Disarm

Thoreau knew where he slept in the school, safely tucked away from any prying eyes that might divulge his location to those better left in the dark, and knew also that no locks could keep him out. He waited until the school was black with night, silent and still, shifting innocuously with sleep, then entered the building and crept, hugging the shadows tightly, towards Abner's office.

He'd acted compulsively before in his twenty-five years of life, but never had he run such a risk without having a clue as to the consequences of what he was doing. What was he gaining by going to Robert now? What end did he want to achieve through these means? In the darkness, he recognized his father's nameplate on one of the classroom doors; what would Adrian have said if he'd known just what his idiot son was getting up to this time? Thoreau knew very well what he would have said--how could you be so wreckless, so careless, have you learned nothing, boy, nothing at all--

Then again, Adrian was not walking the same narrow line between humanity and demon that Thoreau was forced to tread every day, constantly one step away from predator, one step away from guilt-plagued sinner. Adrian was not still painfully in love with a man he could never embrace again.

"This is madness," he whispered to his shadow, which cast itself before him on the ground, long and yawning before him like a void. "What am I doing?"

It hardly mattered what he was doing, or why he was doing it, because regardless of his doubt his feet carried him on down the corridor of the school until he reached the door to Abner's classroom. He twisted the latch and stepped inside, casting a furtive glance around at the last instant. Finding the classroom empty, he closed the door behind him and looked towards the office.

The office door was closed with no dim glow of light visible beneath it. If his senses hadn't told him otherwise, he might have doubted Robert's presence there entirely. His predatory ability to sense warm blooded creatures told him differently.

Anxiety made his chest feel light, his his stomach cold with dread. What if Robert woke up? What if he was already awake? What would he do, what would he see, what would he say? A morbid excitement made Thoreau's fingertips tingle and his lips and throat grow dry with the sudden plethora of possibilities unfolding before him like a thousand different and varied methods of total and complete destruction; would it be so awful to have Robert see him? It came on him so suddenly that he almost didn't realize it at first. All of a sudden, he wanted Robert to see him. He wanted to be there when Robert woke up, wanted to be the first thing that caught his eyes, wanted to see the sudden realization in his lover's eyes that yes, he was there, that he was alive, even in a supernatural sense, he wanted...

He wanted Robert.

The time to think about his actions had long passed him by. Brainless action and reaction provided a pleasant, bland sanctuary for his sanity, which was minutes away from imploding on itself with this sudden rush of new emotion, old emotion, old hurt, old love, old need. Thoreau approached the office door slowly and slowly eased open the final physical barrier separating him from his husband and lover of seven years.

The interior of the room yawned before him like a thick emptiness that threatened to swallow him up. A dim light poured into the office around his silhouette, pale yellow like faded gold; it winked spitefully against a small glass pencil container on Abner's desk. The rest of the room was reduced to a panorama of dull, motionless gray--save for one weakly shifting figure on the sofa sleeping on the opposite wall. Thoreau's heart began to break.

Robert Crim's large body had never looked so fragile to his eyes before. Even before his death, Thoreau could recall the stubborn strength in the set of the blond man's jaw and the fierce, shining love and pride in his eyes as he lay in Robert's arms, staring up at him until there was nothing but blackness. Right up until the bitter end, he'd been such a piller of strength and resilience, a pair of strong arms that would always hold him up, even when his cane went out, or his knees buckled. In Robert's arms, he never faltered. Never.

There was none of that in his hunched shoulders now, his bowed head tucked pitifully against the back of the couch. He had no blankets to wrap himself in and so his strong arms were hugged across his chest as though clutching something precious. His proud dignity had been discarded--his body and soul, broken by grief and left to be repaired by two small children, left Thoreau standing disarmed before yet another casualty of his foolhardy mistakes.

What had he been thinking when he allowed Famke to change him, to alter his body and mind, to turn him into a night creature, a predator, when it was already clear the path that his body wanted to take? What power on high had given them, two simpleton children, the right to play God and decide that it was all right to cheat death? What an idyllic fantasy life he had been living for the past six months--prancing about Paris as the famous David Mercier, concert pianist and lover of the upstart Greek fashion designer from south. Had he really thought it was possible to completely drop one life simply because it was becoming too difficult to lead, only to pick up the threads of an old one and carry on as though nothing had changed? As though for the past seven years, he hadn't fallen asleep next to the same man every night and woken up to his embrace every morning.

Was this his punishment for cheating death--to live an eternity with Famke, what he'd always dreamt of in some secret chamber of his heart, only to watch Robert fracture, break, crumble, and eventually succumb to grief and death, while pretending that he wasn't really there? Death, alone, without Thoreau's arms to fall into? And his children--

No parent should ever have to watch his children borne into their graves.

It came to him so suddenly he hardly had time to register it at all before he was reeling with epiphany--there was no life he had touched that he hadn't somehow sent spiraling out of control, plunging it into a living hell that left deep, irreparable scarring that could never be forgotten. If it weren't for him, perhaps his mother would still be alive. If it weren't for him, Olivia would never have been ostracised from her family for having children out of wedlock. She might never have contracted her husband's disease. She might still be alive. If it weren't for Thoreau, for David Thoreau Vanet, Abner Kequet would never have endured the blistering agony of the Dark Mark, and perhaps the trembling, shaking, half-crazed creature he had been reduced to could have become something stronger, more solid. If it weren't for him, Sartre would never have endured Adrian's torturous Cruciatus Curse while he, the catalyst of it all, was too far away to be of any help at all.

It was Thoreau's fault that Famke went to Italy seven years ago, Thoreau's fault that his lover and companion was captured and turned into what he was today--a vampire, a night stalker, a blood drinker, a seraph waiting to catch flame in the light of the sun. It was Thoreau's fault that Cain pursued Famke so relentlessly; if it weren't for him, perhaps Cain would have lost interest in the fight and gone off to wreak havoc elsewhere. And it was Thoreau's fault that now, after seven years of furtively wishing to see his face again, Thoreau could not give Famke that exclusive love that he knew his lover desired and expected guilelessly. Because no matter how long eternity turned out to be, for Thoreau, there would always be Robert Crim, and he would always occupy a vast part of Thoreau's heart as one of the two loves of his mortal and immortal life.

In his sleep, Robert shifted his weight and voiced a sound of cramped discomfort. Thoreau moved silently to the sofa and carefully eased his weight onto the seat at Robert's side. He waited a moment, frozen in stillness, and watcehd for the inevitable wrinkling of that strong brow, right before Robert's eyes opened. It didn't come.

With another hesitant, shaking exhalation of breath, Thoreau reached out one cool, eerily smooth hand and let his fingertips brush over the soft, golden yellow curls of Robert's hair. His touch slipped hesitantly over the high cheek bones set under frowning, tightly closed eyes. Thoreau furrowed his brows; when had Robert started frowning like that in his sleep? Thoreau tried to whisper his name, but nothing came out save for an incoherent little gasp for air. His palm flattened itself against Robert's cheek, feeling warm skin against his own for the first time in months.

"Robert.." His heart wasn't behind the word, and it fell emptily on the air; he didn't care. "I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry, Robert, I never meant for this to happen to us. I never... I always thought you and I would.."

Fear gripped him. What was he doing, talking so freely! At any moment, he could have woken up--

The man stirred on the couch and tightened his jaw slightly. For a fleeting instant, Thoreau watched as his eyes began to open, to gaze into the blackness of the room. Sleep still had a claim on him, offering Thoreau the perfect moment to run, to flee, to escape back into the night, but he stayed an instant longer, just to stare down into his face, to watch as he drifted listlessly in the In-Between World..

He was gone a moment later, taking strange comfort in the bitter bite of the wind against his wings and eyes as he climbed higher, higher into the midnight sky.