"Do you believe in hell, Claire?"
Myrnin's tone startles Claire, causing her to look up from her attempt to coil stiff metal without using pliers. Just minutes ago, he was joking about how much chocolate he would have to order to fill Oliver's house—Claire's certain that this prank will be played within the next few weeks—and now he's talking about serious issues. The man's ability to change mod so quickly continually startles Claire, and it takes her a few moments to process his question, by which time he's already talking again.
"Do you believe that there's a divine spirit which watches over us, judging us for our decisions—our desires—and when we reach the end it decides if we complete the ascent to heaven or the descent to hell? Does it get to decide if we prosper for eternity or burn—and are these decisions made on what we have done…or what we have not?" He sounds, to Claire's ears, on the verge of tears, and this breaks her heart. Myrnin is many things but never someone who should be considering going to hell. That right is reserved for the truly evil Claire has met.
She sets her wire down and moves slowly across to Myrnin, hovering near a table with chemicals strong enough to halt even him if he tries to hurt her. it hurts her to see him like this, so confused and broken—hurts her more than it probably should. But she tries not to think about that too much.
"I believe…I believe…" Claire hesitates. "Myrnin, are you alright? Do you need any of your medicine?"
He shakes his head slowly, his curls moving to fall back over his head, away from his face. "I am fine, Claire. This is…merely an existential crisis I am having. They are perfectly common amongst my kind—or at lest the ones of us with some understanding of humanity."
Claire takes a moment to decide how to answer, before deciding that honesty is the best policy; with Myrnin in this sort of mood, and sort of lie may take him over the edge. And she doesn't want that. She doesn't want to see the bad side of Myrnin because knowing it exists is enough; she doesn't need proof once again.
"I don't believe in divinity, or that any being has the power to decide where our futures lie—after death, I mean. I will always believe that our life choices will make the path afterwards clear; there's no need for another to pass judgement on it," she says softly, her eyes focused upon Myrnin, his upon her. To Claire, this seems like far too a grown-up conversation for her to be having, but then again, she remembers that Morganville has caused her to grow up quickly…too quickly. "As for hell—or heaven, for that matter—they are merely concepts of the afterlife. I think that if you're an awful person when you're alive, you'll join the awful people when you die. But the model is fluid—you don't remain there for eternity; you move up if you change. It's all dependent on our decisions, on what we do, whether we want to change. That's what I believe, anyway."
As she speaks, she notices Myrnin freezes, his eyes hardening, his expression becoming neutral. She's said something wrong, and immediately she tries to think of what it is, it hitting her instantly: he thinks he's an awful person. He thinks that he's going to join the bad side of the population when he dies. He's not going to be happy.
"I see," he says finally, breaking the growing silence. "Thank you for answering honestly, Claire. You may leave now, if you wish. I do not want to keep you here, from living your life."
"Myrnin, I—" Claire begins, but Myrnin shakes his head, standing up faster than she can see him move. Slowly, at a human speed, he takes a step towards her, his dark eyes almost unreadable. That makes her know that he's hurt; now she knows him, she can almost always tell what he's thinking, how he's feeling.
"I don't want to make you stay here, Claire," he says quietly, staring at her for a moment or so before looking away. He's close to her, far closer than he has been in a long time, and it feels—different to how it used to. A good different though, Claire thinks. "Your life isn't in here, in the darkness. That's a punishment saved only for the wicked, my dear, though I must say that there are many wicked people who do not have to experience such parameters. You're a girl who belongs in the light, in the sun."
Claire shakes her head, tears clouding her vision causing her to wipe them away with a shaking hand. She's not just crying because she's sad; she's crying because she's furious that he's trying to make her leave just because of what she said.
"Is this because of what I said?" she asks, and when he doesn't answer, she knows she's right. "Myrnin, I never meant you! You and Amelie and, wow I never thought I'd say this but even Oliver, you're not wicked! You're—you're not going to that dark place. That's saved for people like Bishop, like Brandon, not the bright, loving, kind person like you!"
Myrnin shakes his head once again, taking a step back from Claire this time. He does more than that; he moves swiftly away, again faster than Claire can see, and this time, he remains out of view. He's trying to make her leave, she can tell, but it won't work.
"My dear, you said what you feel, which I appreciate. I do not like being lied to, after all; I am like Amelie in that respect." Myrnin's voice seems to come from everywhere and nowhere concurrently, and it's one of the things that scares her about him. But she won't leave, she refuses to leave. "You shouldn't spend so much time here, little one, it's not right for someone like you. I…I am the darkness, the living proof of how making a dark soul even darker causes nothing but issues. You, on the other hand, you are everything that is good about the world—or you will be, if you work on it, if you work on the science that means you can save the world from itself.
"I won't be anything to you but a hindrance in the end and you know it."
This time, the tears falling are ones of sadness, of pain that such a brilliant man—vampire, yes, but that's beside the point—could think so little of himself. He doesn't believe in himself whatsoever—and that's his greatest weakness.
"You're great yourself, you know," she says, feeling stupid just calling out into an apparently empty laboratory. "You're the one who taught me all about this. Just because of your…disease, it doesn't lessen that. It doesn't lessen the fact that you're one of the greatest people I've ever met."
She could say more, but he's suddenly in her face again, all blazing anger and dark fire, but she doesn't step away. She doesn't want to prove his theory that she's scared of him, or whatever it is that he thinks. He won't get rid of her that easily.
"You say such things," he says quietly, his tone filled with the same expression on his face: anger mixed with great sadness, two opposing emotions which will tear him apart. He's never looked so handsome to her—or, strangely, less human. "And yet you know nothing of what it's like to be me, Claire! You don't know what I feel, what awful things I want! You're privy solely to the part that I want you to see; the part that hopefully doesn't make me look like a monster." He makes a noise of disgust, probably at himself. "You'd despise me if you knew what I want—it isn't what a vampire wants, no, you know that already—but it's so, so much worse. It's taking the lightness from someone who absolutely never ought to be exposed to the darkness. And no matter how much I want it, I cannot do it. Ever."
Claire's silent as she looks into Myrnin's face, refusing to cower. She's not afraid, though she knows she probably should be, and that's not something that's going to change. He can't frighten her away from her; he should know that already.
"You don't know what I feel," she counters. "My feelings are as unclear to you as your apparently dark feelings are to me. I could dream of everything that's wicked in this world; I could go to hell—or wherever the bad people go. But you don't think that I'm going to go to hell. Do you?"
Myrnin shakes his head slowly, his eyes remaining focused on her. She can feel his every unnecessary breath against her skin, and it's only that cool air which keeps her sane, she thinks. He's too close for her to fully concentrate—not that she should be thinking about what she can't (shouldn't) have.
And then he's whirling away from her, the same anger as before evident in the fierceness of his movements. He's throwing things across the room, shouting in foreign languages, trying his damndest to scare her—and it works. He's reminding her just how crazy he can be without even trying, showing her that she'll never be completely safe here.
Yet she knows that he's doing this deliberately and that it's only a result of his anger, and that causes her to take a deep breath and merely watch as he destroys his own laboratory. She isn't clearing it up.
"Are you finished yet?" she says after a few more minutes, a deliberately blasé edge to her voice. "I don't know about you, but it's pretty boring watching you destroy somewhere that I have to clean up."
Before she can say another word, he's standing in front of her again, his expression manic and crazed, and he's pinning her against the table. He has one hand on either side of her, and the closeness is making it hard for her to concentrate.
"Do you see what I am?" he half yells in Claire's face, causing her to wince. "Do you see what I can do even when I don't think about what I want?"
"Do you even care about what I want, about what I feel, or is this merely a pity-for-Myrnin show?" Claire yells back. She's had enough of his pity, of his desire to push her away because he wants to feel sorry for himself. He wants to punish himself; he doesn't realise that it'd be punishing her, too. "Do you not think that sending me away would hurt me as well, or do you just think about what's best for you and your feelings? I suppose that mine, the things that I want, they don't matter in the grand scheme of things; as long as Myrnin is happy and gets to keep what he wants away from him so he doesn't feel guilty, that's fine! But heaven forbid that Claire would get the chance to get what she wants, eh?"
She pushes him, and the movement catches him off guard; he staggers slightly and lets her escape his grasp. He would never have hurt her, she knows that. She would have been able to see hunger in his eyes.
Instead, she saw only the love he sought so desperately to hide.
"You want something that is wrong for you, for your life," Myrnin calls after her as she stalks to the other side of the laboratory to hide her tears from him. "Friendship with me can only bring destruction for you."
This makes her turn around, causing her to snort. "Firstly, I don't think I explicitly said friendship," she says, instantly blushing. She didn't want him to know that. "And secondly, why does it have to bring destruction to me? I can look after myself thank you very much, and anyway, you'd only destroy yourself if you killed me, and since I'm sure even the monster wouldn't want you to be destroyed, I think my chances at surviving are pretty high."
She turns again and kicks a bucket, causing it to fly across the laboratory, and a teeny part of her feels better. Perhaps she does understand Myrnin's tactic after all. "It's all about what happens to you, and I don't like it! It's all you ever think about! You don't care about my emotions or how I view things if it has an effect on you. It's so irritating."
There's a long silence, but Claire refuses to turn around to face Myrnin; instead she focuses on the books in the corner, and begins to mentally rearrange them. She doesn't like them being unordered chronologically.
"Claire." He says her name softly, and without turning Claire knows he's right behind her. "You're wrong. I think about you, about your health, about what's right for you, every second—every decision I make is for you. I don't want…I don't want you being damned because of me or my actions. I want you to prosper in this life and the next, or whatever follows death. You must believe that you…you are the one who means the most to me, the one whose health I consider at all times."
She can't help but make a disgusted noise of disbelief. "Keep telling yourself that, Myrnin, when you have your little frets about whether or not you're going to hell. Just remember that I think you're not going to hell; that ought to count for something."
He's standing in front of her suddenly; one second it's just her and the books, the next he's blocking her view. He's fire and ice, a burning furnace of passion and anger at the same time as being detached and isolated. He wants to keep her away not only for her health but for his; she doesn't care.
"It counts for more than you know, dear one," Myrnin whispers, a complete contrast to his yelling minutes before. "I just never want you to be hurt. If you…if you want to stay here, you can do as you please."
Before she can do—or indeed say—anything, he's leaned forwards and pressed his cool lips against her cheek. Her eyes close at the contact, willing him to move to press his lips against hers, but all too quickly, the pressure's gone from her face and they're no longer touching.
"I need to see Amelie," he says, and Claire can hear a smile in his voice. "Perhaps she ought to know that she is not going to hell in your eyes. Whilst I'm gone, you may want to tidy up; you made an awful mess when you kicked that bucket."
He's gone before her eyes are fully open and Claire sighs. They have so, so much to discuss—and that definitely involves sharing their feelings, including the ones he thinks will damn him—but she supposes that can wait until he's back from Amelie's.
For now, Claire supposes that she'll clear up the mess near her favourite table and carry on with her experiment; everything that's happened is pretty normal for her and Myrnin—the conversation about being damned, the argument. It's just the final stage that never normally happens.
(Perhaps it will more often in the future.)
Please don't favourite without reviewing