Title: Howling
Author: Niki
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Jane Jensen and Sierra.
Warnings: Friedrich did die. Mentions of a Pet Shop Boys song. Slashy.
Epilogue: Howling
by Niki
Gabriel felt empty. He hardly noticed Grace who was hesitantly leaning on his shoulder. He had a line from some song going over and over in his head but he couldn't place it. "You're in love and it feels like shame." As if it wasn't damned enough that he had fallen again, it had to be a man. And a man who had only used him, too!
"Gabriel..." Grace started, "I need to show you something."
"Hmm?" Grace looked at him searchingly, then handed him a letter, looking cautious. Gabriel recognised the handwriting on the envelope immediately.
"It's from Friedrich! When did it...?"
"Two months ago, just after you had been..."
"What!? Why didn't you give it to me?"
Even as he spoke, Gabriel scanned through the letter, and the words hurt him to the core. Friedrich, beautiful, lonely Friedrich, who had only longed for company...
Grace was explaining something perfectly reasonable but Gabriel knew it was all excuses. He could suddenly see it in her eyes. It was a look he had seen too often to fail to recognise. Grace loved him. It made no difference. In a detached manner he wondered if she even knew herself.
"The choice should have been mine, Gracie," he said silently, sadly, and Grace shut her mouth.
He turned and walked away, feeling her eyes on his back. He read the letter over and over again. Friedrich had cared. Unlike Gabriel had believed in his first days of pain, the older man had really wanted to be there for him then. If only he had!
But had it really made any difference? Friedrich would've had to die anyway to give Gabriel his freedom. To purge his tainted blood... Tainted? 'The Gift', he called it. Gift to kill people?
Gabriel suddenly remembered more of the song that had been in his head. "You're in love and it feels like pain." It was Pet Shop Boys, "Can You Forgive Her?". How damn appropriate.
Gabriel looked back. He had walked a long way from Grace, but she was still visible, still standing where Gabriel had left her. As if a hangover from his wolf-days Gabriel could almost still smell her, still see her eyes.
He could go back, and take what it would be so easy to make her offer. Once he wouldn't have hesitated. But then he probably wouldn't even have seen it. He could go there... But all he could think of was the dark-haired man who had called him better looking than Byron, and who had asked him to join his life.
Like the animal he had been for so short a time Gabriel threw his head back, and howled his pain to the sky.