Blood+
He Who Fights Monsters
Poem "Prayer Before Birth" by Louise MacNeice
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters affiliated with Blood+ or Blood: The Last Vampire. I wish I did but there you go.
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
– Friedrich Neitzsche
"Beyond Good and Evil"
German Philosopher (1844 – 1900)
Chapter 1
Die Geburt der Tragodie
("The Birth of a Tragedy")
I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.
People still believe in vampires. As recently as the 1940s people, villagers from small paranoid communities in the middle of nowhere who still sacrificed sheep in Spring, told of hideous undying monsters who lived beyond death, very unlike those beautiful seductive faces of the Dracula novel.
They weren't humans, they whispered. They may look like humans, they may act like humans, and some (and they took this for a fact) even bit their victims to steal their faces, so they could gain the trust of the friends and family of the dead and kill more, but no, no they defiantly weren't humans, they muttered. By now mankind – the species that had invented the atomic bomb – should have grown out of its infancy.
A lot had changed since he had said goodnight to her on that snowy field in Russia. The Roaring Twenties had come and gone. The Great Depression which seemed to last for an eternity was finally at an end. Prohibition was dead.
And yet when he told her, once again, that the world was at war, that every country in Europe had joined in again, it had seemed like those 30 years had remained frozen, as though waiting for her to return.
"What year is it, Haji?"
"1942."
"Did we win?"
Haji looked up from the dark spot on the floor where she had accidentally spilled a droplet from his neck and it still stung to move. "Yes."
She did not answer.
"How long have we been fighting?"
Some inner instinct told Haji the answer to a question that could have so easily been misinterpreted. "It started in 1939. Hitler declared war on Great Britain. They called on France for support."
She was probably tired. Her eyes squinted slightly, as though peering at something far away. She was always a little here-and-there, a little out of it when she first woke. Even the fresh blood coursing through her veins barely stimulated those heavy eyelids and dry lips. A little bit of red still dribbled down the corner of her mouth.
In some decaying building, quiet and forgotten in the depths of Berlin, Saya was lying very still on the couch, one arm flung over her face, the other with its fingers brushing the floor and a dull throb in each of her temples. They had not even cut her hair yet. The couch was deep with cracked leather and the walls were bare, except of a few light squares where photographs and pictures use to be. It was cold and very dark outside. Haji saw watching her protectively on a small wooden box. There was little noise here, save for the buzz of the streetlamps outside. He'd carried her up the stairs, knowing she felt very light-headed.
For a while they said nothing.
"I will take you to see David and Lewis," he stood up abruptly, holding the coffin. "After you have rested. They are waiting for you at Red Shield Headquarters."
"Haji?"
"Hai?"
The corners of her mouth curled down sourly.
"Will there be any humans left when we are done? Wouldn't it be easier to let them destroy each other instead of defending them against chiropterans?" she blinked once, slowly. "Whomever I kill it seems there are twice as many humans taking its place . . . "
Haji's shoulder dropped as he discarded his cello and bow and the seat where her head lay creaked under his weight.
"Saya . . . " he sighed. He removed the arm over he face and placed it over her chest. Even in this dull light she scrunched up her eyes. "You must fight."
She winced under the light. "For how long? People inflict enough suffering on one another without the need for vampires."
"They carry enough suffering in their veins for a thousand nations."
"Not enough for us." She replied bitterly.
He opened his cello coffin with a click, keeping one eye on her. "I will be with you until the end, when all this is over. After that, we will let mankind be responsible for their own suffering." The blade muffled against soft puffed velvet inside. "Until then – "
He placed the handle in her palm. Her fingers curled around it slowly into a tight grip that whitened her knuckles. "Do not let the innocents suffer. Do not the chiropterans take those who do not deserve it."
Without any movement of muscle Saya's face hardened and stared towards the empty ceiling, barely breathing as Haji watched over her with overcast eyes.
That was three years ago.
This was fluffy even by my standards. Originally I used to post my more realistic work but apparently doesn't upload porn.
R&R