Disclaimer: Cirque du Freak series belongs to Darren Shan, etc.
Spoilers: Book five and six.
Red Comedy
"Oh, hello," he greeted, and she replied with brisk mechanical aptness, forgetting to smile. His voice was bare and cracked beyond repair. One had gone through his throat, after all. "I didn't expect to find you here."
"I wanted to watch Darren's trial," she explained crisply.
"Did you see Gavner anywhere?" he asked amiably. He leaned against the wall, which was jagged and hard and cold, but he seemed not to mind. When he slumped down, however, he left an angry trail of dull, dull red in its wake, which glittered even in the dim shadowy light. "I think I owe him an explanation anyway, if he's still here." His face was perfectly serene, despite the horrible shape it was in, though the trepidation poured off of him in waves.
Though they whispered, their voices fell like waterfalls, and rolled and echoed like thunders while their footsteps, although few, rumbled like earthquakes. Sighs screeched and even the silence was deafening. The walls were wide and the ceiling high. The empty hall tried to use sound to fill it. No one, however, would ever hear.
"He's not here, but Gavner stayed for your trial."
"Oh, well then," he mused, half-hiding in the shadows. He sounded tired and weary and relieved, because he was. When she turned to face him, he mustered up a very courageous smile to disguise, if not to hide, the trail of blood that ran down the side of his face across his three Vampaneze scars, and the wound that began at his nape and ended below his Adam's apple. "I suppose that's alright then. He got his explanation." His smile wavered, and he asked very, very quietly, "Did you watch the trial, or just meet him afterwards?"
"I watched it with him," she said, frowning slightly.
"Oh," he chuckled mirthlessly, and the sound that escaped him reminded her more of a croak. There were more wounds than she could see. They were hidden under his tattered clothes but were belied by the almost pattern-like stains spattering them. "How embarrassing. I didn't think you would be there, you know."
"You were a good actor," she snapped, still furious.
His grin was crooked, though not purposely so. It was because one side of his jaw had been badly injured. He blinked a few times, and swiped at a bit of blood gathering near his pale lashes. Smiling infuriatingly again, "Oh, really, was I? Thank you then. I wouldn't know, of course. I've lied once in a while, but I've never really acted before, between all that mapmaking and plotting and worrying."
It would never heal. All those punctures and cuts and scratches would never close. Though he was bloodless, he would always bleed, and though he was beyond feeling it would always hurt. Kurda held himself up with a quiet but defeated sort of dignity. However, he was bruised and broken and very obviously so. Had it not been callous, had it not been him who was injured and had it not been her who was not, she would've given her heart out for him.
"Did it hurt?" she asked indifferently, and he answered without the need for clarification.
"I would be brave and say no, but yes, it does. Very much. But it's getting better now."
Even so, it would never end. No matter how many years, decades, centuries passed, the blonde vampire would bleed and wander. His soul was inextricably bound to the earth and rest would never come. His eyes, no matter how heavy, would never fall. She would go to Paradise, long overdue. He would never follow. In the beginning of what would be an endless state of aching, he knew this too, smiling sadly at the floor.
There was a black blindfold around his neck, pulled down from his listless eyes so that he could see, and the remnants of iron chains hung loudly at the end of two rusting, iron shackles around his thin wrists. His hair was disheveled, matted to his forehead and his nape. He had been naked in death, and for modesty's sake he had donned a cloak of shadows and darkness after it. His pale skin, where visible, was red and raw. His cheeks were wet. One side with blood long dried but still running, the other with tears long shed but still dripping.
"I watched them cut the body up. I wasn't in there, but I think it hurt more."
She said nothing, feeling her chest tighten.
"I heard about the massacre…the fight," he said suddenly, in a tone that a stranger might have thought was very kindly, but she knew well enough of the bitterness below it when she saw the way his cerulean eyes frosted with an icy haze. His slip of the tongue had been a deliberate fall, and he failed to disguise the slight loathing behind the stumble. "I heard you fought very well in that, Arra."
She scoffed, in that slightly condescending, slightly disapproving way, with a wave of her hand as she shifted her weight to her foot. "Obviously, not well enough," she snapped, motioning at herself. "That one who did it, the finishing blow, was gloating. I don't see what he had to gloat about, there's no honor in rubbing victory in an injured fighter's nose."
He mumbled something like, "But there is in when you're doing it," but it was very soft and repressed so she couldn't be sure.
"What did you say?" she queried.
"I said," he repeated, "the one who did the finishing blow – did you catch his name?"
Her brows furrowed in thought, suspicious but with nothing to feed her suspicions. "I think…his name was Glalda or something of the sort." She saw him flinch quite visibly, but made no comment. "Or at least that's what the others called him. Did you know your little raid party very well?"
He shook his head, very slowly. "No," he said quietly, "not very well. I knew their names, and they knew mine, but I didn't know most of them all that well. But they shared my ideals, believed in what I believed in, and Glalda was one of the more prominent ones. I suppose, in our case, even that sort of bond is significant. They weren't family, or even friends for that matter, but they were comrades at one point, and that makes all the difference."
She coughed, feeling awkward in the situation. There was such sympathy in his voice that sounded so foreign to her. He made the Vampaneze seem humane, and that was so iconoclastic that it hurt her head to think about it. "Well," she tried, falling back on the familiar jeer, "I don't see how you can feel for them. It makes no difference since they're dead and gone now. You were always the coward; believed impossible things easily, like a child."
He began to bury his face in the crook of his arms. "We were all children once, and I don't know about you, but I was happier then, when I had fewer things to doubt and more things to trust."
"Fancy talking to you about trust, Kurda," she sneered.
He smiled. "Funny, isn't it?"
"Have you come to watch the trial?" She turned around, arms still crossed sternly across her chest, with her hair thrown over her shoulder. Arra always looked formidable, even in death.
"Yes. I wish to see what they do with him."
"They won't kill him, if that's what you mean," she replied, with easy confidence. At his questioning glance, she elaborated, "Larten promised me," and fought back the urge to scowl when his features lighted with pure teasing amusement, "and, the Princes are on his side anyway, as almost everyone else. We owe him for turning you in, and though we are a strict race, we are not unjust."
His face fell, but not very far before he caught it. "Not unjust," he murmured, looking at his bloody hands, "but very blind."
She decided that not speaking was a better reply to that, finding she couldn't figure out whether it because she agreed with him or just thought the comment ludicrous. She was caught between helpless faith and questioning, doubting the faith and denying the doubt. Her mouth clamped shut, lest she say something stupid, something like the words that kept on pouring out of his mouth.
He groaned good-humoredly, and it baffled her as to how he could still be possessed of a good humor at this point of time, as he saw her tightlipped expression. "You're still not sore about that defeat on the bars, are you Arra? If anyone should be sore about that, it should be me, because you still wouldn't shake my hand."
She huffed indignantly. "Are you that absent-minded, or have you forgotten what shaking a person's hand for me requires?" Her expression was hard like diamond, but no where near as clear, clouded with flickering emotions. "I'll shake your hand when you've earned my respect."
He made a sound that should've been a laugh, she realized, but was not. "What's so bad about losing to me?" he muttered, half-crossly, "Is it really that bad, for me to win once a while, when I lose everything else after coming so close?"
Her brows furrowed, and she did not understand.
"Do you think he would want me here?" The change of subject was abrupt, noticeable.
"I think he would," she managed to blurt without needing to ask who 'he' was, shocking herself. He did not fail to notice, with the short but surprised pause that followed. Blurting things out did not become her, especially blurting things out that might make her appear reassuring to a terrible turncoat. She bit her traitorous lips, wondering if she was possessed, or merely feeling as if she had to say something soft to lessen the burn of the acidic remarks before.
She cleared her throat and started again. "I think he would. Darren is clever and after your trial, I'm sure he understands enough, if not all, at least."
"Do you?" he asked.
"No," she answered bluntly, feeling slightly reassured when treading on more familiar, conflicting grounds after her previous and awkward run with being less than malevolent towards the other. She sighed, like a teacher explaining the pains of a particularly unruly student, and shook her head. "But then again, I never have. So I pass it off as you being you, and choose to ignore it. It's not for me to deal with anymore."
He was not looking at her, having fixed his gaze at the ceiling, as if he could see past the stone, the mountain peek, and into the daylight sky. He hadn't seen that in a long time, but from what he remembered, it had been beautiful. Maybe, if he was feeling up to it, if his limbs didn't creak too much under his weight and he didn't fall apart, he would go out for the first time in many years later and look at the sun, unable to drown in its light.
"I didn't expect you to. A lot of people don't. I hope that Gavner did, if only a little, and Darren. I owe them the biggest apology, so they matter most. I don't know if they've forgiven me any. But I don't think it really matters in the long run." He paused, lost in turbulent thoughts that he tread through slowly. There was no need to rush; he had plenty of time to think them through. "He's a good kid - Darren. He'll do great things, I'm sure of it. He walks the steps of a hero – an unlikely one, but one nonetheless."
Her eyes became considerably gentler at the mention of the boy's name. "Yes, he will."
"Maybe, we aren't really damned after all, with our future in hands like his," he mused, finally tearing his gaze away and settling his attention at a lonely platform in the center of the room that reeked of humiliation and shame and sorrow to him. It made his heart constrict even as he heard it beat as if every pound was its dying breath. The platform was stained in the center with a brick red paint that would take time to fade away.
Then, he turned to her with a cheeky grin that did not quite spread across his face as it was supposed to, as it used to. "Are you going to go afterwards?"
Slightly and strangely unnerved, she frowned. "Yes. Why do you ask?"
"Because I thought you were going to stay and haunt Larten's dreams for the rest of his life, that's why." He smirked, and winked shamelessly, "I bet he'd have a great many number of particularly good dreams with you in them."
She glared at him with piercing, ruffled eyes. "How dare you, Kurda Smahlt!"
He laughed, the first time she heard him laugh since he came in. That seemed odd; he used to laugh so much. Even so, the sound was forced. Any further intentions of reprimanding him seemed to fade away. She used to take her stick and rap his shins like a mother scolding a child. Though she would never admit it on even a second dying day, she was afraid he would break into pieces if she did.
"Any more tasteless jokes like that and I'll make you wish you weren't born," she warned.
There was something in the dejected and the flat way he returned her stare that told her the threat was useless. There was no way; after all, she could do something that had already been done. "Okay," he said, deadpan, killing the conversation as he turned away, stuffing whatever words she had left down her throat without mercy, turning instead to the more reliable, trusting ceiling of stone.
Arra, a creature born and made of such stifling pride it was almost suffocating, stood there half in the shadows and half in the light, watching Kurda through the corner of her eye as he looked hopelessly at up at the heavens which would not save him, and felt somewhere deep inside as if she had done something wrong.
Then, the trial of Darren Shan began.
Despite the fact that she knew in her heart the boy would come out alright, she could not help but grow worried and afraid when the princes announced their reluctance to make an exception for the child. Angrily, she watched, feeling completely helpless, which made her angrier still. In contrast, Kurda, who had been worrying before, seemed startlingly calm, watching like a ghost from the back wall. When he noticed her puzzlement, written all over her readable face, he smiled and said, "The Princes plan something. I can tell. Be patient, Arra."
Somewhere in between, Gavner had entered the hall unnoticed, though as he took his place beside Arra, she noticed with great amusement that Kurda pressed himself against the wall, succeeding in making himself look even smaller than he did already. "Well," she said to him, watching as his face paled once Gavner turned as well, "I said he wasn't here, but I didn't say he had left yet."
"He…llo, Gavner."
The General looked at him, and he seemed different. His eyes were not quite as bright, weighed down with the absence of life and the understanding of something deeper than he could've fathomed. He smiled and laughed the same though, even as he moved to clap Kurda soundly on the back with a chuckle and a grin so forcefully it could've toppled him over, but the short nod he gave the vampire afterwards was proof enough for the change. "Hello, Kurda! How've you been?"
Kurda blinked soundly. "I've been…just fine, Gavner." He lied beautifully. He had always lied beautifully and flawlessly, the few and crucial times he did it.
Gavner's darker eyes saw the wounds and the blood marring the slender face while he said, "That's good to hear!"
For a long time, Kurda stared at him, eyes a little wide and a little afraid. Instinctively, his head shrunk a little closer to his body. He had expected a great multitude of things, watching Gavner stumble back in the cave with Kurda's knife inside his body, and he wondered if the General was just stalling.
Gavner noticed, and his brows furrowed, mouth dropping into a frown.
Kurda pressed himself deeper into the wall.
"What?" the other said finally, raising his hands, but only to fix his hair. "Do I have something nesting on my head or something?"
Kurda thought that maybe not everything in his life had been done wrong. "No," he answered, letting a little smile work up his mouth. It was not very pure, still held back by solid nails of confinement and bloody pain, but it was as close as it would come for a very, very long time, and it felt amazingly good on that wretched face of his. "Nothing's wrong at all."
Arra made a sound not unlike a scoff.
Larten surprised them all, shocking Kurda with his loud, if slight, assent for change, and softening Arra with his declaration of loyalty to her, to which she did not escape a soft chuckle from the blonde reprobate nearby. When the Princes finally did make their verdict, after much ado, Larten was as stunned as the both of them. Kurda's eyes widened, Gavner guffawed, but Arra almost stumbled backwards with disbelief.
"I never would've guessed…" Arra whispered.
"Larten'll get a kick out of that!" Gavner laughed. "Having to call his assistant, 'Sire!'"
"Imagine that," said Kurda, smiling even as his brows knitted, dressing the smile with endless seas of rue. He shook his head slowly, eyes never leaving the small, frail but so strong form of the boy standing in the middle of the hall. "You do impress me, Darren Shan," he said softly. "Really, really, maybe the vampire race isn't damned after all, with people like you."
His voice was heavy, but laced with humble awe. How could it not have been? The boy had accomplished what it took him more than a hundred years to do in less than a decade. The boy not only walked the step of a hero, but breathed its air, already was learning to wield its sword. Darren Shan would go far, father than he or anyone he had ever known would go, and he did not gamble on it, for the chances were not questionable. It was inevitable, as true as a fact.
"Well, this explains Larten's sudden blooding of him quite well," he said to himself, drawing his hands together in a slow, crescendo clap.
Arra looked at him, frowning.
"Darren Shan, Vampire Prince," he whispered, only to have his words beaten down as a new era came rolling in, a little tardy, but just as grand.
When it grew late without either of the three noticing, and all the others had carried the boy prince to celebrate with luxuries that without flesh one couldn't enjoy, Gavner lifted his bare wrist and looked at it, letting out a slow whistle. His mouth lit with a dim smile full of reluctance and anticipation and weariness. "Well, what do you know? Look at the time! It sure flew by, didn't it? I'm way overdue by now."
Arra raised a brow, her expression like blank paper even as she shifted from one foot to another, as she untangled a crossed arm to swipe irritatingly at a lose strand of ebony hair that merely fell back into place after a brief swing in the air. With a short sigh, "What do you think you're doing? You look like an idiot."
The General laughed heartedly, a wonderful sound that came from his belly and bubbled upwards. "It's something I used to do all the time as a human," he said, waving his wrist around comically, even as his eyes grew brightly sad. "I used to look at my watch constantly, counting down, counting up. Today, time passed more quickly than it ever had since my own blooding," he murmured and then, much more quietly, "Arra, it's time to go."
She nodded, knowing.
Gavner turned and approached the still, blonde shadow on the wall. Kurda shrunk back instinctively, but smiled as bravely as he could with a face so battered the grin looked terrible. "G'bye, Gavner Purl. Have fun."
"What will you do now?"
"I wanted to see the sun."
Gavner grinned, and nodded. "Farewell, Kurda Smahlt." He choked once and only once on the words, face so straight it hurt. When he drew his hand away, he felt it draw away wet with something warm and thick. He refused to look down at it, the corners of his eyes creasing with something far from joy, but watched as Kurda did, for the sight of his own blood no longer appalled him after the first few hours. He saw it too much.
For a moment, the General turned around and became drunk in the sight of the hall. There were so many things he didn't want to forget, that it was inevitable that he would. His throat tightened. "I'll wait for you there, Arra," he said quickly, and walked through the stone doors with a blinding flash and Kurda knew that if he peeked on the other side, or in fact searched the whole mountain through and through, the General would no longer be there.
Arra took three steps towards the door. She called over her shoulder, "Bye."
"Not yet."
Two steps towards the wall. "What?"
He frowned weakly and she saw in his face an expression not unlike Darren's after his first time on the bars, only less confident and a great deal bloodier. "I want a handshake, Arra. Am I good enough for one yet?"
She had never liked him very much, and she didn't, very much, but she was not as hard as she thought she was, watching him stand alone without buckling knees, surrounded by a thousand men who wanted to see a million stakes cut him into shreds, knowing that he stood and watched his carcass diced into so many pieces that he couldn't count them, standing with him as a boy took the place he had worked decades for and not feeling the slightest bit bitter for it.
She had never known him very much - he had never made much sense to her - and in the past few hours she figured she had never known him at all. There were a million things he did without knowing that proved his worth; she just had never seen them before. She hadn't wanted to see them either, but at the threshold to Paradise she figured it wouldn't hurt to listen once. She was still very angry about her defeat on the bars, but somehow it all evened out in a way that was so complicated it wasn't worth pondering.
The question shouldn't have surprised her the way it did. "And…if I say no?"
"I'll whine and pout and throw temper tantrums until you do," he quipped.
"And here I was starting to think you were growing up, Kurda."
"I have plenty of time for that." Though it should've been a joke, it sounded very sad.
"I wish I had time to see the sun too."
And then he stared at the outstretched hand in front of him as if it meant more than the whole world because at the moment the world mattered little to him, and he tried desperately not to laugh or cry, laugh and cry, at the pitiful irony of it all. "Wait," he said, chuckling, and she waited, curious, impatient. He took a tattered corner of his soiled cloak and smeared the blood away from his palm. "Okay." His fingers wound gently around her hand. Her skin was more calloused than his, but somehow she knew that meant nothing, had never meant anything. "Power to you, Arra Sails."
"Power to you, Kurda." When she withdrew her hand was bloodied anyway, but she didn't seem to mind.