The crystal shattered into a million pieces, a loud and unforgivable noise rocking through the study, its simple atmosphere breaking along with it. There always seemed to be an orange haze against the mahogany creating strong shadows that stretched close to a maroon carpet, the glass littering wood and fabric.
Beca drew in a long breath, sitting on the corner of the desk. She was propped up, leg folded along half of the table- a glass filled with amber liquid rested halfway to her lips, ice solid and edged as it clinked. She didn't flinch, instead lifting a pointed eyebrow at her mother.
Blair was always known to have a short temper, one that would go off at the most inopportune times. It was almost as if her labored silence was worse than if she would yell. Beca had become used to the outbursts at a young age, always picking up the pieces and sweeping up the glass. This time, she kept her steady stance.
She raised her own glass to her lips, taking a long and stinging gulp of bourbon. Blair's chest heaving as she steadied herself on the large stone mantle. Her jaw was clenched, grey eyes filled with an indescribable anger. "How dare you question my intentions?" She hissed lowly, knowing her daughter could hear her.
"Your intentions are blurred." Beca swallowed back the bitter taste that coated her tongue. She watched her mother with purpose- the usually composed woman was beside herself. Mumbling under her breath as she ran her hands over the top of her pleated pants. Like she had been cut by the shards, and the blood that ran thick wouldn't just leave a residue. She healed, she was able to regenerate faster than a human. There was no need to worry.
The brunette grimaced, setting her own beverage aside. She had lost her craving, staring down at the sprinkled glass that pushed into the plush carpet.
"Do you forget yourself?" Blair said.
Beca raised a brow at this. Had she forgotten her place? Back when they had stronger heartbeats, it was Blair that she feared. Not her father, her father was a pushover, her father would bend to the woman's stare and cave in at the mere mention of discontent. Then she died.
Beca remembered her funeral. It had rained characteristically that day. The air was cold and the soft soil smelled musty and sharp. She had hugged her coat around her frame and stared at the blades of grass that bent under the will of freezing perspiration. She clung to Jesse, her fingers intertwined with his as they listened to the low psalms the priest repeated. It was no use, no one was listening. She remembered feeling guilty that day. Not because her mother had perished, but because of the relief she was met with when she did.
"I don't believe I have," her voice was steady, the sour taste of alcohol still lodged in her throat.
"You turned her."
"No, I saved her."
It almost hurt to say. She had saved Chloe, but she had also doomed her to a life of cold complexity that the young girl couldn't' quite understand just yet. Sure, immortality was shiny at first. It was invigorating and filled with power- but the novelty would wear off in a few centuries when her family grows old and her friends get start having grandchildren. Friends, she can no longer contact because no amount of moisturizer could cover up her unchanged looks.
"By blatantly disobeying me." She drew in a careful breath "what gives you the right?"
Beca couldn't stop the scoff that fell from her lips as simple as a child dropping their sweets in a grocery store. It was left covered in lint or whatever wasn't swept up from the day before. The candy was still there, sure, but it was impossible to recover, not without some type of disease attached and simmering.
"What gives me the right?" Beca stood, setting the glass down carefully on the mahogany table. It was imported, she liked it. There was glass under her feet that crunched as she walked so close to her mother, she could practically taste the blood of her last meal, smell the soil from something more. "You wouldn't be here if it weren't for me."
"I would have found a way."
"Right, and through who? Your little witchy pet Aurum? Because mother I hate to break it to you but she's near useless when it comes to resurrecting the dead." Beca swallowed, trying to even out her anger. "It took me nearly 130 years to get you back and you want to what? Bare your fangs and forget your control?"
Blair studied her. The woman had once brought great fear to Beca but now she looked frail in the fires shattered light. Her cheeks were sunken in and there was dirt under her nails that Beca had a hard time looking past. She swallowed loudly and rolled her shoulders back almost like her blouse didn't' fit correctly. It didn't.
She raised her hand, much like she did when Beca was young, preemptive to strike with an open palm. Beca grasped her wrist a low edge of a growl on her lips. "Chloe is untouched, do you understand me?" She squeezed, applying pressure "So is Jesse, and so am I."
Blair watched with widened grey eyes and Beca dropped the woman's hand and picked her glass back up from the table, tipping her head back and swallowing the alcohol in one fail swoop of the tongue. She walked away from the fire and the woman who had the power to control it, fingers trembling in a dark rush. "Clean up your mess, please."
Beca let the door slam behind her as she pressed her back against the cold mahogany, trying to catch her breath. Maybe it was the dangerous amount of alcohol in her system or the strange leverage of nearly a century on her mother but something pushed her to fight back- to warn her against hurting the newly turned, to protect Chloe Beale of all people.
The flyer had been a pumpkin orange, noticeable and ugly against the brown telephone poles and muddy brick walls that framed Barden. Most of them had left a neon stain behind as the rain and the soon fallen snow washed away the thought of a once prominent problem. Now an ugly orange flyer was blocking the view of her chemistry text.
She recognized that face, that simple and innocent expression that hadn't been done much justice with the schools' printer. It listed his height, and weight, and what he was last seen wearing. A black logo t-shirt that had soaked up the blood better than she expected.
Her throat tightened at the memory as she inhaled sharply and slammed the book shut so she wouldn't have to look at it anymore. It would loud enough to catch a few glares from students trying to focus on studying. Chloe's eyes met icy blue ones.
"Bree?"
The blonde looked hurt, ravished by her own emotion. Chloe hadn't quite learned how to pick up on heartbeats yet or smell emotion like Beca said she would eventually master, but she didn't' need her newfound abilities to see the hurt radiating from her friend. From her roommate.
"She said you weren't dangerous." She whispered harshly, eyes wet "Beca said you wouldn't' hurt anyone. But you did don't' you?"
Chloe was fast, the librarian glancing narrowing her stare as she abandoned her textbook and bag, standing with a swift edge. Aubrey wanted to fight against her, and she did for the most part, the smaller woman dragging her out of the glass-paned doors and into the nearest bathroom. It reeked of antiseptic and lemon sanitizer. "Get off me! You killed him!"
"Aubrey," Chloe tried to edge her away from fear, gripping her shoulders as she pressed the woman's back against the cold tile, her fingers gripping into fabric. "I need you to stop struggling, I didn't-"
"You did." Her voice was defeated and her words breathless as he chest heaved "It's all they could talk about in my psychology class. About how everyone seemed to forget about Alex. How he vanished in the middle of the night and you-"
Her throat tightened alarmingly as she studied the deep pain of emotion written on Chloe' expression. "It's fucking fuzzy but you killed him. You… you were covered in blood and Beca did something to me. I don't remember." She sobbed still in Chloe's arms as she sunk to the cold bathroom floor, the vampire moved with her. "I don't remember."
She had seen Aubrey like this once, only once.
Chloe had gone home for the holidays three years back, and so had Aubrey. She was an emergency contact and always had been, her phone ringing in the middle of the third Christmas movie. She had excused herself from home and driven in silence to the bar that had called her- the one that was three seconds away from phoning law enforcement.
Aubrey tearfully explained the departure of her father broken down to her on Christmas eve and the way everything hurt, everything. It felt like her blood had boiled and the alcohol put out the flame and if Aubrey Posen had any type of control or seminice it was gone because her whole world was gone. Chloe held her in that bar bathroom too.
"I don't think I can handle this, Chloe." Aubrey sniffed, having quieted as Chloe kept her distance, keeping one hand on the woman's knee to steady her but nothing more. She watched with sullen eyes and a quiet lipped expression. "Y-you're all I have here and you're dead."
"I'm not dead."
"Can you look me in the eyes and tell me that?" Aubrey sniffed "If all of you wasn't lost in that cemetery it was when you murdered a kid in cold blood."
She knew it was harsh, her words stinging like a whip to raw skin on her back. It would leave a gash and would sting to the touch, but it was nothing she didn't deserve. Chloe let out a long sigh and crossed her legs in front of her, facing Aubrey as her hands rested in her lap. They were quiet for a few moments, both listening to the slow drip of the facets.
"I'm never going to be the same person you helped drink out of the water fountain" She started quietly "Or the one you shoved Ryan Heady on the playground for." Aubrey blew out a breath of air at the memory and sniffed, dragging her hand against the base of her nose. "But that doesn't mean I'm gone, Aubrey. I'm not."
Aubrey didn't' say anything.
"I'm going to make mistakes, and some are going to be bigger than others. A lot bigger. But in truth? I don't know if I can do this either. Not without you."
