scratch
ii. looks like i gotta be hot and cold
I begin (again) in Dijon, and it is not an auspicious start. First, it's summer, and the sun is still setting when the train comes to a halt for the final time. I've done all of the crosswords in the entire book, and then, out of boredom, started making up words in the back pages of the book. All of them look familiar, and all of them look alien.
I do not like the way I feel right now.
I wait for the train to clear, and then shuffle out at the back of the line. It's hard to fade into the crowd, but I try -- I keep my head down, curtain of hair hiding my face, hood up, hands wrapped in the blanket. I have the sneaking suspicion I look like I might have just killed someone. No one makes eye contact with me.
I keep thinking there might be some kind of... I don't know a click of some kind, when I land in the right place. Like I'll somehow know he's here if he's here. And, well, there might be, but I won't know if there isn't. It's exhausting, at the very least, to turn every corner with a gasp on the tip of my tongue, ready to see surprise! Edward, standing there. But he's not. On any streetcorner, dark or otherwise.
I'm on the side of town that Satan would keep his head down in, and it's getting close to midnight. I half-expect to see Batman up on a building, or swooping around somewhere. It's got that feel to it, like this is a place that could really use a selfless hero. I am not a selfless hero. I have no intention of being involved in anything except getting my husband back.
I hurry. I've been doing so good for the past fifty years. I've had my head down low -- I had everything I wanted. I had a family, and good friends, and not many responsibilities, and I let other people deal with issues outside my world. I thought that would be enough.
I'm getting angry. I barely care enough to check it.
I find myself at a bar, a seedy kind of place, all metal and angles and glass. It has the look of a place that was beautiful and modern once, but gave up on itself halfway to the future. I turn heads when I walk in. A small part of me shrinks and wants to leave as soon as I've stepped inside, but I make my way to the bartender confidently and lean on the bar.
"What'll you be having?" He asks mildly, in a thick accent, taking care not to look down my shirt. The man next to me is not so considerate. I bite back a response.
"I'm looking for someone, actually," I reply slowly, with a tense smile, and describe Edward. The bartender shakes his head and insists that he hasn't seen anyone remotely matching that description. I thank him and half-consider ordering a martini, just so I could feel a little more normal, before remembering why I hate being normal in the first place.
Not every shot in the dark lands on target, I suppose. This is a fairly big city; there must be plenty of bars lurking around, waiting to snatch up unsuspecting passersby. I don't think this tactic is going to work very well, though -- my temper is getting shorter and shorter, and things will not go well for the next man who tries to get an eyefull. I'm halfway through a really satisfying seethe when I hear the noise -- something like a cross between a whimper and a cry.
"Hello?" I ask quietly, shuffling in the direction the noise came from, a far-off corner of the street. I don't trust this place, and I'm unarmed to boot (though I could probably take anything that comes my way, a knife would hardly go amiss), so I move slowly, carefully. The noise comes again, softer this time, and weaker. "Hello? Is someone there?"
All of a sudden, I'm bombarded by a small girl, jabbering in completely incomprehensible French. I'm surprised and dismayed -- I never bothered to really learn French. I can ask her how to find the bathroom like a pro, but I somehow doubt that's what she wants to hear.
Hmm.
I pull her a little closer to some light -- this street must have been paved back when gaslamps were standard or something, I swear, even I'm having trouble seeing -- and I realize that the girl is covered in a mass of nasty gashes, bruises, and discolorings. She's sobbing hysterically. I don't have to be a doctor to see that she's in terrible shape, but I refuse to give into my vampire side and shuffle off her mortal coil myself.
"What happened to you?" I lean down to her level, and when I look in her eyes, I see something far more horrifying than any kind of demon or angel of death.
I see recognition.
--
"I don't know, I found her on the street. I barely speak any French, so I couldn't understand her at all." The doctors at the hospital are far from top-notch, but I'm still trying to stay under the radar and I doubt even the best doctors could do more than ease her suffering. I'm fighting very hard to rid myself of the look on her face, and of the knowledge that once, Ren was that small. Once, my daughter was this girl's age.
I blink, and vaguely wish for tears. Useless, generally speaking, but cathartic all the same.
"She's hysterical," the doctor replies, "she keeps trying to warn us about an imp that lives under Rue de Chatillon. She was alone when you found her?"
"Yes," I say, feeling -- oddly -- cold. "The street was dark, though. I didn't see if there was anyone else, and when she started panicking, I didn't really look. I just brought her here as fast as I could."
The doctor nods. "Her chances aren't so good. If we can get a name out of her, we'll start looking for next of kin. Until then..."
I fight back the urge to shudder. I haven't felt this empty since I was turned and I haven't missed it. I wish Edward were here, or at least Carlisle, someone who might know something. I just feel useless and alone.
"I'll... I'll stay here, at least for a while," I tell the doctor, for reasons I don't understand. I meant to say that I was going to go back to my own hotel, but that just... wasn't what came out. He looks up at me.
"You don't have to. You're no relation to the victim."
Victim. Of course. She didn't do this to herself, after all. I'm surprised at how heavy the word is, and how much it hurts -- hearing this little girl referred to as a victim somehow makes it all that more real (and the thought creeps in before I can contain it: in another life, I could have done this to her) and it's -- it's strangely painful. I swallow, hard. "I know, but... Someone has to be here, right? Better a stranger than no one."
The doctor nods again and leaves. I close my eyes and take a seat in the sterile waiting room. Like a mantra, I keep repeating the same sentence to myself -- I could have done this. Physically, I could have -- someone just like me, a vampire -- one of us. I try to control my thoughts, with little success. The air in here smells so sharp, so harsh, obscenely clean. Clinical.
I take a deep breath anyway.
This could easily be the work of a vampire gone rogue. And -- I can't stop the idea -- Edward appears to have gone rogue. I know he wouldn't do something like this, though. He's -- He's a vegetarian, for God's sake. He'd never attack a defenseless child. But it could be someone like him, like us.
Or it could be a werewolf. Or just a really cruel person. Or a rabid dog. Or -- I'll probably never know. I just can't shake the feeling that I'm somehow connected to this attack, and not just because I found the -- the victim. This is ridiculous. I never thought I would hate a stupid word.
The ER waiting room is crowded for this time of night. There's a drunk eyeing me (and his sober friend holding him up), a haggard-looking woman who's staring at the television like it's going to save her, a young woman holding a half-asleep little boy, a man holding a rag over his arm. The usual suspects, I guess. I watch the window blankly. All I see are points of light, stars and streetlamps and windows, car headlights and flashlights and reflections. It all seems so distant and so close to me -- like if I could reach out just a little further I'd be able to grab one of those dots and collect it, put it in a bag, and banish the darkness forever.
But I was never really that interested in banishing darkness.
I can't stop thinking. I don't even know why I'm here, just... some misplaced sense of responsibility, or grace. I don't know. I've made it a point to never self-analyze, but when I'm alone, thousands of miles from home or family, in a too-sterile hospital on the wrong side of a city I don't know, with the blood of a helpless child smeared all over my hands and clothes -- I guess I just didn't know how I would react.
That look on her face -- she knew. When she looked into my eyes, she recognized what I am, and she was scared. That's why I can't shake the feeling that this has something to do with me or my kind. She was afraid of me. Strange, how that thought makes my stomach turn.
Worse, the thought that she had every reason to fear me.
I can't keep doing this to myself. I want to get out of Dijon. I want to get away from whatever it is that attacked that little girl, I want to find Edward, and I want to go home. And I want to be done with this. I can't save that girl, and whatever happened to her has nothing to do with me. I'm agitated and unsettled.
I watch the clock on the wall tick away the hours, agonizingly slow. A few new faces come and go, a gunshot victim, a pregnant woman who won't stop throwing up, another drunk guy who passes out on the chairs across from me. The points of light in the window wink out, one by one, until it's just the streetlamps and the occasional car headlight, flickering out of the gloom. It's going to be an overcast, foggy day, I can already tell.
It's fourteen minutes past three when the doctor returns and tells me that the little girl died on the operating table, and do I want to see her?
"No," I tell him quietly, and gather my things. "Thank you for trying."
"There aren't many people who will sit in the hospital all night for someone they don't know," he says. "You're a rare kind of woman."
I smile wanly at this, and reply, simply, "Not really. I just don't think anyone should have to die alone."
The streets are nearly empty. I take a seat at a deserted bus stop and watch the night around me, wishing for a little bit of morning, for something more than a far-off bit of light. The darkness feels suffocating, and haunting, and I can't explain why.
I'm still covered in blood.
