Again, thank you so much to all the people following this fic! Enjoy reading this one! (More notes at the end..)
Disclaimer: I don't own Underworld nor any of its beautiful characters.
Chapter 8 - Rapture
Selene could only stare at her daughter, unsure if she had heard much less understood her right.
He's here. Michael is here. He has found his way to her somehow, his way to them.
Oh, Michael.
"Say something, mom." Eve nudges her, grasping her arm.
Selene blinks, and tries to get a grip of herself, and when she does, panic sets in. "Where is he, Eve? Is he alright? Why did your head hurt? Tell me what you saw."
Something wasn't right. She doesn't know it yet but she has always trusted her gut. Her gut that had told her that Lucian still lived, that the lycans were far from being extinct. The one that compelled her to bite Michael, turn him into a hybrid of both species, if only to save him. And that same impulse was telling her now that they should be far from celebrating.
"Mom, calm down." Eve says, sensing her distress. "He's with David. They're on their way here. They might be here already." Her daughter moves away from her and toward the metal doors of the training room. Selene follows her.
Varga enters just as Eve was about to leave. Selene hadn't even noticed him gone earlier.
Her daughter walks past him, almost running, not even glancing over her shoulder. Selene was left alone with the man whose presence she's come to seek unknowingly almost all of the time.
"Selene." His voice sounded grave. No formalities now. When it was just the two of them, there was no need for any of that. She holds his gaze intensely, almost desperately, asking him with her eyes the question that's burning inside her.
"David wants to talk to you."
She takes a deep breath, and yet when she speaks, her voice trembled. "Where is he?"
Both of them knew she wasn't asking about David.
Without waiting for an answer, Selene saunters to the nearest wall, pressing her hands against its cool surface to balance herself. Then she falls heavily down the floor, finally breaking down. And Varga does what he has always been good at. He does what no other person in her life can do, not the way she wants it. He has mastered the art of Selene, of saying exactly what she wants to hear, precisely at the right moment. But more importantly, most importantly, he knows when to keep his silence. Like he does now.
Any other man, perhaps David, would have fallen on his knees beside her, as if in doing so he could share her pain. But Varga was different. He understands Selene like no one else could.
He lets her be.
And so she falls apart, sat on the floor with her head down, arms hugging her knees. She sobbed like she has never sobbed before. Her cries filled the dark room. And he stays with her. He stays not saying a word, not even looking at her, until she could cry no more, until she's rocked her body enough to come back to rationality, to sensibility, back to be the cold-hearted Death Dealer she always has been. Except she wasn't even that anymore – these days they called her the Ice Queen. Varga stays until she could do nothing but stare straight ahead, arms crossed restless on her knees and mouth slightly open – exhausted. Only then does he bend down in front of her, seeking her red swollen eyes.
"You've waited long enough, my queen." He says it so gently, so unlike the person everybody thought he was. Selene wonders vaguely, not for the first time, if he lets anybody else see him like this. Because she herself only ever lets her guard down when she's with him.
He holds out his hand. "Come. Please, let me take you to him."
When they set foot on the castle grounds David separates Michael from the others. He leaves them to the care of the clueless Death Dealers guarding the castle's iron gates, acting every bit the helpless warrior as he told them his version of what had happened.
"We were ambushed. This one," he tugs on Michael's chains, "singlehandedly killed Samuel, Edward and Jason. I should take him to Selene myself."
Some part of Michael, where his honor resided, and indeed the better part of himself, wanted to do something, anything, to lessen the shittiness of the situation they were in. It was killing him to just to stand there. Think, Michael. Think.
What would he tell them anyway? 'Your leader betrayed and killed your own kind' doesn't sound right coming from a sworn enemy, not to mention he'll be making a fool of himself in trying. And so Michael kept his silence and allowed David to drag him towards the back of the castle.
He takes him to the dungeons. Or that's what Michael thinks. It was dark and the path they took was too narrow that he was finding it difficult to breathe again. He looks around and the chains binding his hands clink loudly when he does, disturbing the quiet of the place. He wipes the blood away from his nose, throwing imaginary daggers at the vampire's back before recollecting his thoughts.
He was correct in thinking that this man was dangerous but has failed to anticipate just how much. He thinks of Selene, of her safety and that of her child's, with a traitor in their midst. The sudden urge to protect them consumes him, the blood in his veins pulses, the lycan within wanting nothing more than to rip David's throat apart.
No, that wouldn't do. It would achieve nothing. Selene hasn't even seen him yet, if he would even be given the chance to see her at all at this point. He'll be introduced as the enemy no less.
It turns out Michael wasn't being taken to the dungeons but through a tunnel that led to what could only be a ballroom. Its massive expanse had elaborate chandeliers that hung from the ceiling but were far closer to the floor, brightening the otherwise gloomy interior. Tall glass windows surround every inch of the place, along with weirdly cultivated plants. The floor was so shiny and pristine that it was a feat that Michael hasn't lost his footing yet – being dragged around. There was also some kind of stage-like platform in the middle. This is where David sets him down, like an animal, facing the hundred or more vampires around the room. They were dressed in their evening clothes, glasses of red (blood, no doubt) wine held on their hands. They looked at him with disgust – he was wearing his Sundal uniform – and he couldn't care less.
David leaves him there – a lone lycan among his vampire foes.
For the second time that day, Selene couldn't believe what she was hearing.
He's one of them, Selene. He's trained to kill our kind. Michael is a danger to us all, especially to you and Eve.
"No," she responds as quickly as David repeats his words. "No."
David eyes her warily. "I knew you'd say that," he says, then holds out his wrist to her. "See for yourself."
It takes her a few seconds to comprehend what he was suggesting.
"Do not misunderstand me, David. I trust you. You know that." Ignoring his disbelief, she continues. "But I love that man. And he is the father of Eve. Right now I don't care whatever he's done, you will unchain him. You will take me to him and you will harm him no further."
He doesn't say anything for a few seconds but eventually gives her a small, curt nod. Then turns his back on her and Varga, stepping out from his own private chambers.
They follow him.
Selene's heart was racing. After so many years, the only man she has ever loved is alive, and is here – somewhere in this castle, where she has built her incomplete home for the past years, where their child grew up without a father, and one where she's currently reigning over.
Oh god, she thinks with a jolt, I'm a queen.
What will Michael think of that?
Not for the first time, she contemplates all the things she's unknowingly forced Michael to deal with in the past – whether he had liked it or not. We've got it all wrong, Selene realizes. They've fallen in love before really knowing each other, dictated by circumstances that left them confused, frightened, and desperately seeking for something to hold on to.
Then they were lovers before being friends.
Does Michael even consider me as a friend? This thought brings a smile to Selene's face. Of course he does, she thinks, remembering only too well how much she resisted every advance he's made just to get closer to her, to make her open up to him. He has finally worn her down – and knocked her up real good – and he doesn't even know it.
I have never even told him how much I love him.
Standing there and being literally the center of everyone's attention, Michael felt naked. But he doesn't mind that much as long as he wasn't harmed. They'll be more sorry if they did harm him. The Sundals has long beaten up and killed the doctor, the meek part of himself that had no place in the life they had planned out for him. They transformed him into their best chance of finally defeating the vampires. Human military plus lycan army equals the end of the vampire nation. It was ambitious of them, really, Michael realizes, especially now that the latter's force was the best it has been in years, centuries even. Three new Elders, led by the one who's killed their last two, had emerged after their last great battle against the lycans.
Yes, Michael thinks, he could take their stares for now, their gazes that judged him by the man he was in his dark olive uniform. Look at me all you want, he says mentally with gritted teeth. I'm not here for any of you.
There was a loud barging sound from above, past the large staircase in the middle of the hall, heavy doors being opened. But when the three figures came, there was nothing to be heard.
Except maybe angels singing in his head – because there she was.
Michael has never believed it possible, that someone could be so arrested, be so enthralled, by the mere sight of another, stranger or a long lost love, that time doesn't stop but only slows down, if only to let two souls meet and take in each other a lifetime longer. At this very moment, he could not be more wrong.
He forgets himself as he stares unabashedly at the woman who has up until now, kept him awake in his dreams. Selene was inexplicably more otherworldly in real life, descending ever so slowly down the steps of the marbled staircase, never taking her eyes off him. The heat of her gaze sends shivers down his spine. Damn it all to hell, he thinks, almost chastising himself, she's so fucking beautiful.
What were you thinking coming here, Michael?
A strong tug on the chains that restrained him pulls him back to his current state. It was David.
He yanks back, feeling rebellious. He was ready to give the vampire a taste of his own UV-filled medicine. But then:
"Stay still. I'm cutting it off." David says simply, eyes darting to him and Selene. Michael looks at her again then, anger dissipating almost instantly.
"Michael," she says, almost breathlessly.
Later he will regret his response: a short nod and the casual, safe, "Selene." Later, he will hate himself for not telling her the truth about David and of the real reason why he had come. It doesn't matter, and wouldn't matter for the days that lie ahead, because later still, much much later, as they lay in bed, sheets tangled around their equally entwined bodies, he will confess that he had meant to ask, "What are you doing for the rest of your life?" instead of just saying her name.
Phew. FINALLY, eh? This was easily my most hated and favorite chapter to write. For days I couldn't get any words out that half resembled coherence. I hope I delivered...
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