Disclaimer: I don't own Record of a Fallen Vampire.

"So you condemned yourself."

The dull words were a statement, not a question, never mind the question hanging breathlessly in the air behind it, just out of sight but not out of hearing. And Strauss was not surprised by the flatness in the voice of the one who spoke.

It wasn't Laeti, nor Morishima, not even Adelheid, but Bridget herself.

The night was not cold, but it was windy, and Bridget had pulled a velveteen blazer over her dress. She seemed a floating face, pale and oval, with a cascade of fine, thick fair hair in the inky blackness of high midnight.

The island was peaceful that night; Nazuna would probably be calling him in for training soon.

Looking at her, Bridget seemed to be suffering as much as young Kayuki from "overwrought vigilance". Her skin was pasty and somewhat pinched, a waxen sheen on her cheeks. Small black circles around her eyes almost made her look like a raccoon; her flaxen hair was devoid of its usual shine. Bridget looked as though she hadn't slept in weeks.

She stood beside him, but did not look at him. With her shoulders slightly bent and her hands clenching the cool iron railing (it was amazing that at such a modern, advanced facility there was rust of such magnitude on the railings), Strauss marveled at how young Bridget seemed.

"Adelheid's going to want to speak with you," Bridget remarked, a neutral, carefully guarded tone creeping steadily into her voice.

Strauss smiled ruefully, running a hand through his hair. "Yeah…I'm trying to think of what to say to her now." Below, the waves hit jagged rocks and crashed and fell apart into sparkling white shrouds of foam.

Bridget shot him a sharp look. "How can you smile?" she asked quietly, almost petulantly.

The rueful smile shifted seamlessly to sad. Kayuki had just asked him that, armed with the belligerence of the young. And he had the same answer to an echoed question. "It's not that easy to smile, Bridget." He fixed her in his gaze, his voice barely audible. "You know that."

"I suppose not." Again, the boom of the tide dominated Strauss's hearing; an owl cried back in the park. The moon's reflection trembled and wavered on the surface of the ocean.

Bridget's presence drew some small blood from secret wounds, wounds Strauss had thought he had lost. Ghost blood, glimmering like pearl and smelling of salt, left neither stain nor wetness as it fell.

"So why'd you do it?" Her voice finally rose to banish away screaming sensations, but what the screaming left in its place was just as bad, an aching void where there was no life, no hope, no anything.

The void whispered strange words in his mind, so Strauss countered with words of his own. "That's a fairly general term, Bridget. Please tell me what in particular it is I did that you wish an explanation for."

She sent out a very detectable and very aggravated whistle-like noise through her teeth. "Why did you allow yourself to be vilified throughout the centuries?"

Strauss closed his eyes. "I believe Mr. Morishima has clarified that issue, at least he has to my satisfaction. Don't ask a question you already know the answer to, Bridget." I did not raise you like that.

A sharp lance caught both of them. Strauss let it pass through him meekly, knowing from long—centuries long—experience that allowing the pain to pass through him like a great throwing spear through water was the only way to minimize the pain and damage inflicted, but Bridget, either out of stubbornness, ignorance or some masochistic urging, trapped it and let it rattle in her rib cage until it forced its way through her throat and Bridget had to let it escape.

"You sinful Vampire King! You will be destroyed here!"

The words were spoken so long ago, but the emotions that had brought them on and the emotions they had evoked still existed in them both.

"You're right." Her voice caught, and Bridget had to duck her head and swallow hard. Strauss looked on, a keen, silent observer, unable to feel pity because what he knew that no one else did was that pity was not for Bridget anymore. "That's the wrong question, and I have many I would rather ask.

"What I want to know, Strauss—" Strauss stiffened; he had the feeling that Bridget was about to surprise him "—is why you didn't tell me."

Strauss actually felt his eyes widen. It was true; Bridget never failed to amaze him, especially at times like this. But again, she was being redundant; she had to know.

"Bridget…" He trailed off, feeling his ribs ache as his heart began to beat against them hard. "Bridget, you know why I had to leave you in the dark." Strauss's brow drew as he stared almost wistfully at the moon. "You are not an unintelligent woman. I had hoped that you would have eventually discovered exactly the sort of tactics I was using. And why."

Bridget ran a hand through her hair, closing her eyes. "Can we go inside?" she asked suddenly, her voice curiously straight and forcibly even.

Maybe a change of scenery would keep the conversation from overturning; Strauss had no desire to clean up the mess overturning would leave, not at the moment. "Of course."

The interior of the building was as it had ever been; harshly white, with blinding overhead light fixtures, and the strong, almost offensive odor of antiseptics. It was like stepping into a hospital, except it was almost completely deserted.

Renka and Fuuhaku were off to one side near a closed door, conversing in soft voices incongruous for two big men. A short bark of "Clear the area," from Bridget had them scrambling to get away; it amused Strauss how Bridget had trained her team to jump smartly at her beck and call. As they left, Strauss could feel amber eyes rake over him, part confusion, part curiosity, part unresolved antipathy. Renka, it seemed, was becoming a very confused man, in place of an exceptionally belligerent one.

Laeti, Ethel, Adelheid, Kayuki, Morishima and the lab rats were seemingly nowhere to be found. Good. It would provide for a more private setting, maybe.

Bridget cast her eyes around the row of doors and at the ceiling intently, plainly searching for eavesdroppers and cameras; Heaven help them if she were actually to find one. Strauss frowned; why was the silence suddenly so oppressive? Why did it stink of fear?

Once satisfied that their conversation was completely and inviolably private, Bridget turned back to Strauss, her mouth gaping open but suffering from an unplanned lack of words.

Bridget was highly proficient at keeping up the fleshy mask of apathy and indifference, but she still bore blood that swam beneath her skin and as long as she did she would not be able to completely submerge the faint pained twist of her mouth nor the desperate wideness of her pale, vivid eyes. Despite all claims to the contrary, despite over a thousand years of building up a dissimilar reputation, Bridget was painfully, undeniably emotional.

When she did finally summon words, it was another unknowingly rhetorical question. "Why didn't you just take me with you? It would have been more believable."

The eternal cry of an abandoned child, Strauss thought sickly. But he had not been thinking of questions and answers that were truly answers for a thousand and twenty-eight years for nothing. "You are not a child. Not now, and you weren't then either. Crisis forced you to stand on your own feet, alone; being with me would have only brought danger on your head." Strauss smiled. "Besides… Who would have taken the dhampire community from a fractured, divided series of sects and factions intent on destroying each other to a unified force…if not you? You succeeded in that, beyond even my wildest expectations."

Bridget ducker her head, licking her dry lips pensively. She seemed to have run out of words, content to revel in the dense quiet that followed, silence like an old wound torn asunder but so, so beautiful.

Then, a sound broke the moment. It was like the rolling of the tide, but…different somehow. It was coming from the room across from where they stood.

"What is that?"

Bridget smiled. "Oh?" Her voice was low with wicked amusement. "It's the sound of your little mountain cat snoring. She does that quite a lot. Ethel was the only one she didn't drive to madness on the ship; he could sleep through the apocalypse itself. Renka tried to put duct tape over her mouth."

"What happened?"

The leader of the dhampire community rolled her eyes and grimaced. "She woke up. We nearly had to readmit him to the hospital; lucky Morishima has some experience in first aid."

Strauss could hear other sounds as well; the walls were thin, insulation against sound virtually nonexistent. From one room, there was the sound of keys on a computer keyboard being pressed furiously.

And from the room to the left of the one where Laeti was ostensibly sleeping, Renka and Fuuhaku had resumed their conversation.

"I swear to God, I'm gonna smother that kid…"

"Renka, no!" Fuuhaku snapped sternly.

Bridget smiled, her smile half-beatific, half-exasperated. "Idiots," she murmured tolerantly. Her tone became considerably more business-like. "Strauss, I can not even begin to fathom what all of this has cost you, personally." She lowered her head, biting her lip. "Then again, maybe I can." Her eyes cleared. "But more importantly. These revelations…they change things."

Strauss nodded. "Yes, they do. Bridget, when this is over, we will return to being enemies, despite what we believe and feel." Her face fell ever so slightly, before carefully rearranging itself. "You will have to continue chasing me, and I will have to continue evading you. But in the mean time…" he smiled weakly "…forgive me?"

She looked up, startled. Bridget closed her eyes, breathing wearily with the weight of entire worlds on her shoulders. "I already have…just a little bit. But entirely?

"Some day, perhaps. But not today."

Though pained and saddened, Strauss understood her point. So many centuries of pain, animosity, blood lost and abandonment left wounds that didn't heal in years, let alone overnight. Things between them would never be the same, no matter what they wanted to believe.

"Not today," Bridget sighed before walking away, the heels of her shoes making hollow little clicking sounds on the floor.

Oh no, I see
A spider web and it's me in the middle
So I twist and turn
But here am I in my little bubble

Singing I never meant to cause you trouble
And I never meant to do you wrong
And, well, if I ever caused you trouble
Oh, no I never meant to do you harm

—Trouble by Coldplay

The song just screams "The story of Strauss and Bridget's relationship". Tried to make it as realistic as I could.