A one shot written for the Better in Texas Fiction Sweethearts - 29 Days of Love Contest.
Crowned the Winner and Queen of Love.
It is the story of Robert and Marianne.
Also Breathe the Free Air has been nominated in the Non-Cannon fic Award and The Bella/Other Coven Pairing categories in the Non-Canon Awards.
Thanks to whoever voted for me.
I hope you will all vote.
Enjoy xx
Whole
Stepping out of the field hospital ward she turned her face toward the sky. Closing her eyes she revelled in the brief moment of solitude and calm before the camp awoke. She was exhausted, not physically, she hadn't been physically tired for two hundred years but mentally - she was beat.
The sun rose slowly over the misty grey green world that surrounded her. She took a deep un-necessary breath of the crisp morning air and walked away from the tents and makeshift buildings and into the trees. The soft dawn light filtered through the green canopy making a mottled pattern on the ground. She needed a quiet moment to recover. She needed to allow her mind to rest.
She had just finished her double shift, all day assisting surgery and a night shift in the recovery ward of the field hospital she was stationed in. It was hard work, heart-breaking work at times but for the vampire it was worth it. She struggled with her thirst at times, she found the pain and suffering almost unbearable but for her the hardest thing to deal with was the fact that she could do so much more. She could work harder and longer than anyone else. She did double shifts, she volunteered for extra duties. She did not need to rest and yet time and again she was forced to pretend to sleep, to step aside in order to keep up appearances.
Why did she do this to herself? She often questioned the wisdom of her decision to be a war time nurse but she could not stop herself. She was called to it; it was a vocation, a desperate need to help. She wanted to help, not just the patients but her colleagues. She wanted to try and make things better for as many people as possible
She sometimes suspected she was born to be a nurse. She had grown up in field hospitals in France and Spain. Her father dragged her around Europe following battles in his role as a surgeon. Her mother died bringing her into the world and he refused to leave her in paid care. As soon as she was able to stomach the stench and the blood she was helping care for the wounded. She seemed to have an innate sense of their pain. She seemed to know instinctively how to help. Her father had commented many times that she would have made a good surgeon. But in those days women were not allowed to learn medicine.
In the year 1710 towards the end of the War of Spanish Succession things changes drastically. At nineteen years old she was a confident young woman who could handle rowdy soldiers and debonair officers alike. She was a striking looking girl with deep red hair and cerulean blue eyes. Her fair complexion stayed pale despite spending the majority of her life outdoors in the sun. She was tall, slender and had several admirers. Marianne knew that most only wanted her for sex, to be their mistress for a time. She might not be wealthy but she had self-respect. She was no camp follower or whore. One day she hoped to marry but until then she sent many an over amorous well-wisher off with a flea in his ear and a stinging cheek. Some had even been left rolling on the floor holding themselves and groaning in pain.
"One did not grow up around battles and soldiers to fail to learn a thing or two." She thought with a chuckle as she walked further into the woodland around the hospital lost in her reminiscences.
Looking back to that fateful day she wished she could cry. That was the day she met a vampire as she was tending the wounded he was praying on. She had seen a figure bending over the dying on the battle field. She screamed at him to get away from them. She tried to shoot him with the musket her father insisted she keep within reach at all times. But nothing affected him. He slowly rose and approached her, the smile on his face chilling. She vividly remembered the blood red eyes glowing in the fading winter light.
The vampire had bitten her but been disturbed when her father returned so he had whisked her away to finish his meal. However by the time he was able to continue feeling the change had begun, for some reason he allowed it to continue. Marianne hated her sire, a cruel vampire named Saul. He had given her only the barest of instructions as to vampire life. He seemed resentful of her presence and angry at her lack of interest in him as a partner. He abandoned her as soon as he could without breaking the law. Marianne never really understood why he didn't just kill her.
Very soon after she awoke it was discovered she had a gift. The flair she had of helping the sick transposed into a gift of feeling their pain. She could not affect the feelings of others but it would give her valuable insight into how they were hurt, where they were wounded and allowed her great empathy. Saul had at first tried to use her, manipulate her. He wanted her to obey him, to try and turn her gift into a weapon. But she could feel his deceit and refused to be used.
He had tried to insist she feed from humans and at first she tried it but very soon found herself crippled by her victim's pain and in danger of losing control. In sheer desperation she had grabbed a stray dog in the town they were passing through and found it sated her thirst without causing her pain. Saul was disgusted with her dietary choice and that seemed to be the final straw for him. So three months after she woke to the vampire life he left her alone without a backwards glance.
For the next two hundred years she wandered alone, fearful to mix with other vampires in case they tried to use her too. She had never been taught how to defend herself and was afraid she would be killed. Saul had told her vampires were vicious and would kill her or force her to serve them. She avoided her kind in order to protect herself but she was lonely.
Marianne followed the wars of the humans, staying on the side-lines, helping where she could. Meeting Florence Nightingale was a revelation for her, the woman became something of an idol to the lonely vampire. Florence encouraged her to concentrate on nursing to use her gift to help, she never questioned Marianne's need to stay indoors or ability to work long hours. It was during this time she mastered her thirst and her gift, finally learning to shut it off when necessary, and thereby found a measure of contentment in her existence.
Her following of wars had led her to her present location. Northern France, near the Somme valley tending the wounded that kept coming in from the battlefields. This war was the worst she had seen, the scale and ferocity with which the opposing sides tried to kill one another was staggering. She was tired of pain and death, exhausted by the constant struggle against her thirst and weary of the heavy burden of her loneliness. She had had enough.
"Perhaps it is time to finally end these struggles." She mused to herself as she moved uncaring of the direction.
"Could I end my own life?" Marianne did not feel she could. She knew she had to stop being a nurse though at least for a time. She just wondered what she would do with herself. Perhaps seeking out some of her own kind would be a better idea. Maybe they wouldn't try to use her, they might kill her though.
"Would that be so bad?" She wondered but shied away from that solution. She was not ready to end it all yet.
With her mind whirling is these varying directions Marianne practically stumbled across the burnt-out wreckage of a supply truck. Unthinking she ran to the vehicle to see if there were any injured men inside but all she found were the charred corpses of the driver and passenger. From the stench radiating from the back she surmised it was full of soldiers and steeled herself to check for survivors. There were the remains of twenty men inside, many burnt beyond recognition, the smell made her gag as she covered her nose with her hand to try and block it out. The futility of it, the senseless waste of these lives completely overwhelmed her. Falling to her knees she wept, she cried for the lives lost, for the knowledge they would not be the last and for the loneliness that was suddenly unbearable.
She didn't know what to do, so she just knelt in the mud and cried. She didn't want to leave the men there but she couldn't get them to the hospital without raising questions. Nor could she go for help, she could not explain how she had found them. She wasn't supposed to be here, this far from the camp. She could bury them but she might get caught by another passing truck. So she stayed put, in the mud, unshed tears in her golden eyes.
Something was niggling in the back of her mind. Her gift was trying to tell her something. Taking a deep, calming breath she stretched out with her senses and concentrated. There was something there, it was the same feeling she got from unconscious wounded in the hospital, a kind of intangible something, hard to define but definitely not the nothing she should feel from the dead surrounding her.
There was a survivor in there!
Without thinking she jumped up into the truck and began to search through the bodies. After a few moments she found him. He was lying under two others who had protected his upper body. He was breathing but his heart beat was weak. He was badly burned on his legs, she doubted they could be saved. Carrying him carefully out of the wreckage she sniffed carefully to try and ascertain if he was bleeding, she couldn't smell fresh blood but from the dark stain on his stomach she could see he was bleeding internally. This man was going to die in her arms.
"No!" She shouted and picking him up sprinted away from the site and into the trees. After a few seconds she realised she was not heading back toward the hospital but away from the war altogether yet still she continued, letting her feet lead the way.
After a while she heard his breathing turn to a rattle and stopped. Laying her precious cargo down gently she looked at the face of the man she was trying to save. He had blond hair, was tall and handsome. He was wearing an Australian insignia. His eyes fluttered as he briefly re-gained consciousness. His eyes were blue, the same shade as hers had been when she was human. He looked at her unseeing, before those blue eyes rolled and he passed out again. His heartbeat was weaker than before and his breathing was laboured, he must have punctured a lung when he was thrown from his seat.
Kneeling beside him she held his hand. He was dying, but she couldn't let that happen. Acting purely on instinct she sank her teeth into him neck and tried to force as much venom into him as possible. She listened carefully to his heartbeat and knew the moment her venom hit his heart. From then all she could do was talk quietly to him as he screamed in pain and fretfully hold his hand while praying she had done the right thing.
"What if he hates me like I hated Saul?" She questioned over and over in the days that followed. Marianne didn't think she could bare that. She was drawn to him, needed him, it was all encompassing and yet terrifying. If he rejected her it would cause her such pain she hardly dared contemplate it, but she would not allow herself to hope. She forced herself to be rational, realistic. All she could hope for was that they could be friends.
She could tell when he was reaching the end of his transformation. She knew he would need to feed straight away and knew that humans were the best food for him. With that in mind she captured a man and knocked him unconscious. She carried him back to her soon to be awake newborn and tried to shut her gift down, she didn't want to feel the rejection she felt sure was coming.
At first Robert was sure he was being burned alive. He remembered something hitting the truck he was travelling in. He remembered a sharp pain in his side and hitting his head. After that all he had were fleeting images and feelings. At first the sensation of heat, incredible heat as well as being weighed down, struggling to breathe, the appalling scent of burned flesh in his nostrils. Then he was flying through trees and very cold instead of hot, but with no feeling in his legs. Next he was lying down, the ground was cold, someone was holding his hand, he remembered the beautiful golden eyes and a sorrowful expression of an angel but then he was back in that burning wagon and he knew he was burning to death.
But death was slow to take him. He lingered in and out of consciousness, vaguely aware at some points of someone there, talking to him, offering comfort.
"Why didn't you put out the flames?" He screamed but the burning continued. Eventually it receded and he could feel his legs again, he could hear his heart galloping as though out of control. As he regained more feeling the burn around his heart increased until he was sure it has to be a charred cinder. He could hear his heart slow down then beat, once, twice, three times and stop.
At first all he could comprehend was the lack of pain. Then the lack of silence struck him. Somewhere close by was a beating heart and suddenly he was ravenous. Snapping his eyes toward the sound he leapt off the ground and shocked himself by landing beside the beating heart. Without a thought he sank his teeth into it and drank deeply. When he was done he looked down at the body in his hands and realised what he had done.
"Don't feel ashamed." Came a soft voice from the right. "It is natural. You have done nothing wrong."
He turned to search for the owner of the voice and saw the angel from his dreams.
"You are real?" he questioned, standing and walking towards her. He was in front of her before he had realised. Her golden eyes opened wide and fearful at his approach.
"Please don't hurt me." She begged. "I did what I had to, to save you."
"Hurt you?" he was confused, why would he ever hurt this woman. She was an angel, his angel.
"I could never hurt you." He whispered knowing it was the truth. He reached out to cup her cheek. "I will never let anyone hurt you."
Gazing into his eyes Marianne felt something she had never felt before. She opened her gift and felt the same coming from him. There was wonder and disbelief. But more than anything there was love, an all-encompassing, overwhelming love. She had found her other half and that was the feeling she had never felt before.
She felt whole.