It was raining outside, and Mir still hadn't returned. Erin had been waiting since early morning to hear from him, to see him return, heavy with unshed tears, ready to cry in her arms. Yet the sun rose behind grey clouds, and he still hadn't returned. The weather blurred the windows, obscuring her view of the courtyard. She knew Cheyenne would not let slip her involvement. Loyalty went beyond self-preservation. Loyalty went beyond everything. Loyalty even overruled free will.
She almost felt guilty. Not for abusing her sire-permissions, not for planning to manipulate him, not even for her constant and inevitable betrayals but the fact she gave in. She let her heart win, the same heart that had sworn off the man she now craved.
It occurred to her that she shouldn't harbour feelings for a man who betrayed her, killed her and turned her into a monster. Her heart always picked wrong anyway.
Despite the very sensible internal argument she was having with herself, Erin's eyes drifted to the window again. Through continuous, angry streams of rain she searched for a slim figure, stiff with hurt, in need of his precious Erin.
Eventually she stopped looking and just listened to the furious patter on the window. What if he never returned? What if Cheyenne hit a nerve and he just left? What if he left her alone? Acute wind rattled the glass pane that she'd been gazing through and Erin realised her mood was affecting the weather.
Maybe Mir was the reason it was raining.
After sitting at the windowsill too long to be acceptable Erin left her perch to search for food. It was just as she was raiding the stash that Ingrid kept in the lobby that he returned. She knew it by the abrupt change in weather.
What had been just a light but constant shower transformed into a high-velocity downpour complete with bouts of thunder and lightning. The sky darkened further, to the point that it seemed to be night, though Erin knew it was only late morning.
She flung the doors to the school open and he looked at her. His hair was slicked to his forehead, his skin blue in the light and his eyes bloodshot and rimmed with red. He didn't move when she darted out into the storm and he didn't ask when she pulled him into her arms. Perhaps he knew she could feel his pain.
His body was taut. Erin pulled back to look at his face. "It's okay," She told him. She could see the mask slowly cracking, intense emotion hiding behind an impassive expression. "It's okay." Her hands wrapped around his shoulders and he slumped in her arms.
The rain continued around them, droplets almost as cold as the vampires themselves, streaming down their skin and through their clothes and Erin was quickly as soaked as Mir. Electricity burned through her veins, deep feeling swelling in her stomach, all because of the crumbling man in her arms.
He tightened their embrace, burying his head in her collar. The energy surging through her intensified.
The rain worsened and Mir's hands curled around the lapels of her jacket. He pulled his head up to look at her and for a second, Erin thought the ocean in his eyes might overwhelm her.
"It's okay." She said again.
Mir released Erin from his iron embrace and looked deeply into her. The cold droplets on his face were not from the rain. He was beautiful in his rawness, completely open and completely vulnerable, like glass.
"I killed her." The words were unbidden and Mir frowned as if he wasn't sure why he said it. Erin was taken aback but not unduly shocked; she'd seen Mir's temper.
She nodded but remained silent, allowing him to speak if he wanted to.
"I killed her," His eyes saw right through her and Erin wondered if he was talking more to himself than her. "And I think it was because she figured it out."
"What did she figure out?" She was curious – not because she thought Cheyenne had discovered anything more than what she already knew – doubtful, loyalty had quashed the girl's brains to nothing but Mir obviously believed in whatever had been said. It was probably the thing that had made him kill her.
He killed Cheyenne. The thought was dangerous and it tickled her with a cocktail of fear and arousal. The volatility and rage was something that drew her in, possibly because it was a trait of her own.
Mir no longer looked dazed. He looked Erin straight in the eyes, glacial sapphire freezing her in place, and spoke. "She figured out that I'm not Mir anymore."
She stiffened immediately and Mir wondered if had been wrong to confess his true nature to her. After all, she had been a large part of the events that had landed him in this state but Mir found, like with most things, that he didn't care.
Her green eyes and ashy face were unreadable but she projected her emotions like a beacon. Shock, confusion, fear and prickling underneath it all, deep-seated rage. "What-" She blurted. "You're not- you're what?"
Her hands clenched around the dripping fabric of his shirt. "Mir. Tell me what is going on."
This was wrong. Mir took a step back and shook his head. This is what Vlad would say! And he wasn't Vlad – he was Mir and he wasn't going to spill all his fears because of something stupid that Chey had said. He closed his eyes and breathed for a moment – ignoring Erin's nails digging into his arm. When his eyes reopened they were cold and calculating, Mir's eyes – no – his eyes.
"Forget it – never mind – I've got to go," He muttered. Erin's face turned from shock to rage and her eyes narrowed.
"You don't get to just drop this on me and leave!"
Disentangling himself from her grip he started to dart towards the door. "Erin – I can't explain this right now," He couldn't share this with Erin; her loyalty was a revolving door!
He made it three paces before Erin was yelling again.
"You stop right there Mir! And you give me a fucking explanation for this shit!" She followed him across the court, halting once she'd wrapped a hand around his wrist. "You can't be honest with me and change your mind half way through!"
Mir's ability to compartmentalise definitely didn't come from Vlad. With a moment of concentration all the compromising emotions had been buried and Mir allowed the same rage that Erin was swelling with to fill him. "Change my mind half way through – like you do?" The female vampire reared back at his sudden snarl. "I don't think I can be honest with you!"
"What are you talking about?" Thrown back at him, her words plucked a furious string that had recently become taut. Mir's lip curled.
"Let's face it Erin – you're a traitor by nature." He laughed nastily and watched horror ripple across her features. Just the look on her face made him feel guilty but he locked that away. He was too far into the anger and hurt. "Became a slayer, betrayed the slayers – became a vampire, betrayed the vampires. How can I trust you? Betrayal is the only thing I can trust you to do."
Mir had a tendency to lie – best of all, to himself. And when he said that he didn't care about the part Erin had played in his downfall…. he'd been lying. Now, the hurt surged through him in a tidal wave and the look of distress she sported only exacerbated his own pain.
He wrenched his arm free and Erin stumbled back. She stumbled back, back into the rain with her eyes wide and her mouth open in a surprised 'o' shape. Mir didn't stick around to see the fallout of his harsh words. He slipped in the door of the school without a glance behind him and speed to the basement level of the Dracula quarters.
The dusty corridor to the blood cellar was lined with cobwebs. Mir shivered at the deja vu. It was strange – he'd walked this hall before – he knew he had! Vlad's memories were proof. Yet his body held no memory of this place.
His mind had no doubt that he'd been here before. He remembered fighting, he remembered being trapped, he remembered panic and pain as he awaited his own execution and most of all, he remembered running. He'd run from this place, even memoryless and bleeding profusely from bullet wounds he'd kept running.
It was strange to be back here. Mir hadn't just been born on the drive with Jonno. Mir had been born in a cellar, waiting for death, betrayed by every one he'd ever known. Without realising it the vampire had stopped. He glided his fingers across the wall, sliding onto the cracks. There was no reason to stop and do this but he was. Dawdling.
His hand shuddered, inches from the handle.
Behind that cellar door was the place where Vlad had fallen to pieces.
The rusty brass creaked under his fingers.
Behind that cellar door was the place where Vlad had sat in the ruins of his trust.
The heavy door scraped the basement floor as it grated open.
Behind that cellar door was… Ingrid?
The vampire clutched a vintage between pale fingers and was sat on the floor, leaning against an empty rack. She looked up at him through resigned eyes when the door opened and dropped her gaze again.
"Go away," Was all she said. Mir didn't leave.
He flopped down next to her. "I was kind of hoping to do the whole introspective thing alone but I guess you can be here." Her face spoke volumes, each volume a very obvious variation of fuck off but she still let him rescue the bottle from her crimson nails.
"You finally come to kill me?"
Mir's eyes rolled over to look at her. She was deadly serious. Her eyes, hard like steel with a touch of blue were flecked with disappointment and a lifelong loneliness that he couldn't believe he was seeing for the first time. Ingrid was a good actress but Mir couldn't believe that Vlad had never spotted it. Perhaps he had ignored it and perhaps only now he understood it.
"Honestly," He took a swig of the blood, "I didn't know you were here." As relaxed as he looked, Mir didn't feel quite at ease around Ingrid, even when she was defeated, like this; Ingrid was too devious to ever completely lose and she was too strong to ever be broken. "I came here to think."
"Hmph. You've never come here before. You always go to the roof."
In his time back at the school Mir had never had the slightest inclination to go to the roof. Though it was a place of thought and isolation that stuck out in his memories from Vlad, it was also representative of a person that he was not. Vlad went on the roof to escape the shadows – Mir had no qualms living in the dark.
"I don't know who I am anymore." He said honestly. It was ironic really – he had bitten Erin's head off as she was dishonest yet he confessed to Ingrid the truth. At least his sister was consistent. He never knew if Erin would turn on him, with Ingrid it was a matter of time.
Maybe Cheyenne was wrong. Maybe he wasn't Vlad. Maybe he was Mir.
The thought of her sent a fresh stab of pain through his system. Cheyenne. The person who'd taken in an amnesiac vampire and loved him. Dead. At his own hand.
Tinged with guilt, the ache in his chest coiled into a knot and it was a startling realisation for Mir that the pain wasn't all Vlad's.
The guilt – Vlad, but the grief, the craving for Cheyenne to be back at his side… That was all the old Mir. The Mir that he was, was somewhere in the middle, an unstable mixing pot of conflicting traits and personality. Two different people at the same time.
Maybe he was neither.
He looked over at Ingrid. Like him she was no longer speaking, watching the floor as if it held the answers to whatever problem was in her head. Then she spotted his gaze.
"Give me that." The bottle was snatched from his hands. Ingrid drank deeply. "Whoever you are, you're not my brother. Vlad wouldn't touch this stuff if his life depended on it." Oh yes he would. Mir recalled the memory of his escape from the school, starting with drinking himself to full strength. "I don't know if I like who you are now." Apparently the honesty bug hadn't infected just him. "Or if I am glad that my brother isn't breakable anymore."
Thoughts of Erin and Cheyenne flashed behind his eyes. Jonno's bloody, bruised profile, still not broken enough to make up for what he'd done to Mir. Russ. The Count. Snake. All of them, people who'd found a way to hurt him.
His eyes were pulled to her face. The look that he sported wasn't closed, it was guarded but within the icy blue there was hints of honesty. Brother and sister finally on the same page. Both betrayed and indescribably alone. So he gave in. It was a display of weakness, a titbit of information that proved Mir wasn't as indomitable as he seemed and the perfect tool for Ingrid to use against him but Mir was too sick of the lies to care. He stared straight ahead, away from her and at the various shelves of blood. He looked, without really looking, and said, "I'm not unbreakable."