Author's Note
Hello, lovely readers! I'm Kosaa, and I just wanted to add a little explanation before this lovely little fic right here. I started writing this fic a year or so ago for NaNoWriMo, but ultimately ended up falling out of practice with it. I attempted again this year (2017), although fell short of the mark as well. As it stands, I do really want to write this, so hopefully I can keep the motivation up. The chapters will be short, only around 1,667 words or so each. If this fic ends before I reach 50,000, then so be it. I have the entire series planned.
That being said, this series takes place in the Vampire Academy universe created by Richelle Meade. It is inspired by the Badlands album by Halsey. Each fic is based on a song from the album. This is Castle
I felt her fear before I heard her scream. Her shrill voice along with the crunching of metal shook through whatever formerly pleasant dream I had been having before I was pulled into her own. The accident had happened over two years ago, but I knew my best friend would never get over the loss of her family. Time heals wounds pretty well, but I didn't think that any amount of time could ever heal what we went through.
I launched myself out of bed, reminding myself that she was the one having the nightmare, not me. I grabbed her by the shoulder and shook her, maybe a little harder than I should have, but it got the job done. Her jade eyes flew open, still in a panic, until they locked onto mine. "It's okay, Liss, I'm here," I reassured her. She sat up and immediately leaned in toward me, and I wrapped her in an embrace without even thinking. Her breath was uneven as she fought back sobs, and I simply stroked her hair as I waited for her to gather herself.
"It was the crash," she whispered. I nodded, pressing my face into her hair. "Andre…oh god…" I knew she felt bad that the last thing she said to her brother had been argumentative, but we had no way of knowing what was going to happen next. The deer had come out of nowhere, and even with the guardian's quick reflexes, he couldn't correct the car in time.
"We're here now, yeah?" I whispered, stroking her platinum hair. Her breathing slowly evened out and she pulled away from me ever so slightly to look me in the eye. Her jade eyes were red rimmed and bloodshot from crying and exhaustion, and her normally pale skin looked almost translucent. "We made it out of that car, and we're okay. We're okay, Lissa. We're here now, and nothing's ever going to take us apart." She nodded slowly, and I gave her a hard look so that she would know that she had better believe my words. I would spend the rest of my life protecting her, I would probably end up giving my life to protect her, but nightmares were the things I couldn't protect her against. I couldn't punch a dream.
"It's still so horrible," she said. She leaned back against the headboard, steadying herself against the wall while she grounded herself in reality. "It's still so vivid. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so…"
"Detailed?" I suggested. "Memories are supposed to fade, and things are supposed to change each time you remember them. Like you're just remembering what happened the last time you remembered it. It's not supposed to be going back and living in that moment." She had no answer for me, but simply nodded, wincing at the movement. I sprang forward, positioning myself closer to her so that I could inspect her for any incurred damage.
"What was that?" I asked quickly, my hand reaching out for her without a second thought. Lissa brushed my hand away feebly, murmuring something about a headache. "Do you want me to go get you some Ibuprofen?" She gently shook her head no, before I realized the next possible problem. "Are you hungry?" She didn't answer, either positively or negatively, and I knew even without her answering. She would never be honest, especially not when she knew where the source would come from. As a Moroi, Lissa's main source of sustenance was blood. Although she could and regularly did eat human food, it wasn't anywhere near enough to satiate her. As a dhampir, half-Moroi and half-human, I got all the perks of the vampire side of my lineage without the drawback of needing blood. Often times, dhampir ate easily twice the amount as their charges. "I'll be right back."
I stood and left the room, pausing at the door to give her a backwards glance to make sure she was alright before making my way into the kitchen. Shortly after we moved in, I made it a point to map out the entire house to the step so that I knew my way around in the dark, even with my advanced eyesight. By the time I returned to the bedroom with a glass of water in hand, Lissa was sitting up and looking much more awake, with a few tissues in hand to clean up after the feeding. I sat down on the bed beside her, brushing my hair over one shoulder to expose my neck to her. She flashed me a guilty look, one that lasted only a second before her lithe frame bent over to cover the distance between her mouth and my exposed skin.
There was a brief moment of pain while her carefully-hidden fangs pierced my skin, followed by the rush of endorphins that Moroi released into those they fed from. Until we left the Academy, I used to think that dhampir letting Moroi feed off them was dirty, one of the worst things that our two species could do. Of course we needed each other to survive, but Moroi had human feeders for a reason. If anyone in the Moroi world found out what I had been letting Lissa do, I would for sure be outcast in a second.
In this moment, though, none of that mattered. While she fed on my blood, I felt sunlight coming back in return. Letting a Moroi feed off you was one of the best highs imaginable, and something that anyone could easily get addicted to. The possible addiction was only one of the reasons that we kept the feedings infrequent. It lasted only seconds, but even when Lissa pulled away and wiped a drop of my blood from her lips, the flow of endorphins broke off, but that didn't stop them from continuing to rattle around in my bloodstream. They were meant to take away the pain of the bite, and to give the feeder some sort of pleasure in exchange for their service. Even though she was stronger after she fed, I was weaker. We did what we had to do to keep both of us alive, but it always meant that one of us was the weaker for it. I had to be strong enough to protect her, but she had to have the strength to keep up with me.
It was a fine line we walked, feeding only every two or three days. In normal Moroi society, they saw the feeders daily. We couldn't afford me to be that weak. If there was a threat made to Lissa, I had to be able to fight it. Still, nothing could beat the look on my best friend's face while she was at full strength. All Moroi were capable of being supermodels, with their tall, thin frames and porcelain skin, I liked to think that my Moroi would be even better suited to the task.
As the brunt of the endorphins wore off, I realized that I'd fallen back against her bed, holding a tissue to the bite marks she left on my neck. They never bled a lot, but there was always a period of time that it could happen. I sat up from the bed and stared out the window, willing my vision to focus on something so that I could ground myself in reality again. I didn't know where Lissa had gone, but I knew she couldn't have wandered far.
Across the street, a streetlamp flickered to life, and for the briefest moment I thought I saw someone disappear behind a parked car. I lurched to my feet, suddenly afraid that we might have been seen. To an outside observer, to a simple peeping tom, it could appear that Lissa and I were lovers. We did share a room, and feeding was an intimate affair. There was motion behind the car again, and I caught view of the man who had indeed been watching us as he gave some sort of signal.
"Shit."