AN: Part one of two I think… Please let me know what you think!
Protect
Though the years and decades without him passed by as if minutes, the memories of our living days – near a century-and-a-half old as they were – were vivid in my mind. Bright summer days running through father's grounds, kite-flying on the town green, shared smiles behind the back of the Latin tutor. Every day with my brother had been bright and clean and wonderful.
Perfectly, I could remember a pink-faced, squealing pile of blankets sheltered in my mother's tired arms. And her face so serene yet ashen as she looked from the blankets to my own curious face. She had patted the bed and I had climbed up, aided by her servant, Nana-May, and once settled, mother had gently placed her delicate package in the circle of my arms. Small eyes unclenched to stare up at me uncomprehendingly. The cries softened, and after a few moments and a hiccup-cough, silence reigned and the tiny, doll-sized face paled. Mother chuckled softly at my awed expression, and reached to stroke my hair. 'Look how he does love his new brother, Nana,' she declared happily.
Tearing my eyes away from my present for a moment, I asked what he was to be named. Mother hummed for a moment and asked what name I thought best.
'Damon is a good name,' I replied.
The women laughed heartily at my suggestion. 'Oh, little mister,' cried Nana-May. 'You do make me laugh 'til I'm gone blue as the sky, sometime you do.' She patted my cheek as she was wont to do in her fondness.
'I was thinking Stefano. After my own younger brother. What do you think of Stefano, Damon?'
I had crinkled my nose at mother's suggestion. 'No. Stefan.' I looked at the bundle in my arms, and its little eyes closing as a yawn stretched its mouth to barely the size of a silver dollar. 'Yes. My brother, Stefan.'
Mother nodded, her smile bemused, her eyes still tired, and encircled both her boys within weakened arms. I can still recall the smell of talc and rose water on her skin, as I rested against her breast. Even this faint, aromatic memory had not faded. 'Promise me, Damon. Promise me you will always protect your little brother.' I had duly promised. In my head I had repeated and transformed the word 'your' to 'mine'. He was mine to protect, mine to love.
Mother passed not long after.
---
Stefan, born beautiful, continued to grow so. All were drawn to him. His hair shone in the sunlight as he ran and jumped and skipped through his early years, eyes alight and grin worn wide on his face. Though father never recovered from our mother's death, and grew cold, Stefan's perpetual joy, his soft manner, warmed my heart. The townswomen often remarked of our duality – I of dark hair and eyes, he of light. As we grew older, it was his quiet and shy and yet softly infectious personality which was compared to my own arrogance and occasionally spiteful tongue. As tutors often remarked, I would do well to let Stefan speak up in my place. I, however, could accept no shame for my verbal lashings of those in the town who might bring my sensitive young brother pain. I wanted to protect him, to shelter him – and if that meant I was to speak on his behalf, so be it.
Indeed his countenance and his soft ways, so different to my self-assuming charm, drew many in the town to him. Ladies of the town cooed over him, his cheeks reddening at their actions as he grew older, while servants and slaves went out of their way to make him happy and protect him in his adventures – particularly I recall Big Jim, one of the stable-hands, who first taught Stefan to ride, nearly submitting himself to death in an attempt to move his young charge from harm's way when a torch fell, instantly igniting the dry stable floor. The panicked screams of the horses had haunted sweet Stefan, and for months he had slept beside me, until dragged away by our father. Father himself favoured his youngest son, often sitting him upon the piano stall as he entertained, at other times upon his knee to recite French poetry. Proud, he was, but I believed this was a display of his father's over-eagerness to impress the haughty men and women of the town. I bore little jealousy, for it was not fair to treat my baby brother as a puppet. The old man could see how Stefan squirmed and sighed in his lap, ever uncomfortable under foreign stares.
---
Unwanted attention was the bane of Stefan's years, and Damon did as he could to shelter his boy from it. They sought the comfort of their manor's grounds, playing and reading and napping for hours in the sun and under the shade of sycamores – far older than the great state in which they lived. Aged nearly fifteen, Damon had noticed, but not fully recognized, the gaze of the town pastor upon his sweet brother. For months he kept carefully to the child's side, until called upon to recite his Latin for examination. Emerging from the house in the early evening, the warm breeze singing with the buzzing of insects and the air sticky-sweet with the smell of ripening fruits in the orchard, he had accosted the gardeners who pointed him towards the newly built church in the distance. Setting off at a run, he had slowed as he approached the rear of the whitewashed building.
What followed was one of the few memories of his time with Stefan that hadn't remained intact. Vividly he could recall surveying the building with fear, and he could remember the sight of his hand on the office door. Clear as day he could see in his mind his brother, nine years old and beautiful, stripped naked and cheeks reddened by tears, huddled on an intricately patterned, but bloodied rug by an empty hearth, legs pulled towards his chest. Neither time nor alcohol had erased the image of bony knees and terrified eyes over the next few years. The pastor, the talk of the town at thirty, tall and strong and single, kneeled half naked, his shirts abandoned, his breeches open and boots set neatly by the desk. He remembered noticing bruises on his brother's pale skin as his legs were tugged aware from his chest, and he remembered the cry of 'Damon', though the eyes had clenched tightly shut, and his presence remained undetected. And then he remembered being above the pastor. An all consuming rage, a fire, streaming through his veins. And the handsome face of the man beneath him transforming, warping, blood flowing and bones swelling. He remembered the peace that came over him as he dropped the fire-iron to the floor with an almighty clang, and the sobbing sounds from behind him, and the realisation that he had killed and didn't care.
He had gathered his protected within his arms and carried him away, shushing and soothing the child as he went. Neither told anyone, though Damon felt the maids may have suspected - bloody sheets were swiftly cleaned and hastily silenced sobbing fits ignored. When, years later, the mysterious tale of the murdered priest was resurrected over dinner tables, Stefan would still cling to his hand under the table, though his jaw had strengthened and his limbs lengthened.
It was this man-boy that had begun to draw Damon himself in a way unfamiliar, unbrotherly and utterly terrifying.