Moments

Sorry for the long wait, I got distracted with some other stuff then really wanted to make sure I got this one right, I rewrote the end at least twenty times. And a quick question for you all, who would you like to see more of in this fic? A few more characters are going to be coming in in the next few chapters but I was hoping to find out who you all would like to see! Thanks and enjoy another chapter.
Nova


Chapter Six: Roses and Thorns
A man who harms another harms himself.

I can't take it when a girl cries. A single tear has always cut me to little edible pieces, but this..this isn't just some chick crying. Crying about me killing her boyfriend, or some of the other shit I've had to deal with all this time. No this is the girl I've never seen smile. For all the time I've been around this stupid little rabbit she's never shown any emotion except for anger and that full of herself smile she always gets when some one loses to her. That sick smile she gets when she knows she's won and immediately runs off for tea. That smile has haunted me for years..this is something that just gnaws at me.

It'd be better if she had just taken her fist and dug it into me, ripped out my damn heart and ate it for fuck's sake. Rachel is a wonder, even crying she's dignified. She doesn't sob or cry out, her shoulders barely even shake. It's only because I can feel wet spots soaking through my jacket that I know she's crying at all. The stone floor isn't as cold as I thought it would be as I sit back pulling her with me as her legs are sprawled out behind the edges of her boots peeking out from the white lace ruffles. She doesn't say anything and neither do I. The smell of the roses is heady on her and I wonder if it comes from her garden or if she just naturally smells like that.

She's calming down now, damn rabbit. My hand raises from her back to stroke her hair as nicely as I can with these gloves on. Being 'tender' isn't something I'm known for but hell at least I'm giving it a fucking shot. Watching people die...over and over. No wonder she was so fucked. The smells of the meal I ruined are still wafting over the slight moonlit breeze and I look at it from the edges of my peripherals. I fucked that table up that's for sure. Glass twinkling in the light along with the ruined food, ah well it'll show that Valkenhyn bastard right, make him do a little more work. She pulls her head away from me her sleeves raising to push away the lines tears have made on her face.

“Forgive me, I appear to have lost myself.” She's making excuses, straightening herself up. That fucking wall raising just as I go some fucking answers, just as the things that happened to me were making sense, why she was a ghost at every god damn turn I made.

Her head raises and her eyes look at me, and I see a look I'd never seen in any girl I'd ever seen, but one I recognized. From the paintings...the woman who was Nic-something's wife. Elysa? That look of just being dead on the inside...shattered. Her red orbs moved away just as quickly and I couldn't help but frown...what was so horrible to do...that to her? If there was one thing I gave to Rachel it's that she was strong. She was hell to fight against and she had one bitch of a brain to get away from. The few times, and I do mean few we're talking maybe twice here, I'd managed to beat her she acted perfectly like I hadn't. She acted as if she had fucking planned for me to kick her ass, and almost every battle we had was close I never managed to hurt her. She never bled or even limped away from any battle we had which was the most frustrating thing about her.

She started to stand but my hand caught her keeping her on the floor. Something in my eyes must have scared her because she flinched back for just a moment. Time ticked in slow moving steps between us as I stared into those eyes. Knowledge, fear, sadness...no not sadness despair, and something else I couldn't quite figure out was there in the very back. The tears made her eyes glisten like rubies under the moonlight and I felt a pang I hadn't felt since...since Shaya died at that burning church.

“I think it would be in you best interest to leave.” Her voice is quiet and barely audible over the slight wind that had started kicking up. I frown watching her face become harsher as she hides behind that look of being haughty and all knowing. It hurt and I couldn't fucking understanding it. She didn't want me to know something, something in those eyes that I couldn't describe. She moved to her feet and I followed. Long tense moments being trapped between us. Knowledge of what had happened, what I knew now. Everything.

She had to watch me die, over and over and over. Who else died? What happened in these 'endings' she watched? We stood opposite one another for a long moment before I broke the silence. “I think I'd like to stay.”

“But the Cauldron-”
“Will wait.” She was pulling at straws now. Trying to pull up defenses and get me the hell away from her. I could only grin internally at that. I had finally gotten to her though I hadn't meant to. For a long time I had always wanted to know who the hell she was. She bit me and ran, then kept showing up like a ghost, and I never fucking knew why. Now...now I was getting my answers.

“Why do you follow me around Rachel? I mean it's not like you have to but you're a fucking ghost in my shadow.” The question caught her off guard, but she knew she wasn't getting rid of me. Sure she could just send me, but for some odd reason she wanted to part on good terms. I wanted to know more...there was something behind all those walls and that mask of indifference...something that reeled me in like a fish.

“Because you are my mistake.”
Ouch. I must have noticeably winced since concern flooded across her face before a stern expression quickly whipped it beneath that heavy indifference.
“Before you I never bit anyone, and after you I never shall again. I am obligated to you.”

“Why don't you think past your fucking obligations. Do you want to follow me around?”
“You are quite amusing...yes. I suppose, out of all the people who are within this play you are quite possibly the most entertaining. I try to keep my eye on you.”

“O-ok.” That was slightly creepy. That all knowing aura came over her again ad it bugged the hell out of me. “Do you want me to leave?”
“I suppose not. I am sure there are more things you want to know.”
“Alright, now what do you want?”

This pulled her away from these easy answers and she simply stared at me at me for a few long moments her eyebrows knotted in deep thought. Most people you asked them what they wanted and a flurry of answers most fucking useless and selfish spewed out of their mouths. She just stood there in silence her fingers folded together neatly, eyes staring over me towards the garden lost in it all.

When her eyes finally focused and she let herself look at me I understood. No one had ever asked her what she wanted before.

What did I want? Within the multitude of thoughts that had come through me want was one I was both familiar and unfamiliar with. I could easily state that I wanted a cup of tea, or that I wished to go out and it would be done. Still such surface desires were hardly anything to talk about and I highly doubted that it was these such wants that he was alluding to. No, what he wanted to know were the deeper wants, those wants that rest within a persons soul. Happiness, love, success. The things every day people wished for, and some for money, power, or to cause terror. Things monsters wished for. Once I had wished of these sorts of things, love especially.

In my younger years mere months before I would become the timeless creature I now was I imagined my marriage. A long white dress, my hair in curls, a man who would cross oceans for my favor. There were many, my hand had been offered for long before I was of age. Arranged marriages proposed and I soon learned too many people were monsters. Princes and warlords wanting to command pieces of the army. To become heroes for their own reasons or tyrants to fight against others even though the beast had wrecked the land. There were whispers once that I was to be given to Hakumen as a bride, which of course is laughable at best, and impossible with the knowledge of the White Knight I now beheld. I would not have wanted him either, the Susano'o unit made him cocky almost to the point of not being able to put up with him. Love was a gift I would not get to partake of. Once I was changed I understood that, and happiness was a mere illusion. Temporary, fleeting...happiness stayed only for a moment until one became dissatisfied with their surroundings and yearned for something different. A never ending cycle.

What I wanted, truly wanted, was the loop to end. To stop the beast in his tracks...to stop the beast not the way the White Knight would, but instead to stop him from ever coming to be. It would never happen and in some small way I wonder if that singular thought is why I must now toil watching the world rebuild time and time again, to know who the beast was. Now perhaps that was changing, perhaps I wanted to save him from his fate, to stop Terumi and stop this relentless cycle. It couldn't change anything now, it was too late, but perhaps give a better future.

“Don't hurt yourself.”

Sarcasm. My face lifts and he is closer to me than when my thoughts had become overwhelming and I drowning in them. Mere breaths away truly, too close. His fingers reached forward affectionately pushing hair away from my eyes, parting the veil they hid beneath. My eyes only flare for a moment with indignation upon his silly comment.

“It is a pointless question. What does what one wants amount to? Nothing. Simple selfish desires that sit untouched when inconvenient.” I cross my arms against the cloth of my torso as he simply laughs at my response. My brow furrowing as I turn from him gazing out into the garden. His fingers at least do not raise to touch me again, he has been far to physical in a non-fighting manner since out at the garden.

“Rachel why not answer the question? Sure it might be pointless but I'd like to know.” His voice seems genuine enough but it is a hard question. I do not wish to turn back the clock of time and destroy the Black Beast as I once would have. Some people truly deserved what happened to them, but I would not like to give up my eternal life either. My life was of the most importance to the Alucard line, the last...it would be like taking out the last unicorn and shooting it merely to save it the pain of being the last. To erase the history of it all, no I had to live on although it meant permanent solitude.

I frown deeply as I consider my choices. I have never thought about what I wanted, not since Father died. Father gave me everything I wanted on a mere whim, from a horse to ride on to new dresses to the large glass green houses. All of it...now I had no wants.

“Perhaps..” I frown it seems so childish, in many ways. My cheeks burned hues of pastel pinks and reds with heat and embarrassment as I thought of it. To admit such foolishness seemed some how a showing of weakness, perhaps even a large one and to give some one such knowledge could only be dangerous. Still as I consider it I cannot find a way which this knowledge could, at least potentially, be used against me and it is but a simple question.

“Well go on, the damn suspense is killing me.” I give a small laugh at his impatience but it is hardly a heart felt one.

“We shouldn't discuss it here. This mess needs to be cleaned and I do not wish to take the chance of cutting myself on this glass. Come, we'll go to the music room, it's not far .” My hands raise and two claps bring a flourish of movements, a black cloud and my two companions arrive with the normal fumbled and graceless entry. Nago bowing low as Gii tries to keep his plump and pointless form airborne.

“Mistress! W-what happened?” I give a sigh at Gii's incessant questions clicking my tongue at him in such a way to make him pale from his normal beet red towards a more pastel shade.
“The legs must be looked at on that table. They fell without a moments hesitation but instants after we sat to eat. Tell Valkenhyn I am very disappointed.”

Nago and Gii exchange looks but nothing else is given, they merely stand there like the pathetic statues they are. “Well?”

“O-oh yes Mistress. We'll have this cleaned up in no time.”
“See to it that you do. I shall be timing your efforts.” With a flurry of a turn I move towards the lower stairs.

She did it again, damn that Rachel. One minute she's almost human, well as human as she can be. The look on her face, her eyes. For a few moments you could believe she was a normal girl with a heavy burden. Then in the flash of two annoying pests she becomes cold as ice and an A class bitch. We move down the stairs and she doesn't bother to talk. Just silence, just like Litchi. Silence was following me today.

“Why are you so mean to those two? I mean obviously you like them or you wouldn't keep them around...”

The edges of her blonde pony tails bounce as she laughs moving with fast steps down the long stair well. One hand dragging, no caressing the wall like an old friend. I could see the stone was smoothed slightly where her fingers fell, I didn't notice that on the way up but I guess it's easier to see this way. Her laughter only lasts a few breaths before she's talking her voice cold as always and it echoes up the stairwell like a fierce chill.

“I don't know if like is perhaps the right word. They have been with me since childhood, but they must know their place. They are mere servants whose lives I could take away in but a moment. Besides, threatening compels them to work at a higher efficiency as well as amusing me in their panic.” I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I was suddenly unsure if the girl I was speaking to upstairs was me falling asleep at the table during dinner. This...person was down right cold, like Rachel always was.

“Lastly, they know I don't mean it.” There it was again, the right hook, the blow that sends you reeling and you don't even know what the fuck hit you. It was an edge of sweetness. Her voice didn't change, not a bit of it from those same tones I've heard laugh at my own losses, but the sweet was there.

She wasn't kidding when she said it wasn't far. At the bottom of the stairs, two doors down past that stupid bust of some old guy in a curled wig, and a vase of more roses. There were flowers everywhere in this fucking place. She opened the door to a room entering into the pitch darkness. It stunk like a trap but I heard two loud claps and suddenly the place was brightly lit.

Candles in holders on the walls and another chandelier lit the place not even leaving the corners for shadows to hide. A large piano, a cello and a few instruments I didn't recognized sat poised at one area of the room while several couches and chairs filled up the rest. The chairs were old and I'd seen something like them in a Library branch some time back. These looked a hell of a lot more comfortable though. Some soft cushy material covering them.

She sat with grace. I always thought she'd get lost in all those damn skirts but the thing barely ruffled as she tucked it behind her knees and sat down at a couch with a heart shaped back. I took the longer couch opposite sitting with a leg crossed over my knee. Arms sprawling the back of the couch, it was better then that damn rigid wooden chair she had me sit at during lunch.

“So out with it.”

Her brow creases again, and I swallow my want to scream at her. Why the hell wouldn't she just come out with it. She was more open about the stupid Cauldron and what this place was than this simple stupid question. A question I could ask a stranger on a corner and get a faster answer out of.

A long breath escapes her lips, it's strange but their darker than normal. The pink replaced for a red that matches her cheeks...wait, she's blushing?! Small bits of pink and red flared on her cheeks and the old myth 'vampires can't blush' was officially dead in the seithr. She wouldn't look at me either her eyes looking specifically at the wall paper beyond me. A good tactic since it made her concentrate.

“I think I would like to live my life as it would before the black beast's arrival.”

That was it? All that blushing, avoiding, and everything else was for that?! What the fuck was that about! I closed my eyes in agitation. “That's it? Go back to being a human?” I forced myself to keep my voice under control but I think it came out through gritted teeth because she was giving me that fucking cocksure smile again.

“No not human, just live the life that was made for me.” More cryptic answers, this is giving me a headache. Obviously she saw my irritation since she took it upon herself to give a shit and continue. “I was to have a large ball at my sixteenth birthday and then meet with suitors. Then I would choose a husband whom I cared for and was of acceptable parentage. I suppose a sort of happily ever after. Eventually I would become queen unless a better heir was chosen. At twenty three my father would have turned me and eventually I would have to fake my own death to remove myself from the thrown but such is life.”

“So you want to live a life where you have to choose some prince to marry?” The more she told me the less this was making any sense. Sure I had no illusions about love or any of that shit, there was no damn time. The cauldron wouldn't wait for me...but I did...once think about what it would be like. Between Saya and now, while training under Jubei that maybe..maybe I'd find some one and just live that nice life in the middle of nowhere. Grow old and all that shit. I couldn't have the choice of who taken away from me, my choices right now were terrible enough.

“I...never looked at it that way. For me I was raised being told that anyone of incorrect lineage was not good enough for me. In those times I had never met people like yourself or any of the others who live in the lower levels. My parents wanted the best for me and knew best. Besides, there is the Alucard blood to think about.”
“Everyone bleeds red Rachel. What the hell does it matter, besides why couldn't you do that stuff anyway?” I couldn't believe this, I didn't think anyone held onto those stupid ideas of 'blue bloods' anymore. There wasn't enough of the damn stuff to go around for people to give a rats ass anymore. Maybe she was right about being outdated.

“Well if you hadn't noticed,” there was that angry tone again “I will probably never pass for a marrying age, and I can barely get most people to not think of me as a child. Besides, only a few people are out of their mind enough to marry a vampire willingly. Without the beauty of being older to aid me my chances for a romantic affair are nil. Aside from that there is a bit too much going on at the moment, and probably will be for the substantial future for love to even have a moment to fester should I manage to overcome any of the above tasks.”

She just got louder as she kept talking, enraged about something as she let her eyes burn into me like two fiery hot swords. “Ok, ok I get it. Still you don't look that young to me.”
“If you think your foolish compliment shall overcome my anger at your being blind not to mention idiotic, you are clearly mistaken.”

I give a sigh as she flares up to anger just as quickly as I do. “Still you want to get married? You don't seem the tied down type.”
She looks livid at me for another moment before her eyes gaze at the piano. “Once all I wanted was love. To know I was loved and some one was there for me. Then I learned no one can, I am damned to eternal solitude. Never to know love in any form, it is the second part of my curse. I cannot interfere, I cannot make the world any better I can merely watch and guard. Also that I shall do it alone, most likely for all eternity or until I go quite mad.”

Her eyes darken again as sorrow takes away the blush that was pulling at her cheeks. Her eyes far off and hazy as she pulls a point on the piano to concentrate into. I-I can't stand that look anymore. She's so broken, so weak...a little mimic doll of the girl who would make fun of me when I was in pain, who would challenge me to fights for her own amusement...this broken thing that hid inside that all along.

Madness...I would go mad with time. The body may live forever but the mind still felt it's toll, only the exceptionally strong could overcome time's ravages and I had found that I was not strong enough. The loop should it continue indefinitely would surely speed up the process. “When I become mad I shall hope I have the common sense to end my own life.” The pang is there, ripping at me. I'll never become that woman my father wished me to, forever trapped in this stunted form. To be called loli and child for the rest of my eternity. Tears were pulling at the edges of my eyes.

“Rachel...” He is pulling me away again, pulling me from that tide of thoughts that ripples through me like a tsunami. Ripping away...why does he bring on these things? Why does he torture me. My eyes return from their daze and I am looking into his. Some time in those few seconds he had crossed from the long couch to my own. Filling perfectly the other half of it.

It wasn't proper and I scooted from him slightly, but his hand was over me, pressing against the curved edge of the couch. He was so much larger than myself and I could see why people feared him. So tall...so wild. “Please..this is hardly a suitable nor acceptable distance.” What was this feeling, my heart in my throat as it beats wildly within me. My cheeks are flaring with warmth and all I want to do is run, yet like a wicked snake his eyes have me transfixed. A gloved finger falls on my lips to silence me as I am about to open my mouth in yet another protest.

I can feel his breath as he leans closer to me. He smells of dust, and of grime but beneath it he smells of mint and fresh air. We're mere moments away from one another now as he stares at me. His eyes are clouded with something, some knowledge like a spark that has lit them.

I finally understood it, as tears filled her eyes I was pulled. Running to her, I had to stop them, I had to fix her. I can't fucking understand it, but it pulls at me. It rips at me more than losing my arm. Where did she go? Where did the stupid rabbit that taunted me go? Or was this who it was... this is who was under there all the time. Her lips are soft beneath my finger and those eyes scared...just like a rabbit would be.

No one ever loved her...and she's been alone. I knew what that was like, every day since Saya was gone I was alone. Even in crowds, and when I was wanted...then I was really fucking alone. No one to trust, everyone was an enemy...even her. Subconsciously my fingers runs along my neck. The bite is still there...it always will be.

Her eyes, her hair...I never noticed anything about her before now. She's so small, tiny and perfectly crafted . It wasn't the change of person that made me see that now but instead the want to keep her from being broken...to keep that pain away. I know how to fix her and slowly I drop my head toward her own. I can feel the breath catch in her throat.

“You don't have to be alone.” The words are barely a whisper, no one needs to hear it but her. Her eyes widen for a moment and that shocked expression is all it takes, I lean forward and my lips press against her own. They're soft like a rose would be.