A Reluctant Confession

[Trillian]

continued from A Reluctant Existence

BECAUSE HE WASN'T TALKING WHEN Owen pulled into the parking lot for the Capital, Ben's reaction was non-existant.  He was surprised, for there were a lot of memories for him in this building, but when a building such as this catered to their species, it made sense that it would attract a lot of vampiric tenants.  He wondered if Ichabod would feel that Ben was close, but didn't follow the tether of their blood bond to see if Ichabod was inside.  He had to actively do it in order to know, such was the weakness of their blood union.  Brothers were not like sire and fledge, and Ichabod had lost a greater union with Kerr as well, being his full fledge and not part-fledge, as Ben.  He clamped down on memories that would do nothing buy cycle (and they already had, for weeks and months), and focussed on the fact Owen had to drive down a few levels in order to reach his carparking space.  Ben was familiar enough with the layout of this building to understand this meant he wasn't on the upper floors, where all the really expensive apartments were.

They walked in relative silence to the lifts, and Owen pressed the button marked '2' instead of the ground floor, where the full bank of lifts were gathered in the centre of the building to sweep guests and tenants alike to their floors.  Ben was intrigued by these lifts, in a position he didn't know about - more to the corner of the building - and only travelled up the first twenty floors.  About halfway.  They exited on the second floor and Owen took him on the short walk to his apartment.  Ben only noticed the inside enough to feel like it wasn't finished.  There weren't all those little knick-knacks that people accumulated over years, and perhaps it was because the walls felt more bare than Kerr's place.  Now Ichabod's place.

He was invited to sit, and Ben asked for a towel.  Owen disappeared for a moment and returned with one, that Ben put on the seat of the lounge before sitting on it.  He didn't lean back, but he didn't feel relaxed enough to either.  He stayed sitting forward with his elbows on his knees (now not hurting at all, he hadn't even thought about them until now), and was prompted by Owen's demand.

"Okay, tell me your side of the story."

It was matter of fact, not spoken with any hostility, but there was something in the tone that Ben imagined was judgmental anyway.  Owen didn't expect to hear anything wildly different to what he'd imagined.  Just as well, because Ben didn't have anything for him.  He looked at Owen intently as he spoke, all the better to read his face as he began to explain.

"Vincent's a really good listener.  You don't feel judged by him, even though he does.  I needed someone to listen, and he gave me the chance to tell it all.  Talking about Kerr made him feel close to me, so I kissed Vincent.  I can't tell you why, other than I wish I hadn't done it.  He says I did it to sabotage myself.  Maybe he's right, I don't know,"  he looked away and spoke to his knees.  "It's certainly looking that way."

[Existentially Odd]

Owen wore a frown and no other real expression as he listened to Ben.  Their ride here had been blessedly silent, giving Owen time to concentrate on his driving and think about how he'd tell Ben to start talking.  He'd been slightly annoyed that he'd been asked for a towel before he had a chance to go and get one - as he was planning - because he didn't get the opportunity to play host much and he'd decided during the drive that it would be his first nice gesture towards his guest.  Being asked for the towel just blew all that goodwill away and made him feel like he was lacking as a host, even though Ben was only trying to be sure he didn't wreck his new couch.

He'd gone to the bathroom and pulled off his coat and jumper before towelling his own hair dry and getting a new one from the cupboard.  When he emerged, he was barefoot, wearing his jeans and a short-sleeved plaid button down shirt with cornflower blue as its dominant colour; he'd worn it for Vincent's benefit, because it matched his eyes.  He'd pushed that dream aside as he'd headed out to the lounge and taken up a seat on the chaise outcropping of the couch, perpendicular to Ben so he could see him better.  He was also sitting forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands grasped thoughtfully together while he listened and watched.

"Yeah, well, for all his hundreds of years, Vincent's not exactly a genius when it comes to people and their motives, so I wouldn't take it too much to heart," Owen observed wryly, thinking about how spectacularly Vincent had misread many of the situations in his own life and in Owen's.  "You didn't kiss him because you wanted to sleep with him?" the fledgling continued suspiciously, his more casual tone disappearing immediately.  "It wasn't because you think he's sexy?"

[Trillian]

Kerr hadn't been a genius either, when it came to Ben, but there was something about Vincent that had made him feel wiser to Ben, somehow.  Maybe it was because he'd waited out his silence or averted commentary instead of growing frustrated and angry with him, like Kerr had used to.

Ben was momentarily struck silent at this new line of questioning.  He looked at Owen with a dumbfounded expression on his face, unsure how to respond.  Eventually his confusion gave way to a frown as he thought back over.

"Uhhh-m, I wasn't thinking about sleeping with him," Ben said, and shifted uncomfortably at the idea of it.  He half went to sit back but remembered himself and returned to his former position.  "He asked me if I wanted him as a replacement for Kerr, and it rubbed me the wrong way.  I don't know what would've happened if he'd... um... if he hadn't pushed me away," he said, his voice growing soft and hurried at the last declaration, because it embarrassed him, to talk about such things with Owen.  "I'm in a place right now, where I don't really know what I'm doing."  He shook his head and made a disgruntled noise.  "Fuck, that sounds lame.  I mean... I know what I'm doing, I just... " he shrugged.  "Don't feel like me.  It was so clear, the path I was on, with him.  Now that he's gone, everything is... muddy.  Vincent made me feel like me, again."  Ben released a single soft breath of laughter, which was humorless.

So the first thing you did, Benny-boy
When you started feeling like yourself again
Was to kiss a man you knew belonged to another
And probably would've fucked him if he'd wanted to
Well done

No way he was going to tell Owen that, but he had no explanation for his laugh.  He figured it could just stay there, at the end of his explanation.  It wasn't like Owen could hear what was going on in his head - not when he was locked up tight.

[Existentially Odd]

Owen noticed that Ben didn't respond to his question about how attractive Vincent was, just about the not sleeping with him.  He supposed that was fair, because for all Ben knew, admitting to Owen that he found his husband attractive might make him angry again and he likely didn't want to get attacked (not that Owen would, but Ben didn't know that, thanks to his boorish behaviour at the coffee shop).  The rest of Ben's commentary just washed Owen down with irony and slapped him in the face with cold realisation.

He laughed when Ben did, though his went on longer and was more obviously bitter.  "It doesn't sound lame.  Welcome to exactly where I am," Owen adopted a falsely cheerful smile and opened his arms to indicate his apartment, glancing around at it for good measure before he looked back at Ben, indicating him with a casual hand on his emphasised word.  "Except, of course, that the man that gave you clarity was the very one that turned me inside out and flipped my world upside down.  But we're in the same place, you and I."

As soon as he said it, his smile faded and he felt guilty, because they weren't really in the same place.  Owen could return to the man he loved, could forgve him and be with him, where Ben didn't have that option.  "I'm sorry, I don't mean to make light of your situation," he said sincerely, shaking his head at himself.  "It's just kind of ironic.  I also have no idea what I'm doing but... I get so angry, still.  I never used to be like this, I was always happy but now... it's my go-to reaction, for anything.  Mix it with jealousy and you have a complete asshole pushing people around on the street, blinded by this... this rage that just... just lurks inside me waiting for an excuse to lash out at someone," he explained, his voice filled with ragged emotion and his hands describing knotted, twisted fists of fury, clenched in front of his chest as he looked at the carpet, like the perfect description for his feelings might be read from there.

He dropped his hands and looked at Ben, his expression apologetic and raw.  "I'm really sorry I did that," he said sincerely.

[Trillian]

As Owen gestured around him, Ben was frowning.  The other vampire must've picked up on his expression and read it correctly, because he was soon apologising for his levity.  He spoke about being angry, and though Ben could understand it, it wasn't really him.  Not manifesting it outwardly, anyway.  He'd been hostile, and he'd even been vengeful and petty - but he'd never been physical like Owen had.  Perhaps he should've; maybe it would help him to get all the anger out instead of letting it stew and fester inside of him.  Ben shook his head at the last, not to deny Owen his explanation, but gesturing that it wasn't needed.  The action had got them here, after all.

"What did he do?" Ben asked, wanting to know and respecting Vincent too much to ever ask him directly.  Maybe, with Owen feeling like sharing, he might get the full story, if nothing else.

[Existentially Odd]

It was a startling question to hear, both because he felt Ben and Vincent were close enough that Vincent would have shared (even though he'd asked and he knew it hadn't happened) and also because no-one had ever asked him that question.  He'd never had a chance to share his story with anyone because he'd internalised it all.  The two people he was closest to in all the world had been part of the conspiracy, so he'd had no-one to tell.  It was odd to have Ben ask and his expression likely looked a little dumbfounded - but pleased.

"Well, uh," Owen began awkwardly, blinking a few times as he tried to figure out where to start this story.  Only his part was relevant now, but understanding Vincent's background was also sort of important.  He'd have to paraphrase.  "Vincent's sire was named Lorica and he loved her dearly.  They were together for... hrmm, a couple of centuries, I think, before a woman he was sleeping with conspired to burn the house Lorica was in down.  When his sire died, Vincent blamed himself and he was terribly lonely.  He took in a young mother and her child to live with him, craving company, but when he told the woman he was a vampire, she lost the plot and he had to keep wiping her mind.  Eventually, he destroyed her mind altogether but her daughter was always accepting of him.

"She grew up and got married but Vincent believed that, if he found a child young, he could shape them to understand what he was and create a companion for himself, so he wouldn't be so lonely.  As it turned out, he tried it numerous times with no success - until me.  When I was growing up, I believed my mother had deeply loved my father and he died and that Vincent was my father's best friend.  He was always around, ever since I could remember, and I loved him like he was my father.  I used to daydream that Vincent would marry my mother and we'd be a proper family," he grinned, genuinely bemused by this ironic memory.

"I found out about him being a vampire when I was about sixteen and I was cool with it, because my mother was.  Vincent's always taken me on awesome holidays around the world - hell, he gave me everything I could ever have wanted throughout my whole life, though he kept his distance so that I didn't start to think of him as a father - he has some weird ideas about people.  He'd been burned like that with one of his previous specimens so he figured he could control exactly what happened with me by being a friend, not a father figure.  It didn't work, really, and then when I was about eighteen, we went to Turkey and I asked him to drink from me.  I figured out pretty quickly that I wasn't thinking of him just as a father any more," Owen raised his eyebrows, his expression wry.  It faded into a frown after a few moments, as he contemplated telling the hardest part of his story.

"Anyway, I fell in love with him.  We started a relationship - I never understood my mother's opposition to it, I thought it was because I was so much younger than Vincent but there was a lot more to it than that - and he proposed to me in Greece," he lifted his left hand to indicate his wedding ring, "he wanted to sire me so we could be together forever.  I had misgivings because I wasn't sure I was ready to let go of the sun and I didn't feel I measured up to him but he dismissed my misgivings.  Except they only grew.  We almost broke up but sorted it out and he sired me on my twenty-second birthday a couple of years ago.  I told myself the date showed it was meant to be, that it was wonderful and it was... until I happened upon a safe he had hidden in the floorboards of the wardrobe one night about a year later.  He was out drinking and I thought myself very clever for cracking the code but what I discovered inside... ruined my life."  Owen needed to swallow and steady himself before he finished this tale, the hurt he'd fet clouding his blue eyes unmistakably.

"It was filled with papers, papers I didn't understand, but eventually I figured out they were birth certificates, adoption records and all the details of his years seeking to create a companion for himself.  I found out I knew nothing of my parents after all - I was actually some random baby abandoned in a laundromat in a city far from here, left in a clothes basket and found by police.  Vincent adopted me.  Well, he got Karen - recently widowed and depressed she'd never have children - to adopt me and invest in his lies, to construct the story he wanted me to know so that he could get a companion who'd been raised the way he wanted him to be raised, with a secure parent and in a loving environment.  His perfect, controlled specimen, a custom-made companion for eternity.  When I found out... I was gutted by the lies.  I felt I had no identity, that everything I'd ever known was a construct, that I couldn't trust any of it.  Even my mother had had misgivings that he'd not only created himself a companion but a lover when we started going out, though he swore the love was accidental, it just happened because we connected," Owen shrugged, his hands pressing into the couch either side of his knees as he sat forward to tell his story.

He watched Ben, not expecting sympathy, feeling like he was going to be condemned for being childish and hysterical but also invested in the other vampire's reaction regardless.  "I had a melt down and left him, feeling like I couldn't trust him, couldn't trust anything that we were was true if everything at my foundation was a lie.  Eventually, I calmed down and realised that it was what it was, that I was always loved and cared for, that our love wasn't part of the bargain and it was more important than sulking about being lied to.  It's... still difficult sometimes but that's why I'm here and not with him yet.  He's encouraging me to find myself, to be sure of my identity and live without his complete influence for a while, so I can figure out... how I fit.  It's cheesy and lame, I know, but I still love him desperately, I just need to find myself first so I feel I'm giving equally in our relationship.  I need to grow up," he laughed self-deprecatingly, wincing at Ben as he expected the guy to agree wholeheartedly.  He thought he was lame...

[Trillian]

Ben listened without speaking through the lot of it.  There were a few turns of phrases that caught his attention, such as Vincent 'destroying her mind altogether' when it came to the woman whose mind he was wiping.  What had happened there?  Ben hadn't considered Vincent to be vehement in such a way.  Then there was the whole 'get someone young to shape them' thing, which Ben didn't like the sound of at all.  It sounded manipulative to the max, to get a child and then mould them to suit you.  Had Vincent really done that?  Owen had said he'd done it 'numerous times' until someone had came out right.  So what had happened to all of his mistakes?

"Yeh, that's heavy," he said when the silence extended.  "Everything's tainted,  I don't know how you can look past that.  I didn't realise Vincent was so... dark," Ben added, thinking about all of the other older vampires he'd met - anyone over five hundred - and the type of person they were.  Why were all the ruthless or evil vampires the ones that were surviving?  If this was truly the case, then he would well and truly outlast Ichabod.  Kerr was another example of a good-hearted vampire not making it to half a century.  Was it kindness that had handed Kerr his death?  Maybe it was something as random as a slayer, and Kerr hadn't been suspicious enough.

[Existentially Odd]

Ben's agreement with him caused Owen's heart to swell with surprise and happiness.  He also felt guilt, because that wasn't the word to describe Vincent, and being sided with allowed him to be magnanimous towards his sire.

"Well, I don't think he's dark, necessarily," Owen argued bashfully.  "He's just...narrow.  His focus was too tight, he went from one failure to another, manipulating the variables each time, trying to control everything that he couldn't control and not realising how impossible it was.  He wanted a companion for all the right purposes but he was too invested to see that he could've found the chemistry, he didn't have to create it.  He never saw himself as a puppeteer, either; he was using his wealth, his knowledge, his time.  As far as he was concerned, he was creating opportunities for abandoned babies, he was giving them a better life.  He never stopped to think of how his children would feel."

Owen's expression was forlorn.  He was sad for himself and also for Vincent; for such an intelligent man, he'd been very blind.

[Trillian]

Ben was wondering why Owen was flipping the argument in Vincent's favour.  He'd just told Ben the most extreme story about manipulation and deception and was now justifying his sire's actions.  He truly was a man in love, and Ben wondered if this was what other people saw when Kerr returned to him time and again.  Ben was the outcast, the one considered lofty and selfish, snobby and ingenuine.  Had Kerr told people of Ben's actions and then backpedalling when they saw the black and white story?  Ben himself had been horrified by the tale of his actions over the three years they'd first been together.  Was it the telling or the distance to the tale itself?  Was it somehow more acceptable when someone was involved?

"So what happened to all these babies that grew up to have better lives?  Did they have better lives?  Did he track them?  Or did he just... you know, take care of it?"

Did he destroy their minds too?  That was a question he would ask, but it felt like too much to slot in at this point.  Ben wanted to know, he needed to know.  Maybe being allowed to leave because of an ill-timed kiss had saved him another terrible fate.  He'd rather not be taught by someone who didn't care about mind-wiping people for his own advantage.  If Ben had been more of a problem, perhaps he'd be suffering another bout of amnesia.

[Existentially Odd]

Owen's eyes widened in horror.  "Oh, no!  He loved them!  He'd never have hurt them - the only time he's ever killed was in seeking revenge for his sire's murder.  He killed the men that burned her.  My mother never understood that," Owen conceded as an aside, looking at Ben with bright, intelligent eyes.  But I'm sure you do, they said, but he didn't voice the comment, preferring to stick with polishing Vincent's reputation now he'd tarnished it.

"But the girls... hmm.  The first was the one with the mother that he raised.  I can never remember her name.  She was fine with him being a vampire, it was the mother who wasn't, but I believe she just got married and he left her alone?  The next one was Leigh - I've met her, in London a few years ago.  She was all spiky and cynical and she asked Vincent if I was his next one and I had no idea what she meant.  She was the first one he tried to raise on his own and she turned into bad news.  She fell in love with another vampire and Vincent let her be sired by him.  She didn't want Vincent because she saw him as a father figure.  The other one was Gayle and things with her were looking the best... until she turned fifteen I think it was, and Vincent kissed her.  She freaked out so he left her with the mother he'd picked for her and I don't know if he ever saw them again.  Then there was me and he knew he shouldn't be the father or even the uncle but the friend by then.  I guess we could say he got it right.  It's weird to think that he named me, he helped create me, in a sense... and now we have, uh, sleep together," Owen laughed awkwardly, unsure about saying something crass in front of Ben.

"If I think about it too much, it does my head in but... it's just his life and the way it unfolded for him.  He had a grand love with his sire, they even had a fledgling together, in Africa, and when he lost them both even burying himself in the ground wasn't enough to make him feel better.  He likes people, he needed someone to be with and he's a fanatical planner, but not so engrossed by it that he couldn't concede defeat and walk away from it when it all went wrong," Owen shrugged, beginning to wonder if he'd hear tales from Ben about his sire, Kerr, now that he was sharing so much of Vincent's life.  "His heart's always been in the right place, he's loyal, loving and caring, he just... " the younger vampire shrugged again, not feeling he needed to finish that sentence.  Vincent's naiveté was, now, well documented and proven.

[Trillian]

Owen's explanations were changing Ben's mind about Vincent back to his initial belief - that the elder vampire was a good man at heart.  The tale didn't sound quite so dark when Owen explained that Vincent had tried and tried again for a companion and was brave enough to walk away when it didn't turn out.  Quite suddenly, almost as instantly as he'd gone the negative route, he wished madly that he had Owen's dilemma, that their positions were swapped, that he was faced with a sire that had wanted company so badly that he'd shaped the world.  There was still a bit of residue of distaste; the idea of watching a child grow up and then getting romantic notions about them... it seemed incestuous.

"What did you mean, then?  When you said that Vincent destroyed the mind of the first girl's mother, what did you mean?  Did he wipe it and not restore it?" he hazarded, not understanding why Vincent would do something like that, unless it was self preservation.

He was fine with self-preservation, and hadn't even batted an eye when Owen admitted Vincent had killed to seek revenge.  Ben wasn't sure that he could, but if he'd found out that he had the ability to destroy whoever had killed Kerr... well, it was hard to know unless he was there, but he certainly didn't cast Vincent in a negative light for that.

[Existentially Odd]

"Oh, well I think he had to wipe her mind from knowing he was a vampire every day, because she just couldn't handle it.  She loved him, I think, but was afraid of him and couldn't get used to the idea, so every night he had to take that from her and eventually it degraded her mind.  She got Alzheimer's.  When she'd forgotten him completely, he left them," Owen explained, realising belatedly that his description of destroying someone's mind might have meant something entirely different to Ben, only because the other vampire seemed confused by it.

[Trillian]

Ben thought about that for a long moment.

"That doesn't sound right, to me.  Why would he wipe her mind every night?  You'd just have to do it once, right?" he pointed out, and began to wonder if he should've heard this story from Vincent directly.  Owen didn't seem to have it straight, but at least he was talking about it.  Vincent hadn't shared about Lorica, other than the fact he'd lost her and gone to ground.  He'd listened to Ben tell his tale about Kerr, held him as he cried for him, talked to him about the last thing he'd ever said to him, comforted him by pointing out that Kerr knew he was loved by Ben, that he'd died in the middle of protecting him, and that was the noblest way for a sire to go out - and that he could only wish he was so lucky.  Such a dark path to tread, in the conversation, but it had worked, for Ben had felt much better, much more accepting of his grief, and able to start healing.  He would never get over Kerr, never really move past him, but that was okay too.  Memories of their time together deserved to be cherished.  He'd locked up all his wonderful Kerr memories into a jewellery box (including the necklace Kerr had given him as a sign of his love), and he would take them out when he was ready.

[Existentially Odd]

Owen gave Ben a blank look and then shrugged.  "I don't know?  Maybe I have the story wrong," he frowned and gave it some thought, trying to remember what Vincent had said about it... there were a lot of confusing layers of emotion on top of the memory but now that he put some effort to it, 'wipe' seemed wrong.  "Actually... he might've said he charmed her.  Like... cast a thought on her so she'd love him still.  Does that make more sense?" he queried.

It occurred to him, in that moment, that he should just tell Ben to ask Vincent and then he realised that he didn't really have a huge issue with Ben seeing Vincent again.  He believed the other vampire when he was told that the kiss wouldn't happen again, that it was a one-time deal, though he was intrigued by how memories of his sire had prompted the action in the first place.  "You should probably just ask Vincent," he said, feeling the comment was awkward just because there was forgiveness implied in it.  His fingers began to fiddle with one another in his lap.

[Trillian]

Ben nodded thoughtfully, because charming someone wasn't as invasive as wiping their mind entirely.  He, as a young vampire, could already charm mortals into staying put for him while he drank from them, of using that charm to imply that they'd done nothing more than tell him the time (a lot of effort) or flirted with him (much less effort).  If Vincent hadn't the skills to wipe a memory from someone's mind (and he understood that such a skill would require surgical precision, so it wouldn't be attempted on a loved one in case it botched), then it made sense to charm her, until the charm wore off.

But would that cause Alzheimers?  Or had it just been a coincidence?  People got alzeimers all the time, surely not all of them had been charmed by vampires and lost their cognitive?  And then it struck him with absolute horror that with all the vampires in the world, with all the charmed or mental manipulation that was going around, perhaps they were the reason why unexplained mental diseases were happening!  Fuck.  Don't even go there, it was nothing but madness for himself.  He pushed it, and it went, but grudgingly.  He focussed on Owen's invitation to ask Vincent, to help it go.

"He's already decided," Ben confessed, hoping that Owen would offer to talk to his sire.  How strange, that the man he'd betrayed might now vouch for him.  "He told me he didn't want to see me again, because of how you reacted."

He very carefully explained the why, because guilt was a powerful tool, and he wasn't past using it again to get what he wanted.  If the Academy was already built, he wouldn't bother, he'd just leave these two alone, but right now he needed them.

And he'd already begun to consider Vincent as a friend.  Perhaps more than that, and wrongly so, but there it was.