Sorry that i've been so late with the updates lately. School's being a total ----- and now that i'm sick, it's turning ME into a -----. In other news, i've been feeling a sudden urge to work on one of my latest ideas for a plot...which would've been good news if it hadn't been for the fact that the plot's not even fully developed enough for me to start writing its chapters


Translations:

*S'il vous plait ne me frappez pas encore. – Please do not strike me again.

**Je meurs. – I die.

***Faux. Je vous prends avec moi. Je vous veux. – I take you with me. I want you.

**** Ange doux. – Soft angel.

2nd Act - Paris, hard ground.

I ran my fingers up his stomach and he gasped, beautiful with gray eyes. His lips begged me to kiss them so I kissed them, enthralled with his rapture at my simple ministrations.

Long neck, aristocratic neck, the most elegant kind, I sucked on him beneath his ear, at the jaw, digging my fingernails into his skin below the navel so he screamed and it turned then, from rapture into terror.

Forgive me that you really did think that I could save you.

He didn't push me away but I pushed him against the wall, pinning him, blushing at the oh wonderful, wonderful moment before the little snake bite that ends the life and quiets the struggle. I dug my nails deeper into his flesh; Dasius burst into tears.

When his knees gave way I gave way with him, letting him sink down to the floor, dying dying dying, a beautiful fifteen year old boy.

I slapped him. He whimpered, starting to see things. I straddled him with my full weight, two hands on the earth to the right and left of his head, looking into his eyes unseeing.

He didn't try to say anything to me.

I slapped him again, looking for the flush of blood in his face. There was none. I slapped him harder only because I wanted to slap him.

Occasionally, one stumbles upon fortune. I found Dasius at Bons Matins, house for lost children in Montmartre.

"S'il vous plait ne me frappez pas encore."*

I withheld my hand.

He was splendid, nearly infinitely.

"Where is my brother?"

"I have fallen on him already."

He was quiet at that, knowing full well what it meant to be the object of such intentions.

"Je meurs."**

"Faux," I insisted, "Je vous prends avec moi. Je vous veux."***

"I don't want to go."

"Be quiet," I said, slipping my hands beneath his back to prop him up, "We are going together."

He ran his fingers through my hair. We were lovers until we left the city.

***

"Can't you see that this is dangerous? She'll get us all killed."

"Don't tell us what to do, Dasius. It's nothing."

I petted Nicolas's blood matted hair. He chattered by my neck, full of a blood fury at the thought of Faya.

"I don't understand you. You're supposed to take care of us but you can't see that there is already suspicion?"

"I suspect that you are supposed to do as you are told," I bore my teeth at him, turning away, "Of course I can see it."

"You have to control her better. You have to-"

I wheeled around and backhanded him across the face, not hard enough to knock him over, hard enough to hurt.

"You have no right," I told him, "You have no right."

He made to storm out but stayed where he was, eyes downcast, fists closed.

Nicolas pulled on my hair gently.

***

The two of them were my little treasures, more so Nicky, not as argumentative, not as forceful, and not, ultimately, as loving. I had never done anything like it before, keeping anyone. They were younger; I felt responsible for them in a way I had never felt for what I suppose constitutes my brood.

In the past, lovers had come and gone, and I would bring them over in a passion or out of boredom, kill them just as fast out of the same impulses. It was not a game, but it resembled a game. Dasius and Nicolas were not a game to me. I didn't want something then. It was not motivated by a specific desire, having them. I wanted Dasius; but it became something else. I did not seek out a candidate for altering my life because it was not a pattern that I could give up in any real way. I had made no resolution to change it.

They were my little angels, my little protectors, at least for awhile, and I loved them, also for a while. Concerning Dasius, perhaps it was a cruel love. Perhaps it can be nothing else. Concerning Nicolas, I was simply amused by him.

Little brother, petit ange doux****, with his softly curling brown hair and big, begging eyes. He had a cruel caricature of a smile, five years old. I didn't think about it. I just did it, bringing him over. I just did it. I don't want to say that I felt anything. I don't want him to think that there was any ultimate reason at all. Anything I felt was insignificant. It was not a passionate move on my part towards a five year old to bring him over. It was just done. I just did it.

Nicolas got snarky as he got older, well spoken but not charming. As a child, he was only vicious and needy. I gave and gave and gave of myself willingly. I've got to say it didn't come down around our heads as quickly as I thought it would. Nicolas was not subtle but people see what they want to see. He was obvious like a peacock at a funeral. I didn't need Dasius to tell me that. One does not have a child walking into their apartment having bathed in the blood of their fellow man without realizing that time is short. I didn't know how to tell myself to leave.

Nicolas could just be so sweet. He needed a parent, and I wanted to give him that, as grotesque as it is. Don't misunderstand me; I didn't think about it. I never said 'I want to care for a child'. That would be ludicrous. What I had was a five year old hound of hell who wanted to cuddle in bed with me and I did it.

"You are too severe," he would say, licking his dry lips, in following years.

I do not think that it is a severe description. I do not think that he remembers what it was like, how I could not hold him for more than a few minutes, how he would go after children and their parents without any sort of advance notice, how he would even bite at me and his brother with those sharp little teeth and that steel trap of a jaw. We could not keep him in proper clothing because we could not keep them clean from day to day. He doesn't remember, because it was a short period in his long life and though still relatively horrible he is calculated now, much more refined in his decision making. The truth then was that there was hardly a mind behind it at all and I did not allow myself to be terrified. I am not like Dasius. I do not entertain notions that we should have drowned him. I did not imagine that he would improve but I did not imagine that I wanted to do without him. At least he was exciting.

Also, honestly, no matter what he has to say to the contrary, killing Nicolas would have broken Dasius's heart.

***

I shook him desperately. Nicolas's eyes were rolled up at the ceiling. I took him to bed. I curled around him and pushed my face into his blood logged hair while he dreamed bloody bloody dreams.

Dasius watched us sleep. Dasius stood by the wrought iron tangle of a footboard, a great iron fence of an end of a bed.

He was learning not to talk to me when I was taken with Nicky. It was all he could do to watch me be very lost. I can't apologize for it. I have no words.

He was sad all the time. He felt that he had lost his little brother, lost him, lost him in a way that is different than him being taken away by me. He understood then that I had not planned it. It did not shake his faith in me, looking at me for answers because he was so young and I was so very very old. Dasius had been there when Nicolas was born, or perhaps died. I would not allow myself into his heartache. I wanted no thought of it to enter into my space because I was obsessed with maintaining a self contained kind of torment. I could not have comforted him in that frame of mind. Long suffering, misguided lover was my melodramatic role then. I convinced myself that I needed it. I told myself that he was merely angsty and it drove me apart from him. As perfect for me as he was, I couldn't take the reasonable voice in my head.

So he learned not to talk at all if there were other people in the room, and instead would approach me when my defenses were rigidly up, so as not to touch a vulnerable part.

There were always times with Dasius when I would break apart and crawl into his bed. There have always been. He holds me with both hands open, lets me have him, loves me when I cannot love myself. It is not a secret that there are many things wrong between us. For me, it does not help matters that Leechtin herself seemed to desire Dasius for a love affair when she showed up years later. It does not foster warmth in me to have competition.