An Antibellum Sunset*Chapter 6*Atsushi/Uruha
Title: An Antebellum Sunset
Chapters: 7/8
Author: gimbat_ash
Genre: Horror, Historical
Warnings: Eventual violence, rape, mild het
Rating: NC-17
Pairings/Characters: Astushi (Buck-Tick)/Uruha, Atsushi/OC
Synopsis: The year is 1841. Rory (Uruha) Scarborough’s father owns a large plantation in North Carolina. One day Uruha will inherit the plantation but he is a less than ideal heir. He’s an musician with his head in the clouds. His life is thoroughly boring until someone buys a nearby plantation, changing Uruha’s life forever.
Disclaimer: I own Gazette only in my strange, sad little brain. I wanna be Atsushi when I grow up though!!! My parents are thrilled…
Uruha swallowed his tears as the carriage bumped down the drive toward the plantation gate. His heart ached with regret. He wished he had gone to see Marie while he could. Once again, Darcey found another way to ruin his life. If it weren’t for him, Uruha might have had many more happy days with his sister. Now Marie was gone.
Uruha shivered as the house neared. He glanced around at his remaining family for comfort. Eleanor sat beside him, holding his hand. The two had been attached at the hip since getting the news of Marie’s death. They just couldn’t bear the thought of further separation.
The tension in the air was so thick Uruha could swear he was drowning in it. The carriage came to a stop in front of that dreaded house. Eleanor squeezed her brother’s hand and the two siblings descended to the ground together. They had an unspoken agreement to face united the death they both knew lay behind the looming front door.
With a deep breath, Uruha knocked. The door opened almost immediately and a slave showed them into the drawing room. There Darcey sat. He looked dejected but Uruha knew he was acting. The rest of the family seemed fooled though and they exchanged teary-eyed condolences. The sight made Uruha sick. It was fake! Darcey was pretending! Couldn’t they all see it? He still had that mischievous twinkle in this eye. But then, they didn’t know the dark man’s sinister side as Uruha did.
The boy followed his family up the stairs and into the bedroom. It was still decked out in lace and pink just as they left it so many months ago. There was a distinct difference, however. Uruha choked back his tears at the sight of Marie’s lifeless body resting on the bed. In that moment, he decided he hated that bed as much as he hated Darcey. It seemed like the very worst moments in his live all involved that accursed bed. “We should begin the funeral preparations,” Mrs. Scarborough huffed, obviously attempting to swallow her sorrow. All of the sudden she began calling out instructions and everyone scattered. A funeral in the South was a big to do.
Uruha rushed into the study to prepare invitations. His mother must really have been flustered to ask him to do this. Everyone knew his handwriting was atrocious. Yet he set to work diligently to make these invitations the most beautiful things he’d ever written. It was all he could do for Marie now.
~
Uruha’s hand ached. The light of the setting sun colored the snowy paper an ominous russet. It didn’t help matters at Darcey’s intoxicating scent lingered in the man’s study, making Uruha drowsy. He forced himself to finish the last few flourishes on the final invitation. He’d written one to pretty much everyone he could think of. A satisfied feeling radiated though him as he set the letter on the stack. He took a deep breath, preparing to stand up, and gasped.
“Darcey! I…um…I didn’t notice you were…”
“You were absorbed in your task. I forgive you.”
How long had he been watching? It gave Uruha the creeps.
“I have to take these letters to be delivered,” he spoke up and abruptly rose and pushed past Darcey. The older man caught him by the shoulder and spun him around. Uruha’s eyes blazed with indignation. He summoned up a retort but he didn’t get a chance to voice it. As soon as he opened his mouth, Darcey’s locked with his. Uruha shoved him back with all this strength and, for a moment, Darcey looked genuinely frightened.
“Your actions are an insult to my sister’s memory,” Uruha spat and then he ran from the room before Darcey could react.
He sprinted into the parlor where his mother sat sullenly by the window. She turned her gaze to her son when he entered and smiled weakly at the sight of the pile of papers he carried. Without a word, she took them and flipped through the first few.
“They look lovely, Uruha,” she said softy. Uruha couldn’t stifle the warm glow he felt at making his mother happy. “Tell you sister we’ll be leaving in about 20 minutes.” Uruha opened his mouth to ask which sister, but then closed it quickly. He only had one sister.
He bounded up the stairs to where Eleanor kept vigil over Marie’s body. She was just where he left her, perched on the chair in the corner. She was no longer sobbing. Eleanor simply sat there looking utterly dejected and unable to tear her eyes away from her sister’s body. It was as if she thought that if she kept looking that she might catch a movement, evidence that this nightmare wasn’t real.
Uruha knocked softly on the doorframe so as not to surprise her. She sprang up at the sight of her remaining sibling and buried her face in his shoulder. She began to cry all over again and Uruha found it difficult to contain his own sorrow any longer. A tear crept out of the corner of his eye. “Men shouldn’t cry. Men shouldn’t cry,” he repeated to himself, but the tears kept flowing. It was as though his sorrow was so great that it no longer fit inside him and leaked out his eyes.
“I can’t believe she’s gone,” Eleanor murmured as she let Uruha go. Uruha sighed in response and made his way over to the bed. In a way, he too had trouble grasping his sister’s death. He reached out and cautiously touched the pale hand. It was cool and it reminded Uruha oddly of the way Darcey’s hand felt. He drew away quickly and, on some odd whim, checked for a pulse at Marie’s neck. Maybe she wasn’t dead. She could just be unconscious.
There was nothing. He hadn’t really expected there to be, but he did find something…interesting. There were two puncture wounds right along the vein about three finger-widths apart. Perhaps she fell on a stick. Then Uruha noticed something else, or rather didn’t notice it. There should be some evidence of blood pooling along her back. The mortician wouldn’t take her away until morning yet there was almost no blood in her body. Something was wrong about all of this and Uruha vowed that he was going to find out what.
~
Uruha lit the candle on his dresser. He had to solve this mystery. He knew that something wasn’t right about Marie’s death. Darcey wasn’t being completely honest. That much was for certain. Uruha vowed to find the truth. He took the candle, tiptoed down the stairs, and headed for the library. There had to be a book about that really killed Marie.
He managed to get down the stairs without detection and scamper into the library. The only sounds breaking the silence were the swish of hoe robe and the padding of his slippers on the floor. It was eerie. Uruha had never been out of bed alone this late at night. He couldn’t see past the circle of light his candle carved out if the blackness. As he searched the leather-bound volumes, he half expected Darcey to jump out at him and drag him to his doom. When he’d assembled a veritable throng of medical texts, he plopped down in a chair to pour over them. He had to find something that would explain the body’s lack of blood.
He researched everything he could think of that might offer an explanation. It just didn’t make sense that someone could lose that much blood out of two tiny holes. Uruha’s eyes burned and every muscle in his body ached with exhaustion. Finally, he finished searching all of the books on the desk so he returned then to their proper places.
“Maybe I’m thinking about this wrong,” he muttered to himself. He scanned the shelves for something that might contain any clues. Darcey said Marie broke her back. Maybe he was telling the truth. Uruha pulled some books relating to that, and Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them just for fun. He could feel his brain turning to mush in his skull. It might do him well to read about something else for a while.
He opened the book to a random page. The article he opened to was about the kappa. Uruha giggled at the picture and read on. This creature lived in Japan so he didn’t have to work about it. As funny as it looked, he didn’t like the idea of being eviscerated of he couldn’t get the thing to bow. He flipped forward.
The Pukka: that was from Ireland. Perhaps his great-grandfather, Rory Scarborough IV encountered this horse spirit back in the old country. Uruha was the seventh son in his family to carry that name, which was why his family usually called him by a nickname. It would be easy to confuse him with his father otherwise.
He flipped forward again, and nearly dropped the book. Darcey’s piercing stare bored into him. No. The picture wasn’t Darcey but there were distinct similarities, not the least of which was the sinister glint in the eyes. Uruha read the title of the article: Vampire.
According to the article, these creatures look human except for a few anomalous qualities, the most notable being a pair of fangs in place of their eyeteeth. Uruha’s eyes widened as he thought back to the few kisses he’d shared with Darcey. Yes, now that he thought about it, he felt fangs. At the time, the unexpectedness of these advances precluded any thought to his assailant’s dental oddities. Uruha eagerly read on.
A vampire is exceptionally pale and often wears formal attire. That was defiantly true of Darcey too. Even in the muggy Carolina sun he remained completely covered in thick fabric even to the point of wearing gloves and a hat. Reading on, Uruha realized that this strange habit had yet a deeper meaning. A vampire’s greatest threat is the sun. It will burn any exposed skin. Most vampires fall into a deathlike sleep during the day but as they gain age and power, some can overcome this sleep and even venture into daylight if heavily protected.
“So that’s why he wanted to meet me after sunset,” he whispered to himself. “He could only remove his clothes at night.”
Uruha’s brow knitted at reading that vampires could not touch anything holy. Darcey attended church. How could he touch the bread and wine at communion? Then he remembered that Darcey hadn’t taken communion. Still, that was something to go on. Uruha wondered if he could get a hold of some holy water, something to carry with him as a defense. He read on. Vampires also possess a hypnotic power to lull their victims into submission. At reading this, Uruha didn’t feel quite so silly and weak. It wasn’t mere charisma that drew him to Darcey but vampiric magnetism.
Not finding anything else useful in the article, Uruha put the book away and sat back in his chair. He fiddled absentmindedly with his necklace as he thought. There was no way that he could carry around a clove of garlic. He’d repel more than vampires. And Darcey had a standing invitation to the Scarborough home so it didn’t matter if Darcey could enter a house uninvited. There had to be something that could protect him. His fingers agitatedly traced the form of the silver cross charm. His eyes widened.
He’d been wearing this cross the night Darcey took him. Why didn’t that keep him away? Why didn’t it burn him?
“Because he never touched it,” Uruha answered his own questions. “He took it off me when he removed my shirt. He must have used the fabric of my shirt to shield his skin.”
That would mean that a vampire killed Marie. He cringed at the thought of malevolent fangs piercing his beloved sister. Did she know the truth before the end? Was she afraid? A scenario materialized before his mind’s eye: Marie struggling vainly in a supernaturally strong embrace, begging for mercy as the life slowly drained from her. He felt tears well up in his eyes and he buried his face in his folded arms. How could this happen?
Then a sudden thought made Uruha sit bolt upright. Darcey wanted him. A vampire was after him. He clutched almost desperately at his cross charm as the shadows began to morph and swim around him. Any one of them could conceal a prowling hunter. Hyperventilating, Uruha leapt out of his chair and sprinted up the stairs. Even though he was now safe in him own room, huddled under the blankets, Uruha knew he wouldn’t be getting any sleep tonight.
Chapters: 7/8
Author: gimbat_ash
Genre: Horror, Historical
Warnings: Eventual violence, rape, mild het
Rating: NC-17
Pairings/Characters: Astushi (Buck-Tick)/Uruha, Atsushi/OC
Synopsis: The year is 1841. Rory (Uruha) Scarborough’s father owns a large plantation in North Carolina. One day Uruha will inherit the plantation but he is a less than ideal heir. He’s an musician with his head in the clouds. His life is thoroughly boring until someone buys a nearby plantation, changing Uruha’s life forever.
Disclaimer: I own Gazette only in my strange, sad little brain. I wanna be Atsushi when I grow up though!!! My parents are thrilled…
Uruha swallowed his tears as the carriage bumped down the drive toward the plantation gate. His heart ached with regret. He wished he had gone to see Marie while he could. Once again, Darcey found another way to ruin his life. If it weren’t for him, Uruha might have had many more happy days with his sister. Now Marie was gone.
Uruha shivered as the house neared. He glanced around at his remaining family for comfort. Eleanor sat beside him, holding his hand. The two had been attached at the hip since getting the news of Marie’s death. They just couldn’t bear the thought of further separation.
The tension in the air was so thick Uruha could swear he was drowning in it. The carriage came to a stop in front of that dreaded house. Eleanor squeezed her brother’s hand and the two siblings descended to the ground together. They had an unspoken agreement to face united the death they both knew lay behind the looming front door.
With a deep breath, Uruha knocked. The door opened almost immediately and a slave showed them into the drawing room. There Darcey sat. He looked dejected but Uruha knew he was acting. The rest of the family seemed fooled though and they exchanged teary-eyed condolences. The sight made Uruha sick. It was fake! Darcey was pretending! Couldn’t they all see it? He still had that mischievous twinkle in this eye. But then, they didn’t know the dark man’s sinister side as Uruha did.
The boy followed his family up the stairs and into the bedroom. It was still decked out in lace and pink just as they left it so many months ago. There was a distinct difference, however. Uruha choked back his tears at the sight of Marie’s lifeless body resting on the bed. In that moment, he decided he hated that bed as much as he hated Darcey. It seemed like the very worst moments in his live all involved that accursed bed. “We should begin the funeral preparations,” Mrs. Scarborough huffed, obviously attempting to swallow her sorrow. All of the sudden she began calling out instructions and everyone scattered. A funeral in the South was a big to do.
Uruha rushed into the study to prepare invitations. His mother must really have been flustered to ask him to do this. Everyone knew his handwriting was atrocious. Yet he set to work diligently to make these invitations the most beautiful things he’d ever written. It was all he could do for Marie now.
~
Uruha’s hand ached. The light of the setting sun colored the snowy paper an ominous russet. It didn’t help matters at Darcey’s intoxicating scent lingered in the man’s study, making Uruha drowsy. He forced himself to finish the last few flourishes on the final invitation. He’d written one to pretty much everyone he could think of. A satisfied feeling radiated though him as he set the letter on the stack. He took a deep breath, preparing to stand up, and gasped.
“Darcey! I…um…I didn’t notice you were…”
“You were absorbed in your task. I forgive you.”
How long had he been watching? It gave Uruha the creeps.
“I have to take these letters to be delivered,” he spoke up and abruptly rose and pushed past Darcey. The older man caught him by the shoulder and spun him around. Uruha’s eyes blazed with indignation. He summoned up a retort but he didn’t get a chance to voice it. As soon as he opened his mouth, Darcey’s locked with his. Uruha shoved him back with all this strength and, for a moment, Darcey looked genuinely frightened.
“Your actions are an insult to my sister’s memory,” Uruha spat and then he ran from the room before Darcey could react.
He sprinted into the parlor where his mother sat sullenly by the window. She turned her gaze to her son when he entered and smiled weakly at the sight of the pile of papers he carried. Without a word, she took them and flipped through the first few.
“They look lovely, Uruha,” she said softy. Uruha couldn’t stifle the warm glow he felt at making his mother happy. “Tell you sister we’ll be leaving in about 20 minutes.” Uruha opened his mouth to ask which sister, but then closed it quickly. He only had one sister.
He bounded up the stairs to where Eleanor kept vigil over Marie’s body. She was just where he left her, perched on the chair in the corner. She was no longer sobbing. Eleanor simply sat there looking utterly dejected and unable to tear her eyes away from her sister’s body. It was as if she thought that if she kept looking that she might catch a movement, evidence that this nightmare wasn’t real.
Uruha knocked softly on the doorframe so as not to surprise her. She sprang up at the sight of her remaining sibling and buried her face in his shoulder. She began to cry all over again and Uruha found it difficult to contain his own sorrow any longer. A tear crept out of the corner of his eye. “Men shouldn’t cry. Men shouldn’t cry,” he repeated to himself, but the tears kept flowing. It was as though his sorrow was so great that it no longer fit inside him and leaked out his eyes.
“I can’t believe she’s gone,” Eleanor murmured as she let Uruha go. Uruha sighed in response and made his way over to the bed. In a way, he too had trouble grasping his sister’s death. He reached out and cautiously touched the pale hand. It was cool and it reminded Uruha oddly of the way Darcey’s hand felt. He drew away quickly and, on some odd whim, checked for a pulse at Marie’s neck. Maybe she wasn’t dead. She could just be unconscious.
There was nothing. He hadn’t really expected there to be, but he did find something…interesting. There were two puncture wounds right along the vein about three finger-widths apart. Perhaps she fell on a stick. Then Uruha noticed something else, or rather didn’t notice it. There should be some evidence of blood pooling along her back. The mortician wouldn’t take her away until morning yet there was almost no blood in her body. Something was wrong about all of this and Uruha vowed that he was going to find out what.
~
Uruha lit the candle on his dresser. He had to solve this mystery. He knew that something wasn’t right about Marie’s death. Darcey wasn’t being completely honest. That much was for certain. Uruha vowed to find the truth. He took the candle, tiptoed down the stairs, and headed for the library. There had to be a book about that really killed Marie.
He managed to get down the stairs without detection and scamper into the library. The only sounds breaking the silence were the swish of hoe robe and the padding of his slippers on the floor. It was eerie. Uruha had never been out of bed alone this late at night. He couldn’t see past the circle of light his candle carved out if the blackness. As he searched the leather-bound volumes, he half expected Darcey to jump out at him and drag him to his doom. When he’d assembled a veritable throng of medical texts, he plopped down in a chair to pour over them. He had to find something that would explain the body’s lack of blood.
He researched everything he could think of that might offer an explanation. It just didn’t make sense that someone could lose that much blood out of two tiny holes. Uruha’s eyes burned and every muscle in his body ached with exhaustion. Finally, he finished searching all of the books on the desk so he returned then to their proper places.
“Maybe I’m thinking about this wrong,” he muttered to himself. He scanned the shelves for something that might contain any clues. Darcey said Marie broke her back. Maybe he was telling the truth. Uruha pulled some books relating to that, and Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them just for fun. He could feel his brain turning to mush in his skull. It might do him well to read about something else for a while.
He opened the book to a random page. The article he opened to was about the kappa. Uruha giggled at the picture and read on. This creature lived in Japan so he didn’t have to work about it. As funny as it looked, he didn’t like the idea of being eviscerated of he couldn’t get the thing to bow. He flipped forward.
The Pukka: that was from Ireland. Perhaps his great-grandfather, Rory Scarborough IV encountered this horse spirit back in the old country. Uruha was the seventh son in his family to carry that name, which was why his family usually called him by a nickname. It would be easy to confuse him with his father otherwise.
He flipped forward again, and nearly dropped the book. Darcey’s piercing stare bored into him. No. The picture wasn’t Darcey but there were distinct similarities, not the least of which was the sinister glint in the eyes. Uruha read the title of the article: Vampire.
According to the article, these creatures look human except for a few anomalous qualities, the most notable being a pair of fangs in place of their eyeteeth. Uruha’s eyes widened as he thought back to the few kisses he’d shared with Darcey. Yes, now that he thought about it, he felt fangs. At the time, the unexpectedness of these advances precluded any thought to his assailant’s dental oddities. Uruha eagerly read on.
A vampire is exceptionally pale and often wears formal attire. That was defiantly true of Darcey too. Even in the muggy Carolina sun he remained completely covered in thick fabric even to the point of wearing gloves and a hat. Reading on, Uruha realized that this strange habit had yet a deeper meaning. A vampire’s greatest threat is the sun. It will burn any exposed skin. Most vampires fall into a deathlike sleep during the day but as they gain age and power, some can overcome this sleep and even venture into daylight if heavily protected.
“So that’s why he wanted to meet me after sunset,” he whispered to himself. “He could only remove his clothes at night.”
Uruha’s brow knitted at reading that vampires could not touch anything holy. Darcey attended church. How could he touch the bread and wine at communion? Then he remembered that Darcey hadn’t taken communion. Still, that was something to go on. Uruha wondered if he could get a hold of some holy water, something to carry with him as a defense. He read on. Vampires also possess a hypnotic power to lull their victims into submission. At reading this, Uruha didn’t feel quite so silly and weak. It wasn’t mere charisma that drew him to Darcey but vampiric magnetism.
Not finding anything else useful in the article, Uruha put the book away and sat back in his chair. He fiddled absentmindedly with his necklace as he thought. There was no way that he could carry around a clove of garlic. He’d repel more than vampires. And Darcey had a standing invitation to the Scarborough home so it didn’t matter if Darcey could enter a house uninvited. There had to be something that could protect him. His fingers agitatedly traced the form of the silver cross charm. His eyes widened.
He’d been wearing this cross the night Darcey took him. Why didn’t that keep him away? Why didn’t it burn him?
“Because he never touched it,” Uruha answered his own questions. “He took it off me when he removed my shirt. He must have used the fabric of my shirt to shield his skin.”
That would mean that a vampire killed Marie. He cringed at the thought of malevolent fangs piercing his beloved sister. Did she know the truth before the end? Was she afraid? A scenario materialized before his mind’s eye: Marie struggling vainly in a supernaturally strong embrace, begging for mercy as the life slowly drained from her. He felt tears well up in his eyes and he buried his face in his folded arms. How could this happen?
Then a sudden thought made Uruha sit bolt upright. Darcey wanted him. A vampire was after him. He clutched almost desperately at his cross charm as the shadows began to morph and swim around him. Any one of them could conceal a prowling hunter. Hyperventilating, Uruha leapt out of his chair and sprinted up the stairs. Even though he was now safe in him own room, huddled under the blankets, Uruha knew he wouldn’t be getting any sleep tonight.