Ancient Wounds pt 39
Author: yours truly, ExMaverick aka Jess
Title: Ancient Wounds
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Prequel to my vampire fic Deepest Shadow. Ville recounts the events of his mortal life growing up in the poverty of 20th century Finland, wrought with grief, sex, romance, passion and abuse leading into his birth to darkness.
His lengthy tales are imparted to the sleepy mind of his young lover, but only in the seclusion of his own darkest thoughts does he begin to relive the greatest obsessions and deepest hurts rooted in his bygone and decadent time.
Warnings: emtionalness
A/N: I have no beta, please excuse any mistakes herein
Pairing: Vam,Ville/Jonne, Ville/OC (in parts)
Previous Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5i, 5ii, 6, 7, 8, 9i, 9ii, 10i, 10ii, 10iii
11, 12i, 12ii, 13, 14i, 14ii, 14iii, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20i, 20ii,
21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32i, 32ii, 32iii, 33,
34, 35, 36, 37
In a celebration of a belated Christmas, I offer you this small token of thanks for everyoen whose put up with my work for so long, hope you enjoy thsi little extra... The Story of Emmanuel and the Tale of Suvi
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“Come into the study and kiss me in the candlelight. My books leave me weary and I am in need of you most in these times. You will know my love when I have beaten it from you, when we wear each other’s blood like the cross upon our chests. You will know my love when you suffer for it. Come, kiss me in the candlelight once more, for with my books you shall find me”
Forgive me Bam, for I have lied to you. I knew a love like yours once before.
……..
1917 saw my writing career bloom from Flowers of Evil to editing a selection of well-known poetry publications, as well as the creation of an additional somewhat shorter compilation of pros The Hand of God in the late spring. I had become what I’d always wanted, a self-sufficient respected author famous in his own right. I felt quite empty. I busied myself with evening parties, long intelligent conversation and when alone the beautifully acrid intimacy of my blood sport. I fed far more than I ever needed to, becoming dependant on the gorgeous swoon that filed my body as the life drained out of their withered vessels, using it to blot from consciousness the terrible reality of my isolation.
I had everyone I had ever cared about around me that still lived, by rights I should have been very much content for I had everything I could ever truly want. But in sleep I was plagued with the more wretched nightmares, no longer the wicked pantomime of William’s death but the visions of my once lost love who mocked me in my dreams with his golden hair and seething blue eyes. I would wake at sundown with the burning ache of kiss his on my throat and wrists. Something in my soul told me to go to him. But what in the name of God would that achieve?
In other news family life had become one of bliss for the collective consciousness of our households. Jesse and Lydia were enjoying the throws of parenthood, and by the winter of that year were revelling in their son’s new found beginnings of speech. Naturally I was never absent from them for more than a week, and loved nothing more than being with them and feeding off Jesse’s fatherly pride. Suvi was always at my side. Living together as we did now she was now fully educated and being the revolutionary beauty that she was demanded she be allowed work and involvement in my career. I instantly and most happily agreed and she joined me as official organiser of my evening appearances at writer’s gatherings and other such public relations. She was cutthroat and brilliant and I would not have had it any other way.
Her personal life had become something of a wonder also, for that same young man that had painted our parlour ceiling turned out into a budding fine artist with a name for himself being very swiftly carved. Not that this mattered to her of course, or to me for that matter. He was a charming lad and as long as he treated her well I would have been perfectly happy for him to be dirt poor. And sure enough by the age of nineteen she approached me seeking an answer to a very important question.
“I want permission to marry Klaus,” She blurted out one night as we arrived home from a meeting with my editors over the possibility for a novel or new poetry collection in the coming year “I wish to marry him next February. Do I have your permission?”
I was absolutely thrown by her forthrightness.
“Where is he in all of this?” I couldn’t help but laugh “Surely he should be the one sitting here next to me asking me these things? Or isn’t he aware you’ve decided to marry him?”
She rolled her eyes in her accustomed fashion and continued.
“Of course Ville, he asked me. But I wanted to be the one to ask your permission”
I mused for a moment. Klaus was a fine young man but I wanted to make sure of his suitability. She was sufficient in herself, it was not his means of supporting her, for Suvi was well versed in caring for herself. I merely wanted to observe tradition for once in my life.
“Bring Master Halonen to me,” I said softly “ we shall see”
And by the next week there he sat at my polished desk in one of my drawing rooms, looking mildly edgy and certainly the model of politeness. I eyed him from my seat behind the ornate carved table (a house warming gift from Jarno) fingers tracing the guided edge closest to me, the other hand at my mouth musing over the fellow. He was quite handsome in his own way, very much the artistic looking type with dark brown hair and stubble framing his twenty year old baby’s face. His grey eyes struggled to look into mine. I felt like a father must do in such times, and chuckled to myself.
“So you wish to marry my ward, Mr. Halonen?” I smiled, friendly intimidation abound.
“With your permission, Master Valo” He replied fumbling with his shirt sleeve nervously “we’re very much...we’re very..”
“Speak up boy!” I laughed and leant over the desk to pour him a scotch from a nearby decanter (which I kept for the reasons that one it was aesthetically pleasing, and two that a good scotch will never go off and hospitality is paramount in my work). I smiled and him and hushed my tone reassuringly. “If you love her my young painter friend, tell me so”
“I could no sooner leave her side than take a knife to canvas of a Master,” he swallowed in one breath “I am so in love with her I do not know what I might do should you say that she is not free to be my wife”
I was quite toppled by this admittances of such passion, and no longer able to play games extended my hand to him across the varnished plain.
“Then you have my blessings dear boy,” I said contently, feeling a pang of sadness inside myself somewhere “I remember what it is like to be in love”
That night I went hungry wracked with the memory of my beloved blonde prince from my past, envisioning his beautiful face the night we parted never to be together again. The days I spent hidden from the light calling his name like a rosary began to mount, and for weeks on end I would lye in a cold sweat my heart thumping with preternatural blood and grief. I had to see him again, and be rid of this torturous punishment for my crimes against humanity.
The new year saw Suvi and Klaus married in February as she had so desired, how beautiful she was in her peach blossom silk. I gave her away. My one year old namesake held the rings beguiled between the two, we were so very happy that evening . But moving into a fine house with her new husband, I was left alone.
And so one night I left the house, took no carriage but went on foot in search for that dark place of my birth, Oulu. By demonic speed made a night journey in a fraction of the time, and though beaten by the lingering frost of the previous season, I ran.
It had been close to three years but little had changed, still the same streets, the same streetlamps, the same chill of the Oulu river. A sickness descended into my belly when the silence of my thought was penetrated by a whisper, words that were spoken but had no voice of their own, just the message… We are here still, and we can feel you, keep away from us and the Master will do you no harm, he swears by it, stay in Oulu but leave us be….
I had no way of knowing which terrible blood brother spoke to me, but knew that they would keep their word. I was safe in my distance, I would keep away from the dirt tracks into the forest. A small crest of guilt rose in my breast when I thought perhaps Dyre still remained there, but there was nothing to be done here but my bitter task at hand.
I found my way to Emmanuel’s house without many a wrong step, all the while aware of that horrible place in the woods that towered above me like some oppressive monster in the darkness. I heard ever single heartbeat in every single room. Looking up from a nearby streetlamp I gazed into the brightly lit window of my former lover’s house, beheld his countenance with her in his embrace within and burst into floods of tears before fleeing into the night.