Summary: 'The Dying Light in reverse; From the other person's viewpoint and mostly backwards.
VI:
Eve Sands is used to dying.
She has to fake her death at least twice a year, leave a body and blood and bones. What she isn't used to is the sensation, the blinding bleeding pain of seeing him kneel down next to her bleeding corpse and whisper 'I love you' into the wind. She isn't used to this permanance. Isn't used to this invisibility that stops her from touching him.
Nick Cutler is used to death.
V:
He wasn't entirely sure why he was doing this. Joining the rebellion was not the smartest thing he'd ever done. Getting caught in a slaughter, Eve had pulled him into a werewolf camp. The two escapees had found the guards quickly. Unfortunately, the guards had also found them. He had managed to find a closet where they could hide. They had broken the locks on the cages, though, so hopefully the werewolves would be angry and/or grateful enough to eat their jailers.
Nick looked over at Eve and asked a question he wasn't really interested in knowing the answer to.
"Everybody dies, Nick." She huffed out, leaning her head back against the wall. "I'm glad we die together, anyway." They looked at each other for a moment, and he just had enough time to marvel at how nice she looked after running three miles in cornfields when she sibilated a "Oh, screw it!" and propelled herslef onto him.
She was a strangely good kisser, considering she'd probably never actually kissed anyone before. His hands just sort of moved up into her hair and then her face.
"Off to die together then?" It wasn't a question. It was a hope. When she reached out, he pulled her into his arms, and gave the only reply he ever could.
"Of course."
IV:
This was his penance. He wasn't even proper dead yet, and he was certain he was in hell. And he, quite frankly, was fine with that.
"Hello, Hal." His hands shook, so he clenched them. The last time he'd say anything, so he could only hope this worked. If it didn't... Well, he was dead either way.
"Ah, Nicholas! Come to join the party?" Nick drew in a shaking breath.
"After a fashion. I'm here to make a deal." Nick flexed his hands in and out.
"Oh? A deal? Why, whatever could you have that I want? And what could you possibly want from me?" Hal smirked, a low, grating chuckle thrown up from the depths of a wasted chest.
"The War Child will be passing over the English Channel in three days. I want you and your soldiers to leave her alone." He didn't stammer. He didn't flinch. He knew what he was here for.
"That's some tantalizing information, but now I have it, what could I need from you worth making a deal for?"
"The last piece of the prophecy. And my life." Nick pulled the parchment from his coat, and when Hal leaned out as though to snatch it, he pulled out a lighter as well. "Careful," he began, flicking it open, "This is very flammable."
"Why would you care?" Hall drawled nonchalantly, resettling on his throne. "About The War Child? Why would you care?"
Nick swallowed.
"Oh. But you love her, don't you?" Hal began laughing, a horrible, mocking sound like red wine soaking into white silk. "You're in love with her, and you'll die for her! Very well, I accept your bargain. Oh this will be poetic." Hal hissed, glee beaming out of his face.
The blood-letting wasn't too bad. They had started by slicing his arms vertically from wrist to elbow, and after that had moved onto lighting matches and using them to tattoo his back. It was a curious sort of pain, a flickering, bright thing that came and went with the darkness of the lines they drew.
Hal himself had begun on his neck. The short, thin feathering from his collarbone to his jaw had been made with a razor blade and the utmost care.
They were just moving on to his hands when Hal returned to tell Nick that he had honored their deal. Nick smiled. The pain was awful, like nothing he'd ever felt beofre, and yet he could breathe easy knowing Eve would live another day. Strange how love could change you. He'd really have liked to tell her how much he cared about her, but he supposed it just wasn't meant to be.
That was about the time he heard Hal's dogfighting gladiators devouring his guards.
III:
He was only supposed to be there for a inspection. He was only there for an inspection.
Nick hated the camps. They reminded him too much of the second World War. He never liked thinking about that. He always fidgeted on inspection, was never at ease. And he was even less so today.
The light rain was dampening his face and he was reaching up to wipe it off when he caught the eye of a small blonde. She was a teenager, familiar and a bearer of that ageless sort of weariness. He found he could place her eyes more easily than he should. Eve.
She clutched her right forearm, attempting to ease the pain with nothing. The sheer impact this had on him was something he didn't like to think about. He took what might have been a step, but with a flash of bitter betrayal in her face, she turned away.
He darted forward and, without thinking about it, pressed a light kiss to her new scar. Another to her temple and a whispered, pathetic apology before he stepped away.
He had to step away.
II:
Stepping out over the sand he caught sight of a weathered blue dress and a pale yeallow head amidst a pile of weather-beaten driftwood. He was trying to be quiet, but she turned before he made it ten steps.
"I'm sorry." He said, not knowing what else to really say. What could he tell her? That Tom was once a sort of friend of his? That he was actually only here to make sure Tom was really dead? That he was really stifling the urge to kill a few pedestrians and get magnificently drunk? No. All he could say was 'sorry'.
What she said surprised him though.
"I'm not." Huh. Well. "You learn to not care so much. After a while you learn that everyone dies and you can't feel sorry for them. Because they get to escape. You learn to pity the living, and not the dead." He didn't know what to say to that.
"Nick Cutler." Was what he ended up saying.
"Eve Sands."
I:
He was running away from some rabid vampires and avoiding what may have been bombs when he ran into the underground. Well, it used to be the underground. The humans had hybridized it with the sewer to make homes and villages.
He was running fast when he was suddenly struck as though with a lightning bolt. His consciousness began to fray, his fingers numbed. It was as though there was a cross nearby. Looking up, he found there was.
"Oh, oh god!" He bent over, falling to his knees.
"Hello?" a small, frail voice called. He tried to look up and found he couldn't. He flicked his collar up, and held it in front of his face. The small girl was apparently smart, because he could hear her drawing a stake from her sleeve.
"I'm not here to kill anyone!" He was getting a bit desperate.
"Why?" Ah, childhood curiousity. "Why would other vamppire want to kill you?" He felt the pain lessen, and he could reason enough to realize she must have covered the cross.
"Because I did something... Unforgivable." There. No traumatized children there. Well, not any more traumitized children...
"I saved the War Child..." He was getting lost in his own thoughts. "Normally I wouldn't care much about killing a child, but really. She didn't even get a year before they began the assassination attempts." He sighed. "Shame." There was only silence. Silence and pain. Even through a sheet, the cross still hurt.
"I'm going to have to uncover the cross." The young voice called. "In case of other vampires you see. Dreadfully sorry." her voice was emotionless, but the last apology softened her. Looking up through the haze, all he saw was a pair of storm-blue eyes and silver-blonde hair.
"That's alright." He found himself saying. "I understand."
"I think I should go now." SHe whispered, and then the pain began to burn him and he was left with no sanity and a pair of grey-blue eyes.
0:
Here he was, standing over the War Child. Eve, her name was. He was poised to kill her, blade in hand, and yet. That soft, young face was looking up at him, and he just couldn't. Blasted fatherly instinct. He and Rachel had meant to have children.
They never did.
He swallowed. He blinked. He turned away.
I:
"...The future's so bright... I gotta wear shades..."
The music floating through the warehouse must've been scavenged from some retro record store, but honestly, Nick was a bit glad. The eighties were good times.
As these thoughts were running through his head, he felt a sfot intake of breath behind him, and, turning, was suddenly tackled by a small blond thing in a yellow dress.
"Nick!"
"What...?" He could feel her inhaling his coat. It was strangely endearing, honestly.
"Sorry. Wrong time." She smiled and darted back and away.
"Huh." He shrugged. Stranger things have happened.
II:
The last thing he remembered was dying. A million dots of light in his lungs and heart and eyes. A dagger burning a hole in his chest.
Now he's standing in a hallway, and there are murmurs all around him. He can make out things like, 'why is he here?' and 'abomination. Doesn't belong anywhere near that lovely girl.' And okay, they hurt almost as much as the dying does. Or they would if he knew what they were talking about. But then he turns, and Annie is stepping through a doorway, and there's a young woman standing as though she's waiting to die.
This young woman, she matters to him. He loves her. It comes to him like lightning.
Her name is Eve and he loves her. And she's standing there watching her mother die for the second time, and he just needs to hold her hand. He reaches for it slowly.
"Hello Eve." She spins around and launches herself at him, like she did months ago. He remembers her now.
"You're not supposed to be hrer." She's muttering it into his shoulder, her arms so tight around him like he might disappear.
"Neither are you, but I'm not complaining." She laughs a bit.
"Well I'd stake you if you did." she says, spinning out from his arm, like they're dancing.
"Well, yeah, there is that..." He goes along with it and twirls her back in.
She holds him again, inhaling the smell of wool and copper and mist and snow. He smiles, truly smiles, and they walk together into the light.
They go home.