This Challenge was set forth in late January by Viv on FORKNI-L. It's one requirement was that the fanfic begin with the line, "Where were you last night?" I scribbled down most of this at the time, then spent the next three months not thinking much about it. Thanks to Jules and Bonnie for their feedback and beta. Spoilers: Human Factor, Ashes to Ashes, Last Knight Disclaimers: I'd rather try a different idea than a popular one. As always, any resemblance between myself and someone who knows what they're doing is purely coincidental. ********************************** Challenge: Pity the Child By Bonnie Rutledge Copyright 2002 "Where were you last night?" He murmurs the words deliberately. They come from his full lips in the manner of a whip braided in velvet. He means to rebuke, but only gently. He means to sting, but only enough to remind me that we are not dead. No, we are not dead, and for a scant, ungrateful second, I crave an apology for the exception. His first words to me since winter's desertion and return, and he asks me this question. Of all the questions he could pose, in all the time and madness that has passed since I presented ownership of the Raven to him, he wants to know why I was not present to join the suffering. My hot streak of rebellion at this callousness is only as enduring as the heat of a pan left too long over a flame or stove. The cool liquid of his follow-up words sizzle the revolting insurgence burning within my breast into something cold and hard again, cold and hard as a heart should be. "We needed you," he says, and I recognize that when he says 'We,' this inclusive utterance suggesting the frailest hint that he is not omnipotent nor self- sufficient, he really means 'I needed you.' But LaCroix can never say that, for he believes in his strength, his own resilience, like an American believes in the dream of democracy: he speaks of his power, he declares its desirability, and he does whatever is necessary to manifest his control of that image. When blood stains his hands, or the occasion comes when he feels the faintest twinge of regret over an action unraveled, he cannot say he is sorry. He cannot express guilt, for that would prove the dream is tarnished, and there would be no greater crime than being wrong. No, he says, 'We needed you,' as if he feels no fault himself, as if I have somehow failed him and that is what pricks him. And when he says 'need,' he does not mean that he requires anything. He means that he is owed allegiance; he is due gratitude. He has failed no one; he is the one who has been failed. Oh, it is a wizened argument, a tack of dispute designed to make its recipient feel helpless, but it no longer works well on my sense of duty. That is because I have recently been reminded what true helplessness feels like, how it feels to have a choice ripped from your hands and stolen away. The voice in my head, something like a demon, something like a conscience, gives me no choice. My duty to him is dust, and until this moment, he has given the matter no more of his care than would a vane; he simply noted the shift in the wind's direction then directed his mind elsewhere. He says, 'We needed you,' as if I had also failed Nicolas, when I suspect neither gave me a moment's thought in the heat of the conflict, but rather worried about themselves, or each other, as it has always been. The truth is, they have both failed me, but I do not indulge the poor taste of pointing out that fact. That is hardly my style. I smile enigmatically instead, a faint wrinkle to my brow suggesting that I could be chagrined, but the mild tilt of my chin implying the barest note that my vexation is unwarranted. A following shrug of one of my naked shoulders renders the debate in my expression pointless. They've had my love, and they've taken my body and soul - what do I have left to offer? What I do say, allowing not a morsel of spite to trip from my tongue, is, "No, you did not need me. I know better than to believe that, LaCroix." I deliver my reply in a flattering tone, counteracting the bitter reality of my words. My smile grows wider as I see the sentiment work its magic. LaCroix is soothed, pleased by the idea that I believe in his strength, even as he hides his self-questioning behind his stiff posture and forbidding expression. What he does not do is correct me. He does not say that, yes, I was needed, truly needed, for he never says such things. He clasps one of my bare shoulders now. The icy metal of his poison ring gives the touch of his stagnant flesh the illusion of warmth by contrast, but as he caresses my collarbone then presses my pale skin to express his approval and appreciation of my response, I want to flinch. What has me wanting to flinch at his touch; what germinates the desire to strike at his hand, to break contact with those possessive fingers through violence; what, if I must confess any truth, kept me away last night was anger. I was angry. I am angry. I experienced a bitter and coarse delight during the turmoil that they might suffer while Divia raged her revenge. How could he soothe this wound? How do I confess? At the moment both seem impossible questions, so I remain silent. The sensation of LaCroix's flesh against my own singes me for, while his ring gives him the illusion of warmth, it is not warm enough. His touch is not nearly warm enough to please me. As quickly as that, antipathy stokes the fire of rebellion within my breast once more. My heart is suddenly hot again. It does not physically beat a throbbing pulse, but emotionally, my heart hammers the intensity of my rage. Though I know the muscles are torpid, in my mind they are not so sluggish. In my imagination, my heart beats strongly. It twists in anguish at the memory of what I have lost, at the reminder of what I have never had. LaCroix's cold hands only serve to make me remember. I think of Robert in death, clammy and pale. I think of Robert, robbed of his hot, vibrant life. His life that fed me into feeling truly alive, warm and resurrected for such a brief tangle that it was easy to question when I woke in the evenings whether I had ever truly met him at all. But I know in my heart that it truly happened. I know that I loved Robert, though those who would claim to understand me would scoff, for what does a huntress need of mortal love? Janette, they would say, does not need anyone or anything that she cannot seize for herself. This scoffing belongs to the cold. It melds into the ice of death, into a body that sees immortality as a beautiful weapon, a seductive treasure. I comprehend with my undead heart that it is wise to scoff at love. I am not blind, though, not anymore. I know in the pounding memory of what it feels like to have a human heart that everything was real. I loved Robert. I had experienced what it meant to be a young, carefree, mortal woman again, and though the affair had warmed me for fewer seasons than a year could offer, I could not let it go. My practicality allows that, had I been given the luxury of letting my nature run its course, perhaps I would have dallied with Robert for a time, then moved on to another indulgence. Eventually, I might have lost interest in the fantasy of playing mother to his son. After a while, the delicious perfection of making love to a fire fighter - for the rarity of finding a mortal man capable of winning battles that I could lose worked like an aphrodisiac - that attraction could have also decomposed through familiarity. But Robert had been ripped from me before I had tired of him. Yes, I would have tired of him in the way that I have, just as I had with Nicolas in Rome, but I was not given the proper opportunity to feel my desire to keep him grow cool at his embrace. I was never given that chance, and the thievery came with a momentous penalty. By murdering Robert, by robbing me of the unfolding four seasons of our romance, my heart had never passed out of its summer of loving him. I'd never reached the inevitable feeling that comes when love grows cold, that night when a lover suddenly becomes clinging more than passionate, suffocating more than ardent, and things must change or something dies. Because Robert had been stolen from me, I could not let him go. Because I could not let him go, I tried to give him my immortality, and in the process, I lost my resilience. I lost my eternity. I could no longer feel the promise of forever cooling my emotions, but heat and fire and a thirst for revenge pounding in my veins with a fragile, human warmth that I could not deny nor explain. "It is just as well that you were absent." LaCroix's voice now carries a relenting note, as though he is indulging a whim I have not expressed. He studies my features, notes the pain I cannot hide, and completely misinterprets the cause. "I am..." His voice hovers momentarily as he is struck by an emotion that he does not recognize, nor is he sure of which he wants to make the acquaintance. "...relieved that you were spared," he admits, coupling the confession with one of his wry, dark smiles. LaCroix does not seem to notice or care that I do not share his humor anymore. I cannot laugh at the circumstances, even in his hollow style, cannot find the reason to fake the air of conspirator in order to please him. "Though perhaps my relief is unnecessary," LaCroix adds thoughtfully, his reflection for his own benefit more than any perceived interest on my part. "Nicholas managed to survive. It is difficult for me to imagine you would have done less. My Janette..." His hand leaves my shoulder to lightly stroke over my hair, like a father would a cherished daughter. I cannot bear it. I turn away, as if affected by the wreckage of the club - what used to be my club - but I do not care if the Raven has a broken wing. I grew tired of tending this nest after 12 years, you see, just as I grew tired of exclusive devotion to Nicolas after 97 years, just as I have grown tired of LaCroix's petty fluctuations over the centuries. For, as surprising as it may seem, I realize that he is confused: he does not know how to treat me. Am I the perfect dutiful daughter, the changeling who never demanded more than he was prepared to offer? Am I the old lover, the seductress whore he groomed to suit his desires? Am I the dead mother, the vampire womb that could never have children of her own, yet who managed to entrench herself in the Community in a way that he could not, nurturing the converted into devotion rather than commanding them to love her? He does not know which I am - he has never known - and I have lost the will to prove myself in search of his satisfaction. My hot, rhythmic memory of a beating heart isn't distressed at the broken glass and splintered wood littering the club's floor, nor am I saddened at the deaths of any dancers or conquistadors of LaCroix's association, for they were not taken from me. Their wounds are of no consequence as far as I am concerned. If anything, his suggestion that he regrets their passing is mildly insulting. He never grieved for me. To him, losing a daughter is gaining a son. That inequality grates, a splinter under my skin. I am not fazed by any injuries LaCroix may have suffered physically. He claims that Divia attempted to kill him as well as the others, that he and Nicolas fought the effects of her poison, but I cannot commiserate over their ordeal. I want to weep for Divia. A child nurtured out of evil, a monster surely, yet I want to cry for her. I need to cry for her. My every cell aches with the need to wail at that child's fate, like a poison biting in my blood. LaCroix does not need to cry for her. I can see that. When he speaks of what happened with Divia, he considers it in terms of how she affected him, how she shamed him, how she repulsed him, and how he suffered as he burnt her body into ashes. His sorrow was for himself, and he spares no thought for her pain, only her affliction. And Nicolas - would he feel any grief for a poor, wicked daughter? Would he spare her the sympathy that he would a withered flower, much less the righteousness he cries for his precious mortals? No, he would not. It takes a poor, wicked daughter to understand that there was more to Divia than a sickness of morality. I see that her dreams had been crushed - her mad, unreasonable dreams that could have never come true in this world. And mad, mad though she was, I know that she must have had moments when it was clear, as clear as the love I had for Robert is to me, that her dreams would end in death, that she would beg to live as I begged Nicolas to let me die, and that dream would be crushed as well. I know, as only a poor, wicked daughter could, that when the world grinds a dream into ashes and dust, the only thing left to hold onto is revenge. The dream becomes the destruction of those who crushed all hope, of those who have what you never will. This vengeful madness is what keeps poor, wicked daughters alive. This unforgiving insanity makes tombs out of alleys and terminals, because the best revenge... But my mind catches on that thought, and I catch my breath as well, for I am not a mortal woman. I do not need to breathe. No, not anymore. I feel a hum in my head, a deceitfully lively feeling, and I recognize that Nicolas has arrived. I cannot breathe. I will not breathe while he is near. His face is bright, gazing at me with admiration and welcome, his eyes fixed on my features as he casually responds to LaCroix's greeting. I realize with fatal disappointment that Nicolas does not really understand why I left the DaVinci portrait behind after he revived the vampire in me. He thinks I forgave him, the boyish delight on his face tells me this. He fails to realize that I was no longer happy keeping it, my painted pose of timeless beauty, because I was no longer content being that image. When I meant it as a rejection, he mistook my gesture for love. Nicolas is not so unaware that he fails to notice my face-to-face coldness for long. I remain silent, offering no greeting. I will not breathe while he is near. I cannot. I will not smile to please him, for he will not offer what I need to smother this angry fire raging where I need a safe, cold heart. I will not console him, for I will not be consoled. I will not soothe him, for I will not be soothed. I will not laugh away his troubles, for I cannot laugh anymore. LaCroix is not blind to my reaction, either. I can feel his stare drilling into my bare back. I imagine I can feel him reconsidering my every move, word, and silence since I arrived, and he is judging each wanting. I understand that any possessiveness he feels for me is transitive: I am connected to him through Nicolas. Nicolas is LaCroix's scope, and beyond that, I do not exist. I am dead to him. Nicolas looks concerned. He scans me up and down, searching for some physical explanation. "Janette? Are you all right? Where were you last night? Were you hurt?" His careless ignorance breathes life into me. Words flood my throat, and I realize I can laugh, if only to mock the irony. He thinks Divia hurt me. He blames Divia, when he is the one who did me harm. I begged him to let me die, to let me have the mortal death he has struggled so long and hard to obtain, and he stripped that prize from me. In his selfishness, he raped me of his prized obsession, and left me hovering on the threshold between two eternities. I can acknowledge that, yes, I did have a choice, even after he shared his blood, but he should have known better. He should have shown me mercy. He should have listened. I begged to die a mortal death. I pleaded, because I knew just how tempting a vampire death could be. I implored, because I knew that I would not be able to resist the darkness. Poor, wicked daughters never can. The light may beckon in the distance, but the pervasive spell, that insidious promise of retribution against those who have wronged us, who will not admit they have wronged us, pulls at us irresistibly. My tongue slips fast and slick as I form my answer, for I must answer Nicolas's question. It is impossible for me to remain quiet any longer, and I hate him, for this need to speak my shattered peace reminds me of the fire of being alive, truly alive. I do not want to feel like this, but I do not know how to spare myself the turmoil. "Divia could not have hurt me. Last night, I wished her success with her revenge." From behind, I feel LaCroix's firm grip on my shoulder, and this time, I do flinch. Reproof, I cannot stand reproof now. "Revenge..." I spit, fury driving me to ball my fists, my nails digging into the creases of my palms through the silk of my gloves. "How could Divia not want it? How could she resist the craving for it?" I am smiling now, a smile with all the cruelty I have been taught, cruelty that I have learned from men. "She would have known, just as I do...the best revenge..." Nicolas stares at me dumbfounded, struck with amazement at the vitriol I utter. He doesn't want to believe my anger, he doesn't want to accept that he has enraged me, so he simply shakes his head, denying me as I speak. But I am not speaking anymore. I am crying, weeping for the dead little child- woman named Divia, because I understand. Only I understand, and the tears have filled my throat, cutting off my words. I can do nothing now but breathe, choking back gasping sobs as I mourn her. Amazingly, the words come from another throat. "The best revenge is revenge." It is LaCroix who speaks, his voice strangely soft. He touches me again, but this time he gently takes my gloved hand. My eyes flutter as I glance down at our entwined fingers in disbelief, for I realize that, in a fragile way, LaCroix is offering something he has never offered me before: his consolation. I lift my head, squeezing LaCroix's hand as my glittery gaze confronts Nicolas. "How could she not want you to suffer? You took her life, you took her dream." I look at LaCroix now, and the pain in his visage stuns me. I gaze up at him, amazed at the map of his features, for on this rare evening, he does not look supremely arrogant, or utterly masterful, or beyond any paltry concern. Oh, he's still wearing his harsh facade of impunity, but he seems - in the absence of a proper adjective to convey the mood I sense, I don't know how to describe it - perhaps I should say he appears weary to his ancient core. Lucien LaCroix looks like an old soldier on this fine, starry night, like a lord with a poorly defended fortress, grown complacent from too many years of rich living and not enough labor. I feel a sensation resembling shock wind through me at the notion of LaCroix at any disadvantage, but somehow I feel, though difficult to comprehend, I have made an accurate assessment. I lift my hands to touch his face, tracing his expression with dazed fingers. "Divia was mad, of course she was," I tell him urgently. "She could never have the love that she craved. You could not have satisfied her, and what hope did she have left? Even if you did love her in your way, she could never have been your favorite. No matter how perfect she tried to be, no matter how much she tried to please you, you could never love her like you would a son." I know that my words strike a blow. LaCroix recoils, a muscle in his jaw flexing as he grinds his teeth. I see his expression shutter, closing me out, and he steps away. This is a battleground for cold hearts, and I harden mine despite the screaming fire in my head. I am ravaged inside. I am dead inside. I am cut irrevocably. While I am dead to him - for I have been a walking ghost intangible to his narcissistic concern for some time now - while Nicolas is too shocked to make an argument, I slip toward the exit, my soles scratching wraithlike whispers against the painted wood of the floor still scattered with glass fragments. They are both glad to see me go, I think, under the circumstances. I know that I should not linger, but I look back like some pilgrim fleeing Hades or Sodom. I cannot help but rub salt in the wound. My tone rings melodic, and I thrill at the sweetness of the sound. How can I be so lovely while so unkind? The words do not sound bitter, yet that is their foundation. "So she had to die," I begin soothingly, then I bend my voice into a chiding clip. "You could have said that you were sorry. I'm sure she wanted an apology." My mouth twists as my nails dig into the doorjamb from my tension, this time tearing the gloves masking my hands. I know I will leave scars in my wake, but that is the way of the world, no? I punctuate my parting sentiment with the damning phrase: "Oh, yes. She wanted a crumb of an apology." And they let me go. In the weeks that follow, neither seeks me out. I wonder if they have already forgotten me, if they have already moved on in their thoughts as they have in their hearts. I have not. I linger, watching from a distance, a shadow haunting their movements. When it happens, I cannot say I am surprised. I feel no disappointment, nor any great pleasure. It seems simply an ending, something awkward that gives me no peace. The craving to silence my heart, to freeze that traitorous organ and to embalm it once more, grows stronger with each night that passes. That is why I enter the loft rather than wait. That is why I see Natalie, her body stretched in near-peace across the rug as if she was sleeping, not dying. What is Nicolas saying? "I can't condemn her to this darkness." But he could condemn me to that fate, just as I could condemn him. Oh, we are a hateful pair: full of petty cruelties in the name of love, empty of mercy in the name of kindness, soft vipers in mortality's garden of heavenly delight. That is when I hear LaCroix's words as he attempts to reason with Nicolas yet again. "Life is a gift..." In all the talk of precious jewels, he fails to mention that life is meant to be stolen, thieved in the night. Life is our greatest commodity, taken and traded in the tides of fate. As LaCroix raises the stake and curses, I wonder if he understands that this is his last attempt to stem that tide. I wonder if he can hear the sounds in my head: the weeping of children, the desperation of a poor, wicked daughter who has lost her head, who claws for her broken dream, who burns for what she can never have. I know the loft. I have been here before. Janette has been here before. I find a sword - another object once loved by the crusader that he cannot let go of though it serves him no good. I sweep it through the air. I am strong; it slices swiftly. LaCroix's head tumbles to the floor, snicker-snack, while his body elegantly drops knee-first before tilting like timber to one side. I do not see the surprise that ices his final expression. I only see the face of a little girl wreathed in pain and defeat. And Nicolas. I see the stake planted in his heart. He is so close to death, his dream painting his lips with a hopeful smile. Of course I save him. I thieve him of his death. I rob his faith of the promise that his mortal love might have carried some meaning beyond the gift of life. Later, when he opens his ravenous eyes, I see them widen in blue-gold understanding. Nicolas does not weep. He simply says, "Janette, I'm sorry." I take his face in my hands. My palms are bare to the world tonight, my gloves abandoned. The scratches and teeth marks puncturing my right wrist gleam as angry a red as when they were first inflicted, though almost a month has passed since the injury. I kiss him softly: mother, daughter, lover. I whisper, "So am I." It is not an ending, I suppose. There is no ending, no peace to be had. Still, as the sun rises, for the first day in centuries, I sleep with the grace of an innocent child. ********************************** End