Title: Hollow Measures
Author: Jordanna Morgan
Archive Rights: Please request the author's consent.
Rating/Warnings: PG for allusions to vampirism.
Characters: Julia, thinking of Barnabas (of course).
Setting: At some point after Barnabas was made a vampire again in the Leviathan arc.
Summary: One way or the other, Julia knows her precaution is a meaningless gesture.
Disclaimer: They belong to Dan Curtis Productions. I'm just playing with them.
Notes: Written for a vampire prompt in the 2020 Spook Me fic challenge. A mere couple of months viewing "Dark Shadows" back in the Early Aughts was enough to make me a devout Julia/Barnabas shipper, and rewatching the series all these years later has only further shown me how wonderful their dynamic is.
Each morning Julia Hoffman lingered at the mirror over her bureau, carefully choosing the accessories for her day's wardrobe.
In some ways it was a ritual born from habit. Julia was far removed from her old life at Windcliffe now, her existence so intertwined with the Collins family that the mundane past seemed almost more unreal than Collinwood's incredible secrets. Still, even if she was no longer in a professional environment, the impulse to look professional had never left her. Besides, if she didn't take pains to look her best, she was certain she would have felt out of place in the almost oppressive opulence of the Great House.
After she had dressed for the day, her makeup was the first of the smaller details to attend to; cosmetics to soften the lines earned by years of work and care, to draw attention instead to her catlike eyes and sharp cheekbones. Then a silk scarf, sometimes wound artfully through a string of pearls around her neck. Often too, she chose a brooch to ornament her lapel. Many of the trinkets in her drawer were gifts from Elizabeth and Carolyn, more expensive and lovely than anything she would have bought for herself.
The last step in her toilette, however, was always the same. She would lift the lid from a small ceramic jewelry box, and take out its sole contents: a necklace chain from which hung a cross of polished gold, barely an inch in length.
She could never really bring herself to look at it. With haste she would tuck it deep into a pocket, and there it invariably remained hidden until sometime far too late in the night, when she returned to undress for bed.
Julia never wanted Barnabas Collins to know of this weapon of last resort that she carried. It was a holdover from the earliest days, when there had been so little trust between them; when the vampire had been something he no longer was, even if the curse remained. Since then a too-fleeting return to humanity had changed him, reawakening a warmth of spirit that he somehow still managed to cling to. She knew that he now wanted only to protect those he had once thought nothing of using and hurting… but she also knew his affliction was worse than it had ever been. Barnabas the man fought the monster inside him with all his strength, but he could not always win.
If he ever lost that battle in her presence, he would want her to stop him. She reminded herself of that each time she touched the little cross. He would even be grateful to her afterward, she was sure.
Yet the knowledge that she could not trust him enough to forsake this precaution would cause him pain—and that thought tore at Julia's heart. She could only pray that he never forced her hand, never let himself slip so far as to bare his fangs to another in front of her.
But then, she knew he wouldn't. Barnabas was careful to keep his sins away from her sight; either too wary of her reproach, or too ashamed of her pity. She was the one person who knew his secrets most intimately, yet in some ways, she was also the one he tried hardest to shield against their ugliness. Her regard and caring held that much meaning for him.
No, if only to preserve his own pride, he would never make Julia produce that cross in the defense of someone else. But there were other dark scenarios that insidiously played through her mind—perhaps for reasons that did not bear close scrutiny, if she was frighteningly honest with herself. If something ever drove Barnabas to lose himself completely, to falter even in his recognition of her and what she was to him…
Well.
The truth was that she didn't know who she was trying to fool anymore, because she knew herself all too well. She knew that if such a night ever came, and she found herself in Barnabas' grasp with his fangs gaping over her throat—
She could never bring herself to do what she knew she should. Her hand would not seek that cross in her pocket, nor her body tense in resistance to his strength. Her eyes would close in submission, and she would simply wait to feel the violation that so many others had fought with struggles and screams.
Perhaps she would be glad his full attention was finally hers. Perhaps she would experience a moment of twisted joy in the anticipation of becoming a part of him.
How corrupted she was, to feel within her a void so deep that nothing human could fill it.
The consequences would devastate Barnabas, and destroy all the parts of Julia's own being that she had always prided herself on. She knew that too, and she hated herself for the awareness that she would surrender anyway. It was a humiliating weakness, a flaw buried deep within the cool and rational persona she had cultivated since her youth; but maybe that persona itself was at the root of it. After a lifetime of denying her own womanhood, something had to give, and it gave in the only direction she knew. When she met the embodiment of the mystery she had long pursued as a doctor, perhaps it was inevitable that her fascination became a very different kind of obsession.
Barnabas had once told her that every inhuman creature possessed one vulnerability—but he didn't realize how true it could be of mere mortals too.
And for Julia, he was hers.
2020 Jordanna Morgan