Disclaimer: I in no way own Gundam W. Don't sue me; I'm simply an E-5 in the USN, therefore I have no money. Ha.
Story warnings/notes: Massively AU, placed in modern times. 4x1, 4x3, 1x2 planned for later on. May seem OOC, but the majority of this is thoughts occurring within the main character's head – his outward actions should be mostly IC. Please R&R. Hope you enjoy!
-BEGIN FIC-
Prelude
I lifted my glass to my lips.
Once again I'd found myself at this small club, swept into the manic thrall that encases humanity's youth during these chaotic times, inundated with their harsh pounding music and vague lighting and crass drinks. I never used to volunteer my presence to establishments such as this – indeed, until recently, I'd found such activities an anathema. I still was outside of my element even now, though I'd been familiarizing myself with this foreign atmosphere for the entirety of this spring season. Since I'd laid eyes on him.
Normally I would spend my hours in my dojo, my home outside of the glorious manor I share with he to whom I owe my existence. Or I would spend my time with the owner of that manor, accompanying him to his pointless social affairs to ensure his safety (sometimes he can be so very careless, and that servant of his is so blithe that he can not be relied upon to protect my provider), accompanying him to his meetings despite the glowers and stares such obvious disregard for protocol drew down upon us, accompanying him wherever fate drew him.
After all, it was due to his relative kindness that I had my dojo, that I had my continued existence and ability to continue attempting to attain perfection.
But tonight, as I had been doing quite often recently, I was ignoring the sanctity of my personal dojo, my obligations to my benefactor and the call of my Art to sit amongst the most surly of this modern era's youth and watch them waste their frivolous lives with needless activities, drugs and alcohol.
Sometimes I wonder if this is what he felt when he first laid eyes upon me. If this obsession is what filled his heart, encouraging him to do what he had done and grant me my continued opportunity to work upon perfecting that impossibly flawed union between mind, body and soul through my Art.
I'd felt this once before. However, the last time this sensation stirred my soul was before he had granted me his ultimate gift – or, as many would see it, his ultimate curse. I'd not felt such a sensation since that moment, since the fire between us had cooled to pleasant embers that warmed our tainted souls, no longer fiercely overwhelming but still present. No, what I felt now was not the pleasurable warmth that existed between myself and he who'd given me my current situation – it was the burning blast of heat that had first overwhelmed me when I'd laid eyes upon him, repeated now as I watched the boy who'd become my obsession.
Pressing my lips to the rim of my glass, I tilted the vessel lightly to let the warm liquid within its confines wet my tongue. The tainted alcohol was still pleasantly viscous as it slipped down my throat.
That boy had no idea how dangerous of a situation he was in. If he'd known what manner of beast was watching him and those around him, he'd certainly flee.
No, he was mindless of the situation as all of those others he danced and drank with were, heedless of the multitudes of eyes resting upon their joyous activities.
Perhaps that is what's drawn me every night since I first glanced upon him to follow him, to look after him. Because he is so very ignorant of the danger he is in, so freely gallivanting through the night's black traps, mercy and luck being all that saved him from falling.
I glowered at another who shared my traits, seated but two tables to my left.
A few tense moments, a challenge rising to his brown eyes that was matched in my Prussian blue orbs, red bloodlust and fierce determination visible in blackened pupils. A calm surveillance of one another's auras.
He predictably backed down, his lips turned in a most delicious frown of defeat as he lifted his glass once more and demanded that the bar's dedicated operator give him his check.
The boy I'd been watching would be safe for yet another night.
Lifting my glass again I smirked slightly, a soft chortle rattling dry lungs as I took a sip of my beverage and watched him laugh and drink with his college friends.
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If I were a more poetic man, I would proclaim that it was destiny that drew us together that fateful winter night. However I am not; I simply see it as an incidental meeting that's given rise to my obsessive devotion to a child who isn't even aware of his silent protector.
It was nearing the end of the season, the last of winter's rains sweeping over the land to soak it in preparation for the coming heat of springtime. A cold and miserable time, loathed by weathermen and hatefully cursed by those people who worshiped the sun.
I couldn't care less about the weather. It has no impact on a person such as myself. All it did was wet my hair and clothing, bogging me down with extra weight that was hardly noticeable as I went through my daily practices in my dojo's open-air courtyard.
That night I'd been released from any obligations to my benefactor, turned loose as he wished to devote time to his neglected slave. I accepted his disregard for my longings as I had been for quite some time.
He had his new toy. I would grant him his playtime, though soft jealousy stirred in my soul.
I turned my attention more towards my Art as he who'd given me all that I have ignored my wishes in favor of maintaining his doll's favors. I wasn't allowing his devotion to that mindless thing to bother me; after all, in a relatively short time, it would be gone. Discarded. Wasted by time. Destroyed by the march of the bane of all mortality, decayed beyond recognition. I am a patient man.
I am also a liar.
His dedication to that sorry pet of his disturbed me to the bottom of my soul; that fact I never allowed to reach my eyes as I looked upon him. I always regarded him with the same professional courtesy we'd shown one another since we'd first met, with the same enthusiasm I'd always given to him when he'd asked anything of me, my pleasure at being recognized and necessitated by him overriding my terrible jealousy.
All that suffered due to my imbalance was my Art, a regrettable consequence in of itself as it was my existence's singular focus beside the wishes of my benefactor. For so long have I been working upon the union of all that I am, for so many years have I strived at that impossible perfection. Those emotions drawn from the depths of my tainted soul by that doll were throwing off my timing, disturbing my mind and heart so that my body's performance was terribly affected.
I am lucky that my lack of ability to concentrate upon my own situation had not so thoroughly disrupted my skills that I could not protect myself. Indeed, if I'd been unable to protect myself I never would have been able to rescue that boy.
I'd encountered him upon the streets of my provider's City's west side, all of his six foot tall frame hunched under his umbrella and hurriedly scurrying along the sidewalk. He was heading at his rapid pace towards the University – obviously a college student, given the backpack bouncing between his shoulder blades.
I watched him blandly, as I watch the rest of this city's scurrying masses. It wasn't until the attack that I took special notice of him.
I still don't know what it was that moved me to strike. I wish to attribute it to the tensions between our Clans, to the rather bold statements made by that beast's primogen to my benefactor concerning our place within our City. But my soul protests that proclamation, whispering that it was something more, something deeper, that had driven me to so very nearly destroy that mist of obscurity that protects us all from humanity's prying eyes.
All I knew was that my eyes which had been so focused on that tall, slender child, tracing the hard lines of his lanky young body as they were outlined by his dark cloths' eager efforts to cling to his skin, watching the limp braid of chestnut hair sodden by rainwater flap gracelessly along that backpack nestled in the center of the boy's thin back, snapped their focus to the shadows that proliferated the street upon which he traveled. The bushes that lined the sidewalk he walked along held a predator.
I knew that predator. I'd not dealt with him personally; the owner of the manor in which I resided had reconciled our last encounter with him. The creature that hid in the bushes on the street I traveled had slid unnoticed past my room (I would have liked this to be an impossibility, but the imbalance in my spirit thanks to my conflicting interests so far as my provider and his toy are concerned has unfortunately degraded my skills to such minuscule proportions). The first strike had roused me. By the time I'd reached the room that predator had slithered into, the battle was already finished.
I'd never thought that the mutt would lick his wounds so quickly. Or perhaps this hunt was necessary to complete the process; his face was still lacerated heavily from the racking strike of my benefactor's rings.
Time veritably stopped as I stared. Hunched over, balanced perfectly upon the tips of his toes, the stalker of the boy I had been casually taking note of let his mouth open in eager anticipation. He was hungry. He intended to feed.
He needed to feed – the attack he'd suffered at my dear provider's hands when he'd attempted to sabotage the sanctity of his manor in order to challenge him by destroying his little pet had drained him significantly. I still questioned my benefactor's motives for keeping the creature in existence; when asked, he'd simply replied that deepening preexisting tensions between the Clans weren't worth the beast's destruction and that powers higher than he prohibited wanton destruction of others without substantial cause.
I burst into motion, my innate celerity sweeping me from the opposing side of the street from the clueless child to those bushes in an eye's singular blink. Eyes narrowed, I clamped my hand easily around the throat of that crouched creature, forcing him upright to glower into his face properly.
The man I'd snared in my grip was just as startled over my activities as I was. Eyes wide, he snarled before glaring back at me and gripping my wrist.
Harsh claws dug into my denim jacket's sleeve. The moon's wan light danced over my prisoner's features as he delved into the dark recesses of his tainted curse, drawing power from his last feed and that vitae which still coursed through his collapsed veins.
I watched with bland disinterest as his jaw extended with his nose, forming an elongated snout. The end of that snout blackened and erupted long wiry whiskers, huffing and snorting at me. Ears elongating, they twitched before turning back and flattening themselves against a slightly compressed skull, sprouting thick brown fur as they did. Eyes narrowed, glowing a sickly green from their fur-lined sockets.
I've never questioned why those of the Gangrel always make my stomach turn. Nothing worse than a Kindred so similar to those foul Lupine who haunt my provider's City's nearby forestall lands. The lack of discipline, the lack of willpower, the very lack of humanity is enough to make one nauseous. And I'll not even begin on how these mutts reek when soaked by winter's rains.
He snarled at me, fangs bared, before daring to open his jaws to speak while he thrashed within my grip, trying desperately to claw my hand from his neck.
If it were a Lupine, I would have tightened my grip upon his neck to save my ears from his lamentations. Cutting off a wolf's breath is the quickest way to silence its voice. But it was Kindred, a creature that did not require breath – I chose instead to throw him across the street.
He bounced and skidded across the pavement with a yelp and a squeal, thundering gracelessly like the dog he was into the alley that ran beside the coffee shop I'd been considering going into when the boy with his chestnut braid caught my eye. No one saw what it was that had flown so gracelessly from one side of the street to the other. Everyone turned at the racket, wondering what had caused it.
The boy was staring as well.
I took that opportunity to slip into the protection provided by those shadows that surrounded me, the lessons taught to me by my provider's strange, crazed friend Leon Ramirez coming in quite handy.
Hidden adequately, I filled my gaze with the vision of that child's brilliant cobalt blue eyes.
Beautiful.
The moment was ended when his watch beeped. With a startled cry, he glanced at the accessory's face and took off running down the street, none the wiser of what had so very nearly happened.
My eyes followed him as he ran, his braid waggling behind him as his feet rapidly carried him away.
Something in my chest had moved when I'd set my gaze upon that boy's face. A sensation I'd not felt in ages boiled in my soul.
I swore to myself that I would set my gaze upon that boy again.
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I'd discovered many things about the boy I'd saved that night during my sojourns into the nightlife he enjoyed. My hearing is quite decent, so listening in on the conversations held between him and his friends wasn't ever a problem. Indeed, with as boisterous as their vocalizations became when they were intoxicated, one hardly needed any skill in eves dropping to partake of their talk.
His name was Duo Maxwell. He was a junior at the nearby University and a recently legalized drinker majoring in Theology. His friends, Allen and Miguel, never spoke of his parents though they spoke of one another's mothers and fathers with regularity. Perhaps he was an orphan. Or perhaps his relationship with his parents was one of bitterness and hatred, and he preferred they never be spoken of. I didn't know, nor did I venture from my protective shadows to engage the boy in conversation and discover the answer to that question. However, his church was mentioned once or twice – Maxwell Church. A coincidental matching of last name and church name? I'd have to look into that.
There had been an incident nearly sixteen years ago in this city concerning religious persecution. My benefactor would be able to give me details if I asked him; I myself had been in New York, investigating a possible link between the primogen of the Ventrue and a Sabbat operative with heavy connections in the phosphorus industry.
The boy was a chipper individual who had a strong liking for Red Headed Sluts and an eye for others of his same gender. Indeed, he was constantly ribbed by his friends about a girl named Hilde that he'd been putting off lately due to his infatuation with a boy on campus named Tony. He was also adamantly against the casual usage of drugs displayed by his drinking companions, though this was somewhat hypocritical – I'd witnessed him sampling powders and joints on occasion, if just to appease them.
Never once did I think to approach the boy. Indeed, with as much experience as I'd garnered during my years of existence in the finer arts of socializing, I wouldn't know where to begin to converse.
My provider was the one who specialized in speaking with others, though that specialization was bent more towards manipulation than simply mingling. I myself cared nothing about social graces or status. My only reason for attending my benefactor's gatherings was to protect him as his pet was incapable of doing. I recognize that social status is important in our Clan, but I truly have no use for it other than to gather enough prestige amongst my 'peers' that they would leave me to my own devices. I care not for Clan politics – that is the forte of he who has given me everything. I care only for the solitude and peace to perfect my Art, to join mind and body and soul into a single, indestructible, harmonized mechanism to serve my own desires and those of my benefactor.
My lack of enthusiasm to play at social politics has promoted my continued ineptitude when it comes to making a clean introduction. I didn't want to frighten the boy away by awkwardly stumbling into his life.
He was too fascinating to scare. He was too beautiful to chase from my sight.
Even if it were from the shadows, I wanted to remain close to him. I wanted to protect him, even as I protect my benefactor.
I wanted him to be a part of my existence.
That final wish could never be reality – my continued existence would be something entirely incomprehensible to one such as him.
He was a normal college student, living a normal life. A person such as he would scoff at the very notion that persons such as myself exist.
He was twenty-one years of age.
I had recently started my sixteenth decade of existence.
I am a vampire, and have been since 1865.
tbc...