finished: 12/17/2018

Disclaimer: Dark Shadows is the creation of Dan Curtis. Yu-Gi-Oh! is the creation of Kazuki Takahashi. No ownership of the canon characters, settings, or events is claimed and none should be implied.

Shadows Over Collinsport 4:

Regret (lives in your shadow)

By Lucidscreamer

Sins of the Father (Quentin's Regrets)

Once, the arrogance of youth held you tall,

certain in your convictions, your shoulders broad

enough to hold the weight of imagined burdens.

Now, regret lives in your shadow, burrows

beneath your skin, weaves its oily tendrils

through your veins, exudes poison in every pulse,

and its weight is as the gravity of the Moon

ordering the tides. Your denial was a granite

cliff, but time's relentless waves have worn it down.

You tried to deny your memories, your guilt,

your blood; but memory is a curse as sure as any

laid upon your line, and no more easily lifted.

Magda's regret was swift-blooming and fruitless,

no remorseful effort enough to remove what anger

set. (You bemoaned your fate; she mourned your children's.)

Your regret was born in blood and lives there still:

Jenny's children's children, your victims, sure as those

who fell to fang and claw beneath a bloated Moon.

Your regret was slow to grow, a pale fragile thing

dismissed with drink and disolution for a time, shrouded

in shame and hidden like a ghost in distant, dark attics.

Once, your own wanting reigned supreme. Absent conscience,

each petty desire was all and swiftly fulfilled;

every craving a command, every thoughtless impulse obeyed.

Now, hindsight lights your path like the waxing Moon,

harsh mistress guiding your every fumbling step forward,

chasing a will-o-the-wisp redemption, ever out of reach.

Your sins engraved in flesh and bone, Magda's wolf stalks

the destiny of your descendants. Your painted youth

offers no respite; accountability has finally caught you.

The regret of lost years settles heavy in your heart.

For you, the wolf only shows its beastly face in magic

and paint, trapped in the portrait that bears your shame.

But your body aches with remembered agony as Ryou's warps

with the Moon's rise. No fault but birth's chance

chains him to this curse, no fault but yours, twisting

regret's blade deeper with every passing heartbeat.

o0o

Quentin Collins watched his grandson slump as the drugged tea took affect and felt a twinge of regret. He had spent most of the day trying to find some way of telling Ryou the truth, but the words all seemed inadequate and got stuck in his throat. In the end, Quentin knew that there was nothing he could say that would convince Ryou of the truth in time to prevent a tragedy from occuring. Once the moon rose and released the werewolf, all the words in the world would do them no good.

By all accounts, Ryou had lived an ordinary life; there was no way he would understand the threat of the supernatural that now loomed over him. Not without a great deal of explanations and some sort of concrete proof that Quentin wasn't out of his mind with his talk of a magical curse passed down through the generations like a particularly unwanted heirloom. No, this was the only course of action that he could have taken. He would simply have to hope that, once everything was out in the open, his grandson would forgive him.

Carefully, Quentin lifted the slight young man from the wingchair in front of the fireplace. Ryou's skin was pale and, despite his earlier chill, hot to the touch. His eyes moved rapidly behind his closed lids. For the first time, Quentin noticed the dark bruises under Ryou's eyes, as if the younger man hadn't been resting well. Perhaps he suffered from nightmares? Would he have already begun feeling the effects of the curse? Quentin berated himself for the fact that he had never thought to ask Chris... much of anything, really. Quentin was not proud of the way he had treated his grandchildren. There had been a lot going on at Collinwood at the time, of course, but then there usually was. Witches and vampires and ghosts... There was always something hanging over the Collins family like their own sword of Damocles. He acknowledged, now, that that didn't excuse his lack of interest or care. He had made a great many mistakes in the course of his long life; few of them did he regret as much as he did his treatment of his descendants. He was determined to make the most of this chance to rectify that with Amy's son.

As Quentin hurried toward the cellar stairs, he felt Ryou's muscles spasm as the curse began to take hold in earnest.

Barnabas was waiting for them in the cellar, the iron-barred door of the hidden cell already open to receive Ryou. Silent understanding passed between them as Quentin gently laid the unconscious Ryou on the bare cot within the cell. Barnabas lifted the heavy manacles and offered them to Quentin.

"I wish this weren't necessary," Quentin murmured, weighing the iron chains in his hands. The metal was cold, almost burning him where it touched his skin.

"As do I."

Ryou groaned, his body contorting as if in pain. His hands curled into claws where they lay against his chest, fingers digging into the fabric of his borrowed shirt.

"We haven't much time." Barnabas took one of the manacles from Quentin and clasped it around one of Ryou's wrists. "Quickly. We don't want him to hurt himself."

Forcing himself to move, Quentin fastened the remaining manacle around Ryou's other wrist. The chains led from the irons to a thick ring set into the stone of the cellar wall. There was just enough length in the chains to allow them to reach the cot, but not the bars of the cell wall or door. With the restraints in place, Quentin picked up the thick wool blanket that he'd asked Barnabas to bring down when he'd spoken to him earlier, under the pretence of looking for Bruno. Gently, he spread the blanket over Ryou's twitching body, wishing he could do more to protect his grandson from what was to come.

Numbly, Quentin let Barnabas usher him out of the cell and listened to the clank of metal on metal as Barnabas shut the door and turned the key in the lock.

He leaned against the wall opposite the cell, his back to it, and tried not to hear the tormented human groans turn to beastly snarls. He flinched when Barnabas' hand came down on his shoulder.

"I'll wait with you until dawn," Barnabas said. As a vampire, he would be forced to retreat to his coffin for the daylight hours.

His heart filled with guilt, Quentin could only nod. Keeping vigil over the werewolf in the cell - over Ryou - would be a kind of penance for at least some of his past sins. Tomorrow, he would have to reveal a lot of those sins to Ryou in order to fully explain the curse that had befallen him. The weight of that responsibility seemed enough to push him through the floor, and he collapsed in a kind of slow-motion until he was sitting with his back to the wall. He wrapped his arms around himself, turning his face to the side as if refusing to look would make the transformation any easier for his descendant.

In the short time that they'd known one another, he found that he'd grown quite fond of Ryou. Quentin could only hope that one day Ryou would find it in his heart to forgive him for the curse of their shared blood.

o0o

finis

The series continues in "Shadows Over Collinsport 5".