when they aren't fully formed; Kristen doesn't know it, but she will have uterine cancer in ten years. I can see your heart in addition to hearing its beating; it's going very fast. You must have run quite a ways. Thank you, I think. But you don't care about that, and nor do I; I was abandoned by my clan. My vampiric birth was an accident, just like my real birth. Bittersweet, familiar humor."

"I really do have a home here; this is my home. Welcome," Sorensen said, with a quarter-smile and a sad glint in his eyes. "This is the one place I could have entered before all of this without needing an invitation. You miss things like that, you know. Being able to go where you want. I tried entering my mother's house the night I rose from the grave, and...nothing. I couldn't do it. I'm not welcome in my own mother's home without her consent, and if she knew what I was, she would never consent. I...don't want to hurt her, Cyprian. And I can't eat what I want, either. Not pasta, not strawberries, not mint chocolate chip ice cream, though I don't think I'd like the coldness as much anymore. My mother told me often I didn't eat enough, and I never thought I'd agree with her. I guess death is the great unifier in more ways than one."

It's the great divider, I didn't say. Since I didn't say it, Sorensen didn't acknowledge it. Just like old times.

"I planned on eradicating the vampires so I could live in peace, but now the humans are gone, too. It's...a stroke of good luck, I guess. Living here will be like hiding in a very large kitchen with a chef on permanent leave. And Cliff really does remind me heavily of William," Sorensen said, brushing some hair out of Cliff's closed eyes. "I...I'd like to try and raise him. As a vampire. He seems like he'd enjoy it."

"He screamed for help when you took him," I said, my voice quiet. Sorensen grinned, but this was sad, too. He said, "I know. But when I explained my...intentions to him, he seemed willing enough. But...I'm having second thoughts, you know. When I smell the blood of the people I kill, there's still a part of me that's sick at the thought that I was the one who took the rest of their lives from them. I gag on the blood I drink. I don't want someone who doesn't understand death to have to face it like - like this, having to be death. He shouldn't even be adventuring. He's too innocent. As for you...it's true, there's a part of me - a very large part of me - that exults in death now. But there's a part of me that's too much to count out that still mourns my victims. I really haven't left the war, Cyprian, but the war's in my head now. That human part of me is more deeply ingrained in me than I'd ever realized in life, and it's all I have. I have that and I - I'd like to have you. With me. For as long as you would have me. We could travel together again, all over the world. To the places we loved, to the places we missed."

I looked at Sorensen, in his eyes, filled with sorrow and pain and pleading and determination, but no hope. I knew that look. I remembered that look. He didn't think I would agree. And then he would kill me, which he would and definitely wouldn't enjoy. Or maybe he'd turn me against my will. Would that mean he loved me or just wanted me around for convenience, because I was something familiar? This wasn't Sorensen. But this was Sorensen. I lived because somewhere, there he was, being Sorensen at all costs.

"We could...I'd like to see Sangria," I said. "See if the people we fought against could forgive us. If they appreciate that we overthrew their dictator, or if he brainwashed them so good they don't know what to do without him."

"Thank you, Cyprian," Sorensen said, and his smile wasn't even angelic anymore; it was heavenly. Not something to die for, but something to live for, because it was too precious to be touched by death. "This means the world to me. I won't turn you unless you ask. I wouldn't dare make you suffer that much."

"You gonna kill anyone on our journey?" I said. Sorensen looked away, but he didn't flinch. He was still happy. It didn't occur to him that to not kill was wrong, but he knew it was something shameful. He said, "I have to in order to survive, Cyprian. Have you ever almost starved to death? Not the kind of starved you get when you've been conserving rations for two months."

"No," I said.

"I was captured in the war. I was beaten daily and given no food. Just poison, for in case I might want to end things myself. Very kind, the Sangrians. On the day you rescued me, Ragnar Merridan came in with what he called a little social experiment."

"Did he make you clean up after his deliberately nearly fantastical messes in a froofy violet dress?" I said, hoping the humor, however weak, would help him. I remembered this; this was what we were pretending never happened ever since before we even reunited off the path on Rhodendron Highroad. Sorensen's eyes were bitter and lost. He said, "If that were it, I would have only asked if a corset itched. No, it wasn't meant to be humiliating. He offered me an ultimatum; I had three options. I could tell him the location of our encampment, dooming my men to certain torture and eventually death, and he would let me live. Or I could not tell him anything, and for every day I didn't say, he would kill a prisoner. Or, last of all, I could take the poison they'd given me, and he'd let the other prisoners live, and obviously my men would be safe for at least a little longer. You already know how this goes; I took the poison. Do you remember? Of course you do; you must. That's why you left me. Awfully hard to forget that kind of anger, even when it's not aimed at you."

"I'm sorry. I did a dumb, terrible thing. I was...I'll say it now, I was scared. That really drove home just how easily I could lose even invincible you to the war, or to your own sense of right, so I lost you myself. I know it doesn't make any sense outside of my head, but I'm not sure I actually thought that one through even a little bit."

"Yeah, I got that," Sorensen said with a smile. Wry, small, sad. "But you saved me. You fought off the prison guards and security, even if Ragnar wasn't there, and you saved me. You alone, of all my men, even if you dragged along Hellene. You said they'd given up on me, but you couldn't."

"I never will," I said, and took the love-lies-bleeding out of my hair. It cooed its sympathy, though Sorensen couldn't hear it. I offered it to Sorensen. He smiled, lost in the past but seeing a future bright and, if not lovely, at least bearable.

"Thank you so much," he said, and I pulled him into a tight hug, as if I never intended to let go, and he didn't make it easy on me, either.

There was a stake nearby, and whether he tried to kill himself or it was left over from the mini-war, it was there.

The newest use for love-lies-bleeding: for use as a red herring while you kill the newly-undead love of your life.

By the time I was through with him, there was nothing to bury but ash, no one with bluish green eyes to close and kiss goodbye. I wished I had; kissed him, that is. I wished a lot of things, and about the only thing I was glad for was that there was no one alive or conscious to hear me choke back a sob.

"That's right, you asshole," I said, lifting Cliff's body after checking for a pulse, which was steady. He'd barely been fed off of. "You better have a goddamn pulse. And you better be worth killing my ex-future husband for."

But I was only the one who put a stake in his back, not the one who killed him. A Sensor vampire had done that, and before him, maybe Ragnar Merridan had. But my incredible Sorensen was already dead before I dusted him.

And maybe that was why I felt like I was dying a little, too.

When I got back, I said little and headed for the kitchen. There wasn't much left, but there was mint chocolate chip ice cream in the freezer, and something cold and sweet sounded really good about then.

Kristen showed up a few minutes later with an uneasy smile.

"You were crying," Kristen said, and all right, there may have been a few tears and so my face was red - or as pink as my hair - but that, as far as I was concerned, wasn't any reason to come after me. "So, um...I know it's technically yours, but Daniela said she wouldn't mind reminding you that she's yours?"

She held out a flower; she held out the love-lies-bleeding.

Use five: showing solidarity.

"She tells such beautiful lies," Daniela said. "The secret's in the telling."

I accepted it, then put the flower back in the chronologically-sealed bag with the rest of them. There were seven flowers and three seeds. Everything in its place.

"Sorensen is dead," I said.

"Sorensen was a vampire," Kristen said. "Cliff is telling tall tales of his capture. You said it best earlier, and I wish I could say it like you did. I don't have the way with words you do. We may not like it when people die, but not liking it doesn't bring anyone back. And...you'll get your light back, farther down the road. If you wait long enough, and you want it."

Unsurprisingly, I didn't feel even a little bit better. But maybe one day, you know?

"Kristen?" I said. "Have you found that light yet?"

"Not at all," Kristen said. "A lot of people died, and I can't remember what it's like to live a life without having to spread my legs for living, and then having to give most of that money to Don Reynaldo. But I've got a new life, and I'm trying."

"Remind me to suggest a rare and painful poison to Reynaldo's personal chef," I said, and Kristen giggled - not Sorensen's giggle, but her own giggle, very much in the present - and the planet slowly went on spinning, as it had always done and very possibly might always do.

Neither Sorensen nor I ever said "I love you." It bothered me that I didn't, more than I thought it would. I always preferred action more than words, and I was everything Sorensen needed me to be until I offered him that last love-lies-bleeding and staked him. I looked down at the flowers in my hand, pleasant and cutting, and I debated destroying them. In the end, I didn't. They were my Sorensen's flowers. I killed him; literally the least I could do for the man I loved was remember him. And I did. And I do. I have his flower here as I write this, blooming strong and bluish green and lovely. And it's all I'll ever have of him, but I'll never ask for anything more. Because if I raised him from the cold earth, he would still be the man I loved, but he would be the monster, as well. And that isn't what he would want or need. I can do this for Sorensen; I can remember him fondly as the man, and let him rest in peace. And I can live my life and drink my six-flavored teas as if everything is fine with the world.

But I don't have to share his flowers. You want them so badly, go make your own damn hybrid.

There has never been a word in any language, symbolic or literal, that quite delivers the feeling of being helplessly, deliriously happy - though for some, love or joy will always fit the bill - or of being completely, desolately, unnervingly alone. Some things are beyond even the might of flowers and words.