Vincent wouldn't have cared if the whole world was watching or listening in. Unless he knew Owen didn't want it, then he would happily go to a secret corner with his love and do whatever his fledgling wanted. Anything, as long as he wasn't pushed away.
He followed eagerly, still unable to control his emotions. He pulled out a handkerchief which he'd tucked into his jeans pocket earlier that night and used it to swipe his eyes. Now that he was with Owen and following him somewhere, he could stop the river from pouring out of his eyes. They still felt hot and gritty, and as he sat down and looked at Owen - knowing that as much as his own world was falling apart, so too had Owen's. He recognised there was a terrible impact in the knowledge Owen had discovered last night. He recognised that there was very little chance Owen would trust him ever again. But maybe, now that he wanted an explanation, there was hope for them. Vincent launched into his story, telling it all, like Owen wanted.
"When she died, I was devastated. Lorica. I'd been with her almost three hundred years. We weren't lovers at that stage, but still very much in love, our relationship had evolved well beyond sex. We couldn't bear to ever leave one another, we couldn't bear to be apart. I felt responsible for her death. I... was sleeping with a woman that grew jealous of what I had with her. She organised her brother to set the fire during the day where I lived with Lorica, while I safely slept in Alice's bed. She got out of the house but the sun claimed her. She sent me enough information for me to understand that she was murdered, and recognise who they were. I understood her final wish, and hunted them down, and killed them. Among other things, I am a murderer.
"I found out from the final man, Alice's brother, that it had been her idea. I went to take her life as well, but I couldn't do it. I was devastated. I was alone. I went to ground for about fifty years, and did my mourning down there. I didn't sleep, like I thought I would. It was terrible, but it was tolerable, because I didn't have to face anyone, or do anything.
"When I climbed out of the earth I spent the next two centuries on my own. Those are a blur, I don't really recall them. I understand now it's because I didn't really live, I merely existed. I loved nothing and no-one. I tried to keep a pet and there were some good memories, but they died too, and much too quickly. I tried to socialise, but I had trouble connecting with people. Trying to connect with vampires was even worse.
"Abigail was the first. Her and her mother Nicola. They were living on the street and I took them in. I don't know what I would've done had they been blonde or brunette, but their hair was a fiery red, and Nicola reminded me of Lorica, in looks at least. I wanted to cling to her memory, and so I extended a hand to them. Abigail was about five or so, but other than considering her as merely Nicola's daughter, I paid her no mind. Nicola and I became intimate, and I'd pretended that I had a fierce medical condition - an allergy to the sun that affected my eye colouring and obviously the reason for my pale skin. I would have to go and get weekly treatments - which was my word for going out and charming someone to drink from them. After five years of this farce, when Nicola was deeply in love with me and I thought I was with her, I told them both the truth. I was a vampire. Nicola turned into this bizarre, shrieking frightened creature, and I had to charm her to calm her down. Abigail... she just looked at me and nodded, like it had answered all of her unspoken questions.
"Unfortunately I had to keep charming Nicola, every night, because she remembered the news. I wasn't so talented with memory replacement, I've never been that way - that was more Lorica's thing. So I charmed her every night, and she would be this wonderful person that I recalled, but it was meaningless. She wasn't vacant or vacuous, but I knew in my heart that she didn't really accept me. Her real reaction was to loathe me and fear me, as though the last five years had been nothing. Abigail didn't like the charms either, but she understood the necessity. She didn't want me to leave, you see. I started looking at her differently, then. She was intelligent, accepting, curious and as lovely as her mother. She was also growing up in front of me, becoming a woman, already fascinated with vampirism. I told her the benefits; enhanced senses, mental skills, longevity of life. She was interested, but much like you she wanted to remain normal. I'd never been sexually attracted to her - she was my daughter, effectively - but before she was of an age that I would consider siring, she fell in love and was married, in order to bear and raise children. It was not my choice to take her from that. I loved her too much to sacrifice her for my own selfish needs. I remained with her mother Nicola, but stopped charming her. She was already charmed enough that she didn't need any more, I found. She developed alzeimers quite early on in life, and she went into a nursing home. It... it worried me, that I had done that. I stayed with her until she forgot who I was, then paid for her care and left. She had Abigail and her family to visit, she no longer needed the monster in her life.
"It was Abigail's acceptance that gave me the idea. Children were far more accepting than adults. I could also shape a child's life, fill it with opportunities and offer an education like no other. A child with experiences like that would blossom and grow and love me and stay with me. I was very optimistic," he said bitterly, but didn't look at Owen as he said this. He looked down at his linked fingers and continued his tale. "It was a few years before the second world war when I met with a nurse who worked in the maternity ward. She was so sad for all the little abandoned babies without even the proper paperwork to their names as young single mothers ran off without their newborn. I charmed her into giving me one of them. I selected a redhead, I took it as a sign. Her birth certificate hadn't even been properly filled out yet. She'd been named Leanne by her mother, so I shortened it to Leigh."
He glanced over at Owen now, for he'd met Leigh, but couldn't bear to look at his fledge or else he would be a mess of tears and emotions again. Ripping his gaze away and looking back down at his hands, he continued.
"She knew what I was from the start. There were no secrets about who I was, what I was, the fact she'd been abandoned by her parents, and wasn't she lucky I'd come along and rescued her? I couldn't be with her during the day though, so there were nannies. They came and went, but there were always nannies. By the time she was nine, there was a difficulty with her last one, and because she was going to school and quite a bright young girl, I didn't bother replacing her nanny. Unfortunately she took advantage and rebelled, and I had no idea she wasn't going to school until she made a few very ignorant comments and I read her mind. I tried my best not to invade her privacy - much like I never invaded yours - but it was still a shock to find out she'd been running around like a criminal for years. I'd made a very bad mistake. I moved cities, leaving behind the little gang of friends she'd made. She went back to school, but was socialising at night with her friends, I thought. She was going to a vampire club instead, and became a share-around groupie. She'd shacked up with some young vampire at sixteen. I went and got her back, but the damage was already done. She wanted to be sired but not by me. She found someone to sire her a couple of years later. The one I'd taken her away from, actually.
"Gayle was next. I thought I'd gone wrong by not giving Leigh a normal upbringing, so paid a couple to be her adoptive parents. They wanted a child and I gave them one without questions being asked. They split up and her mother went through a string of boyfriends. I was always around to keep an eye on Gayle, to make sure nothing bad happened to her while all these strange men came in and out of her life. I suppose I must've scared some off. She and I had a good friendship. She knew she was adopted, but didn't know I'd had anything to do with it. She was smart and funny and a bit boyish in her manner in interests. She and I had an easy friendship. I thought maybe I'd done things right this time, but when she was fifteen I took her to Europe and made another mistake. It was possibly the most romantic night she and I had ever experienced, and we kissed. We came home and things got awkward. She avoided me, I confronted her, and she accused me of setting her up for seduction into vampirism. Once again, I read her mind, to see how much she knew, but she'd thought it was only the past couple of years that I'd planned, not her whole life. She was devastated enough, thinking that I'd spent all this time with her just to make her my... slave, or something. So I did the only gentlemanly thing that I could, I bowed out.
"I was struggling to go through it all again. I thought I would have one last attempt. This time with a boy, because I figured Gayle's tomboy nature - working best - was a sign that I would possibly get on better with a man than with a woman. I wasn't thinking about sexual relationships, you see. I was thinking about companionship. I'd always favoured women over men and thought that was also part of my problem, that there was sexual tension. I took my time selecting someone, and Karen... I met her while she was grieving your father. Grieving her husband, I mean. She'd lamented waiting before starting a family. She'd lost him and now didn't even have a child to raise. She was full of love and regrets, and I spoke with her about what I was and what my plan was, and she eventually agreed. Even in her desperation to have a child - because she couldn't adopt at her age without a partner, you see - she still was wary of me. It took me time to win her over. She had to leave behind her extended family once she had you, and I pulled strings and charmed people to get her at the front of the queue."
Now Vincent looked at Owen, in appeal.
"As angry as you are at me, don't be at her. She might not have birthed you, but she raised you, and has nothing but love for you. All she wanted was a child to raise and love, a child who wouldn't die, as her husband did. She's a woman who will always want the best for you. She is your mother, in every way but the biological. I haven't told her yet, that you know."
