Once Ben left, it didn\'t take long for Kerr\'s life to fall apart completely, yet again.
There was two weeks of bliss, at first - a fortnight of consoling himself over the absolute loss of his fledgling within the warm and loving arms of his carbon copy. Sure, Kerr didn\'t feel the love for Jack that he\'d felt for Ben, but it wasn\'t difficult to surrender to the indulgent, worshipful love with which he was heaped in his stead. Jack loved him with all his heart and, once Kerr accepted that passion and devotion, he found it was a truly lovely place to be.
He spent a few extra nights away from work than he should\'ve, but that was only because he needed the soul mending that being with Jack provided; they had a mini-holiday together, lounging about in bed, making love on every surface between it and the front door, worshipping each other\'s naked bodies in front of a crackling fire or swimming in the ocean until Jack could do nothing but shiver and it became Kerr\'s pleasure to warm him up.
It seemed to last a wonderfully long time and was just the perfect way to recover from losing Ben... though there were times when Kerr couldn\'t help himself from falling into a state of melancholy. While Jack slept, his dreams became the stuff of the past, as Kerr systematically shuffled through and took a copy of Ben\'s memories - the ones his fledgling should have owned, the ones that paved the path to their love. It wasn\'t particularly honourable - hence the fact that he only did it while Jack slept - but the vampire thought of it as insurance, in a way. Should his fledgling ever come back to him, it would be a... reward, of sorts. Possibly a way back, but he didn\'t dwell on that aspect of things, not when he had Jack.
Unfortunately, the happier they became together, the more miserable Jack\'s coterie became. After ignoring them for two weeks, he decided he had better visit Samuel while Kerr was at work (he had nothing better to do, after all), and the young mortal floated into the acolyte\'s home on a cloud. His smile was beatific, his heart full and his head whirling with how wonderful everything was. He spoke volumes of how much Kerr meant to him, of how deep and abiding their union was, of how soon he would become immortal and spend eternity with his sire/love.
When Samuel questioned Jack\'s committment to the earth, his dedication to their plans for dominating the planet as he should, his memory about their discussions about Jakra\'s epic destiny, Jack laughed it off. Samuel became enraged, pushing to find the wondrous being he\'d sworn lifelong fealty to inside the disgusting shell of a boy in love with someone who was, quite frankly, nothing more than a speedbump on the road to greatness. He found nothing, heard only more ramblings about how insignificant such things were in the face of true love and a future as a dirty vampire and the acolyte\'s course was set.
As Jack rose to greet Hannah - she had been out and returned unexpectedly - Samuel followed him with a ceremonial dagger snatched up and held, concealed, in his hand. He embraced the boy from behind - just as he opened his arms to the girl - and slit Jack\'s throat from ear to ear, reefing the mortal\'s head back onto his shoulder for added damage. Hannah screamed as she was doused in arterial spray, watching with stunned incomprehension as Samuel held the twitching, dying body of Jack, kissing its temple and shushing her, whispering that it was for the best. She fell silent as Jack\'s grey eyes became glassy and unseeing, beginning to nod as Samuel spoke to her in earnest.
Within half an hour she was gone from Samuel\'s home and the city, her mission clear and her destiny secure. Samuel waited behind and began preparing the shell that had housed his God for burial, washing the corpse reverently, dressing it in a swaddling loincloth and laying it atop the table to be transported when he was ready.
Unfortunately for Samuel, Kerr happened to finish work earlier than expected, and be eager to pick Jack up sooner rather than later. Knowing he was at Samuel\'s place, he drove there and parked as close as he could get (not very close and not an easy feat, in Chinatown). As he approached the building he\'d visited a couple of times before, Kerr was uneasy when he didn\'t sense the mind of his lover pining for him, as he\'d expected, no matter how much he probed mentally. By the time he knocked on the door and got no answer, he\'d moved beyond uneasy to downright panicked.
Sensing Samuel inside, he read his mind to see what was going on... and was horrified by what he saw there. He broke the door down and entered just as the acolyte came in from another room, freshly showered and wearing special-looking robes. He came to a stop and eyed Kerr calmly as the frantic vampire spied the corpse of his love on the table and fell to his knees with an anguished cry.
"You\'re too late," he told the immortal coldly, folding his hands inside the long sleeves of his robe enigmatically.
"What... have you... done?" Kerr sobbed, clutching at his hair and yanking, his gaze rivetted to the far-too-still-and-practically-naked form of Ben - no, Jack, lying dead on a table.
"I ended this incarnation. It was... underachieving."
"Under... under..."
"Underachieving," the older man answered helpfully, looking at the distraught vampire through disdainful eyes. "You\'d corrupted him and he was never going to reach his full potential with you around. I needed to act before you sired him and it became much more difficult. You brought this on yourself, really," he sneered austerely.
"My... self?" Kerr whispered uncomprehendingly and that was about the moment where his mind snapped once and for all. He saw red literally - and it was nothing to do with the blood stain on the sea grass matting. Beyond thought and consumed by despair, he flew across the room and grasped Samuel roughly in his own two hands - one gripping the old man\'s bicep, the other threaded through his hair and tilting his head back at a truly painful angle. It should have scared the shit out of the guy, it should have made him beg for mercy and at least apologise for what he\'d done.
It didn\'t, though; Samuel laughed, the condescending, hateful noise telling Kerr that he believed he\'d won this match and that nothing could be done from here. He was wrong about that and Kerr\'s conviction on the matter easily saw the old mortal\'s head separated from his body - literally. He bawled as he did it, his primal scream venting all his hatred for the bastard who had taken from him everything he had left and opening up the black pool of loneliness and grief that he was already feeling so that it leaked into his body and consumed every bit of happiness and light he\'d had.
Dropping the parts of Samuel that he still held, Kerr then stumbled over to Jack\'s body and cried upon it, scooping it up and bawling his pain into the cooling flesh that he had so recently pressed his own lips and flesh against, in love and passion. It was surreal, unreal... and yet all too real. He left the apartment in a fog of bewilderment, thinking clearly enough to swathe himself in invisibility so that he wasn\'t seen carrying a corpse from an apartment that had had a whole lot of noise and screaming recently emanating from it, and making it to his car. Laying Jack reverently upon the back seat, he drove him back to his cliffside mansion, whereupon he mourned his dead lover anew.
In the haze of his despair, he was fairly certain he rang Ben\'s mobile and told him, very simply, that Jack was dead, before he hung up abruptly and then went back to keening over the corpse. It was more than just Jack he was grieving, of course. It was the entirety of his life, embodied in this one, lifeless creature that had been the last holder of any hope or goodness he\'d had left in him. It was the end of two lives, not just one and, two days later, he was ready to say goodbye properly... to himself and Jack.
As he stood on the shore of his private beach, watching the small boat in which he\'d built a pyre and laid Jack\'s corpse float out to see, he resolved to change from then on. No more being a victim, no more love, no more relationships. It was too hard, ended only in pain and got him into this rut of misery from which he never seemed able to escape. As he fired a burning arrow into the gasoline-soaked boat and watched it burn first the body within it and then the very shell of the vehicle itself, he systematically shut down his heart and adjusted his thinking to the moment; no more worrying about the past, no more preparing for the future, it was time for him to enjoy the here and now.
The next night he worked but when he came home, he packed everything that he valued and transported it back to the penthouse in the Capital Building. The fact that their bed stayed in the room that had been Ben\'s and he left behind the one he\'d been sleeping in with Jack was deliberate; he only took things like Mandy\'s artwork, his laptop and his clothes.
The night after that, he went shopping; in fact, for the next week, it was all he did. He bought new furniture - entirely new furniture - for the apartment and had the old stuff shipped over to the beach house (he hired workers to finish off all the renovations out there as well, and ensured that, once it was done, it could be either rented out or stayed in, depending on his whim when the time of all the upgrades being completed - in about six months - came) for dealing with later. He ensured that the penthouse was now only in his name and fixed up all the structural damage Jack had caused and not had fixed to his satisfaction. He had the fixtures changed and the walls painted new, sombre reds and blues that added a level of sophistication he felt were lacking.
When there was nothing more to be done to his living environment, Kerr set to work on himself. He bought a lot of new clothes - most of which were leather - numerous oversized silk shirts, some chunky boots and some makeup, for the first time ever. Although he wasn\'t exceedingly confident with using the stuff, he knew what he liked and he spent a good amount of time in front of the mirror experimenting, until he was satisfied with what he saw.
The final step in Kerr\'s reinvention came when he stepped into the most expensive hair salon in the city - a cost only increased by his request for it to stay open an extra hour beyond its usual business hours. His hair stylist\'s name was Max and he did not approve of the state of Kerr\'s hair when he walked in at all. After he\'d shampooed and conditioned it to within an inch of its life, Max advised the vampire on the style he thought would most suit him and it was done half an hour later.
When Kerr walked out of the salon, it was two weeks to the night since Jack had been murdered and he felt it had been a fitting amount of time to mourn, break down and rebuild himself into a stronger, more resilient being. No longer would he be vulnerable to his heart\'s whim, to a pretty face, to someone else\'s desires. He would live for him, live for enjoyment and for the hell of it... answerable only to himself and in spite of the fact that he no longer slept through the day and occasionally awoke sobbing. It would all fade away eventually, just as the memory of love and happiness in a relationship would, and he would still be standing.
It was the end of he and Ben, the end of he and Jack... but the beginning of a new and empowered Kerr. Long may he reign.
