12. Situations II

Keep and eye out for more updates… sorry about the gap. 3

1. Spoil

Delicate fingers tapping lightly against the decaying hair of an oaken cherub, he observes them, watches them bicker over blood, trust, and alliances as they have done for centuries in a state of immortal stagnation. He has the awareness they need committed to memory, but he will sit silent and invisible, an observer and presence stronger than any of them could ever imagine or detect. There is a burning rage beneath the paternal smile as he watches them from his little balcony for what seems like the millionth time; but, he reminds himself, all possibilities must be considered. He will not fail this time.

And Desmond listens to them, marveling at their ignorance; because they do not realize just how very incorruptible blood really is.

What his innumerable children fail to realize is that the blood can never be tempted away from what it already is – the true culprit is the heart.

2. Mood

The mountain has an ambience that is strangely difficult to defy; the rough stone walls and crack-riddled floors are ghostly by themselves; the echoing voices that travel down the tunnels mile after mile; the soft whispering of ancient breathes across the empty halls; these combine to create a terribly gothic atmosphere that is potent enough to send the animals that wander into the tunnels straight back out again. It is a heretical idea to even consider the idea of change in this den-of-lions. However, Kurda Smalht seems to have no trouble breaking the spartan mood; he laces his walls with delicately inked baby-blue lithographs and somehow manages to procure some decorative pillows to soften up the corners of his coffin. Gavner has come to regard this addition very warmly.

3. Pupil

When he was out of place and busy tripping over the hurdles set in his way - even when in his youth he had been too blind to notice and to feel anything but childish resentment – Larten had been there to set him right, and the boy-cum-man never really had the chance to thank him for it. Each push had been in the right direction, every word placed carefully onto the tip of his tongue, and never (never-never-never, the crafty old demon had told him with the shake of a finger) had the man taught him to regard the sufferings of others as less important than his own.

4. Addict

Darren is remarkably well adjusted, for all he has been through.

There was the initial shock of coming across a vampire, and watching his best friend try to join the ranks of the undead. He dealt with that fairly calmly, all things considered. He's almost been responsible for the death of the aforementioned individual, but had righted that wrong by behaving in another traumatic manner – namely, becoming a vampire himself. The list continues, from nearly cannibalizing his little sister's blood to attending his own funeral – but when Mr. Crepsley had refused to buy him a soda at the run down little gas station as they were leaving civilization in pursuit of the cirque, he felt it was not only his right but his duty to lapse into a fit of hysterical laughter.

5. Accident

The sobs of the bereavement do not settle well on the Steven's ears and he can feel shivers (he is still too inexperienced to look death in the face without misgivings) roll down the small of his back, so harsh and angry make him feel suddenly ill, and make him wonder if he can restrain himself for the remainder of the viewing. He supposes he can, so the schoolboy drags himself forward to pass the open casket – to catch a glimpse of his beloved Judas, and fuel his ambitions and his rage to an appropriate end.

Keeping his face stony face is not difficult; nor is shedding a tear for the sake of appearances, or quivering a bit around the knees. Mrs. Shan pulls him into a desperate hug as he passes (she smells of the house and a hint of lavender, and he distantly postulates her racking sobs are undoubtedly more legitimate than his own) and Steve indulges her. Face pressed against her shoulder in an embrace more intimate than he would have allowed his own mother, he fights the urge to spoil the moment with the laughter that he can feel pushing against the walls of his belly in an urgent wave of mirth because, for the first time ages he knows something they don't know.

6. Collection

"Beautiful…" comes the voice, hushed in his reverence for the delicate display balanced carefully on the uneven stone shelf above the coffin; and he reaches upward to stroke the polished, resin-stained wood that his lover has so painstakingly pressed together; but the walls shake and he looses his balance and he forces it over the edge with his excess strength; and the little box falls, and a hundred tiny wings flutter with the force of the updraft, ripping away from dried and mounted chitin abdomens, until there it a terrible, thought-shredding crash and the wood and glass and beauty and love all shatter into an eternity of pieces…

Gavner wakes like a frightened bird, trembling and helpless, soaked to the marrow in his own dream-induced sweat. Breathing in gasps he stares blindly into the darkness, reaching out to stop himself from falling back into the abyss; he almost yelps when he hears wood scrape on stone – but suddenly there is a soft hand clutching his own and another smoothing down his damp hair and caressing his face, whispering softly and comforting him out of the frantic terror the dream has brought him. It takes him not a moment to place the voice, and his heartbeat slows.

"…shhh, Gavie, you're just fine…"

And the light returns to his eyes, and he can see again.

"… settle down, it's alright…"

He looks up at the empty shelf and at the thin, welcome face beside his own.

"… I'll let nothing hurt you…"

But there are some assurances – though gracefully articulated from honeyed lips, dripping with honesty almost too innocent for words – he cannot seem to believe.

7. Promise

I will be forever at your side, they vow, but even as they stand together, hands clasping desperately tight in ceremonial unity beneath the glow of the harvest moon, and mouth the words are well aware that it is a promise they can will not keep. Larten is too stubborn, Arra is too proud, and they both know forever never lasts.

8. Acquaintance

The smiling lady ushers the boy and his father into the daycare, and then out through a little door in the back to show them where the children get their exercise. Little groups of boys and girls race across the woodchips and sand, and Darren watches them curiously as they tear in and out of the equipment – but his eye catches on a corner, where one little boy sits alone, watching the others with an unusual glimmer of maturity caught in the turn of his mouth and the gleam of his eyes. Darren feels a hand pull him up and into strong arms and loud, calm words smolder in his ear.

"You see that boy in the corner, Darren?" he asks. A nod. Dermot Shan sets his son down again and continues.

" Maybe you should go and play with him. He looks lonely."

The child's eyes grow to the size of picture frame (all the better to see you with, something silent whispers into his ears) and he stops walking, peeking around his father's leg at the distant child in an instinctual gesture of fear – but Dermot reaches down and pulls his slacks gently out of tiny, tightly clasping hands.

"But Daddy, he's –"

"Darren," he bends down to look his son in the eye, "There are some things in life that should be fair, and sometimes they aren't. This is something you can try to change."

9. Doomed

"So it's settled then. We'll put on our own production of Chicago. Now, to assign the roles…"

"Eh…?"

"Yes, Darren?"

"We haven't got enough girls."

"Didn't you study history in school? For the better part of history the roles of women have been filled by men – I sincerely doubt we'll have a problem finding actors."

"That's sort of gross… can you even picture any dancing around in drag without vomiting? Hairy legs and bulging calves and everything?"

"…"

"Kurda?"

"… you know, perhaps you're right."

10. Murdered

He rounds the corner and stops dead; and he is not the only one.

The destruction of the ribcage is enough to make him retch, with slivers of bone bending out from the glaring cavity in the chest and scattered in mounds all across the concrete floor; eyes are wide and staring, like twin marbles soaked in – oh, what is that odor? – blood. No mercy… and without the old man that was supposed to teach him (and, he notes with a sniff of irony, protect him), Steve knows he is dead. But he will not die like a helpless animal, so he lets the muscles in his shoulders sag and forces his breathing to hitch in little cloying gasps; and when he hears a sound close behind him he wheels with a sudden fury and lashes out with his knife –

and a hand catches his wrist like a steel trap, and he can feel the calloused palm grating against his own.

Then there is laughter – but this laughter is warm, not cruel or cold or patronizing – and an amused grin and a twist of the wrist that forces him to drop the dagger. The beast of a man releases his charge, picking up the dropped knife with practiced care and holding it out to him with a confidence the young man would never have expected. It is this casual air of power that finally finishes him, and forces him to listen when the man finally asks, "Who are you?"

11. Bottom

When she came to find him in the massive hall with her face flushed and hair rigorously disheveled, Larten was certain that this could only lead to trouble. The balding man did his very best to shrink, to slip into the shadow of his mug of wine – but a path seemed to materialize before the coming storm that was Arra and he cringes as her eyes cut into his own. Moving like lightning her lips curl back in a scowl and, as she nears, her hands slam violently onto the table while she growls low in her throat. Words come more lightly, in little hisses and spats like the breaths of a snake, laced with a similar amount of venom.

"Where. are. they."

It doesn't register with him for the first few moments who she is after, and why she has come to him and for whom she is looking – but it hits him like a slap in the face in moments.

"Darren, I suppose?"

"Yes."

Her fingernails are carving delicate, arching rifts in the oaken wood of the tabletop.

"I'm not sure…" he admits, face creasing as he considers where the boy might be and whether or not he should pass on such sensitive information to Arra while she is so violently angry, but – ah ha!

He shoots a hand down and his nails catch on flesh and cloth. Larten yanks his catch upwards, dragging a violently struggling Darren from his hiding place. The boy stills suddenly and shoots him an icy look, frowning in disapproval and looking thoroughly trounced and dejected. The older vampire stands up and guides his apprentice around the end of the table towards. There is silence for a moment during which Arra is stalk still; then she tilts he head, touches a finger to her left cheek, and gives her former partner a rather encouraging look before she sweetly inquires,

"What are your feelings on corporeal punishment, Larten?"