Roleplay City
Infusco => DOMICILES => INFUSCO: Enter The Shadows => Awelfor Manor => Topic started by: Saiketsu on December 12, 2019, 03:15:42 AM
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Reserved for Cedar
The black Cadillac Escalade sped through the city at a fatalist speed that, at any other time of the day, would have been the cause of several deaths. He flew as if nothing could hold him back from reaching the ocean, stopping only to pick up three packs of cigarettes that he intended to finish before the end of the night. His music was loud enough to drown out the voices in his head that it all just felt like static. He wasn't present anymore and he felt as if he were watching a movie of his actions rather than actually performing them. No attachment to a former self.
He knew the way by heart by now and despite the familiarity, Judas remained quiet in his head, the only part of him that was. He had been used up for the night and now rested, hopefully for the last time. Like a child put to bed. There was no attempt made to stop his actions and for once Nikolai and Judas understood the same thing and agreed on what needed to be done.
Ninety-seven years was long enough for anyone to live. He had always known that it was coming sooner rather than later, the boredom with time and repetitive behaviors progressing towards an end he himself had always said he'd do. The last sunrise he'd ever see.
Nikolai smoked as he drove, unconcerned with the fumes that built in the car and the tar it deposited in his lungs. Somewhere Laurent was still laughing behind the leeches that invaded him. Only a few more hours of the madness and control. He had waited for almost a century; he could waited a little more.
The pull towards Mitchelletto on the outside of the city was strong in his chest, unmanipulated now, but ever present now that his sire was close enough to feel. It put leadened weight into his foot that pressed the accelerator to the floor of the car as he steered the SUV towards Awelfor Manor. A weight began to settle in the pit of his stomach and he begin to feel giddy, laughing over the drums throbbing bass in the car. Soon, love.
But as he pulled into the driveway, everything inside of him slipped into another kind of chaotic mess.
The other Black Escalade was in the driveway in front of the house.
Nikolai pulled up behind it with apprehension gripping his gut and something else entirely filling his thoughts.
Her.
Perhaps. Maybe.
Laurent's words flickered through his head as Nikolai stopped the car and cautiously approached the door that he knew so well. If he had a working heart, it would have been pounding in his chest or caught in his throat.
Closing his eyes, he inhaled and groaned at the presence of a scent that he was too familiar with.
It was Her.
He opened himself and felt her heaviness, that blackened presence that he lov--
But it was different now, something changed. He didn't wait to be let into the house but opened the door to the foyer himself, searching through the house for Her room by room just like he had two years ago on the first night She was gone. He didn't have to go far, Her image on the deck walking towards him.
Nikolai Armani froze where he was.
-
After hours spent in deep meditation, the dream memories mercifully faded into ghostly tendrils, though they left traces of melancholy in their wake. With the sunrise approaching, she left the ocean with reluctance and made her way back to the manor. Navy blouse and dark-wash jeans, waterlogged and spotted with sand, clung to her skin with unpleasantness that barely penetrated her senses. The surf pulled at her every step and she nearly heeded their call for a final time, sinking into the waves, going out as far as she desired and-
down down down
reaching clawing
lungs filled with salt
Not tonight - perhaps tomorrow.
Her clove cigarettes were right where she'd left them on the deck. One went delicately between her lips, fingers moving on their own accord to light it. Bare damp feet padded across the wood as she leaned over the railing, smoke curling into the sky from her nose with a slow exhale.
She dreaded sleep, had half the mind to avoid it and half the mind to see how close to sunrise she could dare to see.
The sound of an approaching vehicle was hardly an event, it was likely to be one of her hired people come to care for the house. It wasn't Tuesday, though, so they were early. Unless she'd rescheduled? The occasional thing slipped her memory since her return, and she was disinterested in investigating how she'd forgotten trivial matters like a rescheduled housecleaning.
Her mind turned back toward the ocean and the smoke in her mouth, paying little attention to the sound of the car's engine stopping. It wasn't until the door opened and closed that the small hairs standing straight at the back of her neck demanded her attention. Tension curled in her gut - when would these haunting feelings cease? The fingers that held the clove cigarette quivered gently, drawing her attention to the glowing tip.
Ridiculous. It was just the housekeeper.
When the housekeeper did not knock on the door as expected, an inexplicable flutter of fear went through her chest. In the small moment while crushing the cigarette into the ashtray, the need to fly back toward the ocean overcame her with such a force that nearly sent her stumbling forward. With a frown and all of her effort placed in quelling this ridiculous flight response, she turned toward the glass door to glare at the presumptuous housekeeper.
But there was a man in her house.
Anger drove her toward the door - how dare an intruder, practically a fledge, enter her home? The glass door slid open with her mental force and she stepped inside toward him.
With an unwavering voice, she addressed the trespasser. "Who are you - get out of my house!" As soon as she finished speaking, the desire to run increased tenfold and she involuntarily flinched against it. She did not notice the slight tremor in her hands - too focused on ignoring the terror gripping her chest.
Why was he so familiar?
-
The urge to obey came unwillingly and he almost obeyed out of vampiric pressure - he had forgotten how old She was, how She could manipulate those younger, weaker, less talented with mind games... But Nikolai stayed, his feet rooted to the floor at the sight of Her and he didn't register what She had said.
Is it actually Her?
She was soaked, water slicking the soft fabric of Her blouse to Her ivory skin, Her jeans suctioned to Her legs. His eyes had never seen the like, but he couldn't fully trust his eyes. Not after sleeping next to Her ghost for nearly two years. His mind liked to aid the demon in playing sick games on him.
An illusion. She had to be just another ghost.
Sonya - the real Sonya - was lost to him. All that mattered was the rising sun.
Nikolai eyed Her suspiciously, still unsure despite his inner narrative if She were really there, standing in front of him, telling him to...
"Get out?" His face contorted in confusion. It was the first time they had seen each other and She wanted him gone already? The idea was ridiculous. The nights he spent at the beach waiting for Her, looking for Her, thinking about Her and how it all hit the fan when She left him...
"No." He asserted, a tentative anger filling him and making his hands shake. Questions raged in him, questions he had waited for years for answers to, questions that clarified what all of this was and was supposed to mean. They filled his chest with a bloated rage that choked him up, filling his face with fire.
"Fuck you! Where were you?" His voice was low and close to a snarl and it pulled on a deep ache in his chest that had cost him everything he had ever known to acknowledge in Her absence. He was speaking to a spectre of the woman who caused within him all this grief and he wanted - needed - answers. Especially if She was, in fact, real.
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At his words, a flicker of recognition appeared to flash through her face before settling on a look of shock. No? What fledge in their right mind would refuse the command of an ancient? Where was the self-preservation? Did he actually know her? Or was this some raving lunatic?
Still, there was that decade gap in her memory - things unaccounted for. Was he one of them?
The déjà vu familiarity crept back into her awareness, that feeling clinging to the back of her neck like sweat. Where were you? Something in her chest dropped heavy into her gut. She searched her mind for his face, fruitlessly drawing blank. That expression on his face further unsettled her.
Clenched, trembling fists she took another step forward.
"I don't know who the fuck you are," her low voice spoken like a warning, "Get - out - of - my - house."
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The hairs on the back of his neck prickled as the room darkened around them with Her warning, but he held his ground, too thankful and stubborn that he remembered how in Her presence even after so long.
No, it was the look in her eyes and the words from Her mouth that threw him off balance, made him pause in his attack on her, the anger that had built within him hitting a brick wall of confusion. Nikolai blinked at Her and something in his chest clenched tightly as if he were holding his breath.
How could she not know who he was? Was this a game? He searched his own recollections of their years together, a trickle of panic creeping into him when some of his own time was spotty and She took a step closer to him. He hesitated, not knowing what to do, what to say.
"Sonya..." Something was wrong and he didn't know where or what it was. Did she really not remember him? An unfamiliar feeling, not unlike fear, passed through him and he just looked at the water that dripped from her hair onto the floor. He found her bare feet unnervingly sandy. Had she just emerged from the ocean now? That was impossible. Hadn't Laurent said she had been spotted in the city? He wanted to reach out to her and take her face in his hands, to embrace her, to shake her into remembering everything. He wanted to kiss her again, to feel her hard skin against the palm of his hand.
"Do you... not... remember me?" Nikolai looked at the ancient with eyes hardened by habit, pained with the absence of him in her mind. The urge to turn away from her was suddenly upon him, alarms in his head blaring, the shadows cackling in low breaths beneath his hearing. He could simply return to his car and find four more junkies to feed from before the sun found him abandoned and strung out, covered in blood on some rooftop.
-
She could see herself rushing at him, sharp nails shooting out to grip his throat in her grasp, pushing him backwards out the door -
Through the wall in the upstairs bedroom -
the one you
are avoiding
haven't gone in
since you got back.
Opening eyes she hadn't realized she'd squeezed shut, her glare lacked the same conviction. Something unraveling slowly against the fray. The sound of her name on his tongue -
No. No, no, NO
She pushed the fire back into her eyes with partial success, wavering when her eyes met his. Unshakable familiarity - she was nearly certain those were the eyes she'd seen in her dream. Impossible. Instead of answering or challenging him, she turned fast on her heel and bolted back out the sliding door.
Sunrise be damned.
-
Her wave of panic hit him with a frantic mental cry that pulsed through his head like a strike of lightning. "No!" He shouted after her - once he realized she moved - watching frantically as her figure was on the beach, suddenly wading calf deep into the rough waters of the ocean that she must have just come out of. With all the speed that immortality had given him, he rushed after her, throwing himself out the glass slider and down the deck, stumbling briefly over the sand until he had her forearm in his grasp and his own calves in the water next to her.
"Sonya, please!"
Please? Please what?
His voice was a pathetic mixture of fear and need, the swell in his chest at her escape allowing such a pitiful display of emotion that Judas would have been ashamed of.
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Overwhelmingly incomprehensible - what was the point of this? Why couldn't she go back and force him off of her property? Her every muscle pushed her toward the shore, with an eagerness that suggested an inescapable inevitability. No backward glances. Unable to process decisions through the whirlwind of her mind, she was in the water before she realized what was happening. Calling out above it all came a warning -
he must not undo what was left incomplete
But to what end? He was already at her side before she could go further. His name, there was a name there in her mind behind a slowly lifting fog and she squeezed her eyes shut against it, shaking her head desperately from side to side as if the gesture could make it stop. Easily freed from his hand with a single pull, she took a single step forward before stopping.
Each wave that pushed against her eroded the tenuous wall surrounding a fistful of memories. Her shoulders dropped in defeat, but the tension warring with the unraveling in her mind refused to leave.
"What are you doing here?" Her words were spoken barely above the sound of the sea. You're ruining everything.
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He was more surprised by the solidness of her flesh, physical proof that she was real, than he was by her reaction to him, more or less expecting her to wrench free from his grip. His heart jumped into his throat.
She was real.
Desperate for more proof of her presence, Nikolai reached out again to re-secure himself as she took a step away from him, stopping only when she did as well, afraid to finalize a touch upon her skin - for fear of misremembering the moment previous. He watched as the turmoil came over her expression, unaware of what was happening within her. Those same impulses - to demand her attention, to shake her into remembering, to take her into an embrace and never let her go - ached within him as he watched her.
But her quiet words sent a thrill through him. She spoke as if she knew him once again, her irritation both confusing and painful. Did she remember him after all? had she not expected him to come back? To not go looking for her when she had disappeared? Did she know that she had disappeared? The wind howled and the sea rumbled, pushing at him. Laurent's shadows whispered in his ears and sirens blared. But for once Judas was silent and Nikolai could think.
He had no words for her and he couldn't have ever predicted her question. His emerald eyes lingered on her shoulder before following the length of her arm down to her fingers, as if her crafted hands held some kind of answer for him. Why was he here? There were plenty of places to die in the city, were sunset would have found him and reduced him to ash just like anywhere else. Why had he felt pulled to here?
He knew the answer, but still found it difficult to admit it to himself, let alone to her. There were words in his head he had never uttered aloud to anyone, words that had turned Judas against him. His gaze lingered on her fingertips as the wind blew droplets of water from them sideways with its vehemence. He could remember the last time he had felt those fingers on his tattoos, tracing lines over his art like he had done to her canvas years before in the first days they had met. It was funny to him how such things circled back around.
Nikolai smirked something bittersweet and drew a deep dragging breath into his lungs before answering, while he stroked the back of her arm with the back of his finger, drawing his hand upwards against her cold, wet skin. It didn't matter, after all. "I came to watch the sun rise."
-
Her arm wrenched away from his touch, her head turning sharply toward him and her glare finding his eyes with a spark of fury. What did she care that a fledge sought the sun? The churning in her chest fought the transparent thought, uncertainty persisting regardless.
She knew him. He meant something. Once.
Thoughts struggled upstream in her consciousness, pushing past hastily laid mental commands. Panic curled anew in her throat until words made their way out of her mouth.
"You're not supposed to be here," she hissed, taking a backward step toward the ocean. Her face revealed that the assertion surprised her, as though another spoke from her lips.
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Her comment pointed at something he already knew but he ached nonetheless as he was spurned. He dropped his hand away from her, feeling the incredible weight of her glare like a critique. Their eyes met and he watched the confliction in her expression and didn't understand it.
Of course he would be spurned. What had he been to her anyway? A lover? A distraction? A decent fuck?
A manic, internal search for a critical understanding of what he was - what was he doing there? - came over him in self-conscious flashes of their time spent together:
The Massacre of South Brockton, with blood clinging to her hands, her hair in mats.
Her insistent little Italian brat, the one who liked to have his fingers on keys and in pies.
Firecrackers snapping as she pulled his lip rings out of his flesh.
The impact of the ground after he flew out the wall of the second-floor bedroom.
The one where he woke up to the smell of her hair on his chest.
Heavily thoughtful, but silent circles traced on the surface of his skin, nails pressed into her flesh until blood oozed.
The Look in her eyes that tore his chest open as their bodies connected.
All-consuming, aching.
Burning.
The Look they never spoke of.
How could he speak of such things now when she denied their very existence in the first place? Did they ever exist, or was it just one more game that Nikolai was a passenger for? What was all of this? What did it all mean?
Nikolai had found the answers in glimpses that caused him bouts of panic and deafening migraines. Slowly the answer had suffocated him and drowned out his reason without his consent. Denial at first, of course - it was all so laughable, so insanely human. But with the maddening search for answers - for her - the acknowledgement of his need of her brought with it the only possible explanation. It had turned Judas into an overbearing savior and Nikolai back into a junkie. With discovery of truth brought more denial, more heroin, more cocaine, more head and cocks - anything to wash the taste of her from his mouth.
She was the one who had chosen to bury herself in the fucking ocean.
"No," Nikolai answered quietly, his eyes falling again to her fingertips, wishing to feel them again at his shoulder, in his mouth. "You were supposed to kill me years ago. But you didn't."
-
A pulse of recognition rocked her, followed hard by a feeling of compression as though air had been sucked from her lungs. Desperate eyes searched his for an intense moment, want for answers she dare not ask for. How much longer would this persist before something burst from her chest?
Who are you? Who are you to me?
The barrier separating her consciousness from the answer thinned, revealing shadowy figures dancing in slow-motion behind a sheer curtain. Trembling again, she wrapped her arms tightly around her.
She could put a stop to this, outrun him into the sea, separate his head from his shoulders, or otherwise incapacitate him. She could stuff the flare of...whatever this was back down and freeze over until she didn't feel it anymore. It would be easy - she'd done it before, hadn't she? Yes, there was a memory of that somewhere, edges blurred and running into one another like watercolors.
The Queen of ice, protected from trivial weaknesses, ensured a familiar safety. Was that what she wanted?
"Is that why you're here, then?" She barely seemed to note the question pass her lips as her eyes moved from his, body slowly turning back toward the ocean.
-
He exhaled a brief laugh, the sound of which was undoubtedly lost to the howl of the wind and sea. His lips curled upwards and the skin at the corner of his eyes crinkled but no enjoyment filled his features.
"I heard you were back," Nikolai said simply, though the words weighed on his chest like lead. "I needed to see for myself if that was true..."
Because I ...
missed you...
"So I came here one last time. With the hope of seeing you before I went."
Now, however, he didn't want to go. Not quite yet.
-
"What do you mean - you heard I was back?" The question bit sharp with venom as the pendulum swung hard from Anna's fearful uncertainty to the Queen's anger. She did not turn to look at him, the weight at the base of her throat holding her in place and phantom heartbeats clenching at her chest.
-
He hesitated, knowing that any mention of Laurent would be force the leeches into his throat and seal it just as they did when Lisa-Joe tried to coax the name out of him.
"Sonya..." He drawled, unsure of what to say. Nikolai kept his eyes on the waters pooling around his legs, watching the foam stick to his jeans unceremoniously as the water ebbed. "Come with me to the shore." There was a sense of defeat that filled him as he made his request, knowing she would be faster than him should she try anything violent or sudden. In a small voice that he couldn't remember ever using, the tone unfamiliar in his mouth, but necessary nonetheless. "Please?"
-
The softness in his words pulled at her - it wasn't supposed to be there but how did she know that? "Why?" she snapped reflexively, bristling against the creeping longing to go with him. When she turned again to face him, this longing bled through before she hurried to hide it.
"How do you know me?" she demanded, feeling immediately foolish for admitting that she could not remember him.
-
The lump in his throat jumped as that feeling of longing - burning as he knew it - washed over him like a sea mist. He searched her expression pleadingly and watched as she shut herself off to him again. Still he clung to that recognition like a life raft and refused to let it go, bolstered now by an answer to a question that he had denied asking so many times as he lay in bed next to her - or even after she was in the ocean as he laid with her ghost.
There was an echo of the same burn that smoldered in his chest in her eyes, that Unspoken Thing between them from years ago. The thing that made him revere her like a Queen when he had no love for monarchs, that brought his lips to the corner of her mouth to encourage their upturned humor. The thing that warmed him as he lay tangled in her just before his eyes fell closed with the rising sun.
Nonetheless he couldn't muster the gall to tell her what he needed her to know. Maybe it was shame? Fear? But trust, yes of course. Trust that he would still be whole after the words slipped from his mouth. He had never uttered those words before and he had never wanted to. With her, however...
Everything was different now, changed when she buried herself in the sands of the ocean and forgot his face.
Betrayal.
His hardened emerald eyes found her teal gaze and he sneered at her, a frown pulling at the corners of his mouth. How could she ask him such a question? He should have told her to go fuck herself. He should have gotten back in his SUV and drove as far east as fast as the Escalade would take him to confront the rising sun face on if that was his goal here.
Was it? He couldn't tell anymore.
Nikolai dropped his gaze and the volume of his voice, though he doubted she would have trouble hearing it. "I was your lover." Something like shame filled his face as he watched the water again, licking the backs of his teeth before looking back out at the tides on the horizon. "Before you went into the ocean."
-
The answer filtered into her mind before his words reached her ears. Lover wasn't a word she thought he would have used, and hearing it used to describe their - how they were with one another, sent another shock through her. Refusing to believe it, she turned in a panic and started back toward the sea, as though to outrun the memory cascading past the crumbling fortifications of her mind. The burning in her chest intensified with renewed familiarity - they'd been here before like this. Her skin pricked at the sensation - the memory - of being enfolded by his embrace and brought back into the house where they made -
No, this was all wrong, none of this was supposed to have happened, he was ruining everything - she should have gone back into the sea.
His hand shot out - was he expecting this? - and frantically crumpled the fabric of her sleeve in his fist. Her gaze whipped around to meet his, but she made no other attempts to pull away.
"You weren't supposed to care!" Her voice strained with something desperate that she wanted nothing more than to ignore.
-
He blinked at her words, expecting her to lash out at him for his grip. Instead, he took a moment to process her words, their desperation. His thoughts flickered back and forth quickly, debating and weighing their meaning before settling on an impossible meaning. One that made his chest ache with the possibility.
"I didn't want to," he answered her, searching her eyes again for that hint of reciprocity. He took a daring step towards her and held her closer, their bodies almost touching. He had nothing to lose by his life, after all. It was already something he was willing to part with. But as he addressed her with his harsh words, his tone dropped into something somber instead, a flow of words he didn't mean to say out loud. Angry, cathartic words that did not ease his aching. "I wanted to forget you like you forgot me. I wanted to erase every memory of you with as much coke as I could consume. I wanted to know that you were just some figure that I made up because I'm fucking crazy enough to do so. I wanted to know that you were still buried in that ocean when the sun rose over me."
He wasn't sure when it happened, but their bodies were touching, the sensation a comfort he hadn't known for too long. He was only vaguely aware of his grip around her waist, pulling her in to fit against him, his hands slipping up the curve of her lower back. She was stiff, of course, her muscles resisting him and a fluster of unpleasant emotion emanating from her skin - a warning. But somewhere he could feel that Unspoken Thing again, and he kept drawing her in. Her arms, bent and accepting of his embrace, fought the tension of relaxing against his upper arms, as if to touch him would mean destruction.
"Yet here we are."
He could smell her now; not the sea, or the earth, but her. The sweet scent of her skin, cold from her lack of blood, was as familiar to him as it had ever been. There was a faint smell of a human that lingered on her flesh, but it occurred to him as only a passing thought as he searched for her. Nikolai closed his eyes and inhaled deeply the solace of her presence against his cheek, the clenching in his chest tightening as he tried to warn himself that it could have been one of Laurent's or Mitchelletto's tricks again.
If his heart could beat, it would have pounded in his chest as his mouth found hers for the first time in years. He squeezed his eyes shut to keep out all the demons and shadows and monsters that otherwise dug their claws into him as he basked in the joy of kissing her again.
-
How easily she was undone by his touch, his words. That, she remembered, drove her to ground before all else - the ease with which she bent to him. His anger stung, summoning her own to harden her gaze against it but it was a futile act. This pain, this anger was her doing. The impulse to fight, to cool the burning and deny its presence persisted within her. He would destroy her, this was self preservation - but that self was a shadow now.
Initially she resisted, but caved to the relief of each touch, releasing degrees of tension as her body remembered what her mind still sought to deny. With frantic trepidation her eyes fixed on his lips, foreseeing their approach moments before they connected. Passionate desperation fueled her movements, her hand gripping at him in a familiar pattern of want, mouth urgently pressing against his.
Please, please, please
An apology burned through her chest and clung to her lips. She'd been so foolish, stubborn, dramatic - afraid? Yes, there was that too. Like a dog snarling and foaming at the mouth, and she drove away Nadia - sweet Nadia - because of it. How many more had she burned with this act of going to the sea? Defensiveness rose within her to deny what she knew to be true - that it wasn't the first time she abandoned everything to seek a resetting. But it had worked in the past, hadn't it? She'd come out whole before, hadn't she? Not this time.
Overwhelmed, she pulled her lips away from his. With the disconnect came the terror that he would unleash the destruction that she'd feared, and whatever was left of her self would disintegrate in its wake. Fear and uncertainty caught his gaze, cresting on a wave of regret that threatened to push her deeper into herself.
-
He was like to explode with the gravity of it all. He tried to pay attention to all of it all at once - the aching throb of need that she sparked as she kissed him, the solid feeling of her hands pulling at his clothes and flesh again, the relief that bloomed in his chest as it finally began to set in that she was back. He he wanted to wrap his arms around her tightly and never release her. In all of his imaginings of seeing her again, Nikolai could never have understood the drowning, burning that filled him to the brim and kept his mouth frantic against hers, his hands pulling her ever closer. He fed upon the feeling of her sorrow, her anguish and terror, comforted and bolstered by its presence leaking off her flesh.
But there was resistance too - a fury so hot he wanted to shove her as far as he could, the tired rearing of a head of his so-called protector, the scent of Mitchelletto on his skin and the stink of drugs in his veins. There was the echo of intrigue in the roiling of the shadows that gathered in his throat, casually threatening to invade her just as Laurent had invaded him.
Everything was different now.
He sought her lips again even after she pulled away from him and he saw that pain - that fear, he realized - in her. The denial of his kiss left him reeling, yearning for her in the vacuum of physical disconnection between them. So much vulnerability so quickly... it frightened him and before he knew what she was doing, Nikolai had picked her up off her feet, carrying her tightly by the waist as she stabilized herself in his arms.
He wasn't brave enough to use the words that begged to be said aloud, the words that sent Judas into a maelstrom of hatred, words that he had never dreamed of telling her before. But like a pulse throbbing within him they pushed now past his broken defenses, a weakened Judas, a curious shadow, meeting their final resistance at the tip of his tongue. His mouth had never moved in that way with any meaning behind it - obligatory offerings when he was feeding egos of human relations or paying customers. As he looked up at her, the flatness of her ribs soaking his dry collar with whatever sea water remained in the fabrics of her clothes, he took her towards the shore, afraid that if he didn't move her now she would be dragged back into the depths from which she came.
-----
Nikolai awoke to the smell of her hair at his lips and her fingertips on his arms that surrounded her shoulders. Sometime during the day he had decided to pull her close into a crushing embrace, his fingernails embedded into her hard skin as if it would prevent her from leaving if she wanted to. His dreams alternated between losing her face in the ocean and blunt objects crashing into his skull, forcing him from his heavy sleep multiple times in order to check that it was, in fact, just a dream. Each time he woke, he searched frantically for any sign that the previous night hadn't been some elaborate schism of his imagination. Each time, he felt the firm, naked flesh of Sonya next to or under him, those oceanic eyes looking at him with wonder and a softness he didn't have to put into words. He would fall back into a restless sleep despite his relief that he was not actually alone in her bed again.
She stayed with him during the day. In his drunken heaviness of the sun overhead pulling him into sleep, he had begged her not to leave, to stay with him, at least for one day. As he inhaled her scent of her hair, he could remember the taste of panic in the back of his throat when she had hushed him without agreeing to comply, the sun climbing into the sky outside the walls of her house.
He had picked her up and carried her all the way back to her house wordlessly, her lips carrying his name into his ear as she bent close to him with her hands on either side of his face, as if she suddenly remembered him. It swept him away into a kiss so fierce that he didn't remember entering the house until his shins were against the footboard of the bed that they shared last and she was pulling him down onto her. The praise that he paid her immortal body was true and deep, but did little to satisfy the well of longing that remained when he softened within her. He ran hands over her naked form and held her close as they both felt the approach of the morning. Fright at the passing of time, that she would return to her watery grave and leave him to the whims of his sire, his captor, and his Protector, made his tone desperate and he begged her not to go. It was only when she assured him that she would stay that he was able to give into the dizzying heaviness of the day and sleep beside her.
Now he felt her muscles move beneath her alabaster skin as she traced his tattoos with her nails. He tried not to move, committing the sensation to memory. With the slightest of adjustments, Nikolai pushed his nose deeper into her hair and inhaled deeply, closing his eyes as his grogginess wore away. He thought passingly about what it would take to remain naked like that with her forever, thinking of her body pressed against his as he bent low to feed from a human. Nikolai kissed the forehead near his mouth.
"I thought for sure you'd be gone." The urge to tell her what was lingering on his mind bubbled up, but he kept his lips shut, knowing that such things woke Judas - who would only ruin the tender peace that existed in the breaths between them.
-
To say she remembered everything now would be a gross inaccuracy. Memories filtered in like inked lines bleeding into one another on a page, dewy webs clinging to the images, resisting their ascent to the surface of her consciousness. Her body knew - it responded to his as if there had never been a passing of time between them, drumming up the burning that she had foolishly sought to quench in the sea. This burning surged unhindered, bucking any weak attempts to tame it, and dominated most thoughts while they lay with one another.
Finally, with an intensity scarcely dampened by the impassioned exchange of their flesh, she watched him succumb to the weight of the rising sun. His last words fighting through his exhaustion - Don't leave me, you have to stay - gave rise to a renewed sort of tension balled in her throat. If she drifted to sleep in the sunlit hours it was so light that it escaped her notice. Her mind tuned intensely to his every movement, each murmured word loosed from his lips - her name alternating between deep adoration and desperation coupled with his nails anchoring deeper into her flesh.
As if it would keep her from leaving again.
In the stillness of his deep sleep, her mind warred in that small space of uncertainty - a tiny seed sprouting in the ball in her throat, nourished by self-consciousness and fear as it blossomed. To combat it, she focused strictly on direct observations. This room - his room, she'd once thought of it as - was unforgivably musty in its lack of use. When was the last time the sheets were refreshed? More muttering from Nikolai in her arms drew her attention back toward his face as she traced her fingertips over the skin beneath his eye. It was an automatic action. Muscle memory.
What now? What happened when they woke for the evening? When memories sharpened their focus and she recalled, with clarity, what drove her from him? She doubted any of it would matter now - pieces of something that would not reform. What did he want from her? He said he'd sought the sun - destruction - and the notion terrified her on a visceral level. She cared - of course, she did - and that was the precipice of it now, wasn't it?
And how she cared. Cared and cared and cared it rocked the foundation of what she knew - thought - she was so much that she couldn't move.
She struggled under the weight of it, weakened by the tender lurching in her chest as he finally stirred at sunset and spoke.
He thought she would have been gone? But she was gone - and all the quiet daylight hours spent thinking would not reveal who was left.
"No," her whisper was pregnant with new and unfamiliar softness, eyes and fingers seeking the comfort of tracing familiar patterns into his skin.
-
He watched her eyes as they followed her own fingertips, the deeply pensive expression that he had seen only glimpses of before. He couldn't read the thoughts that plagued her, but there was a heavy, churning feeling in the bed between them that felt too familiar to be anything else.
He had begged her to stay with him and she had obliged. Now what?
Part of him hoped that they would return to the same old bullshit as before - the fucking, the feeding, the silent dance around the parts of them that ached. For a brief moment he wished it all back to the way it was before with all the same comforts and elephants standing in the room. At least than he didn't feel like a fool.
There was another part of him that knew that something had changed for good between them. Two torturous years lay with them in bed. Mitchelletto had returned. Laurent had found him again. And even as he watched her, his skin began to prickle with familiar cold sweat as his guts turned themselves to knots from lack of heroin - easy at first, but the unwelcomed symptoms would undoubtedly grow until he turned his attention onto another junkie. He hated himself for it all, but hopefully she wouldn't notice just yet.
Judas remained sleeping upon his throne and the leeches beneath his skin observed him so silently, Nikolai began to doubt their presence. He wanted to reach up and run the tips of his fingers over her lips, but for some reason the urge never came to fruition. "When did you last feed?"
-
"Did you always ask me this?" the words left her lips before she had time to process whether it was a question she wanted to voice. Her gaze left his skin to find his eyes again.
-
He blinked at the rapidness of her reply and hesitated before taking a breath inwards. "Yeah..." he drawled, unsure of why she was asking. "You... you don't remember?" Was it some sign of weakness to want to feed with her now? To want to ensure that she was properly balanced before she tried to flee him again?
-
There was a sharp intake of breath at his question and, averting her eyes, she retracted her hand. Ignoring his second question she answered the first, "A week ago." Decker. There was a strange pang of guilt, which she quickly buried but to no avail. A flutter of panic made its way into her mind instead. Awkwardly she sat up in bed, sheets pooling at her waist.
"Cigarette?" she asked hoarsely, searching the room.
-
The disruption of their skin pained him and he almost followed her as she sat up. Instead he held on to some of his dignity and watched instead as she moved, tracing the curve of her spine with his eyes as her hair fluttered over her skin. He wanted to touch her, to flatten his hands along the smooth acreage of her back and travel along her skin as far as she would let him. Until he had his arms wrapped around her waist again, holding her securely close.
At her request he turned over on the bed and reached for his jeans with stretched arms and a pulse of the start of a withdrawal induced migraine. He retrieved his pack of cigarettes - semi-crushed after a frantic peeling of clothing and unwatched steps - and pulled out two cigarettes. Nikolai lit them both in his mouth, inhaling and handing the least bent one to her wordlessly, his arm outstretched to her side until she took it. He debated trying to convince her to feed with him, but decided not to push his luck. She was usually fine after only a week without blood.
Usually, at least according to what he knew of her then.
He tucked his arm behind his head as he reclined, the sheet pooling near his navel, and took a deep drag on his own cigarette, hoping to stave off the worst of the cramping in his abdomen for a little while longer. Stupidly, he hoped she wouldn't be able to smell the addiction in him, the stain of heroin, fentanyl, cocaine -- whatever he could get his hands on, really - in his veins. He never wanted to bring his garbage to her door, yet here he was. Nikolai tried not to think about it all, or what else she must have smelled on him. He shifted himself uncomfortably.
It was still too surreal to know that she was back and actually there with him. Her distance and oddity was like some barrier between them he wished that their physical rediscovery of each other's bodies had just ripped out. He didn't want her sitting up and away from him; he wanted her reclining in the crook of his shoulder with a cool smile on her lips like she had enjoyed a victory. He needed to have his hands on her body to reaffirm that she was there, something that Judas couldn't take away from him at last. After his debate, Nikolai slipped a hand down to the small of her back, caressing her with the backs of his fingers as far as she would let him. Satisfaction, but only as much as a sensual touch was when he wanted the full carnage of sex. Craving. It pained him.
He exhaled a lungful of smoke and tried to tell her again, his mouth moving in a testament of his yearning for her... yet nothing came out, as if the smoke had sucked up his ability to speak. Moments of silence passed before he could call her attention again, quietly, coldly. "How long have you been back?"
-
Fluidly the cigarette went between her lips, fingers possessing the slightest tremor as she smoked through the silence between them. His touch coaxed her back into a reclining position and she swiveled to face him. When he finally broke the silence, her body stiffened as something not unlike a grimace overtook her features. She should have expected that question, having spent a portion of the night wondering how she would have answered it. Throat constricting, she swallowed dryly before taking another drag.
With voice full of pause and shyness she answered, "Some... three months?" Truthfully she was unsure, not bothering to mark the passing of time. She pulled another drag and exhaled through the corner of her mouth. With hesitation, she lifted her gaze to meet his.
-
The hand against Sonya's back froze in its position for a while as a surge of undeterminable sensations flooded his consciousness. The heat of fury, the cascade of despair, a twist of betrayal... He felt himself blink his eyes slowly, the words burning through any of his relief at her return.
Judas roared in his ear, a stretching maw of black teeth and ear-splitting sound that grew from a lowly growl into a blinding clamor of mixed voices. Howling. Cackling. Whimpering... Chittering, rumbling, roaring, clanging, shaking... He was sure he would explode with the pressure of it all. Laurent. Judas. Mitchelletto.
Nikolai opened his eyes that he didn't remember closing and the sound was gone.
"You've been back for three months?" The words dried his throat and his voice was a hoarse whisper as he sat up, pulling himself far away from any physical contact with her.
Three months ago was hard to remember, the earth black and every footstep hazy in his mind. He thought of the fear that coursed through him when he recognized his sire's face. Rage pushed its way forward when he remembered being on his knees in front of Laurent once again, the sickness that built in his stomach and throat. He had been their plaything for the past few months. They had taken his tongue against the mention of them, the slivers of freedom that he had left after the drugs had taken their fill, taken his blood and used it for their own purposes. They had tried to drown him in forced obedience and servitude. And all the while, Sonya - the key to ending their hold over him - was out of the sea.
Why hadn't he known sooner?
A lightning bolt struck him and Nikolai flinched as Judas bucked his control, shaking him in his own body. Nikolai shook his head and re-established his control. He caught his aching head in his hands as his elbows found his knees off the edge of the bed. His gut churned and nausea washed him, reminding him that his current addiction was simply a chaser to his own insanity.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Weakness in his voice and a resulting whipping from his other half. Nikolai groaned in chest at the sensation. Something foreign inside of him laughed at the shortcoming. The image of a noose tightening around his neck flooded him unwillingly and he tasted the raw coppery flavor of torn tissue like a ghost on the back of his tongue.
Why didn't you find me? Nikolai's head snapped to the right as Judas took another swing at him, nearly toppling him from his own awareness. Not now, he pleaded. Not while she was finally here again. Not while he had such limited time to spend with her before she disappeared again. Temporary, Nikolai begged, hoping he was wrong. Judas' hold loosened around his throat and Nikolai could move again, running his fingers through his hair. He couldn't ask these things because he knew the answer.
Her own madness had taken her. He had seen it in her struggle for composure last night. She didn't remember who he was.
Did she now?
"What do you remember about before you went to ground?" The words dried him out again and suddenly he was very thirsty for the taste of dirty blood.
-
Unable to retain complete composure, confusion marred her features as he cycled through something unseen. Familiar, yes, but she couldn't point to specifics. His words were jarring and she looked away, unsure of what to do with the guilt that flooded her again. She deserved this reaction, and was unsurprised when he moved away. Swallowing against the ache of separation, Sonya took another drag from the cigarette shivering slightly between her fingers.
Her eyes locked on the back of his head, absorbing every bit of information she could from the movements in his body. More flutters of familiarity bubbling past the guilt in her gut up into her throat.
The notion came to her -- Another presence -- lacking the context needed for clarity. If it hadn't been for his exclamation, she would have lost herself to frustration. His next question sent her reeling back toward frustration, and subconsciously she shrank away from him.
Twice she opened her mouth to answer, hearing the wet sounds of her mouth exaggerated to her supernatural hearing in the silence that spanned the distance between them. How could she explain it succinctly.
"The last decade is..." More hesitation, the phantom feeling of heat in her face where there was none. "...hazy." Her last word was spoken with the displeasure at not having found the most appropriate adjective to sum up the dream-like state she'd been in since her return.
-
Nikolai sneered, shaking his head in his hands. "Of fucking course." The cigarette remained pinched between his lips, burning his eyes with smoke.
"How do you even know who I am?" His words dripped poison, lashing out like an animal trapped. Cackling and swirling in his head where Laurent's eyes watched.
-
A flare of anger sent a glare to his back.
"Because I tried to scrub you from my mind but it didn't work," she hissed, sitting up on her elbows. After last night, did he really think she didn't know who he was now? Missing details and moments wasn't the same as missing entire people. The hurt squeezed her chest.
"It comes back in bits," she added, defensive in her imperfect articulation. It felt like fumbling for an explanation, painfully vulnerable in ways she never had been. The old habits, old traits of that fractured identity, roused more anger quelling beneath the surface.
-
Her words triggered a growl in him, and a chuckle from somewhere else. Laurent again, his leeches watching, watching, watching... There were pulses of sickness in his guts unpleasantly distracting from the issues at hand. Everything was simply out of control again. He could hear her, yes, feel that somewhere her words would have ordinarily stopped him in his tracks - scrub him from her mind? Why? Why? - but he was not his own anymore. He hadn't been since she had left.
Nikolai took a drag from his cigarette and then stood up, reaching for his pants as he did so. Pain rippled through his body as he moved too quickly, stepping wordlessly into his clothes like he had down with Mitchelletto the night before. The irony was enough to make the leeches giggle with pleasure, pulling on his ball sack like a school yard bully. Nikolai swatted at nothing, stumbling as his perception swayed.
"Enough already!" It was only afterwards that he realized the words shouted at the swirling shadows in his mind's eye were also murmured aloud beneath his breath. Sonya would have undoubtedly heard them. Even more reason to get the fuck away from her as quickly as possible. There was another inconsolable swell of pain in his chest that felt like being on fire.
"Everything is different now, Sonya." He wanted to tell her just how different things were - about Mitchelletto's return, about Laurent's trickery, about his own submission to them both as he blacked out into a version of himself that he couldn't control - but his mouth filled with a black stickiness as soon as he brought either of the names to the tip of his tongue. Nikolai swallowed hard on Laurent's laughter in his ears. "More than you could ever imagine."
He couldn't look at her now. Not as he withdrew from the Venom and the heroin, not as Laurent crawled beneath his skin, not as he would be forced to obey whatever lunacy Mitch wanted him to do. Not as he burned without her and drowned in consequences of his own madness. It was stupid to think that he could go back to who he was before she left, as if she would just allow him back in the way he was.
It was stupid to think he was the same person who fell in love with her, and that it would be simple to love her again.
Nothing mattered anymore. Not if she didn't remember him like he needed her to. Not if he wasn't his own.
-
He didn't see her look of confusion and concern while he continued to battle against something she could not see or understand. Should she ask? Should she attempt to pierce the barrier of his mind to discover what was happening? That wasn't how she was with him -- another thing she recalled.
But everything was different now.
"Obviously," she muttered under her breath in reply, glaring at his back as he dressed. Everything would always change, that was the very nature of existence as it unfolded in endless similarities and patterns like a flower blooming with endless petals curling out from the center. Predictable and unknown all at once. This tangental objection stayed silent on her still tongue as she wondered if that was the sort of thing they would discuss and debate on in the past. It seemed likely, but there were no memories to fall back on.
"Are you leaving, then?" she snapped, crushing the cigarette into the ashtray on the bedside table. "Just like that?" There was no hiding the hurt in her voice, and she burned with foolishness and anger at once.