Disclaimer: I do not own the original canon nor am I making any profit from writing this piece. All works are accredited to their original authors, performers, and producers while this piece is mine. No copyright infringement is intended. I acknowledge that all views and opinions expressed herein are merely my interpretations of the characters and situations found within the original canon and may not reflect the views and opinions of the original author(s), producer(s), and/or other people.
Warnings: This story may contain material that is not suitable for all audiences and may offend some readers.
Author's Note(s): This story is a response to the Soul Bound Challenge posted in the Facebook group Fanfiction Challenge. The Soul Bound Challenge is the monthly challenge for February.
Summary: Nikola should have been there. It was their daughter's wedding. It was wrong that he wasn't there. But that wasn't his fault, was it? It was hers.
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Echoes of Forgotten Hope
Part 01: Melltith
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Then leans on me the weight of the year, and crushes
My heart. I know that Beauty must ail and die,
And will be born again,—but ah, to see
Beauty stiffened, staring up at the sky!
Oh, Autumn! Autumn!—What is the Spring to me?
– Edna St. Vincent Millay, The Death of Autumn
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Cokeworth, Shropshire, England, February 1960
Melanthe watched as her latest daughter danced with her husband. The fading sunlight caught in Marigold's hair giving it a truer hue than the red normally appeared. The girl laughed as her groom spun her about the dance floor and Melanthe smiled, even as her heart wanted nothing more than to weep. Nikola, her Nikola, should have been here to see this. Not for the first time, she regretted sending him away all those years ago. Perhaps if she had kept him close—if she had just risked that the cabal would be able to follow as they had from where she had hid them after New York—then maybe she could have prevented his death. In seeking to protect him, she had inadvertently ensured that he missed out on the pleasure which was raising Marigold.
Marigold had been a surprise, to say the least. If there was one thing which her long years had taught her, it was that children were the price paid for the longevity she and her kind enjoyed. Lamiae rarely had children, cursed as they were, and even as closely related as lamiae are to vampires and succubae, the chances of conception was only marginally better than lamiae and humans. Typically, extraordinary measures had to be taken, and even then, the Church had managed to sterilize the vampires which prevented them from natural means of reproduction. The only remaining methods they had was direct blood and flesh transfers which were tricky at best and more likely to produce a mindless beast than anything resembling a true vampire. Marigold should have been impossible, conceived accidentally in an affair which had lasted less than a fortnight.
Then again, Nikola had mentioned that he did the impossible.
Raising Marigold had not been as easy as raising her other children had been. The times were different. Unwed mothers were not currently acceptable, though thankfully not illegal as they had been at various times. Fortunately, the war with Germany had made many a widow and as her sources had confirmed the public reports of Nikola's death, grief had not been hard to demonstrate. Even now, over a decade and a half since she had "saved" him only to lose him, his loss pressed against her chest like a boulder, crushing her beneath its weight. There had been times when Marigold had said something or done something which was just so Nikola that Melanthe had to fight to recall how to breathe.
While drawing in some man to stand as a shield against societal disapproval would have been easy, Melanthe hadn't the heart to replace Nikola. She still didn't, even as her instincts called out for fulfillment. Nikola had been special to her in a way she had thought she had lost. From the moment she had seen him in that New York bar, she had felt the connection they had with each other. She had planned to use him and send him along as she had so many others over her long life. Then they had been attacked and she realized that for all that he was perfectly happy to be played with, Nikola was not a mere toy to her. So when he pushed against her, she pushed back, bonding him to her in way that only lamiae and vampires can, not caring that she had known him less than a week. For five wonderful days, she had rejoiced in their mateship. It was her first since her Kerbasi had died almost a millennia past.
It still pounded at her occasionally, the feel of their bond. It lingered like an aftertaste on her tongue, an echo of things better off forgotten. Occasionally, she would be walking down a street and a scent would drift out of an alley or shop that would be an almost perfect replication of Nikola's flavor. Renewed loss would hit her so suddenly and fiercely it would be all she could do to move out of sight and teleport away to privacy. Certainty that Marigold had somehow been spared the potential blood-legacies of both her parents was cold comfort when it bore the additional knowledge that Marigold was destined for the mundane world and a mortal lifespan. Eventually, the last bit of Nikola would pass beyond her care and slip into the gentle embrace of the Long Night.
She watched as her daughter buried her face in her groom's shoulder, embarrassed about something but still laughing. It was hard letting her go. If she had doubted even the tiniest bit that Harold loved her, Melanthe would not have been able to stand it. Marigold was still her baby, being barely sixteen. No matter that the girl had just enough of the lamiae blood to give her maturity beyond her chronological age, sixteen was nothing in terms of experience. Joining her life with a widower ten years older than her could be the height of folly, especially when said widower came with a toddler in tow. Yet Melanthe could see how their love shone when they were together, as bright as the bonfire they had jumped last Beltane and as steadily warm as the banked coals which had been the only light in the little cottage where she had raised Marigold on the Solstice night that the girl had haltingly confessed her suspicion of pregnancy. Harold loved her daughter and Marigold loved him in return. The Mother had blest their union even before a formal ceremony had been enacted. Who was Melanthe to go against such a sign?
It still broke her heart to let her little girl go, even into wedded bliss.
Nikola should have been here. He should have been by her side, safely held in her arms as they watched their child mix her blood—their blood—with the man she loved and who loved her in return before their wrists and fates were tied. He should be excitedly debating what to teach their grandchild first. He should be here and it was through her failure to protect him that he wasn't. If she hadn't sent him away on his own—if she had only sought him out instead of trying to lure the Triple Crowns away from London—if she had only protected him, her brilliant but brash Nikola, then he would be where he should have been, instead of reduced to ashes which being bickered over by museums and churches.
It was the curse of the lamiae, to have forever or near enough but to have no way of keeping those they loved with them. They were creatures who lived on love, in all its expressions, but couldn't stand to be near others of their kind for longer than it took to raise a lamia child to maturity. They were capable of wondrous feats but incapable of stopping Atropos from stealing their cherished ones into the embrace of Achlys.
As she watched Marigold scoop up the tiny blonde that was now her daughter, Melanthe gave a prayer of thanks to Clotho for spinning her youngest daughter free of such a fate. If that Moirai was truly kind, the babe would be just as free.
