Pieces of Me
Chapter Eight:
The Lies That Break Us
Fill me with your lies, you're pungent dishonesties that you prefer to the reality that surrounds you, and I will thank you, for that is all that I have come to know.
A/N: I am sorry for once again I have deceived you. I intended for this chapter to have been posted two weeks ago but after editing it I decided to alter a few things and incorporate a flashback. And excuse after excuse later, I fell behind my deadline as per usual. As always, I apologize for the wait. On the bright side, I think it does a better job connecting Danny and Godric. Anyways, thanks to all of you who added this story and incorporated it into your "favorites" list. And special thanks to ellaella for reviewing! Thank you all very much for the encouragement and I hope that you keep enjoying this story.
Disclaimer: I am not Charline Harris nor am I Allan Ball. Therefore, I sadly do not own True Blood so I beg of you not to sue me because I am just a humble (and very broke) college kid.
It always starts with a touch, docile and as chaste as its intensions. Then it escalates, building upon concepts neither of us understand until it takes its first breath on its own, becoming something we no longer control. Then we are left with placid caresses, fingertips dragged across the skin as a reminder of what has been, what used to be us. For we do not create emotions, they create us.
I dared not breathe until we were all housed by the sanctuary of Goric's home, holding in a breath from war as if it contained the fortune I sought. Around me were the people, both human and vampire, who conversed with one another in a merriment aberrant of their kind as it broadened throughout the room, brightening all that it touched as if it were the light of day. Premonitions of warfare faded from their minds and soon it was just an acrimonious memory they would later recall at another congregation such as this, laughing at the absurdity of it all.
In the middle of it all stood Eric with an impudent confidence that stretched far greater than a single man could hold. It dripped from him in the fabrication of ascendancy he demanded to possess; whispering words of grandeur within his ears before it fell, forcing his presence into every corner as if he owned the room that housed him. Oh, how I longed for a solid hand to slap him with.
"It's rather unbecoming of a young lady to glower," a voice graced by a substantial southern intonation that spilled forth upon his words in a Antebellum twang sauntered up to my side, refusing to acknowledge certain syllables as it strained his dialect. It wielded a jesting tone that curved at the corners in a way I knew only to be Bill's.
The mirth of the night's soiree coerced a slender smirk to press his lips into their mold of delight. Despite its rather diminutive stature, it was authentic which was far greater than could be said for the fictitious ones that he has been accommodating him for quite some time. Perhaps it was the delusions of inadequacy; the desire of wanting more than what was in his grasp that caused his smile to falter so. He always had such an insatiable appetite. Or perhaps it was the vile memento of his true character that prohibited the warmth of his smile from claiming his eyes. Regardless of my reservations, I truly did not know what plagued his mind and it aggrieved me to see him suffer so from an elusive cause. Marked indignant, I could only assume and pray that one day soon he would seek my audience on the matter. Until that day came, I would bear the grace of his smile for him.
He stood straighter, back marked rigid by the proper etiquette that was instilled within him at such a juvenile age, compensating for missing his other half. In truth, it was abnormal not to see Sookie dangling from his arm. With her company always near to him, one might postulate that he wore her as a novel accessory, seeking a materialistic comfort in her blinding and overbearing presence. I prayed that he would tire of her quickly for she was far too credulous and naïve to be one with as quick-witted and erudite as he. Then again, it may very well be the rationale for her appeal, for he always enjoyed the stroking of his ego. It was a character flaw for one such as he who actively compared his level of intelligence to those who shared the room with him, desiring to be above the others for it translated into his survival. However, he chose not to flaunt it in ways Eric preferred, blazon and demanding, rather he kept it secret as if silently confirming his place in the world. He would reveal it in time and watch as the others would fall submissively before his feet.
"I was glowering? I failed to notice." Derision stretched my tone to new depths, yet I failed to mind the tactless grace it invited. I was scorned and by damn it, it was time for it to make its presence known. I have been growing weary of maintaining such a placid façade for quite some time that I fear it has stretched itself thin enough to be translucent, permitting all to see the vexation that crept behind such a fictitious docile frame. If it was one thing that I despised more than Eric, it was being in his debt.
"I share your sentiment," he spoke with words encased in a repugnant loathing towards the Viking that matched my own verdict. "You will be liberated of him in time."
I was content to know that another agreed with me on such an issue. I found solace in knowing I was not alone in my beliefs. As a result, I offered him a smile with a magnitude he was unable to reciprocate before returning to my glower bestowed once again upon the supercilious Viking. I would have continued it as long as the night would permit me if it were not for the tenacious recollection as to why my presence was requisite, to assess Godric's mental stability. I eased my rancorous mind with notions of possessing time later that could be spent inflicting desolation and melancholy upon Eric's wretched existence.
Content with its argument, my gaze traveled to Godric as he sat blasé and as inert as time. Disenchanted with the merriment set before him, for he only felt suffocated by such ostentatious and jovial gatherings that were rendered trifling by his burdened mind, his eyes fixed upon a distance with a perspective cast upon a bereft past that remained an enigma to prying eyes. The memories flickered beneath his irises as wisps of spun gold that faintly lined his pupils with a forlorn life he was incapable of disregarding. I could feel the deliberation it brought as it pressed itself upon every corner of his mind. It was the question that we all asked of ourselves at some point; Am I good enough?
It was unremittingly followed by others that only beckoned more of its nature, flooding his mind, encircling, spinning round and round as the process completes itself only to commence once more. I did not require Sookie to read his mind. I already knew what plagued it for they were the callous queries I had asked of myself once upon a time.
"Do you think he will ever overcome it?" My inquiry fell softly upon the room, rendered airy by the earnest wonder it carried.
"You once did." Bill's subtle prompt of a girl best forgotten rang throughout my ears despite the amity of his tone. Recollections of a past I wished not to be mine surfaced from the resonance of his words, filling every corner of my mind with its reminiscences.
With a dejected sigh hanging wretchedly upon my translucent lips, refusing to part for it was far from finished as I sat upon a nearby couch. Sinking into it until my insipid flesh became ones with its crimson fabric, I passed through its frame completely with only the floor cradling me after my downwards departure ceased. The sigh still reprehensibly clung to my lips upon recalling that I no longer consisted of solid matter.
I was a ghost, a translucent entity embedded somewhere between life and death, or at least that is how Bill explicated it to me. Nevertheless, his erudition of the mystical paranormal was no longer here to illuminate the obscurities of my queries. It left with him, just as others before him, upon the tenuous evasion of commission. His attendance was requisite in New York for reasons he respectfully refused to enlighten me with. Thus, I was left behind, rendered alone in this ostentatious hotel room, a method of décor New York only knew. Despite feeling the poignant tumult of human lives around me, their insufferable emotions inexorably altering to better suit the ambiances of intentions that carried them here, the vast solitude of an existence not conceived was all that I could hear. Its cries for tribute were louder than the others as it rendered them to nothing more than white noise that retreated to the slender crevices of the back of my consciousness where they collected, scheming their malicious reprisal.
Bewilderment prickled my mind, reproaching and jeering as if to say I would never comprehend, as I attempted once more to wrap my mind upon such a concept of introspection. All that it produced were the contemptuous realizations of being blank, empty, and hollow as it cruelly casted me back in to a solitude that enclosed me with scornful remarks and censorious visages. I had no past to define myself by, only a name I was not sure was even mine to take.
Its absence left a fissure within me for the ambiguity and diffidence to fill, consuming more than what was offered as its grasp burned me with a reality I was unable to comprehend, a crippling pain that stung with a white hot intensity that always left the tedious twinge of scars, imprinting what belonged to it. As it immersed me, consuming me until no part of myself remained, it liberated tenacious queries I could not answer as they crawled down my insipid flesh, clucking its tongue in discontent before sinking its teeth within me, burrowing deeper to where it would always be a part of me.
Am I good enough?
The callous thought echoed in my ear, tugging at my hair and clothes indignantly, until one by one each reverberation unraveled in their own laughter, cackling in the broken shards of self-redemption that mirrored a disconsolate fate for they knew I had no answers to silence them with. I was inadequately inept, just a memory left to fade away with the wind to unburden those who once knew me, those who once cared.
I looked upon the hotel door, terrified of what its burnished cherry wood held behind its frame, for it was a world I could never conceive. And how could I when I could not even comprehend myself? I was no more of use than the chair that refused to sit my weary frame.
I cradled my somnolent head, marked heavy by all the callous reflections and thoughts it must hold, within my enervated hands. I breathed out a superfluous breath that rattled around my lungs in dismay before being exhaled in the form of an apprehensive sigh. I watched as it fell upon the room in a beige vapor, plummeting to the wooden floor where it collected with its brethren in puddles of ambivalent conjecture for what was to come. They would be all that would remain of me in time.
It was coming for me. Hair frightfully standing on end from its blistering breath upon the back of my neck as I once turned the never-ending corners of New York, narrowly evading something I could not define but faded just as time. The tarnished remembrance of it pressed itself upon my mind, filling every recess and indentation with frayed cornered images of jagged fangs emerging from the dusk of the world followed by red rimmed eyes of a figure cloaked by the desolate shadows of our fatal world.
It would find me, the death I had escaped. I knew it was hunting me, steps falling like the unremitting ticking of a clock, howling in the middle of the night with allurements void of cordial bliss. It was only a matter of time before I would run out. It would find me one day and it would take me screaming, bucking, nails desperately dragging upon the fresh earth, back to another dwelling that I could not comprehend but claimed to be my home, a forlorn place for me to belong. I knew of its disheartening mendacity, shuddering at its fabrications for I knew even it feared a place such as the afterlife. A dismal terror lurking in the back of the mind, forever haunting you over the things you could not elucidate with rationality for logic even feared such a thing as it.
I could not sense the tips of my fingers upon my scalp as they ran through translucent locks of hair whose hue remained inscrutable to my eyes. I curled my fingers upon my head, dismayed that I could not feel the clumped tresses they seized as my eyes closed firmly in their own exasperation. Time passed by leisurely, agonizing as it languorously caressed my deliberating frame, embracing me with notions of an end I remained disconcerted of as it raked its nails indolently across my flesh, indulging in its perturbing pace. As time elapsed, depraved seconds turning into inexorable minutes, I felt a life I never knew pass by, glimpses of a world unforeseen, as I sat here frightened by my own translucent flesh.
"It's not fair." My tongue crafted such juvenile words only for them to be uttered once more, made absolute by the chagrined exasperation detained in my shaking head. "It's just not fair." How was I to answer such questions of fate when I could not even recall who I once was? Was I truly not deserving of such a redemption? Was my felicity too much to request?
This was not the life that I had wanted, rendered confined to an abysmal hotel room by my own tenacious queries and trepidation. A life spent fleeing from something indeterminate was a life spent wasted, for the indefinites of this world surrounds us every day. It lurks in the shadows of every minute decision that was never made, filling our minds with notions of alternate realities and forsaken ways of life, compelling us to wonder if our decisions where the right ones to have made.
Caught within the blazing auburn flames of a realization that embellished the fragrance of faint vanilla, I believed myself to be stronger than I once was for enervated minds always graced us with such delusions of grandeur. I no longer cared if death came for me. Let it come. I will chase it away just as I had done before. I would live a life with lines I had ascertained myself, no longer willing to bend for the sake of an unruly destiny I had no part of crafting. I would walk this earth and it would crumble at my feet, marking the day that I chose to live instead of submissively waiting for the grace of a foreboding fatality.
Holding in a superfluous breath, I passed through the door, feeling for the first time the atoms that defined myself breaking away. Strangely, it tickled, a sensation of jubilation I had no recollection of experiencing. It was a new experience and I welcomed every moment of it.
In time I walked upon the streets of New York with an exuberant smile spread across my naive lips, seizing them for they were now their own. Vibrant colors of a world unforeseen surrounded me with their entangling aromas of life and I embraced them all, welcoming for this was who I will be until I found a way to truly be alive once again. I would taste its saccharine decadence upon my tongue once again no matter the expenditure of my equanimity waiting to attain it.
I would live.
For once I was fortunate that no one could see me, for surly they would have thought me deranged for being in such a state of inexplicable exuberance, wandering the pompous and vulgar boulevards of downtown Manhattan. Regardless, my smile never faltered for I knew I was halfway out of the darkness.
While lost in an impetuous forest of the past, my exchange with Bill had been terminated once he found Sookie to be finished with her change in wardrobe. He left me to be with my foremost reminiscences of a past I hoped not to forget as promptly as the one before it. He parted me with a smile that curved in a reassuring manner before departing to be by the side of his beloved. Her previous encounter with Gabe only reinforced his defensive nature, compelling him to be by her side every waking moment.
Jaded, for no other word could carry the emphases of my lackluster, I sought diversion in the observation of others. In a matter of minutes I was immersed in the party's ambiance. I felt myself being carried away within the lush wine mist of a zealous avidity. Blinding and uncanny, it sauntered into the room as men marked by the leather they wore and the size of their fangs made note of who they would share their bed with for the night. It was a form of ravenous voracity that was eternally insatiable as it sunk low to the ground, stalking within the shadows. It tainted the room with its shades of an errant and dissolute night that haunted the ivory of these walls for days to come. Its fingers stretching from the sanctuary of the shadows to grasp their host, crawling ardently up their frames to sink within their vixen's flesh. An ash gray, the hue of winter remained upon the skin where it once was, spreading across the surface of their flesh, consuming them without their acknowledgment.
Its fingers expanded again in the distance, hastening towards me as an emerging shadow while I remained stagnant, frozen by my inquisitiveness. It clasped around my ankle, holding firm as the chill in the night's air. It slithered up my leg and across my arm in a lecherous manner as it clashed against the light in the room that tired to thwart its journey. It moved as smoke across my insipid flesh, curling around my frame as I became entangled within it. I remained as still as time as it perched upon my shoulder, fingers tapping with every whispered word of sinful sensations that would have caused my cheeks to flush if there were blood in them to boil from such perturbing intimate notions.
"Give yourself to him. Let your legs wrap around his waist as your bare skin molds with his," it whispered seductively in my ears as its words resonating across its entire form, each wisp of itself concurring as it filled the night with its dissolute propositions. Although it felt cool upon touch of a vice, its indulgent words were warm as they rose, entangled in its low and intimate tone. Irresolute as to why, my gaze fell upon Godric as its propositions reverberated within my ears.
I had witnessed such incidents happen to others, unbeknownst that they were being inveigled, but never has someone else's sensation tried to coerce me with lexis. Until this cumbersome moment, I have only sensed fragments of their persuasions as essences that have passed through me: the sights, sounds, and aromas of others' emotions. Now that one was willing to spare their time for a ghost, I dared not counter to its proposal for fear its hold on me would strengthen.
I loathed the way it made me fell, as if I ached from a rapacious hunger I could not comprehend. A restrained craving of intimacy plagued my mind with its restless desires as it caressed my skin, a vexing jeer through the lingering ache. I desired to feel the sensation of another's flesh upon my fingertips. I wanted to touch and be touched.
Realizing such primitive and dormant thoughts now run rapid across my consciousness, it brought a trepidation that shook them from me and returned my prudent nature. "Go away," I whispered in a timorous stained voice that appeared smaller than my own. "Just go away."
Realizing that I would not be swayed as the others, it left, passing through my translucent frame to a new host to appease its tyranny. A solace sigh escaped my lungs and I felt the tension within me relax, coiled muscles collectively releasing their anticipation in a superfluous exhaled breath.
A few eyes passed dubiously across my form, inquiring as to what sparked such words. Not wishing to waste a moment on the girl who was plausibly losing her grip on reality, they returned to their banter, leaving me to my trepidation of what was to come.
It was a fear unlike the others for it weighed upon my shoulders with the turmoil of the world, suffocating as a future that was left to bend to the whims of the universe and was thus deemed indefinite and capricious. My state of existence had remained as constant as death would permit for these past years. It was now that it saw fit to revolutionize and shatter the world I was beginning to comprehend, as if nonchalantly altering the pieces to a puzzle that it thought nothing of. Panic-stricken and with hasty steps that fell inaudibly despite my maladroit and inept nature, I sought solace in Bill's presence and what I craved to be discerning guidance that would cast light upon the murky indefinites within me.
That was when I saw her, a presence more radiant then memory could capture. Her golden tendrils fell before her lucid verdant eyes, in a manner of arid play that was humbling to witness by the lesser presences such as myself. If possible her eyes appeared greener now that they were no longer tainted by her preceding crimson tears. It was always within her presence, as well as others that were strikingly similar to her, that my place in the world was fashioned, a place that would remain beneath hers for she were the water that quenched men's thirst and I was the salt that brought it. We would spend a lifetime comparing ourselves to the placid yet alluring nature her beauty possessed, wondering why it graced those such as her but disregarded others such as ourselves, incapable of being beleaguered by such genetics that were lost causes in its light of mind.
A giggle as light as air rose from her lips and fluently passed through the fingers that tried to cover it. As her laughter fell weightlessly upon the room in wisps of spun gold that curled in their own enchantment with a faint floral scent of fresh cut roses, it crinkled the corners of her eyes as it lightened the hue of her irises. She stood with the apposite grace of mannered intellect, lilac waves of fabric cascading from her shoulders, rippling across her well endowed curves as she devoured the conversation put before her with the zeal of adolescence.
I passed a scrutinizing glance over my own mediocre ensemble of faded jeans and a murky jade jumper that neither hugged nor caressed what modest curves I possessed but fell loose upon my frame in an unsightly manner. Disconcerted by my attire, my gaze fell diffidently upon my feet, which were no more presentable in their bare flesh and lime green nail polish that chipped and cracked around the edges. Dismayed by the rising levels of commiseration that filled the crevices of my low self-esteem, I disregarded such self-inflected insults to my demeanor in order to remain at the topic at hand.
Before me stood the very motive behind my accord to such a discarded rescue. She was the young woman I met several nights past at the hotel, weeping over the bereavement of her beloved Godric. Now that his security was established and reputable, a smile returned to her lips, as light and warm as her memory served. Despite the exuberance of bliss that fell from her in twisting and curling embroiders of teal that appeared almost translucent in the artificial light, I found it peculiar that she was not by Godric's side. What disgruntled me most was when the realization of such trickery sunk in by the manner of her gaze passing over him, blasé and apathetic. It was as if she were looking at a stranger and not the lover she claimed him to be.
Once the startling distress of such abrupt deceit passed, the name of the culprit pressed itself thin upon my lips as it fell disdainfully from my tongue, "Eric." Even the brief mention of him riled an anger within me so profound that it shook me to my very core, seeping in to seething breaths and glowers.
"He tricked me," I murmured to the night, disregarding the glances of those who assumed me to be deranged. Those words ignited the spark of derision that lay dormant within me as it waited to be riled by his antics, only able to be provoked in such a way by the reminiscences of his manipulative nature. As it awoke, it burned the contents of my mind that it touched, tainting my thoughts, consuming all within its grasp until it devoured me, ensconced within me as if returning home. Content by the malice it harbored, I spoke the words again, relishing their caress as they rolled forth from my tongue. "That bastard tricked me again."
The heat of his conceit burned me, singing my insipid flesh with their unruly audacity before his words forced their way into the light of the night. "Telling a vampire to lock her door; how bold." A tone so taunting I knew it to be possessed by Eric, for only he could wield such words entangled in a condescension that mocked me, was heard from behind me, coercing me to meet its creator. Not one to repudiate such a dispute, I turned in its direction with acrimonious vexation transfixing my gaze into a glower that blazed with all the intensity of hell. The grace of a smug smile was adorned on his pompous lips as he relished the thought of triumph over wining our daily disputes.
How dare he be so blazon!
Now due to Eric's blatant trust issues, I could conclude that I indeed did not like to be tricked. "I hope it was worth the money you spent on her." I bit the words from my tongue, each one tasting more pungent than the last as my enmity seeped into my tone, growing until it was silenced by his interruption.
"When will you see that you let your emotions cloud your judgment?" The daunting remnants of his taunting nature prevailed through his arrogance as his words fell flat upon the floor in a scolding manner that was disappointed by the failure of others.
"It causes you to put your faith in those you shouldn't." He continued as his gaze lingered upon Bill's frame, resentment lapsing upon the rims of his irises, chilling them to the hue of a winter's frost that only reflected more of its nature in its prisms of ice.
His demeanor distorted instantaneously, dismissing our frivolous quarrel with a roll of his oppressing eyes. His jaw now tightened for reasons other than animosity as the menace of the indefinite darkened his eyes and pressed his lips into a thin line that nearly vanished from his visage. Contemplation filed the creviced lines of his facade, molding to his form as water, deepening their marks upon his ivory skin as lines of trepidation. Aberrant as they stretched upon his contemptuous visage, they admonished in frayed lines of paranoid ginger that deceit was upon him.
My gaze traveled to Bill as well, wondering if Eric's concerns would become lucid by following his gaze. What filled my line of vision was only a man too consumed by love to acknowledge his surroundings, blinded by the pearlescent pink of adoration that captivated him completely. How could Eric possibly perceive Bill as anything more than a dupe in love, too entangled in his own admiration to inflict malice upon others?
"What are you insinuating?" I inquired, curious to comprehend the logic behind such callous accusations, especially when they come from one as morally corrupt as Eric. I felt my left brow rise with the dubiousness of the words immersed in a blackened tone, hollow of credence considering he never earned their presence for it remained wary of his previous deceptions.
"Nothing that I can prove, yet." They were not the words of deceit that so eagerly fell from his lips and seized his tongue in the only dialogue he knew. They were the words of warning.
A/N: I hope you all enjoyed that chapter and thanks for reading! Please leave a review to let me know what you have enjoyed most about this story. I would love to know what keeps you coming back so I can incorporate it more into the other chapters. I am still looking for a beta (if there are any still out there) and if anyone is interested, then please send me a PM. With that all said, have a fanfiction filled day!
