TITLE: Everyone Else's Girl
AUTHOR: foggynite
FANDOM: Night World
STATUS: Complete
PAIRING: Blaise/Illiana
SUMMARY: When the world changes around you, do you change, too?
NOTES: Yes, I know they're somehow related. If that squicks you,
run like hell.
DEDICATED: to lindamarie- you're like a muse, man. you rock.
People say Death smells sweet and cloying, like the perfumed scent
of a funeral parlor or the light breeze of a sunny cemetery. They
say Death comes quietly in the night, while a babe sleeps soundly,
to wing him up to heaven in a flurry of angel wings. They say Death
is a mercy for those who are suffering, the beginning of eternity in
peace and love.
A gentle and romantic view for a process that scares the piss out of
every mortal man, despite protests to the contrary.
For Death is not kind. Death is the rotting aroma of the bloated
animal carcass at the side of the road, black tire tracks across its
back until it's broken down into tufts of fur, tar, and rainbow
exhaust streaks. Death is the antiseptic stench that clings to an
old woman's paper-thin skin, lurking beneath the surface as her
bodies slowly decays around her bones and she tries desperately to
cover the odor with baby powder and floral perfumes. Death is the
liquor in the bottle; the crack of bones and marrow; the odometer
steadily rising; the sharp twang of pain in soft guts. Death is
impartial.
Having seen more than enough of it in the recent past, Blaise Harman
is tired of Death.
Sitting in a remote graveyard lost among the foothills of Nevada,
she pulls her hat tighter on her black curls and squints behind dark
sunglasses. The driver is standing respectfully at the door of a
black limousine, the vehicle gleaming in the bright sunlight and so
out of place near this gated plot of land.
The Harman family cemetery is fairly small, considering the
generations dwelling just beneath the surface. Some grave markers
are new, although most have been transplanted from cemeteries across
the country. Yet all who rest within the bounds of the crumbling
brick wall belong to the Harman clan, are part of a long and noble
bloodline of witches.
Perhaps Blaise would draw upon their collected wisdom. She has a
vision of reaching down into loamy soil, perfectly manicured nails
caked with black dirt and stringy plant roots, reaching down until
she encounters a bony wrist and pulls it back to the surface into
her welcoming embrace. A vision of kneeling in soft grass, the raw
silk stockings on her shins soaked through with dampness, as she
converses with the rotting remains of a great aunt. Empty eye
sockets following her perfect pouting mouth, the shiny gloss of her
own lips so different from the curled and chewed flesh of the
other's face. Would there be vocal cords left to speak with? Would
her words echo hollowly in the mossy, vacated skull?
She dismisses the fanciful whim, filing it away for research on a
rainy day. The harsh light does not beget such involved efforts,
and her body has yet to adjust back to the balmy weather of the West
Coast. It was fall when she left New England, left her confines,
and she is oddly adrift for the first time in her life during this
blossoming spring. There is no longer an authority figure to rebel
against, leaving her bereft of familial attention and at a loss.
So it is here, sitting on a weathered concrete bench amid these
markers and mausoleums, where Blaise seeks to center herself. The
sharply edged new marble in front of her seems incongruous in its
place of honor, resting only a few feet from the statue of the
Goddess in the middle of the cemetery. She clasps her hands tightly
in her lap to keep from reaching out, from tracing the dark veins in
the light stone or the deeply etched letters that are the final
announcement of a woman Blaise had taken for granted most of her
life.
She sits in the burning sun, dressed in mourning black for it fits
her mood, and contemplates the future. She wishes she had
remembered to bring her cigarettes for the distraction, but they are
tucked in her small hand purse in the limousine. Waves of heat rise
from the stone beneath her, warming her legs but not her fingers,
which are clammy and she wonders at that.
Yellow eyes flash in her memory. Furtive movements in the shadow of
a doorway, and there were screams. She remembers screaming like she
remembers the events, removed from herself and nicely
compartmentalized in her mind. As though it were not her ears that
heard the harsh rip of fabric and what she later realized was the
shredding of flesh. Not her that felt the feather light arm in her
grasp jerked suddenly away. Not her that felt the hot spattering of
blood on flesh, searing liquid still sizzling with body heat even as
it traveled the short distance from body to flesh. Not her that was
thrown aside by a heavily muscled arm covered in coarse fur matted
with blood. Not her. Not-- Her.
She wonders at her clammy hands and watches a small bird fly
overhead. She has no clue what breed or color it is, that's Thea's
interest, but the tiny flutter of life in this waiting place is a
reminder of her duties. A reminder of a cluttered shop just outside
Las Vegas waiting for a mistress that will never return, and the
role as proprietress that Blaise now finds herself in.
There are others to help her, witches she can call upon for
ingredients and recipes and advice, but for the most part, she is
the only one in the shop now. The tensions between the Night World
and Circle Daybreak are escalating, and not many people stop by
anymore. The vampires are planning to conquer the world, the
werewolves are running wild across the land, the shape-shifters
aligned with the witches, and the witches are divided, yet drawing
together under the martyr they have made of the High Lady.
And the humans. . . .
Blaise watches the tiny bird peck for worms at a crumbling grave on
the other side of the Goddess.
Humans are cattle. Humans are weak. Humans can never survive in
the Night World, yet the Crone was willing to accept them, bring
them into the world of magic and eternity for the sake of all the
worlds interlaced. Could peace be possible? Is there any other
choice? If the vampires have their way, the dragons will raze the
entire planet before letting the humans coexist with anyone, and
then what will be left? Pain and suffering.
She tries to reconcile in her mind twenty years of hate and
disparagement as her world is collapsing around her. Part of her is
slowly deconstructing that which is Blaise, all the core
philosophies and habits, beliefs and memories. Another part is
refusing to give in, stubborn and haughty and full of pride because
this is her world and she will shape it as she sees fit. But she
realizes most of all that she cannot control everything, not even
herself.
"Let the world live its own way. As long as it lives it away from
me and mine." She smiles at the sting in her words, and wishes her
grandmother were here to argue with her.
The wide brim of her hat doesn't keep the sun completely off her
back, and now a bead of sweat trails down the inside of her black
sundress. Inhaling the silence of the place once more, she stands
slowly in tall heels and follows the beaten grass path back to the
rusty wrought iron gates.
Other people have left talismans near head markers for past
holidays, some have planted wild herbs and flowers, and others have
left half-melted candles in remembrance.
Blaise brought nothing, and leaves nothing behind.