A broken piece of stained glass burst to powder beneath the heel of Isabel's shoe.
She had tried to bypass the messy remains of the shattered vase, but her judgment was flawed. The floor was littered with crooked fragments extending far past anything she thought to prepare for. Their jagged edges made the entryway into Hugo's apartment appear cracked and splintered where before it had always seemed solid.
Isabel lifted the offending foot; taking in the splatter of rubble below it morosely.
Even with the motivation of collecting her belongings, convincing herself to come here had not been easy by any stretch of the imagination. The option to go out and simply buy replacement items for the things she left behind was more appealing than she would ever admit. But she was already the laughingstock of the nest for being outsmarted by a human. She certainly didn't need anymore humiliation to add to her shame, least of all as a result of her foolish entanglement with the perfidious lawyer.
So here she was, attempting to break the ties that bound her to Hugo Ayres as quickly as possible; trying to pretend the process was as painless and mundane to her as throwing out a soiled carton of milk that had gone bad before it was empty.
If only it could be that uncomplicated.
But the wreckage of the vase pricked at wounds which were too fresh to be ignored by someone possessing so much as an ounce of sensitivity. And the blinded lover was sensitive.
She found herself on her hands and knees, piling the larger pieces of green-tinted glass together out of the way of the entrance. There was no rhyme or reason to the action. Godric already told her what he'd decided to do with Hugo, and he was never coming home again.
Still, Isabel felt driven to erase the evidence of their last altercation. She'd been furious, and he might have deserved every bit of that fury, but looking back on it made her feel guilty.
She should not have hit him.
Yes, he hurt her. Yes, he took advantage of her trust. Yes, he betrayed her affection, and almost got Sookie killed along with himself. Yes, he did it all for completely selfish reasons. And, worst by far, because of him the Dallas vampires could have lost Godric.
Yes, yes, yes.
Nevertheless, none of those things gave her the right to lash out the way she did.
Once Isabel had all of the clearly visible shards pushed to the side, she began to sweep the floor for less obvious remnants of the vase. The side of her right hand skimmed the floor, brushing the scattered fragments into the palm of her left to be disposed of.
She pictured the trash bin that Hugo kept tucked away under the sink in his tiny kitchen. It was made of black plastic with a lid that was supposed to spring up whenever someone stepped on the pedal jutting out at the bottom. But the top snapped off sometime before Isabel met him, and the lid she saw in her mind's eye was held on by sporadically placed strips of metallic duct tape.
The blinded lover was jerked from the fantasy of the kitchen back to the reality of the doorway by a sudden, sharp sting. Isabel's wounded hand whipped up into the air reflexively; revealing what she already knew to be a chip of glass sliced into the side of her littlest finger.
She immediately dropped the fragments she had gathered in the palm of her other hand to pull the glass out before her finger healed itself around it. It would be twice as difficult to remove then, and cause a lot more pain than the measly cut was worth.
The translucent bits of vase sprinkled everywhere. Just like that, her work was nullified as if she'd done nothing at all.
Isabel successfully plucked the chip from her finger; staring at the trace amount of crimson on one of its' uneven edges while she sucked the mending gash into her mouth. Something about it angered her immensely.
She couldn't figure out what it was exactly. It had something to do with how the injury had occurred. She only began to clean up the glass because she felt guilty for treating Hugo badly. For no other reason than out of her own kindness was she doing this, and once again her misguided compassion brought her nothing but harm.
Isabel rose to her feet, and threw the tainted glass chip down with the rest as she charged into the apartment. The popping sound they made beneath her stride was abruptly very satisfying.
Without pausing by the bloodstained sofa, or even turning in the direction of the tiny kitchen, she headed straight for the bedroom.
Hugo insisted on keeping the door closed, and the room always had an aroma distinct from the rest of the place because of it. It wasn't an unpleasant scent. Hygiene wasn't a practice he struggled with. But it smelled of leather briefcases, and fresh paper, and the coffee/cinnamon roll breakfast combo he ate in bed first thing in the morning. And Isabel stopped breathing.
The bedspread was in uproar. The navy comforter was curled over on itself with the sheets oozing off the mattress on the left side. At the start of their relationship, Hugo's blankets had been largely consisting of deep gray shades and the occasional forest green. After dating her for a few months, his choices began to migrate towards lighter tones that would show the evidence of any blood exchanged there quite proudly.
It seemed a bit sadistic to her, and she'd told him as much. But he justified himself with explanations about how the stains represented their connection to each other; how they reminded him of her during the day, when he would inevitably wake up to find her gone, and she couldn't find it in her heart to argue with that.
She was a fool.
On the nightstand was a lamp with a rounded base. The shade was off center- tilted just barely too far to the left to be symmetrical. Beside it a tall, digital alarm clock was flashing the wrong time in ostentatious, red numbers. Hugo wouldn't have been able to read it any other way. As he'd demonstrated to her on multiple occasions, his eyesight was hopeless without contacts.
The blinded lover spotted the necklace she was looking for draped around the corner of the clock. It was one of her favorites; a choker of rubies interwoven together by a delicate web of yellow gold. It had been a gift from Stan, oddly enough.
She was surprised to see, however, that her choker was not the only ornament hanging from the clock, as it was the last time she saw it. Instead the makeshift hanger was balanced by a wristwatch that now coiled over the opposing side of the clock. It was one of Hugo's favorites; a watch with a wide wristband of black leather and a silver face that she'd accidentally come in contact with so many times, he stopped wearing it.
Isabel fingered the gems on her left-behind piece of jewelry tentatively, but, she realized as she eyed the wristwatch, she could not bring herself to take it from its perch. A still moment passed, and she turned to the closet in hopes of starting with something more detachable.
Her hopes were doused instantly at the sight of the open closet doors. Hugo's countless dress shirts poured out of them on an array of hangers as diverse as the shirts themselves were in color. The evening gown she wore on their sixth month anniversary, the pencil skirt he spilt wine on, the endless sets of lacy lingerie she'd purchased with him forefront in her mind… They were all tied inseparably to this place.
Ultimately, she could not bring herself to touch a single thing…
"I'm outta here."
Isabel was standing with her hands on her hips, watching Stan throw various possessions into a garbage bag for transportation. Godric's decree of peace towards the Fellowship had been the straw that broke the proverbial camels back, and now the cowboy was taking off in search of greener, more violent pastures.
"You can't just go without providing any sort of notification," she said exasperatedly.
"Watch me."
"We're under-"
He tossed a belt so it hit her in the shins, "I don't give a fuck what we're under."
"Fine," she snapped, nudging the belt away with the toe of her shoe, "Deal with the legal system however you like."
She spun around to see Godric exiting the conference room, probably having just finished squaring things away from his meeting with Powell. He heard Stan slam a pair of boots into his bag with excessive force, and looked to her in askance.
He's leaving, she mouthed to him, Again.
Her Sheriff closed his eyes for an abnormally long second before gradually making his way over to them.
"Stan," he said.
"Don't talk to me. I'm movin' out."
"I wish you wouldn't."
Stan growled, "I don't give a fuck what you wish!"
"Alright," Godric replied neutrally, and then he fell silent.
Isabel followed the ancient boy's lead, observing Stan's temper-tantrum packing without further comment. It took a matter of minutes for the painfully undisciplined show to grow stale. She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms unhappily about her midsection, glancing conspiratorially at Godric.
But he wasn't paying attention to either her or Stan.
His eyes were averted toward the door he had just come out of; gazing at it with some sense of weak anticipation, as if waiting for it to open. She would chalk it up to Powell still being inside, but she saw him leaving on her way in. Godric must have forgotten something else…or someone else.
Her thoughts traveled automatically to Eric.
In all the time she'd known Godric, Isabel had never met his child. It was pure coincidence that she even knew of his existence at all. The result of an offhanded suggestion she'd made to Godric once that siring a new vampire would help alleviate the languor which seemed to plague him more and more frequently.
"Why not create?" she had proposed, "Pass some of your knowledge off on another. You would be an excellent Maker, and through the eyes of someone so recently alive, the world would be rejuvenated."
Isabel's logic was heavily influenced by her own reasons for fraternizing with humanity. At the time, she'd just begun her relationship with the perfidious lawyer, and was basking in his zest for life. How little it took to excite him…how mystified he was by what she was, by what she could do…
Sometimes, when you lived on Mount Olympus, it was easy to forget you were a god.
Her Sheriff had responded with a slight smirk, the first she could remember seeing on his face in weeks.
"Thank you. But I have already forgone the path of the Maker."
She was surprised, and her expression communicated it. She hadn't seen or heard any mention of Godric's progeny until that moment. Was it possible the ancient boy's foray into procreation had been as disastrous as hers?
But then he said, "His name is Eric. He was living in Louisiana the last I heard. The Sheriff of Area Five. He owns a bar there, among other things."
Isabel was quiet for a short while. She tried to imagine him- this child of Godric that she'd never known existed.
"I would like to meet him," she decided.
The hint of a smirk returned to Godric's otherwise unanimated face, "I don't think you would."
The subject was not brought up again, and then Godric disappeared.
And she knew she had to contact him.
Provided the seemingly distant nature of their relationship, Isabel hadn't expected Eric to react very strongly to the news of his missing Maker. But she was wrong. He flew into Dallas with a telepath in tow, presuming to lead the rescue mission.
Whatever idea of Godric's child she'd been formulating in her head flew out the window the instant she laid eyes on Eric. Her Sheriff, as always, had been right. In hindsight, she wasn't entirely sure she didn't regret making Eric Northman's acquaintance. He certainly acted as though he regretted making hers.
But it was too late for regrets now.
Godric's focus shifted back to Stan then, drawing Isabel out of her reverie. She watched the cowboy bag a couple of knickknacks in a vastly cooler manner than he had been using before. It seemed to her that the ancient boy debated walking away for a moment; he appeared to lean outside of the scene in front of him, and his head tilted marginally to the right- as if to give them his cheek.
However, the moment died so quickly she could very well have just imagined it.
"Stan, you're needed here," he said in the next.
"Bullshit. I'm not needed for nothin'. You and you're pansy-ass peace can get on just fine without me. Waste of motherfuckin' fangs…"
"An order of peace does not make it a guarantee. Most everyone is as infuriated with the Fellowship of the Sun as you are. When the outbreaks begin, I will need you to smother them, and see to it that those involved are not tempted to disobey again."
Stan slowed his movements, holding one item suspended in the air as he turned to look at Godric. The enticement of battle looming on the horizon, and the promise of handing out punishment to anyone in the wrong, caught his interest and trapped it in an iron chokehold.
Isabel dropped her head to hide her smile. Of course Godric's words would have been absolutely honest somewhere else, and there was always the possibility of some deranged nitwit with an enlarged ego passing through, but the thought of someone disobeying him was mostly laughable. She had seen with her own eyes how deeply those under his jurisdiction respected him; how lost they were when he vanished. She herself knew with more certainty than ever that there was nothing she wouldn't do for him.
Luckily, Stan's respect for Godric only ran as deep as a puddle, and he was not one to acknowledge that someone within the confines of the universe may feel differently.
"You are the best I have militarily," Godric went on, taking advantage of the intrigue he'd ignited, "You don't hesitate to act. You are as ruthless as you are frightening. You are a vampire, Stan. And you see everything as a true vampire would. There is real value in that."
When Stan's pissed off pout split into a devilish grin, Isabel knew the ancient boy had him…
Isabel was hovering over the kitchen counter with a compact mirror in her right hand. She pressed a finger up underneath the bottom of both of her eyes, trying to clean up her face after what had been a long and taxing night. The lighting was good here, much better than most of the bathrooms.
As she pushed some loose strands of hair back from where they had escaped, her mirror captured the reflection of Godric (who had opted to come with her after things were squared away with Stan) on his way to the refrigerator. He swung it open, reached inside, and came away with a bottle of Tru Blood in his grasp.
A lot of the others in the nest turned their noses up at the sight of their Sheriff drinking synthetic, but it didn't bother Isabel. Diet was a personal choice, and if he didn't want to feed solely off human blood, then that didn't make him any less the leader he was.
It was rather hilarious, though, to watch him try to consume it without making a face.
Isabel drank quite a bit of Tru Blood herself when Hugo wasn't around, and it would never win an award for Best Taste from the American Vampire League. She could only wonder how much worse it must be for a vampire as old as Godric who had been thriving off the real thing for thousands of years. Of course his body would reject it.
Why did he continue to subject himself to it? Well, for the same reason he chose not to drain the Solider of the Sun, she guessed.
She listened to the twist of the cap, the soft plink as it released the mouth of the bottle, and waited for the sound of the microwave opening. But it never came.
Closing her compact, she cast her eyes behind her to find her Sheriff raising the cold blood to his lips.
"Godric," she said, "At least heat it before you..."
But he only threw the bottle back and filled his mouth with the chilly imitation of life. His cheeks swelled slightly with the liquid; his eyes squeezed shut in revulsion; his brow tugged as low over the crinkled lids as it could get. And then, with a nearly imperceptible swing of his arms, he made himself swallow.
Isabel watched him repeat this process three times, at which point he carried the bottle over to the sink with the clear intention of pouring the rest of it out.
"You should eat more than that. Just warm it up first. Did they give you anything while you were being held at the church?"
Godric turned the Tru Blood upside down over the drain. He stared at the burgundy fluid as it chugged in generous increments into the basin.
He did not answer her.
"Sheriff?" she questioned.
The ancient boy continued to hold the bottle above the drain, though the blood was no longer coming out. His eyes bore into the sink as if entranced. Even from her view of only the right side of his face, all of his features were pulled taut in concentration.
Isabel moved so that she stood behind him, and placed her hands on his shoulders.
"Godric," she whispered, moving her thumbs in a circular motion that had always soothed her son in her human life, "It's empty."
Finally, she felt him take in a breath.
"I know," he said, slowly rotating his wrist to right the bottle and then setting it aside.
After another minute, he turned around and she let her hands fall.
"You are a good friend to me, Isabel," he told her with a disquieting somberness, "I appreciate you."
"I have no intention of leaving, so your compliments are unnecessary. Not to mention undeserved. I should have known Hugo was working for the Fellowship. We were together so much of the time, how could I not have seen…or heard…? It doesn't make any sense. You should punish me for my ignorance."
Though she tried her best to stay withdrawn from the words, her voice had grown softer and softer as she spoke. Her throat tightened, and then she was fighting bloody tears.
"I am a fool," she admitted aloud with a broken voice.
Godric shook his head, "You are kind, and intelligent. With the right people surrounding you, you would make a fair Sheriff. And if anything ever happens to me-"
"Nothing is going to-"
"If anything ever happens to me, I want you to take my place."
The knot in Isabel's throat loosened, and suddenly it was extremely dry.
A/N: Credit for the title of this chapter and Isabel's 'title' in this story (The Blinded Lover) goes to DarkAngel620. Thank you so much for being so wonderfully insightful. BelleAngeli- thank you also for your awesome suggestions. I was truly touched when I got a response back from you guys. And thank you to everyone else who has reviewed this story. Feedback means the world to me.