Fragment, an underworld fanfic

Author's Notes: This was a "challenge" fic, therequirements were an object (a piece of broken glass) and any or all of the following phrases ("lie to me", "somehow you just seem to shine" and "too small to matter, but big enough to cut me into so many pieces").

This takes place in the opening scene of the movie. Also, much as I love the movie, this is my first Underworld fic, so please be gentle. The main character in the story is Rigel, the vampire who was fried by the ultra violet bullets in the subway. Pairing: Rigel-OC.

Italics signify emphasis. It starts out third person but becomes first person POV, Rigel's POV.

Disclaimer: Don't own Rigelor Underworld, not quite sure who does and too lazy to look it up. Don't sue, it wouldn't do you any good. Olivia Anora is mine, so claws off.

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The digital camera whirred slightly as it tried to keep up with the demands of the cool finger rapidly pressing the button on its top. Rigel continued to capture images of the two Lycans until they had disappeared into the metro station. Letting the camera drop to dangle from its strap and rest against his chest, Rigel looked across the square to Selene's perch on another five-story building, her black clad figure almost blending into the statuary, even to his advanced eyesight.

Their gazes met and Selene inclined her head the slightest fraction of an inch. Rigel acknowledged the signal and stepped off the edge of his high perch, knowing Selene would do the same moments later from the place she had been watching from. As the graceful, sleek vampire landed lightly on his feet, a sparkle of something in the pool of light from a street lamp caught his eye.

It was a piece of broken glass.

Rigel would have dismissed it out of hand and moved on toward the night's targets, but the light caught once again on the scrap and it seemed to wink at him. Bending down and straightening in a move so fast no human eye would have noticed that he had moved at all, Rigel retrieved the piece of glass and held it up to the light. He immediately sucked in a breath, the unusual violet color sending him back in time to memories of a different era.

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Lady Olivia Anora Larkhurst had been the Incomparable of the London Season in the year 1814. Back then I was only a sometime member of the Death Dealers, old enough and high enough up in the hierarchy to choose when I hunted and when I lived the life of ease. That year I was posing as a man of means but no title, leaving the hunting of Lycans to my brethren and enjoying the spectacle and silly intrigues of the haute ton.

The Lady of Larkhurst, having reached the age of eighteen, was admired for her father's wealth and for her own exquisite beauty. Soft honey gold hair that was the envy of half of the women of the ton sat atop a lovely head held up by a slender, pale throat. Her figure was slightly too full for the fashion at the time, but I had always preferred women who offered a bit more than skin stretched over their bones to hold onto. Not that I had any intention of holding onto her. She was an innocent, and mortal, part of the look-but-never-touch category in my mind.

But it was her remarkable eyes that enthralled me most of all. They were an unusual shade of violet, changing and darkening dependent on her mood. But even the beautiful color paled in comparison to the life shining in her orbs. The Lady was intelligent and witty, and her every emotion was put on display in those eyes for anyone who cared to take a deeper look.

I was an observer then, what the humans call a people-watcher in the modern age. I suppose its what makes me so good at taking surveillance photos. I must admit that the camera has been one of my favorite human inventions.

Olivia Anora… I never called her just Olivia, it wasn't pretty enough to be her name on its own… was an observer as well. And she found me utterly fascinating, despite the fact that I was posing as just a 'Mister' and not a 'Sir' or 'Lord' or any of the other fancy titles her suitors claimed. Because of what I was, I could not join their ranks. And so, despite the fact that I had coveted her from the moment I first looked into her eyes, it was she who first approached me.

If anyone but me had heard her whispered, "Dance with me," it would have been scandal. And because of the devilish glint in her remarkable eyes, I knew I had better lead her out onto the floor or risk a scene. As fate would have it, a waltz began right then and I swept her into my arms and onto the dance floor. The waltz was by far my favorite dance, allowing an almost intimate hold on one's partner and making conversation much more possible than the country reels where intricate steps carried two people away from each other as often as they carried you toward your partner.

"I was beginning to think I might never have the chance to dance with you, Mister…"

"Rigel," I corrected gently, wanting to hear my true name on her lips and not some pseudonym I had created for the masses.

She smiled coyly, "Then you must call me Olivia, or Anora if you prefer. It is my middle name and what my dear aunt calls me."

"Olivia Anora," I compromised aloud.

She smiled delightedly. But she was silent only until the next time I twirled her through a turn.

"I've watched you, Rigel. And I know you've been watching me. What is it that you like about me?"

Her forthrightness was 'not the thing' at all, but it only made me like her more. And her honest question deserved an honest response.

"Somehow you just seem to shine," I answered. I had no idea there was poetry in my immortal soul until more words spilled from my lips. "The light that shines in your eyes and your smile is the brightest I have ever seen, and yet it touches my heart with a gentle warmth the sun has never shown me."

Her smile in response to my words was sweet and real, blowing away the hollow echo of a gesture she bestowed on her human suitors. From that moment, we both knew what we felt for each other was deep and real. It was two nights later that I came to her bedroom and revealed what I was, and the fact that we could never have the life together that we both wanted.

She was silent for long minutes, but she told me she understood and begged that I continue to visit her and meet her at balls and routs until the end of the Season, when she knew her father would choose a husband for her when she did not do so for herself.

It was all too easy to agree.

And though I left her innocence intact, I showed her all the other passions I could in the privacy of herbedroom. I was also a guaranteed guest at any event she attended after the sun had ceased to shine. The second waltz of the evening was always mine, but because we always limited our dances to one a night, we gave no cause for our relationship to become the latest on dit.

I was standing behind her seated figure at a musical evening five weeks after I had revealed myself to her when she began coughing. As a proper gentleman would, I gave her my handkerchief to cover her mouth and snapped at a footman to fetch her a glass of water.

I smelled it before I saw it. Never doubt a vampire's ability to scent out the liquid of life. A tiny drop of blood had made its way onto the handkerchief I had provided.

That tiny spot of blood on the pristine white handkerchief had been too small to matter, but big enough to cut me into so many pieces. My mortal love was sick, dying of the disease of the lungs that in that time had no cure. The ice-cold blood in my veins boiled and I immediately wished a terrible death on whoever had given Olivia Anora this illness.

Olivia Anora, looking up and seeing the truth in my eyes, smiled sweetly and whispered that she was glad. Glad she would not be forced to marry a man who was not me, to live a mortal life of simple mortal passions after having known how much more there was. I stayed away from her for a week's worth of nights after that confession. But I could not keep myself from her side for long. Her pathetically short mortal life had become but a flicker in the grand scheme of time. It was when the physician ordered all-day bed rest in a desperate attempt at giving the Lady more time that I made my decision.

Turning humans wasn't exactly forbidden, but it was looked down upon severely without express permission from the council. But Olivia Anora did not have the time necessary for me to wait for permission after making the request. And I would gladly take whatever punishment they chose for me in order to have her by my side for all eternity.

At first I was afraid she would refuse. She had never asked for me to give her eternal life. And chances were great that my bite would kill her even faster and more painfully than the consumption. Nine times out of ten the disease that made us what we were killed the recipient of a bite instead of turning them. I explained it all to her, not leaving out one gory detail of the change and its alternative, not wanting her to later accuse me of not warning her.

Her answer was to gently kiss my mouth before turning her head, baring her pale, slender throat for my bite. I was gentler in the moment that my fangs sank into her flesh than I had ever been in any action, in my mortal life or my immortal existence. The soft cry that escaped her lips at that first searing pain pierced my heart and I fervently prayed to a deity I had long ago given up belief in that she would not be taken from me.

And though I felt every twinge and burn and stab of pain she felt in the hour that followed as if it were my own, a joy more profound than anything I had ever experienced swept through me when she opened her violet eyes and woke as one of us. A vampire, whole and powerful. No disease of man could steal her from my arms now.

I wanted to leave her home immediately, to have her at once cast aside her old life and embrace what she had become. But my sweet Olivia Anora wanted the first time we made love to be in the same bed where I had given her eternity. I could not refuse her.

Hours later when she smiled at me, sated and sleepy, I lifted her from the bed and pulled a clean nightgown on over her head before she donned a velvet cloak. Dawn was coming soon and we had to go home. My home, now ours. There would be time for practicalities like clothes and any possessions she wished to keep from her former life in nights to come. Right then all that mattered was us.

I often wondered in decades that followed if I would have turned her if I had known what was to come. And even though we only had mere hours together that way, my answer was always immediate and the same. Yes.

Olivia Anora was ripped back out of my life as we crossed Hyde Park. A pained whimper drifted from a set of bushes, and my eternal love, being the caring creature that she was, moved toward the brush to see of she could help.

Too late did I catch the scent of madness and filth, too late I noticed the full moon shining down upon us.

Before I could even call a warning, the arm Olivia Anora had extended in a gesture of compassion was pierced by the elongated teeth of a Lycan. My sword was out a moment, later, cutting deeply into his back. He let go of my love with a howl, barreling off into the night. I did not follow, crashing to my knees beside my dazed darling. She was sitting in the cool grass, staring at the wound in her pale arm. Her system was already reacting to the second strain of immortal virus, blackening the flesh around the crimson blood.

She lifted eyes dripping blood-tears to mine, pleading softly, "Lie to me."

"You'll be fine," I told her as I dragged her onto my lap.

But it was only moments later that she cried out in excruciating pain, the darkness that signaled her rapid demise spreading across pale skin I had worshiped with my lips only minutes earlier.

"Do it now," she commanded. "Before it spreads anymore. I cannot stand the pain. I am sorry I cannot be stronger for you, my love."

I shushed her, standing to do as she bid. Picking up my sword from where I had dropped it, I wiped the foul beast's blood from the silver-tipped blade with shaking hands, unwilling to let any more of his filth taint my dying love's body.

"I love you," I told her.

She echoed the words back to me before closing her eyes and baring her throat once more, this time for the fatal sting of my sword.

I barely made it home before the sun rose, hating myself for leaving her beautiful body to turn to ash at the touch of morning's first rays. It had only been instinct that made me go back at all. I asked to be killed, to have someone take my head as I had hers, or for them to let me walk out into the sun at the very least. But my requests were denied. For turning Olivia Anora without permission and for letting her killer get away, I was stripped of my aristocratic rank. I was watched carefully after that, not allowed to go anywhere near a window or door when the sun had risen. Twenty-six years later, when they were sure I would not try to take my own life, I was made a full time Death Dealer. Kahn gave me further training and was the first to notice my talent for watching, for surveillance.

And the first time I destroyed one of those beasts on my own, I saw my Olivia Anora again, her warm smile shining in my mind for a few precious, brief moments. Over time I stopped seeing her when kills were made and I was given the choice of taking back my rank and former lifestyle, but by then being a Death Dealer had already become the largest part of who I was.

And so I hunt. I have never come across the Lycan scum who killed her with a single bite, and I'm not sure if I ever will. He could have been dead for nearly two hundred years for all I know. It was harder to keep records of all the Lycans the Death Dealers took out back then, especially when they refused to identify themselves. And even if we had, I'm not sure I would have recognized him. It happened too fast and my attention was on her, not him.

I know all the killing will never bring her back, but revenge is all I have lived for since her death. Revenge not for my race, but for the woman I loved for too short a time. I can never make amends for failing her. Eternal revenge is all I can give my sweet Olivia Anora.

Blinking, I thrust my thoughts back to the modern age. Selene is ahead of me, moving swiftly and silently through the scurrying mass of mortals. Pocketing the tiny scrap of sharp color to contemplate more at a better time, I move to follow.

Minutes later, as white-hot pain burns through my flesh… some new weapon more effective than any I've ever encountered… all I can think is that I didn't need my little piece of glass. I'll soon be with the real thing again.