A/N: Happy Valentine's Day folks! More importantly, happy Silence of the Lambs day! Today is the twenty-three year anniversary of its theatrical release, so if you want a way to celebrate both, why not treat your Valentine to a romantic dinner of liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti?
…was that disturbing enough?
Okay, well, I thought I'd do a little sort-of Valentine's themed piece, focusing on Victoria, because while everybody always seems to love talking about Bella and Edward being "soulmates", Victoria and James have their own love story that always gets overlooked. I mean, she raised an entire army of newborn vampires for the sole purpose of avenging his death. If that isn't more romantic (in a completely psycho and melodramatic way) than anything Bella or Edward have done for each other, then I don't know what is.
Yeah, so it's not your typical Valentine's day story, but like I said, it's also Silence of the Lambs day, so a little bloodthirstiness seems fitting.
Paint It Red
Torn limb from limb and cast onto the fire.
I can picture it in my mind's eye, as sharp and as vivid as reality itself, maybe even more so. My vampire senses almost seem able to spin it into existence, like a memory I'm reliving although I was never there. The crunch and snap of his bones reverberates in my skull and I smell the stench of vampiric flesh alight like blazing gasoline. Inside me, something snaps.
Cullen bastard!
The rage takes over, and I scream. My soulmate has been taken from me, over something as trivial as hunting a human girl, and I lash out in an effort to break anything I can lay my hands on and make the world pay.
Edward Cullen…you will regret this…
I don't know how long it lasts, but when it's over and I come to my senses again, I find I'm standing in the woods. This isn't far from where James and I last hunted, and I feel a stab of pain at the memory. Why would I bring myself here? The place around me is levelled, trees uprooted and flung to the ground, pale sunlight streaming in from where I cleared the canopy in my fury. My skin glints like a sword edge, like light reflecting from the barrel of a gun, shimmering like the weapon that I am.
A human corpse lays at my feet, throat torn out and blood spilling onto the floor. I barely remember killing it, yet my clothes and skin are drenched in its blood: messy, chaotic and furious, so unlike my usual precise self. Myself when James was here.
I look down at the crimson liquid coating my hands and taste its sharp tang behind my lips, but it's bitter and unsavoury. This isn't the blood I truly want.
There is no blood of any living thing that could satisfy me now, except one. The one who was the cause of all this. I still find it hard to believe that something so small and insignificant was the reason James was taken from me and my whole world turned upside down.
All this over a human girl?
Could Edward really love her like I loved James? A vampire in love with a pathetic human? Well, if it's true, I'll make him pay. I'll paint his world red with her blood, so he feels what I feel.
Did he imagine I wouldn't retaliate? Does he think that because I don't share his pathetic, childish affection for humans, that I was incapable of loving another? In his world, only good people have soulmates. Romance is only for the heroes of the story. True love can only ever be good and pure. Well, to hell with that. I'm evil and bad and wicked and my love is as real as theirs; my pain just as deep. But my grief is deadlier. My heartbreak is not tears and mourning: it's war and blood and revenge. So keep your naive, saccharine sentiments and give me something to kill.
Love is not kind and gentle the way you imagine it.
Love is irrational. Love is selfish. Love is pure.
Revenge is all those things with all their intensity, and while its passion burns quicker and its satisfaction is much more fleeting, it's all I have to placate the grief. While I may not have my James here to hunt beside me any longer, the bloodied corpse of the Cullen's pet will suffice instead.