Its been a while since I posted anything. I saw both Underworld movies again for the hundredth time (they are some of my favs) and I was inspired to write a little ficlet. When I listened to this song by Flyleaf, it just fit. I hope anyways. Please review, I love to know what you guys think! Thanks!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, not the characters, nor the song, which is Flyleaf's.
We can't be oblivious
We are not ignorant
Blood on our hearts
Blood on our hands
We're human
We reason
We're breathing
Protecting
You're living and dying
Surviving, you're trying
So breathe in safety
Come home safely
Mercy screams its violent love
Justice
And mercy
Justice
And mercy
The death of us created for
Justice
And mercy
Justice
And mercy
This is where they kiss
Life, here sacrificed
Someone who paid the price
Blood on our hearts
Blood on our hands
We cry out, we're fighting
Its warfare, we're dying.
Believing, we're winning
Its ending, we're singing
Its already done
We've overcome
Mercy screams its violent love
Justice
And mercy
Justice
And mercy
The death of us created for
Justice
And mercy
Justice and mercy
This is where they kiss
With a life on the line (the fire)
That consumes or refines (the fire)
To ascend or decline
To retreat or to climb
Out of sight, out of mind
'Til attacked from behind
Will this fire
Consume or refine?
Mercy screams its violent love
Justice
And mercy
Justice
And mercy
The death of us created for
Justice
And mercy
Justice
And mercy
This is where they kiss
The entire complex of my identity was being altered. And damn it, I didn't like it one bit. But I couldn't be ignorant of it either. Ignorance got us killed much more frequently then the lycans did.
Kraven should know this, but is it honestly my fault that he doesn't? I tried to warn him. I tried to tell him that Michael was important to them, and that he may be the key to destroying the den that I had discovered.
Of course, nobody in the mansion believed me that I had discovered a den. But I'd heard the howling, the snarling, and the throaty growls from that tunnel. I knew there were lycans down there, and I knew it was more than two or three. A lot more.
For six hundred years, I'd been a Death Dealer. Dispensing justice and retribution for the slaughter of my family. Even now, after all this time, I could hear their screams. I shuddered and touched the gun holstered at my hip.
I was reassured by the weapon, even as I gazed out to the empty room that held our elder's tombs. Inside one was Viktor. The man I considered my father now. He was much more than a man, besides being a vampire. Viktor had shown me mercy, compassion, and trust. He'd changed me to a vampire, and with that new blood rushing through my veins, I had the strength to wreck justice and pain upon those who had taken so much from me.
Six hundred years, I had served Viktor. I'd been envied by many for his favoritism of me. It was no secret he cared for me like his daughter, and as such, I held a high place in the coven. I'd asked for none of it though. I was a warrior at heart, and that was the only thing I wanted out of life. The only thing I asked for was a fight.
I heard footsteps. Inhaling, I tasted the blood and wine soaked scent of Kraven. I wasn't in the mood to deal with him. Could he not leave me to my thoughts in peace?
I ducked out of the room before he could reach me. Like a black shadow, I flitted through narrow halls and doors until I was far away from Kraven. No doubt he wanted a word with me, but, he was not to have it. I had work to do. I'd been brooding for to long.
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I could not help but feel pity for Michael now. I'd seen the bite to his shoulder, and it was a horrendous wound. Even now, blood seeped from his skin and his arm was rendered almost useless. He would heal though, lycans had that uncanny ability, just as we did, to re-grow flesh, muscle, tissue, and bone itself even.
"Where are we?" he asked me quietly as I gazed out the window, watching the rain pour down. A million thoughts were running through my mind, but there was one that stuck out the clearest, and it was hard as a brilliant diamond.
"We own this building, along with many others in the city. We use it for interrogation," I said quietly. I spoke, but, I made no conscious awareness of what I said. Viktor would know that I spoke like I was being controlled by something else. Some kind of auto pilot. What I had just done consumed the entirety of my thinking.
"What's wrong?" Michael asked. "What is it?"
His voice was soft, gentle. Was there not one angry bone in his body? I didn't like creatures who were not rough and hard as I was, none save Viktor. His kindness and warmth I yearned for day and night. Save for him however, I was unaccustomed to softness.
"What I have done goes against everything my coven stands for," I admitted at last. I leaned my head against the cool glass. "I've shown mercy to a creature I was trained to do nothing for but kill."
"Why do you kill them? They're almost extinct now, what is the purpose?" he questioned. I glanced at his eyes, and I saw a hunger for knowledge and information like none other. I smiled inside. He reminded me of when I'd been first turned, and trained as a Death Dealer.
"Justice," I answered simply. I was not someone of many words. I preferred to act. Leave Kraven and his fellows to sit and talk. I'd let my gun, my weapons, and my fangs, do the talking.
"But what have they done to your coven? I saw the mansion, and all the money you guys have. What could they possibly be still doing to you to warrant all of this?" he asked, gesturing to the torture and interrogation tools we used on a nearby table.
"Its not what they did to my coven. Its what they did to me," I said listlessly. The pain in my heart was familiar. Almost comforting. To be without it would be like being without a limb.
"The war spilled into our house. A horde of lycans came, and they killed my father, who tried to fend them off. He was not enough, and no more was I. I couldn't save my mother, or my sister. I listened to the screaming of my nieces as they were butchered like animals. Twin girls, barely six years old, like lambs for slaughter."
"I was sure they'd come for me, but then I was in Viktor's arms. He'd driven them off and protected me. He asked me if I wanted justice. Revenge. Retribution. I said yes, and he made me a vampire, so I would have the strength to avenge my family. And since, I have never looked back."
I turned to look at him. I could not say to his face what I was thinking, though I longed to do so. I wanted to say he was the only exceptional to an iron clad rule I had made for myself. If I could kill them, I did, and I did not ask questions. Michael was the exception. I could have so easily killed him, many times. Even now, it would be no trouble for me to spring upon him and snap his neck, or put a silver bullet straight through his heart. But something held me back, and it wasn't because he was important to the rest of the lycans, or even Lucian. It was something else.
Mercy. I'd shown him mercy where I had never shown any of his kind mercy. I suppose you could call my faster than lightening death mercy, but, it was death nonetheless, and to be quite honest, death frightened immortals. Its a concept that we don't understand. I grasp the deaths of others well enough, but not my own. A picture of a world without Selene, the Death Dealer, without me, I cannot grasp.
"Why did you help me?" Michael asked me, breaking my stream of consciousness. I sighed. He was smart. I didn't like that. I'd rather him be a fool, it was so much easier to work with fools rather than those that had a working brain. That was why I tolerated Kraven.
I was about to answer that it was none of his business, but, it was. He deserved to know. He'd earned that much.
"You saved my life. For the past six hundred years, no one but Viktor has shown me mercy. To whom it is given, it is returned." As I spoke my last sentence, I felt the knife like pain in my heart twist again. My father used to say that to whom gives mercy, mercy will be given. I'd spent six hundred years withholding mercy. When I'd finally shown it, it was given again.
What had become of my life?
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I was in shock. I watched Viktor's body crumple to the ground. In a daze, I dropped his sword. The sword I'd used to kill him with.
I knew the truth now. Viktor had killed my family, not the lycans. He'd destroyed all of myself and taken from me like nobody ever had. He'd made me an unknowing slave for the past six hundred years. But not even that could bring me to kill him. It was as he threatened Michael that my resolution hardened into a single, diamond like point. The focus of all my training. I had one, and only one shot.
I remembered leaping through the air and swinging the blade. If I had missed, I would not live for long. As a hybrid, Michael could hold off Viktor, but I was a mere vampire. I was strong, but Viktor was an elder. I could not compete with him.
At first, I thought I had missed, as Viktor released Michael and spun to face me. But then I raised the sword I held. Blood ran like a scarlet river down the silver steel.
Viktor was dead. And I could comprehend nothing else but that Michael and I stood here together. I walked towards him, and he shifted from his hybrid form back to human. He cupped my face in his hand and kissed me.
His lips were warm and soft, and I let the heat flow over my cold body. Michael was the embodiment of everything I wasn't. With a purpose in me, I could survive without him, as I had for six hundred years. But that purpose was no more. Now I needed him to survive. He was the second half of me that I'd been missing for so long.
Justice and mercy. This was where they kissed tonight.