A/N: First off, let me set in stone that this fic only follows the manga version of the plot and the characters, which is to say, it disregards the anime completely, as I can't bring myself to agree with their rendition, as well as the novels, simply for their unavailability in good quality where I live. For those of you who haven't read the manga, this basically means no Virgil visiting Bridgett II in her last minutes and no provocative neckline or greenish hair for Vanessa - I won't be speaking for their personalities because I really have no idea if they're much different. I'm pretty sure there is a small wagon of other small discrepancies out there, but eh. I'm clueless here.
Secondly, this is already fully written and complete. I just want to see your reactions to each individual chapter as well as that to the whole piece, so I'll be posting all six (and an amalgam of author's notes) chapters of this over the week, if nothing urgent comes up. Please take a moment to review, if only so that I know my writing didn't leave you indifferent.
Finally, the warnings: language (the kind that should merit an M rating, but it's not that bad, so I'm certain taking liberties), very slight gore (might be disturbing to some, better safe than sorry). I'll warn you if anything else pops up in later chapters; don't really remember now.
P.S. I'm just wondering: if Metsuselah's bodies stop developing once they awaken, does that mean the brain 'freezes' as well? Not in that they become unable to learn, but that certain aspects, emotion control in particular (which develops until as late as 25 in humans, or so I've heard), never develop fully if the Awakening happens before they can? Because that means... a lot of things, I'm sure you realise. Just a heads-up.
With all that out of the way, I wish that you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this.
Chapter 1. "For Each of Them Held Other Lief and Dear"
The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer
Mother Nature has finally lost all its marbles, Vanessa thought as she trudged through ankle-deep snow that piled up faster than the street sweepers could hope to manage. She could hardly see across the street through the milky shroud, only the shops' brightly lit windows discernible as large splatters of colour in the otherwise achromatic scenery, and a curse burst past her lips when a wild gust of wind threw another handful of the chilly substance in her face and invaded the remotely warm confines of her coat. The trench was ill suited for winter as it was, but with this year's temperature going utterly haywire – December through February had seen mild frost at worst, and it seemed as if all that snow that hadn't deigned to make an appearance over the winter was pouring down right now.
It was the beginning of March.
Curse the mad weather.
Every sensible bone in her body was telling her it was not possible to keep braving the storm for that hour and something it would take to reach the palace on any normal day – meaning that it would be more like two hours in the end, and by the time she caught up to Virgil, she wouldn't feel her fingers nearly well enough. Any cab would likewise take ages, and Virgil, ever the sensible one, wouldn't waste time like that; so she dove into the first alley she came across, relishing in the brief electric tingle in her muscles that preceded her slipping into Haste. No matter how careful she was of the oblivious paupers, though, there was snow, too, and no one to clean it, and she cursed again when one pile caught her as high as above the knee.
In the end, thanks to the sporadic use of Haste and the relatively clean embankment of the Thames, she was at the palace gates only half an hour later, shivering and hating the whole big world and irresponsible people with a vengeance. The warm light of the windows promised salvation from all sins and oh, what she wouldn't give for a cup of hot tea, no matter how low the chances of her actually getting some.
"Halt!"
In theory, that was supposed to have been a booming command to instil fear and profess authority, to make it clear to any man with dishonourable intentions that their actions would do nothing to diminish the greatness and valour of the royal family. In practice, it was the croak of a dying crow. The poor guy didn't even cross his rifle across the passage. Frozen solid, huh.
Why hadn't she just scaled the fence? Ah, right. The documents. The bloody documents and the bloody irresponsible people that had her out in a snowstorm.
"State your name and purpose!"
She levelled at the guard a tired glower, but the fire in it died within seconds: she was too weary and cold to fume at the irrationalities of standard protocol at the moment, and the guy couldn't be much better off.
"Like this would stop a well-prepared snooper," she scoffed, and dauntlessly forced her way past the gate, belatedly noting the possibility of her glove sticking to the overcooled iron. "Vanessa Walsh, of the House of Manchester, at your service."
Even the front yard was covered in snow. Oh, joy.
The on-duty shouted something at her back, but the wind drowned out the words and she couldn't care less.
The two maids scurrying about the side entrance halls had exchanged puzzled glances before deeming her unworthy of their attention, and the supposedly snuffed-out ire sparked back to life, joining the efforts of the warm air to thaw her numb cheeks and kindling a different kind of determination into her pace. She didn't care in the slightest by that point if she was scaring off anyone who could have deigned to take her coat and scarf: for one, she would so give her brother a piece of her mind if he couldn't be arsed to be thorough to the end. For two, she'd only been to the Queen's office twice, and by complete accident, that, and the fuzziness of her memory was driving her up the wall. She was pretty sure she'd saved enough time for Virgil to still be around, but if not, she was fully prepared to barge in with the damned documents and be done with it and try not to snap at the Queen and strangle Virgil over dinner.
His lucky stars seemed to be out tonight, though.
"Brother!" and he paused, hand on the knob, the door already ajar, features shifting from surprise to confusion, and she broke into a run, the stupid files having ling since migrated from inside the coat into her grasp, the dozen metres to Virgil's side surprisingly easy on her fatigued body – she'd overdone it with Haste after all.
"Vanessa… Why are you here, and in such weather no less?"
Her eye twitched.
"I wouldn't have had to go through all that if you'd bothered to check what you're taking!" she blurted angrily before recalling who she was talking to and genuinely cooling down. "They brought this in when you'd already left, said it was important."
The papers then changed hands, and he hummed quietly as his eyes skimmed the first page. "This could have waited until tomorrow, or the morning at worst," he concluded at last, and she suddenly got a second visit from her earlier urge to strangle someone.
"How was I supposed to know that? I'm a medic, not a pencil-pusher!"
There was a giggle, sudden as the chime of a telephone, and the existence of an open door nearby sprung into the siblings' attention. Beyond it, Queen Esther was unsuccessfully stifling her mirth, and a lump of abashment stirred in Vanessa's throat; it mattered little at the moment that the same queen had once held the blonde at gunpoint, which was against royal decorum if she knew the word. The tittering slipping past her lips was unbecoming as well, but those trailed off after Virgil quietly cleared his throat, caught in the same embarrassment as his sister.
"Come on in, sit down," Esther smiled and reclined in her chair, an unfamiliar to Vanessa expression of content placidity on her face, and suspicions flared. "I would like some company."
"She drink any?" she questioned Virgil in a discreet mumble as the queen snatched a file from her desk and pouted at whatever she saw there, and got in reply a nod towards the edge of said desk, where a dusty bottle stood sentinel over a half-full glass of amber liquid which Esther reached for even as the document was set back down.
"I'd offer you some, but…" she trailed off and shrugged, fortunately aware of the relationship between Methuselah and spirits. Virgil seemed baffled, but not at all uneasy about the whole situation, and Vanessa wondered if he'd dealt with drunken people before, following his lead to the settee.
"It's quite all right," he reassured the woman, standing up briefly to deposit the files in his possession on the desk, where they were ultimately ignored, and returning to his spot not ten seconds later. "If I may inquire, what could be the occasion?"
The Queen sighed, slumped even lower in her chair, grabbed the glass and took the most unladylike swig, her face immediately scrunching up in an awfully caricature-like grimace, "I am officially sick of the High Council. Those guys. I can manage if it's internationals or economics or whatever, but when it comes to you guys, they're like rabid dogs. Been so for some time now. Argh, I'm so tired of them!" she ranted, and Vanessa frowned. She had developed towards the Queen a certain respect when the latter had wholeheartedly promised to work towards the eventual liberation of the ghetto's inhabitants from the underground. Add to that the fact that the Methuselah noble hated the dukes with a passion, and you had yourself a fine instance of rare solidarity. The queen's face adopted a sullen look then, and she spoke, as if with effort, heavy words that refused to melt into the air, "I don't know if I can hold them back much longer. I don't know…"
She sighed once more and looked at the glass in her hand with sudden distaste that had nothing to do with the flavour of the drink, her gloom spreading like a miasma cloud. A few centuries ago, when the Queen of Albion's power had been absolute, it might have worked for her to put her foot down and refuse to give any consent, but should she try that now, the dukes would raise the population faster than you could say 'revolution', not to mention that her barely twenty years of age, coupled with a baby face, didn't give her much credibility with the old men in power. Though Vanessa could pity the girl, her primary concern at the moment, bug and lumpy like a bull in a china shop, was the wellbeing of her people-
A frantic knock at the door broke the tension with one of a different sort, and without waiting for an invitation, a maid barged in, pale and all but shaking.
"Forgive me, Your Majesty," she rasped, out of breath and shocked at her own audacity, "there's been an accident...!"
"What kind of accident?" Esther questioned, sobering up within seconds, and the servant struggled with herself for a moment.
Even though what Vanessa heard didn't seem to concern her directly, there was still too much unsettling ambiguousness about it.
"My Lord the Duke of Bedford has been violently assailed!"
ꕂꕻꕂ ꔹꕮꔺꕥꔺꕮꔹ ꕂꕻꕂ
Esther cajoled the information from the terrified maid little by little as the latter led them to the drawing room near the one where the assaulted had been placed: he had apparently suffered an unclear number of stomach wounds and had lost a frightening lot of blood before staggering over to one of the palace guards with the tenacity of a cockroach, having only left the court minutes ago; they brought him in then and sent for the court physician, who would be looking at the man as they spoke, and it was all so, so horrible!
The maid was sent away with recommendations of a nice, calming drink, and their merry company, high-strung and sombre, walked through the doors with all the subtlety of a stormcloud. The congregation camping out in the room consisted of a few of the older and more influential courtiers who had nothing better to do in the evening than hang out at the palace, a couple of stronger-willed maids and a brooding Colonel Spencer, and the nobles rose in the presence of the Queen.
"What's the situation?"
"Lord Somerset is in critical condition, Your Majesty," one of the courtiers provided. "Multiple knife wounds and dramatic blood loss. However, not all of it can be attributed to the wounds," and a dangerous expression crept onto his face. Just as he opened his mouth, though,
"It can be deduced," the colonel cut in, face stern and stonily serious, "from the pattern of the punctures observed on Lord Somerset's neck, that the assailant, or one of them, was a vampire."
Wicked and rather blatant delight spilled across one of the courtiers' face.
Vanessa felt clearly, even through her shock, a crippling disgust and a white-hot desire to rip that barely concealed gloating right off.
That glee over the insinuations of her kind's crime was driving her mad.
Something snatched her hand and held tight.
Virgil.
Slowly but surely, she schooled her face into relative semblance of calm. The hand that had held hers for a moment wasn't shaking, the face of her brother was no paler than usual, and she wondered if he looked what he really felt.
The fury within her still burned, charring the lungs and blistering the dermis.
The nobles' stares burned like branding irons.
"I give up!" rang out as the doors flew open with a grand bang worthy of a king's arrival, and no one was exempt from watching the physician take long strides into the room, the damp towel in his hands working frenetically at the blood staining them; there appeared to be a lot. "It is decidedly beyond my abilities, Majesty! Numerous knife stabs, ha! His abdomen is mincemeat! The intestines-"
"You would do well not to soil Her Majesty's ears with such gruesome details," a duke boomed threateningly, but the doctor all but waved him off; it appeared that propriety was low on his list of priorities at the moment, and the towel was smearing more blood on skin than it was wiping by now.
"Her Majesty is a much stronger woman than all those ladies-in-waiting fainting at the sight of a pricked finger," he shot back assertively, and flashed a shadow of a smile to Esther, who sent back a similarly bleak one.
"My tolerance of blood, especially the verbal account of such, is not a point for concern, duke, however much I appreciate it," she supplied with evidently fake sweetness, but once her attention turned back to the doctor, all the feigned high spirits gave way to business-like seriousness. "What is to become of him?"
"If left untreated, certain death within an hour," he spoke solemnly, and to the queen's pained gaze, added, "and I lack the qualifications, Majesty. I can stitch up a bad gash, but... It would be much too easy for me to do more harm than good."
"Has anyone called for a surgeon?"
"They have, Your Majesty, however, given the weather conditions, I am afraid it should take a couple of hours at best to fetch him."
"And the court surgeon is on leave at the most inopportune moment," Esther mumbled, the faint worry on her face morphing into deep contemplation for the duration of a whole five seconds before her eyes zeroed in on the Methuselah siblings, and the question sounded moments later introduced a brand new sort of tension for the evening: prickly as thorns and just as solid. "Vanessa, weren't you a medical specialist of sorts?"
The woman in question knew full well where this was headed. No matter her respect for the Queen,
"Why the hell should I help someone who wants us dead?" and she saw the noble geezers scowl and Spencer close her eyes as if at peace, and the snow kept piling on the windows, higher and higher-
"Please."
until it fell, vanished from sight, unable to bear its own weight.
The repercussions for refusing to help when one of their own was being basically charged guilty would, with any luck, be only grave.
"I've never even performed an actual surgery on my own," Vanessa argued half-heartedly, mind on the possibility of getting the Methuselah community into even hotter water by screwing up, and apparently, the Terrans were thinking along similar lines.
"You Majesty, it is too much of a risk!" came the well-expected rebuke. "You cannot possibly trust those bloodsuckers enough to let them anywhere near wounded! Hasn't she said so herself? She has no confidence in her skill, and what is to say she will be above deliberate harm?! This is-"
"I trust them," and Esther's voice left no room for argument. "They have pledged their allegiance to the Crown just as you have, and, if I took a guess, around the same time that you did. I am fully responsible for my judgement."
"You Majesty-"
This time, it was Virgil – the kind, compassionate Virgil that couldn't bear the thought of someone who was, for all intents and purposes, little more than an outsider taking responsibility for his brethren for him, but he was cut off as well, lightly and swiftly.
"That's quite all right, Lord Walsh. Vanessa," she turned, and of course, she wasn't 'Miss Walsh', not even in front of those geezers, "I'm counting on you."
"Yeah," and not 'Yes, Your Majesty', because she was just a tiny bit peeved – the courtiers could glare all they wanted, - but it wasn't the time for sentiments now, and she made for the door in a resolute tempo, barking orders left and right and feeling as in her element as she remembered ever getting. "Get warm water and towels in there, tools too. You," she looked at the physician, "are going to help me."
"I- I don't have the qualifications-" he sputtered, looking pretty disturbed, but when he shot a frantic look at the Queen, she could only offer a helpless, if strained, smile.
"Yes, yes, I've heard that, now move it!"
And like that, in an uncertainty-fuelled flurry of directions, she was gone.
ꕂꕻ ꕂ ꔹꕮꔺꕥꔺꕮꔹ ꕂꕻꕂ
Once everyone had abandoned the modest parlour in favour of other occupations, Virgil was left to his own devices, one on one with an empty room, a dying hearth, and his own thoughts. He was not quite sure why he even stayed: the dominant, rational and calculating, part of his mind told him that no factual harm would befall Vanessa with the Queen present in the palace to let judgement befall any who dared misconduct, and his sister would eventually make her way home, maybe a little worse for wear. Whenever he tried to entertain the notion of going on about his duties as usual, however, the very suggestion felt ridiculous and abnormal. So he stayed, no logical reasoning behind the compulsion-turned-decision, settled himself in the window seat to watch the outside and waited, and waited, and waited.
About three hours later, around the time the sky finally cleared, a servant came in to report that a surgeon had been brought in, feed some firewood to the smouldering flames and, with Virgil's consent, turn off the lights.
The moon was full that night.
Another hour later, he ran out of poems to recount.
He'd seen husbands wait for their wives to give birth, rare as the occasion was in the ghetto: all three or four of them had shown significant restlessness and an inability to concentrate on matters not concerning their rapidly approaching fatherhood. He supposed waiting for a medic to get out of a surgery was different. He didn't suffer from bouts of anxiety or experience general nervousness over the outcome: the only problems that could come – that he could see coming – would involve the futures of the whole Underground populace, and if worse came to worse, everyone knew what to do. Though the duke's death would briefly weaken the opposition the Methuselah were facing, it would inevitably and rapidly lead to the end of life as they knew it. So much depended on Vanessa and her skill and luck at the moment, and he was sure she was aware of that, and on her shoulders rested not only one Terran life, but also the livelihoods of a hundred and three brethren and herself. He was sure she'd pull this through. She was his little sister, after all, his dear little Vanessa, who had come to understand the concept of maturity a little too late. But, he supposed he'd taken on her share oversoon.
Dear, dear Vanessa.
The fire had disintegrated into embers once again when the door soughed and quietly slid open, letting Vanessa through. She stopped to close it behind her, the movement weak, listless, he noted as he got closer, and only when his shoes clicked on a spot of lacquered wood not covered by the carpets did she raise her head and seem to notice his presence. A few more moments went by before she fully recognized him, and then, as if relieved from a spine-breaking load, her whole posture appeared to sag, though the only thing drooping were her shoulders; she complied soundlessly as he brought her to the sofa to sit down, and in what little light was left in the room, he saw enough of her countenance to not like it.
"How are you feeling?" he asked quietly, only now recalling the only instance when he'd glimpsed a doctor who had just performed a twelve-hour overnight surgery and the unresponsive, almost catatonic state he'd been in, sitting in the corner of the room with his head resting in his hands like a heavy weight, and looking ostensibly like someone who'd seen the ninth circle of Hell. Of course, unlike that doctor, his sister was a Methuselah, and the conditions were nowhere as dire, but the memory was no less unsettling.
"If he wants to live, he'll live," she replied, and he realized she wasn't in quite a good way, or rather, he had the proof: either she wasn't even hearing him, or her logic was twisting the wrong way, as if after a couple of sleepless days, and she asked, "I've done what I could. Can I sleep now?" in a voice so entreating, not even in her younger years would she have used it. Contrary to the brashness he'd become used to, she was displaying such weakness, and somehow, the fact that only he should be privy to that agreed with the laws of the universe.
"Yes," softly, gently, the last note of a lullaby, and she wearily closed her eyes, head falling into the juncture of his neck and shoulder, body slumping against his, limp as a ragdoll: out like a light, if he allowed himself the words. Carefully, he set his sister down, never bothering to remove her jacket, and sat over the slumbering figure for a while, studying the still-too-prominent paleness of her face.
If his reasonable side begrudged him for this later, he'd use that pallor as an excuse.
His own jacket went off and over her shoulder, and then he was settling onto the sofa himself, with his back turned to the world around, his arms winding around the world in front of him, and he himself would be the shield between the two for now. For now, he would keep silent vigil over her sleep, cradle this brittle being – because all life was brittle, but at the same time resilient – against his chest, and not hesitate to drive off any that intruded on her rest, from whatever incorporeal abode they might come. At this strangely out-of-sorts moment, it was the only relatively familiar course of action.
He didn't even realize he'd dozed off until his eyes caught up to the slightly dimmer lighting from a now-moonless sky and the lifeless fireplace, and his mind – to the faint scratch of doors and shoes upon varnished parquetry. Whoever the unwanted guest was, he wished for them to state their business quickly and by their own incentive, for he felt no compulsion whatsoever to stand up and address them, fearing that his sister would wake; looking at it from this side, he wasn't perfectly sure he wanted them to speak, either. The voice that sounded after an inexplicable brief span of silence, surprisingly, identified their late night visitor as Colonel Mary Spencer, in propria persona.
"You were in luck tonight, Count," she spoke quietly, as if sharing his sentiment, and for a short time, he felt truly grateful to the woman who'd wrecked havoc upon his home not too many years ago. "The prognosis is still uncertain, but the experts appear to bet on the duke living rather than not. However, do not think that the House of Lords will let the matters slide. If my hunch is any worth, you and your people will not be getting out of this so easily."
He didn't know if she was counting on an answer during those seconds of complete silence that followed, but he wasn't going to offer her one, and finally, she continued, drawing the finishing line.
"It's thirty minutes past four in the morning right now. I suggest you leave as soon as the servants are up."
And with the faintest of clicks, her footsteps faded in the hallway.
He was not accustomed to that woman displaying consideration in such manner and proportion, and yet she had been treading lightly for the sake of one sleeping 'vampire' – a 'vampire' whose timely involvement had most likely saved a life earlier that night, admittedly, but a vampire nonetheless. Still, if that piece of advice was nothing more than a rather blatant hint to stop soiling the palace with their presence-
A shuddering intake of breath that came from around his clavicle and was decidedly not his almost startled him out of his skin, but within moments the shock was replaced by concern: the colonel's voice must have woken her after all, and he did not particularly like the way her hands were vainly grasping at his waistcoat before finally fisting over nothing. He reassured himself she would have acted if he was suffocating her, but then something solid, most likely her forehead, pressed against the spot below his collarbone, and once, he believed he could make out a hint of a hiccup.
"Those... Those-" she hissed in a low, forcefully subdued voice, and as the words spilled from her lips, intermitted by hitched and ragged breaths, he realized one peculiar and perturbing nuance. "Is it so fucking difficult- Ungrateful bitches! Don't- look at me like I'm some blasted bloodthirsty animal! Don't look like I'm going to assault you at any moment! Don't accuse me of things I didn't show a hint of doing! That's fucking insulting, dammit!"
He hadn't seen – hadn't been around to see her cry at all through the last several decades.
"Why the fuck d'I even agree to this?! Like his life- will save our case! Sooner or later, they'd have done something anyway, why bother with- this humiliation, but no, humiliation is what 'vampires' are worthy of! Fucking Terrans with their shitty loyalty! They'll sell the country as easily as their lifelong friends! They'll sell us cheaper than their carpets!"
Their small community was a prideful bunch, some more than others. They might not show much malcontent about mistreatment, but there was no discrediting the value of the technology they provided, along with the fact of being people, though not quite human. The barbed attitude he received on behalf of a hundred of Methuselah during his relatively rare trips to the court was always aimed well, and his steely composure was not meant for that kind of defence, so he was not unused to stepping on his own throat and being the epitome of politeness despite himself. His sister, on the other hand, in dealings with Terrans was nettly at best, but even if she seemed like a tight, angry bundle of thorns, there were also leaves, and petals too. She'd always been thin-skinned, a hopeless crybaby in her younger years, though he'd missed the moment she grew brambles, preoccupied as he was with his own dethornment, and though she might have wrapped herself in briars, she still hurt. Else, she wouldn't be cursing up a storm right now. Else, she wouldn't be shattering so exquisitely, so splendidly, a myriad of cracks blossoming in an eyeblink. The one closest to him, he couldn't protect from this. One should never take familial love for granted, nor was one entitled to love solely upon the basis of blood relation, he'd learned that at his own expense, but her, he loved. Oh, how he loved – the knowledge was almost instinctual in the sentiment's overpowering, overwhelming omnipresence; her pained rage was eating him like acid.
Beloved, beloved Vanessa...
All he could do was keep sentry and try to hold the pieces together.