Before Forever
"We cannot afford to be weak."
The chess game is abandoned halfway, the white pieces almost mingling with the black on the board. I lean back and let out a quiet exhale through my mouth and look out of the window. The snow is falling and outside, I see a fragment of a memory flitting before me, of another age gone by - of another time, another story, another lifetime. I remember journeying in a similar winter, the clothes upon my back thin, and yet the cold never really touches me unless I want it to. I remember pausing and glancing over my shoulder, my lips parting in the start of a conversation. I talk to some unknown companion, a forgotten someone. As quickly as it comes the memory leaves me.
I start as I sense Renji approach me, and I turn to my little son with a smile, and pick him up from the floor. I sit him on my lap and wipe his mouth with my hand, gently, and smile at him. He smiles back at me and tries to stand up; I help him by having my hands on his sides. He wobbles quite cutely in front of me and laughs, and my smile gets wider. Children were adorable, no matter if they were human or vampire.
I ask Renji if he wants to have a book read, and he nods. For one moment I carry him in my arms and approach the shelves that house our collection of children's books. He picks out Hansel and Gretel, a hardbound illustrated tome that I remember buying some one thousand and one hundred thirty years ago. It had been my son Yuuta's, one of his favorite books in fact. I settle back on the couch with my son on my lap, and I read him the story of siblings Hansel and Gretel. I let him trace his little fingers over the fine drawings, and I let him point to colors and encourage him to find their names. He is learning to speak rapidly.
Izumi, Yuuta and Renji are not my first children. Yet when my sons were born, the feeling of mixed dread, happiness and apprehension were present as if it was my very first child being born. A parent never gets used to that feeling. I have never really gotten used to a baby's smile, or a baby's laugh. Each smile and laughter is like a new gesture, something I have only recently experienced. I revel in them. I feel as though all my worries are away. I feel that time somehow stops, and nothing exists, just my child and me.
My very first children were only two, a boy and a girl, the parents of the Kuran line. My son was born during a warm summer evening, and together his mother and I decided that he should be named Kostya. The vampire court greatly celebrated his coming. A thousand sacrifices were bled in honor of him. I remember being very, warmly happy. I remember Sonja faintly as she sits beside me holding our first child, and she is aglow with happiness.
My first daughter was born ten years after Kostya, a relatively small gap in vampire standards. We named her Ilya, and though her coming was not as celebrated as her brother's, Sonja and I strived to shower equal amounts of affection and exact parts of love to our son and daughter.
Kostya and Ilya were born in a dangerous time, even then. I remember that as soon as Kostya could walk, I was already teaching him how to use his powers and his fangs to defend himself, and most importantly, to Hunt. I was already trying to teach him that unlike nobles and commoners, he had too great a responsibility should he bite a human; that no human was ever a play thing, because vampires owed all that they were to their neighbors. I stressed to Kostya and Ilya that all purebloods with us now started as humans, and that they should always respect their neighbors. I remember teaching them about Profugus, Level E's, in a hushed voice, saying that the poor creatures should always remind them of their responsibilities as a pureblood, as a leader of this race that I had created.
Then one day Kostya asked me about the human captives being kept in the dungeons. He had went to Uruki, ancestor of the Hiou line, and asked that the captives be released. Uruki would not have obeyed if I hadn't been looking on, but release the humans he had captured he did. I would never forget the look he gave me after.
---
I sit there stroking my little Renji's hair. He points to Gretel's hair and tries to mouth out the word 'blonde', but he doesn't manage it. He looks up at me and smiles. I smile back, and marvel at the vulnerability of pureblood children. Our children have to learn early on that they cannot spare too much kindness to anyone, no, not even their own siblings. They have to understand how deadly an attachment to a human is. That the life of a human being is but a blink of an eye to us, who linger on through eternity. That they would have to be numb to a certain extent, kill or be killed, because in the vampire world, a weak pureblood was as good as dead.
Yuuta, my second son, had to learn how deadly an attachment to a human is the hard way. He had worked as a doctor then, and had found himself irrevocably enamored of a terminally ill patient. He had not told us a word of this, no, not until everything was over and he was a sobbing, helpless heap before us his parents, who could only feel sorry and wonder how much pain he must be going through. He had told the girl all about him, even what he was, but despite it, she did not want to be changed. Yuuta told me that she spoke this with so much resolve that he had wavered, and chose to respect her decision though he knew it would pain him greatly, and that he might never recover from the hurt of it forever. He had picked himself up admirably, nursing his broken heart as best he could. He had become more solemn after that, but he had moved on.
As I sit down I wonder how life would be for my little Renji.
I know that when a child cries, little pieces of the parents' hearts are lost with every teardrop shed.
Yet we are pureblood, and we cannot afford to know weakness. We are doomed to an existence of solitude, forever unable to fully trust anyone. We cannot know any real friends, or if we do, most of them, if not all, fall back and fade as Time passes by, while we keep walking forward, each dear loss carving out a nick in our hearts, to scab over and heal, yet the scars remain, and we carry it with us until we decide to sink in that irreversible, eternal Sleep.
A parent's heart only wants the best for a child, yet the heart sometimes overrules the mind, and ends up stunting the child when the parent intended to only give protection.
At this point, my thoughts stray to Yuuki – and inevitably, to Haruka and Juuri.
---
I still do not understand why they chose to raise a daughter in a windowless basement.
It may be a little selfish of us as her parents, but we just want to keep her safe.
Haruka could not look me in the eye as he had uttered those words, in that distant time in that selfsame windowless basement, when I once asked when they would let Yuuki venture out onto the surface, the outside world. I knew at once that it was wrong.
Parents would always have this selfishness for a child's well-being, but how far could selfishness get? In the end, when the parents are gone, their selfishness' long term effects would stay, stunting the child forever, and the child is left vulnerable when he is already supposed to be able to stand firm on his own two feet, able to protect himself from any and all danger that life might throw at him. But this is not the case. This is magnified for our pureblooded children, rare and dangerous creatures that we are. But our rarity is most often mistaken for frailty, and we are sheltered, oh too sheltered, and when Fate finally finds us, we are caught unawares, and for all of our power we are actually quite powerless, and we are dead before we even knew what hit us between the eyes.
I remember. I was in no place to say anything, nor object, because I was never part of Haruka and Juuri's family in the first place, no matter how much they liked to pretend. I stayed because I felt indebted – guilty for all the trouble I have caused them, and that I sought any way at all that I could make up for it – taking up the space and the life of their lost son.
I still do not understand why Juuri had to even consider 'providing Yuuki a different future', when in the end she left her daughter still in my care, still close to vampires. A memory seal was to its best effects when the sealed vampire would be cast away, away, from any traces of that previous life. The seal would not break without the extreme want to remember from the sealed target. A perfect, peaceful life was achieved in the end, and the vampire would die as a human, enjoying that baffling ethereality that have puzzled me and my race since we had first existed.
I do not understand why parents should ever want to hide what their daughter really is. Acceptance of what you are is key to many things, even parenthood – and if you cannot accept yourself, are you ever truly fit to be a parent? If you cannot accept what you are, then how can you ever accept what your child is?
I do not understand why parents should stunt their child's growth too much, so much so that their precious daughter ends up being too precious for anyone to handle, too vulnerable against her own self.
I do not understand the selfishness that drove Haruka and Juuri to kill themselves, leaving their daughter alone in the world, when on top of everything; they have not prepared her for the life of a pureblood, this damnable existence of unending thirst, limited trust and consume or be consumed.
Ten years of quaint peace. I never believed any of it.
What is ten years of mindless, idiotic peace when in the end, Yuuki would have to face the onslaught of the terrible reality of the world, yet she is powerless against it all?
I knew then, that she would never be able to endure Forever.
---
I start as little Renji touches my cheek. I look at my son, and there is a hint of childish concern in his deep crimson eyes. He is a sharp child, like his brothers, and already rather perceptive to things around him, much like Yuuta when he had been in the same age. I smile, and this assures him.
A parent's heart only desires the best.
But our children cannot afford to be left unprepared, because in the very end, they only have themselves to rely on.
I kiss Renji's forehead.
My son, your mother and I would love to see you standing proud and strong on your own one day, to turn to us with a smile and say, "Mother, Father, I can do this now. Thank you for everything."