Silence
It's hypocritical to say she wants to get to know him better when she didn't even know herself.
He fascinated her from the moment they met. She was intimidated by him yet intrigued with his story, his pain, his heartache and his guilt.
She hated his guilt. She envied it. She envied the fact that his guilt was kept so close to his heart, that it shielded him from the rest of the world and its inhabitants. She hated it because it consumed him and enveloped him in a shroud of mystery and misery that she couldn't compete with.
She couldn't compare to his past love, an intelligent, independent lady. Lucretia was a woman in every sense of the word, a woman that was pursued and wanted. But she was also a monster in the eyes that knew him. She was puzzled to his devotion and love to a woman who left him to his fate, who toyed with his affections and gave so little in return. She was a woman in love with her career, her research and left little to the starving soul that was the vampire they know so little of today.
He confused her and discomforted her. She felt restless in his presence wanting to shake him until he would utter a word or give her a reaction. She wanted to strike him until the guilt surrounding him shatters to a million shards around his feet. She wanted to rip that cloak from his body like she would tear at the silence engulfing him. She wanted to liberate him from his self imposed prison. She want to speak to him, to remind him that another soul was there. She wanted touch him and give him human contact. She wanted to comfort him and cry all those tears that he could not or would not shed. But instead she watched him, looking and hoping for a glimpse of his humanity.
She couldn't read him. It frustrated her to no end that she couldn't discern his regard of her. She couldn't find what she was seeking in him. He did not disapprove of her yet he would not accept her. She couldn't follow his train of thoughts or understand his actions. He was her greatest fear personified.
She feared the silence that he exuded. When he walks into a room all the occupants would stop and merely watch the strange, cloaked man with a golden claw move like a bloody shadow across the floor. None would speak in a normal voice when he was in close proximity fearing his wrath. His presence demanded silence, as if his only path of penance was paved with solitude and silence.
When her mother died, the whole castle was silent. Everyone had stone masks on, somber and forboding. For a young child who only knew of sunshine, butterflies and fields, it was a living nightmare. Zombies roamed the halls. Silence and dread tucked her in at night. Her father grew quiet and lifeless, becoming a ghost possibly to be closer to his deceased wife. And 10 years later, she seeks the attention of a man who lives among ghosts that only he could reach.
Silence was an unbearable sound ringing in her ears. Ironically, she would grow to love a man who lived, exuded and sought the silence as much as she sought a way to escape it.
She grew only to become a bigger child. She had no desire to become a woman. Who, rather, what would she turn into without the guidance of someone like a mother? She was her mother's shadow hiding behind her mother's legs and bathing in her perfume. She felt no different at the age of 18. She wasn't a lady of the court or heiress to a long lost kingdom broken by war and tourism.
So, she wandered seeking her purpose, her conquest and her prize. Perhaps there was nothing at the destination, no pot at the end of the rainbow, nothing to signify her journey through life. She was and had become nothing but noise battling the gaping silence that surrounded Vincent Valentine and the gnawing emptiness inside of her.
