There's artwork I've done for this fic that you can find on my tumblr. I've left the link on my profile page.

~:~

II

In my Veins


Prompt: Oh, you're in my veins and I cannot get you out

Oh, you're all I taste at night inside of my mouth.


He keeps coming back to the place he found her—the girl with the beating heart who looks like Crescent, but isn't. She can't be.

She comes to the café for the chocolate fondant. She comes every Friday, at about seven in the evening, with a portscreen in her hands and a tentative smile on her lips. She likes the corner table, tucked away behind a fern, ever so slightly separated from everyone else. She mostly likes coffee with her cake, but she orders tea once. Just once.

Cinder keeps reminding him he's creepy. A stalker, she says. But he's never followed the girl, not to her home, not anywhere. He doesn't even know her name. (He doesn't want to call her Crescent. She isn't.) He wants to go over and talk to her. He wants to ask her for her name, he wants to ask her why she has her face; but confusingly enough this is one girl he can't seem to approach.

Which is new.

So he just sits there, three tables away, every Friday, nursing a cappuccino he can't drink, being creepy. Sometimes he hopes she won't come back the next week. Sometimes he thinks he'd be utterly lost if this girl he doesn't know decides to get her cake from someplace else.

Still, it's a month, a whole month of listening to Cinder's taunts and Scarlet's laughter, until he finally, finally walks up to Not-Crescent's table, slides up a chair and smiles at her, wide, just a touch away from flashing his canines. She blinks. Once. Twice.

"Hi," he says, and she starts to blush already. There is a bit of panic in her eyes. Her eyes, he notes, that are the same colour as Crescent's. Aces.

"Hello," she mumbles, looking like she wants to hide behind her portscreen. Or under the table. He thinks that she would have too, had this not been such a public place. There's a multitude of things he wants to say, most of them wildly inappropriate.

"Is that any good?" he asks instead, pointing towards her half-finished fondant.

-o-

He had read somewhere that hope was once held inside a jar. He's held hope under skin and under fingernails, he's had hope dug into his bones and laced into his borrowed blood. He's held hope in every artificial breath. Inside all the hollow spaces in him.

She looks just the same as she always did, but different at the same time. He blinks and she has long hair. He blinks again and her hair is short. She moves the same way too, smiles the same way, bites her lip the same way. He wonders if she can crack security systems just as efficiently. There's this one museum that has the best collection of second era paintings…

He kisses her knuckles as he introduces himself. She turns a deep, rich colour like Scarlet's hair and looks about to swoon.

"So, what's your name?" he asks.

It's not her.

It's not her.

It's never her.

"Cress," she says.

In his mind he sees a small person-shaped scorch mark in the concrete beside him. In his mind, he's screaming a different, yet same name.

"Cress," he repeats, testing the sound of it on his tongue, twisting the syllable around lazily. "I like it."

-o-

She's most definitely, ridiculously, unnervingly human. If he had any suspicious before, they all wither away now. Everything from her working heart to her smell is human. It does not matter that everything else about her is absolutely Crescent.

At least it shouldn't.

"What do you think her blood type is?" he asks Scarlet as she instructs him on how manual liftoffs work on his ship. She lost him somewhere at...uh, probably the very beginning. He's fairly certain though that if he presses all the switches, turns some dials he'll get something right at some point. Flying can't be all that difficult.

Scarlet pinches him.

"Ow. What was that for? I'm only curious!" He pauses. "What's your blood type?"

Scarlet leans towards him and smiles. "Poisoned," she tells him.

-o-

Being dead does not mean he doesn't dream. He dreams often. He dreams of Crescent. He dreams of Cress.

He's alive in his dreams. She's not. "Do you think you could ever love me back?" she asks him solemnly, as if she already knows the answer, anticipates it, braces for it. He can feel it in the quiver of her voice, the slight tremble in her lower lip.

The sky is honey-coloured like her hair. Shafts of light break through the shattered ceiling, through the cracks on the walls. Crescent sits by the shadows, holds them to her like they're her friends, like they're her safety blanket.

He doesn't know how to answer her, and he never gets to.

-o-

Wolf catches him trying to steal Scarlet's hover. Well, borrow. He just wants to go see Cinder in New Beijing for a while. Public transport just isn't him and comming her his problems isn't quite the same as following her around and badgering her in person. It's so much more difficult for her to ignore him then.

And Iko sometimes has very wise input.

"I hope you remember what happened last time," Wolf says, leaning casually against the hangar door. He's smiling like he enjoys threatening people...which, he probably does.

"I do, yes."

"If you scratch the ship again this time," Wolf informs him, "Scarlet plans to inject you with holy water in your sleep."

"Aw," Thorne places a hand over his heart like he's touched by the sentiment. "That's sweet, but really, she doesn't have to."

-o-

Cinder gives him a once over. "No," she says. If there was a door to her little stall in the market, she would probably have slammed it on his face.

He sighs and climbs inside over the table. "Just hear me out."

"You have the worst ideas, Thorne."

"Hey, my last idea got Iko her amazing new body." He winks. The android giggles. Cinder looks unimpressed.

"It also got us arrested."

"Right. Well, it'll be different this time. I just heard about this gorgeous second-era jade necklace..."

Cinder makes a face. "No." She picks up a screwdriver and starts opening up an ancient-looking android laid out on her worktable.

"Please?"

"Why are you here anyway?" she fiddles with some wires, does some mechanic-y stuff. It all eludes him; especially the irregular sparks that splutter every now and then. Those look very distressing to him, but don't seem to bother Cinder in the least.

"What about that poor girl you've been terrorising? Did you ask her out yet?"

"Yes. Yes, I did."

"Did she throw her coffee in your face and kick you some place not nice?" she snicks at her terrible joke.

"That's horrible!" Iko gasps. "She sounded like such a nice person when you talked about her before."

"She is nice," Thorne says. "And she said yes."

Iko sighs in relief, then perks up. "So, is it her, her? Is she really Crescent?"

"I don't know. Her name is Cress," Thorne says, sounding a little glum. "She's human, and she doesn't remember me."

"Sounds like a lucky girl," mumbles Cinder.

-o-

He goes back to Paris the next night. There is a huge dent in Scarlet's hover, so he locks himself in the Rampion until he can be sure she won't try to poison him. His portscreen chimes every few minutes. All angry threatening comms.

He pours himself a glass of B positive and settles down on the Captain's chair.

"How is she human?" he asks to no one in particular.

"Apologies," his ship says, "I do not compute."

Thorne sighs, and massages his forehead. "Oh Darla, I don't compute either."

-o-

He takes Cress to a fancy restaurant where she looks enormously uncomfortable, until he starts reading off the menu in his snootiest voice. He aches when she laughs, because he hasn't heard that sound in so long, he had almost forgotten it.

It's a cold night, and his jacket nearly swallows her up as he drapes it around her. She lets him walk her home and he winds his fingers through hers, marvelling at the warmth of her that had never been there before. He wonders vaguely how creepy she would think him if he took her to the lonely ruins of an opera house on their next date. On her doorsteps, he kisses her cheek, leaving a flutter of icy current to consume her daydreams.

He waves at her before he turns around a corner and disappears into the shadows. She stands there, outside her door, cold now without the warmth of his jacket, and shivers at a strange feeling of déjà vu.

-o-

He pours himself some A negative when he's back in the Rampion. He wandered around the city for a while, aimless and confused, until the sun was nearly up. He doesn't know what he's doing with Cress. Cress, who is not Crescent. Cress who is an art student and probably doesn't know anything about vampires or SQL injections or disabling motion detectors.

He takes a sip of the blood and turns on his portscreen. There's a comm from Cinder among the hundred and twenty six threats from Scarlet.

Mechanic: There are reports of a stolen second-era jade necklace from an auction house. What did you do?

Oops.

Captain: ...nothing?

Mechanic: THORNE!

Captain: What? It looked lonely by itself. Now, it can keep my art collection company.

Mechanic: Thorne!

This isn't what he wants to discuss though. The necklace was just a whim. Something to occupy his mind because otherwise all he would think about is a certain fair-haired, blue-eyed girl. He feels a tingle creep up his toes as he takes another swig of his drink.

Captain: What do I do about Cress?

Mechanic: Don't change the subject!

Captain: But she's human!

Captain: And I think she likes me.

Captain: And she's exactly like Crescent.

Captain: But she's HUMAN.

Mechanic: Have you been drinking addicts again?

Captain: That was ONE TIME!

And also an accident. But he'd ended up selling Wolf to a shady pet store owner, stealing an escort droid, marrying himself, and vandalising the New Beijing Palace. Naked.

Cinder was absolutely livid. She grounded, actually grounded him for a year. Something which he couldn't for the undead life of him understand, seeing as his antics had landed her in sights of the dreamy Prince of the Eastern Commonwealth. Sure, it probably didn't leave the best impression, being associated with, well, a naked vandal (who claimed to be Picasso) but Prince Dreamy seemed quite smitten with Cinder anyway.

He hiccups, and the room sways.

Mechanic: Sure.

Captain: ...I feel a little funny though.

Captain: ...tingly.

Captain: And the walls are so pretty.

They are. They're the colour of happiness and giggles. Of summer heat, and sundresses. Of flavours, and time, and memories. Cress's lips, and Crescent's voice. Of chocolate cake. Of poison.

Captain: You're so pretty.

Captain: And I'm so pretty.

Captain: And she's so human.

It's painful how human she is. And impossible.

Captain: Cinder!

Captain: Cinder Cinder Cinder Cinder Cinder Cinder Cinder Cinder!

The air tastes like starlight. He gulps the rest of his blood and smells a strange smell. Like gunpowder and flowers.

Captain: My blood of glass smells weird.

Captain: Bloody glass.

Captain: Or glassy blood?

He dissolves into a fit of giggles. He's so funny, and witty, and charming, and amazing, and oh. Oh no.

Captain: I think Scarlet put something in my A negative.

-o-

He wakes up with crippling headache, and Crescent looking down at him with worry creasing her brow. He groans, and passes out again.

-o-

He dreams, or maybe be remembers. Snow against the sky, under his shoes, on her cheek; she laughs, a giggle really, as her fingers play with her hair. She says something, something inconsequential, something funny. He can't remember what, and her words melt away like the snow.

Her eyes widen as he says something back, and she makes a small, adorable mouse-like noise at the back of her throat. Her lips are almost blue, her skin as cold as ice. Her teeth so, so sharp. There is a curve of innocence in the tilt of her chin, a trace of hunger in her eyes.

She looks like she could be made out of marble, another statue in this hall of ruins that is her home. She looks like she could be made out of eternity.

She closes her eyes, and leans against a pillar. And she hums.

The sound echoes though the empty spaces, through the broken hall, though the dream, and winds itself though soft words spoken in sunlight...sweet crescent moon, up in the—

He wakes up with a start.

"...sky. You sing your song so sweetly after sunshine passes by..."

His head threatens to split into two and his eyes feel like they're on fire. He groans and curls into a ball. The singing stops.

Whatever Scarlet had put into his blood was evil. Absolute evil. He tentatively cracks and eye open.

She sits on a large swivel chair, legs pulled up, face half-buried behind a portscreen, staring at him, wide-eyed and a little distressed. "Hi," he says, sounding liked he died and was just brought back. Cress waves at him hesitantly. Her eyes go back to the portscreen, then to him.

"Your records say that you're forty six years old," she says, quietly, as if she's in shock. He gulps.

"Yeah," he tries to laugh. "Well—I use this amazing face cream."

-o-

He's not sure how to explain himself. He doesn't want to say vampire right off the bat and freak her out. Well, she already looks very much freaked out. He doesn't want to freak her out more.

He notices his surroundings then. It's not a room he recognises. The walls are lavender, the floor is tiled. There are easels and paint all over the place, but also what looks like, whoa, invisi-screens all over the place (lit up and paused at some sort of video game). He's laid out on a couch, a flower-patterned blanked draped over him. His right arm is bandaged. He sits up, slowly, because Cress seems frightened. But also because his head is threatening to split into two and fly off into the sun.

She looks like she's holding a question at the tip of her tongue. He has an idea what it might be.

"Your apartment?" he asks, turning his head around tentatively to take a better look. It's pretty, if a bit messy.

She stares at him for a long moment before she registers the question and nods.

"How did I—?"

"You, um...you rang the bell, and then you passed out. So, I, uh..." she gestured vaguely at him. "You were also...a bit burnt..." she trails off into unsure silence.

Ah, so that's what the bandage is about. He doesn't really need it. He's a fast healer. Really fast healer.

"I'm sorry," he says, because he doesn't know what else he can say. He's awed by her. She could have left him in the sun. Anyone else might have. No, instead, she dragged his sorry ass inside, bandaged him, and let him sleep on her couch. He remembers cold, gentle fingers cleaning his cuts, wrapping him in gauze. But that was a lifetime ago.

Cress nods again.

"Are you—" she starts to ask, but bites her lip. She takes a deep breath. "What are you?"

Her voice is quiet, and rightfully frightened. Vampires isn't treated any better than cyborgs, or the weres. Fear and disgust are the default reactions, and it's not an unfair reaction either. His kind isn't the friendliest. Not when everyone else is a food source. Crescent had been something of an anomaly, and he supposes he's one too. It's not that there aren't others like them; it's that most vampires are like what Sybil Mira had been.

Cress doesn't look disgusted yet, but it'll come. He knows it will. This is not how he saw this conversation going. He'd actually never thought this far, so very preoccupied over how this girl walked, talked, even sneezed like someone he'd once lov—known. Known. Someone he'd once known. Mm-hmm.

He shifts uncomfortably, and casts a quick glance towards the windows. Just in case she has some holy water or something hidden behind her and he has to make a quick getaway. It feels like about eight pm, so there's a long while until sunrise.

"I'm, well, I might be a bit...undead."

"Oh," she says. Her fingers tighten around her portscreen, her knuckles turning white. "Oh."

"Cress?" he says, gently, carefully.

"Yes?"

"I won't hurt you," he feels like he has to clarify. She has all rights to be scared, though he wishes, (wishes so hard it hurts) she won't be, but he needs her to know that he would never, ever hurt her. Not her.

Her heart hammers away nonetheless, like a cornered animal. He wants to move closer, wants to reassure her, over and over again until she understands. Instead, he stands up, and steps back, away from her. His head protests at the movement, still thumping away. What did Scarlet dose him with?

"I will never hurt you," he repeats. "I actually haven't hurt anyone yet. I have surprising self-control. I've only drunk from people...hmm, thrice I think. Yup. Thrice. And not killed a single person. That's an amazing track record. Ask anyone. There should be medals for this..."

She takes a while. She looks a bit like she's still in shock, but he's weary to get a closer look. "Okay," she finally says. He can't quite decipher from her expression whether she really believes him or not, but her grip on the portscreen loosens slightly.

"How did you access my records, by the way?" Cinder and Iko did some fiddling for him, a while back, so that his real records were hidden away behind lots of codes and stuff that he doesn't quite understand. His current id chip and records are heavily tempered with. But clearly Cress has invisi-screens and Crescent's skills along with her face, and her laugh, and her adorable lip-bites, and head tilts. The only difference he's found between the two is a working heart, a reflection, and mortality. Oh, and a new haircut.

"It wasn't that hard," Cress says.

"That isn't very reassuring," he laughs. "You should know, I can't have people knowing I'm practically ancient. I have a reputation to uphold."

Cress presses her lips together to hold back a smile. "You're okay. I only found your records because I knew what I was looking for. I mean, I was specifically looking for them, and because I knew your surface records were forged."

"Yeah," he says sheepishly, "I should probably not call on people during daytime, half-burnt and delirious, huh?"

"Why did you?"

"It wasn't intentional," he assures. "My friend drugged me."

She looks horrified.

"It's okay; she only did it because I trashed her hover."

-o-

They fall into something comfortable and familiar, yet foreign. As her guards slowly ease, Cress asks more and more questions, her curiosity is cautious, but seemingly unquenchable. He answers everything with a little amusement, and some anxiety, careful not to bring up Crescent. He's not ready to open that can of worms yet.

Instead he tells her about his friends; about Cinder and Iko, Scarlet and Wolf. He tells her about Darla too, tells her a somewhat modified version of how he stole her, and some of his other misadventures over the years. She tells him about her eccentric friend and the constant hunts she keeps getting dragged into for the perfect candy apples.

"They have to be 'as red as blood'," Cress says with a laugh. "Or there'll be a war."

He wants to bottle her laughter, and take it home with him. He wants to trace the line of her nose as she yawns, and taste the blush on her cheeks.

"I should go," he says, but his voice is a whisper, spoken only a breath away from her lips. They have been leaning closer and closer to each other all night with every word they've spoken, every giggle, every smile, every breath—artificial and alive. He could touch her, if only he dares. He could kiss her.

She gulps. He can feel the heat of her skin, the beat of her heart, the thrum of her blood.

"See you on Saturday?" he asks. That's supposed to be their second date. But she knows what he is now, so...

She nods. He grins, and leans in to press a quick kiss on the tip of her nose. Her breath hitches, but when she's blinked, he's gone.

Her visions blurs for the space of a second, and the slow sway of her drapes seem like heavy crimson curtains from some sort of a ruined, broken hall.

-o-

There is a new comm from Scarlet and it's the first one that's not a threat.

Red: So, how was your day, dear?

He replies back with every French expletive he knows.

-o-

Saturday is an eternity away. And lazy comms fill the space in between. He sends her funny pictures, and great existential questions about the anatomy of pigeons. She sends him snaps of her art, song recommendations, and puns.

He forwards everything to Cinder with accompanying text in capital letters, lots of exclamation marks, and excited emojis.

Cress reads, and re-reads all his message and goes to sleep with a smile on her lips.

-o-

He forgets about the little painted masterpiece on the side of the Rampion.

"Uh, that was already there when I got her," he says.

Cress tries to hide her smile behind her hair. "She's pretty," she says. He's not sure if she means the naked silhouette, or his ship. Although pretty isn't the word he would use for the Rampion. Gorgeous, maybe. Breathtaking, amazing, incredible, beautiful, absolutely stunning—the greatest ship in the skies. But, yeah, she's pretty too.

Cress is fascinated by Darla, fascinated by the controls, the inner-workings, the whole system. Her mouth is half-open, her eyes bright and excited. Her whole being buzzes for the need to touch and explore. He catches her fingers twitching as she brushes along the controls, craving to take a peek inside the integrated computers.

"Go ahead," he nudges, and she makes a half-yelp sort of noise at the back of her throat, and then quickly brings her hands to cover her mouth in surprise. He chuckles and leads her to the Captain's chair.

"Can you fly?" she asks.

He remembers a promise from long ago and his chest aches. "Yeah," he says. "A little. But the Rampion was...acquired through, uh, creative means, and I've wiped her clean, so we can certainly take off anytime you want, but the moment we hit Earth's atmosphere again, we'll be caught."

Cress looks disappointed for the whole of three seconds, before her expression transforms into concentration, and then to something he hasn't seen in her before. She pulls up the main screen, and starts typing furiously.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"Something..." she bits her lip and looks up at him, "creative."

-o-

He does not think that he'll ever stop being constantly amazed by Cress. She is cute, she is kind, she can sing, can paint, can beat him at video games. She also likes puns, and she can divert satellites.

His takeoff is a bit rocky, but once the stabilizers take hold they're good. Cress makes no depraving comment at his flying skills like Cinder or Scarlet. She keeps her eyes peeled on the skies and hums an old lullaby.

He's so busy congratulating himself on his first successful takeoff with the Rampion that he doesn't notice that he knows this song.

-o-

The view, oh the view is incredible. Impossible.

Earth is lights, lights, and lights. Dots like fireflies map out the continents, winking and blinking at them. The sun is on the other side, and for this moment he's safe, and he's with her.

She looks like a fairy tale, pale and soft and golden. She looks like hope, if it were a person. His fingers find hers, and he pulls her close. He tucks a stand of her hair back because she allows it, which still amazes him. She must know that his fridge is mostly full of blood bags.

Her eyes flutter down to his lips, and back up to his eyes. She blushes oh so prettily, it's almost a sin. He holds the moment because it feels precious. She lets him, for the space of eight seconds that tick away as if they are nothing.

And then she tries to step away, starts babbling something incoherent, something just to fill the silence, to feel less embarrassed, less awkward. He hears her heart stutter, can feel her fingers loosen from his. He feels a sudden panic well up. In his mind, she's already leaving (as if she was never there, as if he'd been dreaming all this time).

It can't be healthy, but he feels he'll be driven mad in her absence again. He tugs her back, not sharply, but certainly. Her babble slows to a stutter before it stops altogether as he leans down and kisses her.

-o-

He wonders if she loves him back yet.

-o-

She can't sleep that night. When she closes her eyes she sees a million stars, feels his lips on hers again, coaxing, insistent. When she gasps, his tongue finds its way into her mouth and she groans. She remembers his hands, his cool, steady palms, holding her secure for a moment before trailing up, up, up and entangling in her hair.

She remembers the look on his face before he kissed her, and the look on his face after. She remembers how words, all words had left her, all coherent thought, and how she had stood on up tip toes and kissed him again. And again. And stars...

She can't sleep.

-o-

He comms her at three am wondering about bees.

She replies back almost immediately.

-o-

Mechanic: Stop forwarding me all your sappy conversations.

Captain: I'll think about it.

Captain: But isn't Cress AMAZING?

Mechanic: Don't you have people to terrorize? Children to steal from?

Captain: That was one time!

-o-

Red: Thorne and Cress sitting on a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

Captain: Actually it was on the Rampion.

-o-

Iko: That's so romantic!

Iko: What happened next?

Captain: She said that dragons probably don't have belly buttons either.

-o-

Username: No.

Captain: You say that about everything.

-o-

He doesn't expect her to remember the person her met inside a forgotten ruin a lifetime ago. He's not even sure if she's the same person. But he loves her still. He knows this. He knows with every certainty.

-o-

And he grows afraid.

Time is still for him because she smeared her eternity on him and burned away. And she doesn't have her forever anymore.

-o-

He does not know that she's been drawing opera houses and moonlit streets for a while now. She draws old faces. People who are long gone, whom she had known once upon a time. She paints a beautiful face—sharp and cruel, and she shivers because it scares her.

She signs a name in the corner of all her new paintings, and it's not 'Cress'. She hums songs she's never heard, and she recalls warmth in the touches of one undead Captain.

She wakes up with a scream stuck on her throat. She cries for reasons she isn't aware. When she asks her friend, her ethereal, eccentric friend if she's going mad, Winter smiles at a china vase and shakes her head.

"You're remembering," she tells the flowers.

-o-

Cress dreams.

She dreams she's a phoenix.

-o-

Late one afternoon, Thorne gets a comm from her.

Damsel: I remember dying.

~:~