A Drifting Memory
Nope. Don't own Vampire Hunter D, just my character. This is a oneshot idea-the character of Fox hasn't really been developed-after watching the first movie and 'Bloodlust'.
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She told me once, when we'd shared a campfire one cold winter night, that Fox was not her real name. She told me that she'd chosen it for several reasons: a fox is as black as the deaths we bring, red as the blood we spill, and white as all the innocent lives we try to save through our actions. Because her namesake is neither of night or day, traversing both as easily as we of the half-blood do. And above all else, because the fox is known for its cunning.
She had stared at the dancing flames for a few moments after explaining these reasons, the flames reflecting in her eyes. Finally, she had spoken again. "We are as mortal as those who claim they are not, but you and I, we understand that nothing lasts forever except death. Not us, not the ones who make sport of hunting our short-lived kin, not even the control we exert over that beast within us. I hold that hunger and will continue to do so for as long as I can, but one day when that leash breaks-and I know it will, should I live so long-then I too, shall slay for the sake of seeing blood run. And when that day comes, I hope you or someone as strong as you will be around to slay me. For I will no longer be myself, and that final death shall be a blessing."
She had looked up at me, a strange smile barely curving her lips, voice barely louder than the crackling flames. "As I would do for you, should you ever require that service. Such is the dhampeal-hunter's code, D."
A joyless laugh then, as she had laid an even wager with me that 'D' is not my real name. That only myself and my parents in whatever state they may be-alive, dead, or undead-are likely the only ones who would know it now.
"Our lives are spent with a foot in each world," she had sighed after that wager, "not of the human world nor that of the vampire, doomed to be hated in both because one fears us for our hunger and the other fears us for our hunting." A haunted look into the flames as though they offered answers. "And alone. Always are we doomed to be alone. Well, fuck that."
She had risen to her feet and swung herself up into her horse's saddle, giving me what I could only call a hopeful, defiant look before beginning to ride off. "On one of your hunts, should you ever become weary of being alone, look me up. I'll even think about letting you keep all of the profits."
And as the hoofbeats of her horse faded from even my hearing, she had called back one last thing. "Our lives need not always be lonely death, 'D'. They are only what we make them to be."
I have yet to meet her again. I wonder sometimes if she still lives, if one could call this living.
Is 'D' my real name, you ask? That would, as she'd say, be telling.