AN: Um, ok, so this fic is a series of the scenes that I think would have been in Fest of Fools, if it had centred around Amelie's POV.
Once again, I tried my hand at third person past, and if it's shoddy, I apologise; it's my weakest tense, so…gotta improve.
Dedicated to Lucy [section v] & Flying Penguinz [most of it] & Alice [the rest of it]
.i.
"Ma'am, there's an issue at the Glass House; they require your assistance most imminently," Amelie's assistant called to her as Amelie glided through into her office. She had just been to visit Myrnin in his cell, having discussed how all her hopes and dreams had been decimated, and managed to ensure Oliver didn't try and destroy everything, as he was well capable of doing. All she wanted to do was to sit down and to grieve for the loss of hope for the chances of her race's survival, of her survival, and now this!
"Tell them that I have no interest in interfering in their politics; if they fear for their lives, they are to call the police, and if it is Oliver, well, if they have allowed him into their home, that is their own issue." She was curt with her reply, and continued on into her office, ignoring the look her assistant shot her. If Marie wasn't careful, she would find herself being replaced, Amelie thought viciously.
"Ma'am, it is imminent!" Marie burst out with as she ran into the office, breaking the most important rule of working for Amelie: when the office door is closed, one does not enter. "They left you a voicemail, and there are reports of disturbance! It is…it is…" she stuttered, and Amelie rolled her eyes, her temper so short that she felt it was close to snapping entirely.
"Either tell me, or leave!" she snapped, resisting the urge to sweep her hand across the table and knock everything upon it to the floor, because what was the point in it? She had lost all hope. There was no purpose in this…this show any longer.
"It is your father, ma'am," Marie said, and Amelie froze immediately – it wasn't possible! "Apparently he is refusing to leave the house without you going to meet him, and that he threatened the children."
Without hesitation, Amelie rose to her feet and rushed towards the door, headed directly for the Glass House. Things had gone from bad to worse with only four words, and she wasn't sure whether even she could recover from this.
(Even Amelie couldn't overcome everything.)
.ii.
Amelie surveyed Oliver slowly as she moved one of her pieces, wondering if he would fall for the oldest trick in the book; she had been using it for centuries, and even with their one hundred and seventy year break between games, she was sure that he should recall it.
He didn't.
"Check, Oliver," she sighed, and only hoped it could be this simple with her father.
He didn't do what he had always done before, which was to flick his king over as soon as she said check; he had always been impatient, and if he was close to being defeated, he would give in. This time, however, he merely studied the chessboard, his eyes roaming it to try and find a piece that he could move without making a move that would cause a more detrimental situation for himself. "What are you going to do?" he asked her as he twisted one of the pieces in his fingers, careful not to lift it from the board. "After all, Amelie, you believed him to be dead. It isn't exactly the best of things, for daddy to be back in town."
She narrowed her eyes at him, noting how the shadows cast by the dimmed lamps obscured most of his face, darkening already shaded areas. "You are well aware of what I intend to do, Oliver," she said, her tone indicating as though it were obvious – which, to Amelie, it was. "The only question is regarding what you will do. Will you stand with me, united against a common enemy, or will you skulk off to the wrong member of my family?" her tone was hard, ice cold and unrelenting; there was no way she expected him to leave her side, because that was part of vampire tradition: when two vampires had an enemy in common, they put on a united front, sealed the cracks in their relationship until they had eradicated the problem.
He took his time answering, and Amelie knew he was doing it, in part, to irritate her; she didn't want to discuss this for much longer, given that the house's residents would be returning shortly, yet she wanted an answer, so he would make her wait. Whilst she could demand a response, she couldn't set a time frame for Oliver, and he knew that.
Finally, he moved his piece on the chessboard, speaking at the same time. "It is no longer check, Amelie," he said, commenting on the move he had made, "and it is nowhere near the beginning of the end of this war. If you considered I would miss this, you truly do not know me at all."
There was one load off her mind; now all Amelie had to do was create a plan to foil her father's plans, and to ensure that she kept control of her town. That was all she wanted.
.iii.
Days passed by, and yet Amelie did nothing to strengthen her position – on the surface. Whenever she was forced to spend time with her father, or his fellows, she gritted her teeth and bore the idiotic themes Ysandre decided to discuss. She pretended – quite well, in her opinion – that she was a relatively attentive daughter, one who was able to act as though it had merely been months since she had last seen her sire, rather than the centuries it was.
It was only when night fell, when Bishop ordered her away because he had 'things to do' (translation: discover which members of Morganville were willing to follow him) that she felt that she had the chance to sneak away herself. Without having asked him, she knew Oliver would be preparing for battle, using his past as a war lord as a base for what to do; he could sneak around much better than she could, given that Oliver didn't fall on her father's radar for whatever reason, and discover everything that she would never be able to find.
"Well?" she said as she entered Oliver's office, an outfit unlike her usual one covering her body; she didn't want to be recognised through her clothing, for although few people recognised her by face, her clothing choices would most likely set her apart. "What news have you for me, Oliver?" she continued as he did not speak.
She moved to take his seat, something he noted with a slight raising of his eyebrows, yet he deigned not to comment. "There is a general consensus around the vampires of Morganville, who I have spoken to, that you are the one who they desire to lead us; they are mainly ones you have turned, or who recall the hard life under Bishop." He didn't sound particularly positive to Amelie, and she frowned slightly.
"What are you telling me?" she asked directly. "Are you telling me that more or less than half of the town's vampires support me?"
He hesitated a moment, and it was in that moment that Amelie knew things were far worse than they appeared; it wasn't anything he had said as such, more that she could just sense that victory wasn't certain.
And so then, Amelie realised what she had to do.
"Numbers are difficult to ascertain, yet there may be upwards of fifty three percent on your side, for definite," Oliver replied finally, his gaze focusing anywhere but Amelie. "That means we naturally need to discuss how you want to fight him—" he began to direct her towards the plans on his desk before Amelie held a hand up to silence him.
"Destroy these," she hissed, indicating the carefully annotated plans on Oliver's desk. "We do not want to draw suspicion; for now, we are not fighting. We shall welcome him in peace, and show to Morganville that they are not enemies," she told him, watching with a glint in her eye for his reaction to her carefully thought out words.
Oliver began to splutter, great rivulets of spit spraying across the room as a by-product of his desire to speak. "You cannot welcome him here, allow him to destroy this town – your town – without fighting!" he almost yelled, causing Amelie to smile; he had taken the bait. "He is dangerous, and if you will not fight him, then I will."
"Oh, relax, Oliver," Amelie responded, rolling her eyes at his dramatics, though she had fed him the lies. As she spoke, she leaned back in the chair, noting how it creaked, even under her slight weight; how Oliver could deal with this, she didn't know. "I would never do that; I despise him more than even you do, which is remarkable given that he decimated your entire army in three minutes." Her reminder of the event that had Oliver firmly believing that Bishop ought to be in pieces in the ground, rather than just buried, caused an embarrassed look to slide across Oliver's face.
"That was a cruel trick to play on me," he argued, yet he didn't seem inclined to take it further. Before he spoke again, Michael Glass began to perform in the shop area of the café, and both vampires stopped their conversation to listen for a few moments to the sweet melody, something that was so rare in the modern society's music. "Yet I can see the logic behind doing such a thing; he would not believe that a daughter who could appear so devoted, could be so evil…"
Amelie shook her head slowly, the smile fading. "He is aware exactly what I am capable of – or, rather, what I desired to be capable of," she reminded Oliver. "No, I have planned this: I welcome my father to my town, and that evening, I discover what he truly desires; revenge on me is not a reason, otherwise he would have been here long ago, or exacted that revenge already. I have wracked my brains for every moment since his arrival, yet I cannot think of anything besides a possible link to the disease."
"The mythical disease, you mean," Oliver stated, his tone bored. "I thought we were meeting to discuss a series of battle tactics, Amelie, not your fixation with the so-called disease."
Her eyes flashed red, then silver, and she was pleased to see Oliver lean away slightly; it proved to her that she still had the power to scare him into submission, at least. "There is a disease, and the faster you accept that, the faster we will be able to conclude our plans," she told Oliver. "I believe…there is something to do with him that is the cure to our problems; I shall have to discuss this with Myrnin, yet I believe that my father could save us all."
Oliver spluttered once again, yet this time it was more out of a laughing manner than one of shock. "Myrnin, the old nutcase who disappeared for so long that we all presumed him dead?" he confirmed, and Amelie nodded. "I believed he had died, of whatever it was he suffered as a human…I didn't believe that you still put trust into him!"
Amelie didn't say anything for many moments, and the only noise was that of the guitar playing in the other room, faint screams audible through the soundproofed walls; their age meant that their senses were far stronger than human soundproofing was able to protect against.
"Myrnin is a very important part of this, Oliver; I would even go as far to say that he is pivotal," was her reply, when she spoke again. "You may not believe in the disease, yet there is one, and it will affect you outwardly in the coming months. What we need is for Myrnin to discover what it is my father has that we require, and then gain it, by whatever means necessary." She leaned forwards at this point, over Oliver's unusually neat desk, and their heads were all but touching when she whispered, "and I will do this by any means possible, Oliver. And if that requires me unleashing a full scale war in Morganville, so be it."
"You can count on me if you do," he promised her, moving away as she leaned back into her chair. "Now, we should go and put on an appearance out there; if it is seen that you are mingling, there is more chance of more…unsure vampires to see that they should side with you."
Without another word, Amelie stood up and swept from the office, leaving the door open for Oliver to follow, and stood in the shade of the nearest pillar, her eyes fixed on both Michael and the red-haired man mere metres from the singer. Somehow, in this war she had just promised Oliver, she had to find a way to protect Sam, hopefully without making it obvious that she loved him.
That, she thought, would be the biggest challenge she had ever faced…thus far in her life, at least.
.iv.
Silence.
It was something that never normally bothered Amelie – she spent most of her life alone, after all, or with companions who didn't speak unless spoken to – yet as she snuck through the portal into Dr Mills' office, it began to unnerve her. The sterile, clinical environment of the hospital wing where she was headed…it didn't seem right, for it to be quiet; it suggested that monsters lurked around the corner, as though nothing in this building was safe – something ironic, Amelie thought, given that it was probably the safest building for humans in Morganville.
Or maybe it was the combination of the act she was about to commit and her clothes – items styled for the youth of today, rather than herself – because this was a situation she had never been in. Never before had she been breaking into a hospital to take a small vial of the medicine that Claire and the good doctor were cultivating, to then replace it with a placebo to avoid suspicion of a vial being missing, and then take the stolen product to a madman.
In all honesty, never before had she been breaking into a hospital.
As she approached the lab bench belonging to Dr Mills, the one which contained the object of her desires, Amelie realised just how much her life was changing – had already changed – and how it showed no sign of slowing down; soon, she would be forced to reveal her face to the entirety of Morganville, something strange given that most of them had never met their Founder before, and pretend as though she was pleased that her father had come to town.
Life had a definite fluidness to it; it was able to change and shift whenever events cumulated in a certain way, and Amelie knew that she would have no choice but to act by Saturday. Already, her father was gathering forces to raise an army against her, his mission objective unknown, and she was honestly running out of theories as to what it could be; what could she have, other than her life, that he desired? She was in charge of a town that made very little money, on the whole, and her position was not one that was enviable – so why had he returned?
A noise down the corridor startled Amelie, and she recalled that the scientists of today worked throughout the night – and whoever it was happened to be headed in this direction. Whilst it would be absolutely no problem for Amelie to force the intruder to forget that she had been here, it didn't seem worth it, using her energy for such a trivial thing, so she merely snapped out of her pensive state of being, and moved onto completing the task she came here to do.
Within mere seconds, Amelie had made the switch between the real medicine and the fake and was ready to leave the laboratory, moving with great speed across the hallway before the scientist approached; there was no way he would have seen anything, even if his eyes hadn't have been glued to the sheet of paper in front of him, and Amelie breathed an unnecessary sigh of relief. She had a feeling enough blood would be on her hands in the coming weeks; there was no need to kill the innocent now.
The medicine in hand, Amelie used the portal to return to her home, slipping the vial beneath the mattress of her bed, where it would remain until she had reason to visit Myrnin. How much he would know by Saturday depended on Claire and how well she could keep things quiet, but Amelie knew that he would already be forming a plan on the limited information her employee would give him.
That was what she was counting on, at least.
.v.
"Hello, Amelie." The voice of the man who she had wanted to speak to for fifty years, yet had forced herself not to, startled Amelie more than she would care to admit. "Can I have a word with you?"
Part of Amelie wanted to scream no, no you can't have a word with me, or I shall end up revealing how I can live without you in my life no longer, yet she knew that that would be illogical. If it was too dangerous when her enemies were younger than her, and less brutal, there was no chance that she could allow her father to know about her feelings for the ginger-haired man.
"If you must," she ended up saying, moving slightly to indicate to her guards that Sam was not a threat; they must have known that, otherwise he would have been ejected from the vicinity already. "Yet I want to know how you got into this building; it's classified entry only, and I don't recall putting your name on the accept list." Amelie ended up being viciously cruel – yet it was for the reason that she didn't want Sam to get too close to her, not when everything could blow up.
With only inches between them, it took everything she had to focus on something other than his face, and to barely look at him as he spoke. "I know you're planning something," he whispered, leaning close to her ear to inform her of this. "It's not hard to tell with you, Amelie, not when I know you as well as I do – no matter what you tell yourself, I know you better than you think."
She scowled slightly, the expression unfamiliar on her face, and she shook her head. "And what makes you think, Samuel, that you know me?" she snarled. "You're…never mind. If I am planning something – if – what makes you think that I require you to know about it; surely, only those who were pivotal to the plan would know?" what she didn't say was that she had considered allowing him access to her during the party, just so she could keep him safe, and that anything she did was to try and protect him.
"You need me, Amelie." He sounded far too confident for Amelie's liking, and that had her worried that he may try and get involved anyway, even if she didn't want him to. "You've always needed me, well since you've known me, and you always will. Think about using your most loyal piece, yeah? Because at least then you know that there's someone who will have your back, always."
Without Amelie almost noticing, Sam moved a few inches away from her ear, and moved his lips to the top of her head; she could have ordered anything to happen to him, for violating the 'no physical contact' rule she had – but that was Sam, always doing things he shouldn't.
And anyway, after his lips pressed to her head for a moment, he was gone, moving like the wind down the corridor, almost as though he wasn't there.
Too much like her actions normally.
"Ma'am?" her guard said uncertainly, and with a start, she realised that she had remained standing in the same spot, lips still partially parted, for over ten minutes after the departure of Samuel. "Are we heading to our destination?"
Slowly, she nodded, gathering herself together within seconds, almost as though the encounter had never happened; it was so small, so illicit, that it felt akin to their clandestine meetings in the short weeks they were together after he was turned…and yet there was almost nothing to it. It consisted of her Samuel telling her that he would fight for her, defend her with everything he had – things she already knew.
Yet, Amelie wouldn't deny that hearing them once again didn't exactly hurt her feelings, as she moved to put the final piece of her plan into play.
.vi.
It was startling, Amelie concluded, that the drug could make so much of a difference to Myrnin – and all within just a few moments. Mere seconds after he was writhing around on the floor, trying to attack her and screaming obscenities at her for attacking him with the medicine, he was perfectly sane once more, almost the Myrnin she had known in the past – almost, but not quite. Now, he was broken, almost beyond repair, his shattered body's pieces scattered, and Amelie didn't quite know if he would return completely to his pre-disease self.
"The current formula lasts almost five hours, so we should hope that Claire comes to visit with the news relatively soon," Myrnin told Amelie as soon as the effects of sinking the plunger into his immobile heart became obvious. "In the meantime, you can spend the time informing me why I heard of Bishop's arrival through a human, what your plan is, and the importance of the role I am to play." The business side to Myrnin remained as he walked alongside – never behind – Amelie back to the portal, and consequently, his laboratory.
Amelie raised an eyebrow, quizzical amusement diluting the very real fear on her face, and calmly stated, "and what makes you think I desire a madman as part of my plan? I already have a one-time enemy, a human girl who is far too pivotal than she ought to be, and a seventy year old lover who won't take no for an answer; why do I need a crazy alchemist?"
Myrnin succeeded in looking amused and affronted simultaneously – a feat Amelie had to admit she had always admired – and he managed to put this across in his voice as he spoke. "Oh, Amelie, how your words hurt me so," he said, his overdramatic tone accompanied by actions of his choking himself to an impossible death. "In all seriousness, old friend, your visits have not been for leisure for over sixty years. I know you have arranged a role for me, something I could never decline, because you mean too much to me for the alternative to be considered."
As she listened to him speak, Amelie began to set up the chess board in the corner of the room, the one she hid behind a shelf of romance novels on Myrnin's bookcase; in his crazed state – or even in his non-disease provoked fits of insanity – he never touched those books for some reason, and therefore became the hiding place of choice for Amelie. It was where the book had been stored, until Myrnin had discovered its hiding place, and insisted on finding a better one for it. That part of that plan in particular had failed, and Amelie only hoped that similar parallels could not be drawn that evening.
"Let us play, Myrnin." Amelie motioned to the table housing the board as she spoke, seating herself in the more comfortable of the two chairs as she waited for Myrnin to join her. "And as we play, perhaps you will begin to understand the nature of the plan, and how one must consider oneself to be in danger, for there to be an overall positive effect for our side."
And so she explained how her father was in town, how she had to defeat him, yet she could not kill him outright – and Myrnin listened.
"Yet you are strong, you have the town – you can win!" he insisted, taking one of her pawns in a move that seemed far too easy a mistake for Amelie to have made. "You can gain his blood and see if that is the cure, for…that is what I have concluded. Bishop's blood will – must be – the cure."
Amelie smiled ever so slightly and moved one of her rooks, playing with the piece as she did so, before answering Myrnin. "He is more prepared than you could imagine, Myrnin; I have eavesdropped and know that he has more vampires than I thought. He understands how to create chaos, even in a town unfamiliar to him, and whilst I can deploy certain tactics to distract him, I worry that this will be the long game we shall play."
"No," was Myrnin's instantaneous response, barely paying attention to the board game as he spoke. "You can win, and I will assist; we shall discover if his blood is the cure, and then if it is, we drain him and destroy him. You will be victorious, let me assure you of that."
Silence reigns for a short period of time, both of them moving pieces at random – or so it seemed – with black dominating the board. The lower ranking pieces of Amelie's lined the side of the board, Myrnin's to play with, and yet with each piece she lost, Amelie's smile seemed to grow a little wider, the chilly edge disturbing even to Myrnin.
And then, with one slender, pale hand, Amelie pointed towards the alignment of the pieces on the board, indicating the position of her strongest pieces. "Look, Myrnin, without you realising, I have arranged myself into a position which means I will be victorious; it took time, cost me some less valuable pieces, yet I have arranged my definite victory – valuable pieces are now at risk, yet they will be sacrificed if that means your defeat."
She saw Myrnin observing this, working out in his mind the pieces and their plausible moves, before he nodded slowly. "Endgame. The long game. Your endgame is to take time, to be discreet and promote your pawns to distract from your plans. Very clever, Amelie, I—" he began to congratulate her – or so Amelie thought – before they both heard the tell tale signs of someone approaching the laboratory: Claire.
"We must hurry," was all Amelie said, standing gracefully as she moved to Myrnin's side. "You must hide that you have taken more of the drug, make it seem as though your improvement is down to a long term change because of the previous doses, and not know anything about the Welcome Feast. There are costumes in the attic in the Glass House; use those, arm Claire with non-deadly weapons, and for God's sake, ensure that you gain the sample. I shall not be able to converse with you until much later, Myrnin; I wish you luck." As she spoke, they raced through the portal, down into the prison where Myrnin was now housed, the cell door already open.
"Luck isn't what will get me through," Myrnin told her quite seriously as she closed the door with a soft click. "We will get through because we have planned this. Victory will be ours – I guarantee it."
As Amelie left the prison through the other, less pleasant exit, one that was lined with dank, oppressive stones and led to an undesirable area of town, she realised that neither of them were right: it was going to take a mixture of luck and skill, planning and chance—and above all, whether or not Jason would have taken the bait and betrayed them all, before then finding a catalyst for the evening. What would start off the beginning of the end, commence the long, arduous game that would ultimately end in her victory?
Amelie didn't know.
And that worried her more than almost anything else.
.vii.
Amelie's eyes lifted from the mirror, in which she was observing herself without movement, to the clock, and she noticed that it was time to leave; she had to go to the Welcome Feast, welcome her father to town and act as though she wanted to be there. Every other vampire in town, along with their dates, had already arrived, most likely would have already eaten and would be waiting on her father and herself to arrive, and those part of the plan would already be stationed around the room.
Nothing had been left to chance: there were weapons stored in the underground lockers, easily accessible by those who knew where they were; Oliver had been briefed on the logistics behind the plan, so should she perish or be waylaid, he would not try and unleash another massacre on the people of the town; the university was on lock-down, or at least prepared to, if the war began tonight. No truly innocent civilians would be killed.
She took a deep breath of unnecessary air and let it out again at a slower speed feeling her chest fall as she did so; it was what calmed her, what made her forget the nerves that threatened to overcome her every time she considered the consequences of her actions, and it had worked for hundreds of years – why not tonight?
"Ma'am, your car is here," Gérard approached her and told her, stepping away as soon as he had spoken.
Somewhere downtown, her father and his cronies were putting the final touches to their costumes, preparing to begin the spectacle that would ultimately end in his death. In another part of town, Myrnin sat waiting to complete his priceless mission, one that could save her race. And here…here, Amelie sat for a moment longer, wishing that life was that much simpler, that Morganville's security and her own life could take precedent over whatever reason her father had returned. All she wanted was some normalcy – something she thought was unlikely she would ever get.
She was prepared for the long, slow game, the one that would end with her victory and her father dead, because that was the only solution she would accept…and there were only two real solutions.
Before sweeping from the room, Amelie reached into the chest of drawers beneath her dressing table and removed the small, black book she had fought so hard to get – firstly from Bishop, then from the possibility of Oliver's hands. She then slipped it into the inside of her dress, the spur of the moment decision down to insecurity over the likely success of the plan to utilise her final pieces – her endgame strategy.
Everything had been planned. Now, all she could do was hope that things would work out how she desired them to.
AN2: if you happened to like this, feel free to check out my relatively new oneshots "together" and "moments"
& please don't favourite without reviewing.