Chapter 3: Chance
"If you bring me back to life, my death will have no meaning. I had a fine existence. I was a good place. I spent a little time in the waking world. I even fell in love, once, a little. I lived a good life and it ended. Would you take that away from me?"
-Fiddler's Green, in SANDMAN #70, part one of "The Wake"
Death is merely a beginning, or so I've learned. I don't know if it's my patience that's got the attention of everybody else who knew, or if my immense craving for her had gotten to a point wherein just by looking at me, you could tell that I've degraded my self esteem by possessing her husband's body just to have her look at me, as opposed to through me. Anyhow, after years of silence, someone came to me today.
You can only imagine the shock I felt to have someone talk to me again, after a long time of having one sided conversations with everybody else. I've never been a firm believer of spiritual entities, but then again, I had never been a firm believer of life after death, so there goes the whole theory. She came to me, my deceased mother, the kindness in her blue eyes piercing through me. The interaction was sudden; I had been taking a walk, oblivious to everything else when she called my name.
"Sebastian."
A sudden chill came over me, it's been seven years since I've been acknowledged and I was not at all used to it by now. Still, I turned my head, cautiously, as though I feared this would be some demon that had come to torment me in my current state of being. What I saw melted away the busy New York streets, the people faded away and there was a sound of immense silence as my jaw dropped open and I stared at her. The only kind, understanding face of my childhood, long, wavy blond hair and the same blue eyes only mine were full of mysteries and hers carried a burden I could never fully comprehend. My mother, looking the way I exactly remembered her, dressed in an elegant white dress, the one she knew I liked best on her. I used to go to her room as a child, when the world was so much simpler and women weren't on my agenda yet. After being dressed up in one of those tailor made suits made for men but fit me just to watch her smile at me and tell me that I was going to break a lot of hearts someday, and I'd laugh and tell her I would never do that. Breaking hearts were cruel, it was what my father did to my mother each time he'd call from work to tell her he won't be coming home for the night while there was that inaudible girlish giggle in the background. And she'd ruffle my hair and kiss my forehead gently, each time telling me that she loved me and that I should never forget that.
I haven't. As I grew up, I dropped by her room less and less until I didn't come in at all. When she died, I cried for the first time, my eight year old body shook with silent sobs while the stranger I called my father stood stoically beside me with a hand on my shoulder. To the other mourners of Mrs. Valmont's death, we were the very picture of familial love. This was not the case. My father's hand was on my shoulder for a different purpose. His grip tightened until I nearly gasped out in pain. He was telling me not to cry, I was embarrassing all the other Valmont men who'd gone and died before us. It was simply not acceptable. And so, without the guidance of my mother, I was slowly molded into becoming the man I despised the most. By then I was too preoccupied with women, the rush of taking away their innocence with acts of pleasure causing me a high like no other. I had done what my mother had foretold I would. I was breaking hearts, avoiding phone calls, and making empty promises just to lure them into my bed. My transition through the years was what every young boy would envy, I was never awkward nor gawky, I've never had the need for braces nor acne cream, I was refined, elegant and my movements slow and deliberate. The snake who charmed his way into women's hearts. By the age of fifteen I was quite sure the rest of my life would be comprised of challenges that weren't challenges at all. Women were mine for the taking, and how I took them all so lightly.
That is, until that one fateful day when my father brought home another blonde, but that was where the similarity with my mother ended. This particular woman was wearing a tight smile on her even tighter face, and I was sure that she had had one plastic surgery too many.
"Sebastian, this is Tiffany Merteuil." my father said proudly, as though he'd had the catch of the season with this pained looking woman who had probably once been beautiful but was now only a shadow of it. As we sat down for dinner, my mind was wandering about which latest conquest I would undertake, would it be another senior girl or one of those cheerleaders who never had anything intelligent to say but was quite flexible in bed? After minutes of playing listlessly with my food, something moved in my peripheral vision and as I followed the movement, I found myself staring into the darkest, saddest and greenest eyes I had ever seen. There was something about her, this girl seemed to be my age, but the way she moved, we might as well have been years apart. That was the first time I ever saw Kathryn, and it was also the first time I found myself invariably tongue tied and my movements inexplicably slower and more hesitant.
"I'm sorry about my tardiness, mother. I had a little trouble with Claude today."
Claude? Who the fuck was Claude? A boyfriend? My mind had stopped wandering, now it was focused entirely on her, on this ravishing creature, this woman-child, the living, breathing porcelain doll Tiffany Merteuil had somehow made. Tiffany's eyebrows raised in disapproval and merely commented to my father that Kathryn was an equestrian and had more blue ribbons that any girl her age had. A horse. I remember heaving a sigh of relief, even though having a boyfriend had never stopped me from seducing.
"Kathryn, this is Edward Valmont and his son Sebastian."
My father glanced at her appreciatively, her beauty not at all lost on the old man. I must admit I was the same thing, only I stood up and shook her hand. The first time we'd touched each other was nothing magical, but I can still recall how her small hand fit well into mine, how a small smile, a real one, had tugged at her pink lips as she tucked a stray of soft brown hair behind her ear.
It was the beginning of everything. The Sebastian Valmont and Kathryn Merteuil legacy. I was smitten, driven with lust and infatuation for her. When we would have breakfast, lunch, dinner, or any kind of function that would require her presence, I would attend it. There was still that secret smile on her beautiful face when she realized that I was there as well, as if she knew I was pursuing her. The eternal challenge, the start of a lifelong obsession even death would never take from me. I could never really talk to her because she was always being whisked away by her mother to be bragged about, how this girl managed to achieve every damn thing escaped me. So, after one particularly long and tedious night at another charity function, I decided to leave and call it a night. Most fifteen year olds wouldn't have had a Porsche, but I wasn't and had never been like anybody else. It was a gift from my father, a bribe to refrain from seducing and breaking his girlfriend's daughter's heart. I took it only too happily, failing to mention that I would never do that, regardless of a car or not. My 1956 Jaguar Roadster was still miles away from me, resting and waiting for me to claim it when I turned sixteen. I tugged the tie off my now trademark dark suit, contemplating whether to take one of those insipid society girls home for a quick fuck when the other door opened, and there was a flash of brown hair and green eyes that jumped inside. Before I knew it, her small, pale hands had pulled me to her, and we were kissing. That did me in. I was drowning myself into her, the scent of her hair permanently lingering in my nostrils, marveling at the softness of everything that was her. She ran her hands through my hair, twisting it into little curls that way she does to her husband's hair when she allows him to own her for a brief while, her lips sweet and tainted with the champagne she'd secretly been drinking. My hands shook, staying on her face and on her waist, its usual lascivious nature gone because I was scared to make a single wrong move that would stop this madness. Finally, she pulled away, mouth parted open, green eyes twinkling with mischief and chest breathing heavily.
"Goodnight, Sebastian." she said sweetly, leaving as quickly as she came in. I started the car and drove off, knowing she'd be watching for my reaction, the reputed playboy stumped to silence by a socialite's perfect little angel. After making sure there was nobody else in sight, I pulled over and turned the engine off, my heart still pounding from the sensation of her mouth on mine. I was drunk off her scent, off the champagne sweetness of her moist, warm lips. I was inexplicably drawn to her, and I knew at that point that I would gladly give up every single woman in the world just to have her and to keep on having her.
I still reeled from the events of the previous night when I stared across the table at her, and there it was. The unwavering smile on her pretty face, the way her emerald stare hypnotically pulled me in. We were lost in our world, a secret world that was inhabited by nobody else save myself and her. I was about to ask her to join me for a walk around the grounds when my father spoke the words that would forever crush and stain this secret world I had only deliriously discovered just last night.
"We're getting married!"
I saw her face fall, and I'm pretty sure my own features had contorted into disappointment, anger and nausea. The smile had left her face, the twinkle faded from her eyes and that mask of indifference once again covering her beauty. I scowled at my father while Kathryn politely congratulated the two, didn't they know what they'd just done? I tried to get her alone, to talk to her about this obstacle that had reared its ugly head between us, but she never allowed me. So I stopped trying, but the hope still remained. The wedding preparations were swift, just as any wealthy marriage would go. The day of our parents' wedding, she came with a date, a wealthy East Coast preppy who couldn't stop staring at her. She didn't look at me throughout the entire ceremony, preferring to keep her stare solely directed on our parents, who was unknowingly committing an act that would forever doom their children to a life of forbidden wanting. During the reception, I couldn't take it anymore. Her silence was killing me, her teasing glances and affection for her date caused me a rather large amount of jealousy.
"Kathryn, can I talk to you?"
She looked surprised at my sudden approach, yet she gently extricated herself from me. "I'm busy at the moment, Sebastian."
Let me explain, at the age of fifteen she still wasn't The Kathryn Merteuil, although it had been starting to form. She wasn't the seductress, the instigator of malice and mischief the way she had been in her later years. She was still polite, pleasant, and driven to succeed to attempt to meet up to her mother's neverending expectations. She still tried.
"Please." The calmness of my voice was somewhere between anxious and still, and she sensed it. Kathryn sighed, still keeping her gaze averted from my own searching blue eyes as she excused herself from the table. I led her to the gardens where we could be alone and away from the prying eyes of society who would now disapprove because of our relation by law.
She looked at me expectantly and I could only bite my lip at how sad she really looked, so this was why she wouldn't look at me all throughout the ceremony. She was as angry and hollowed as I was while our parents professed their love for one another.
"We can't do this anymore." my now stepsister was the one to speak first, rubbing her arms against her bare shoulders from the wind. I took my coat off and gently wrapped it around her, my jaw clenching at the sight of her looking vulnerable and torn. That's the Kathryn you don't know and will never know. That's the Kathryn I loved, that's the girl that was ommitted from the pages of that leather bound notebook.
"I agree." I replied, the close proximity of our bodies not at all agreeing with my words.
"We're related now." she whispered, my arms not leaving as it stayed wrapped around her.
"I suppose so." I murmured in reply, drawing myself closer.
"But you'll never stop, won't you, Sebastian? No matter what happens?"
A question of commitment, the very same thing I'd spent my life avoiding. Despite this, despite the fear of committing myself to one person for the rest of my young life, somehow I realized that no matter what I said, no matter how much I denied it, I never really would stop wanting her.
"Never." I promised her, and she succumbed to me. She gave in not to this attempt at seduction, but to this display of uncharacteristic love I was as surprised as she was that I showed. We kissed, slowly, deliberately hidden from the world that would never understand. I ached for her, just as much as I ache for her now. But we both knew that once we gave in to the demands of our bodies, we would never be able to keep away from each other. So we pulled away before I could feel her around me, and I felt a strange moisture on my cheeks from where her face had touched. There were slow, beautiful tears that filled her large eyes and I could feel myself shatter into a million pieces as I tried to reassure her that I would be hers, her persevering lover and admirer, for as long as she wanted me to. I took out a white handkerchief and gently dried her tears, a pained smile on my Kathryn wanting lips as I tried not to run back to the reception and murder everyone in sight. Was this my karma for breaking all those hearts? Was this my punishment, to reside under the same roof with the unattainable female I'd soon resort to fucking different girls just to be numbed around her? That was the last time we'd kissed, really kissed. She handed my coat back to me and headed back into the party, back into the waiting arms of her date and I back to my room only to lay down the cold bed and stare blankly at the ceiling while everybody else rejoiced downstairs. Even years later, when Kathryn would ask me where I went after we'd gone to the gardens, she assumed I had gone and fucked one of those beautiful airheads present at the party, and I would neither deny nor correct her. It was better for her to think that way.
Tiffany and Kathryn moved into the Valmont townhouse and her daughter took the blue and gold paneled room directly opposite mine, her naught filled hidden smile catching my eye when she announced it was her room of choice. It wasn't until she was sixteen that she'd started bringing boys home, and I continued that dull routine of bedding females. Sometimes, we'd argue and fight, mostly with thrown objects and hateful words that only stemmed from jealousy. I'd be jealous of every Tom, Dick and Harry she'd allowed to touch her and she'd be jealous of Heather, Eliza, or Joan that I'd sometimes bring to dinner at home and fuck later on. After this, we'd stop, and the tradition of her sneaking out from her room to climb into the barren bed with me began. She would leave the snoring young man who slept naked in her room and creep into mine, the movement of the sheets awakening me as her warm body cuddled against mine. Mostly we'd just talk, and we'd never have sex. She was on the verge of becoming cold and manipulative, yet she was still my Kathryn. Already, she'd started taking joy out of the ruination of those who crossed her, but when night fell and she came into my room, I'd wrap my arms around her and she'd play with my hair as if she was still the same fifteen year old woman-child who'd kissed me for the first time that night. We'd talk in murmurs, scared that somebody might hear us from outside and ban her from setting foot into my bedroom ever again. When I fell asleep, she'd leave the room and come back to hers before anybody could catch us asleep on the same bed.
That's why I love her. That's what you don't understand about us. You think you can summarize our entire lives based on that damned journal? There's so much more to it than you'll ever know.
Everything changed in one night. It was the last day of school, and she had declined her mother's offer to accompany her to Paris because she claimed she wanted to spend her time with the charity organizations, but we both knew she wanted to spend her summer with me. I had brought Jean Winterthorpe home, a red haired eighteen year old college student who ignored my age and knew only of my reputation. In the midst of immense lust, she told me to tell her that I loved her, and I did. I loved her body, how she drove me to new heights of pleasure only an experienced woman like Jean could ever give me. The moment those three words slipped from my mouth, there was an unmistakable patter of footsteps and my door slammed, only to be followed by another slam of her door this time. Shit. I quickly pushed a breathless half naked Jean aside and grabbed my boxers, running out to the hallway to knock on her door.
"Kathryn, please open up."
Her voice, unmistakably sharp and icy cold. "Fuck off, Sebastian."
I begged her, alternating from fury to placation, I pounded against the door until my fists were red and my knuckles almost bled. It was an unspoken rule between us, never to use that word despite its commonality, we had never said that word to anybody else, not even to each other and I had broken it. She never opened the door and I fell asleep in the hallway only to wake up and realize that she'd gone to Paris with her mother.
When she came back, she was The Kathryn Merteuil, merciless, numb, and sporting that cursed hollow crucifix. There was a hollowness of her cheeks, a sure sign that she'd started taking drugs. I took her aside to explain what had happened and she only laughed at my face mockingly, saying she was never bothered by such things and would never be bothered again from now on. "Tell every fucking pussy that you love her and I wouldn't give a damn." Those were her exact words, and it hurt. Thus, began the second part of our twisted relationship. That of games and manipulation, the affectionate past seemingly forgotten. It was safer to bitch and annoy each other, because the anger never allowed us to get hurt. She no longer snuck into my room but I would sometimes go into hers when she was asleep if only to observe her for the couple of minutes wherein she looked like the sixteen year old she was before she left for Paris.
What tangled webs we indeed weave.
"Sebastian." my mother called out faintly again, disrupting my reverie. I snapped back into attention, the image of sixteen year old Kathryn temporarily leaving my mind as I walked towards her, dazed.
"What-What's going on?" my own confused voice sounded so lost as she wrapped her arms around me, giving me the affection I'd been missing as the time passed. She was smaller than I'd remembered, but there was still that warm feeling of being in that secure zone with her.
In the blink of an eye, we were back in Kathryn's room, watching as her husband fixed his tie and she automatically pulled on a red dress that made her husband stop fixing his tie to give her another longing stare, like a dog begging to be loved.
"Is this what you really want?" she asked gently, her presence making me feel less alone.
I nodded, staring sadly at my stepsister, the love of my many lives. "Is it even possible?"
What my mother said next shocked, excited, frightened, and made me nearly drop dead all over again.
"Perhaps."