Title: The Thin Line
Fandom: Vampire Game
Theme: #24/"love and hate"
Pairing: Illsaide/Falan
Rating: 12/PG-13
Disclaimer: All characters and situations property of Judal.
Summary: Falan can't bring herself to hate her brother.
Falan can't hate Illsaide and that's the worst part. She's read enough stories – tragedies, usually, and Gothic romances, which are the only fiction in their library – to know that people like them don't get a happy ending. Those who are born in brooding castles die there.
(She could go and live in St Pheliosta with Ishtar. She could rule – co-rule – just as easily from there, especially with the ruelle mirrors and it's less than a day's ride from the city.)
Love turns very quickly to hate in those stories, but it doesn't happen like that in real life. Illsaide hasn't done anything that Falan wouldn't have herself and hating oneself is just an extreme form of self-pity and a waste of effort. She doesn't care for the idea. She's tried the other way, too – making Illsaide hate her. It doesn't work, partly because she isn't given to spite and partly because for all his violent tendencies, raising a hand to Falan – wanting to raise a hand to Falan – is a thought so alien to him that he never thinks it. When she pulls away from him (the most forceful rejection that she's capable of, most days), he doesn't even try to pull her back. He turns the pain inwards, his eyes dulling and his face becoming blank and he pretends that he doesn't notice anything.
Falan knows, deep down, that she's wrong. Not in the obvious way, loving her half-monster half-brother, not in loving the boy-man whose hands are wet with blood, but she's made a mistake.
Not being able to hate Illsaide isn't the worst part. It's not being able to stop loving him that's destroying her from the inside out.