Chapter Text
June 14th
10:44 PM - The Hastings Estate & Hotel - Room 8B
“Reese, can I ask you a potentially thorny question?”
He couldn’t help but note the humor. Wasn’t that, in and of itself, a thorny question?
Upon entering the foyer, which Victoria felt odd calling the ‘lobby’ for reasons she didn’t care to unpack, they had found the receptionist and checked in. After getting their room key and finding the appropriate staircase (the elevators were still pending approval, considering it entailed thorough reconstruction of a building legally designated as a ‘historical landmark’ apparently) they had entered one of the three dozen rooms that had since been retrofitted into areas for guests to stay. Victoria could only remember the vague layouts of select areas, as her child self had only been able to find the rooms that were most relevant to her. Bedroom, bathroom, parents bedroom, and kitchen were about all she could meaningfully recollect, but even then, she didn’t remember the place being this enormous.
Apparently, since her departure, and since her family had effectively relinquished ownership of the house when a distant relative signed it over to a prospective buyer, it had been remodeled and expanded a few times over as the building went from an opulent, privately owned home, into a piece of land owned and operated by the monarchy once all was said and done. Granted, the old government had gradually been dissolving since before Victoria was born, but somewhere along the way, it changed hands to be owned by the local governing body, who had now turned it into a tourist trap.
The thing about tourist traps was that they tried to remain authentic, which meant this place still looked an awful lot like how it did in her memory. It was strange, both recognizing this place and also not, but it did harbor some vague, intangible nostalgia that Victoria began to feel.
The couple found their room up the stairs and down a particularly long hallway, and all Victoria could do was marvel at how regal it all seemed. Old furnishings, portraits, and architecture that had such distinct hallmarks of a forgotten era. High ceilings, narrow halls, furniture and walls made of a consistently-matching style of finished wood. It wasn’t Buckingham Palace by any means, but it was a good deal nicer and more well-maintained than buildings of comparable age in Kentucky.
She couldn’t remember what their room used to be, but what it was now was roughly the size of a nice hotel room. An installed bathroom, one bed, a TV set, and a few pieces of furniture like a nightstand and a table in front of the window that contained a lovely vase of flowers. When they set their things in the bathroom and dropped their bags to the floor, Reese flopped face-first onto the bed, arms spread, his face in marginal pain because the firm mattress had collided with his nose--not that he really cared at the moment.
Normally, she would’ve laughed at that. Reese knew something was up when she didn’t.
“Pardon?” he asked, shifting his head to the side to see Victoria still standing by the bedside table.
She sat down on the edge of the bed, facing away from him. Not an immediate bad sign, but in tandem with her tone of voice, it was a sign she was holding onto something she very much needed to let go of.
Reese pushed himself up, swinging his legs around to drop off the side of the mattress, sitting exactly as she was, making sure to allow a bit of room between the two just for the sake of personal boundaries. After the plane, they were more than eager to stretch their limbs at any opportunity. That, and Reese could simply intuit that infringing on her space right now was not the wisest idea. She’d appeared distant in the cab, but he figured that may have been garden variety exhaustion. Now, he suspected something was wrong.
Victoria sighed.
“I know it’s late, and I know this is a hell of a thing to spring on you,” Victoria presaged. “I just… think I need to talk about something, and I feel like it will get away from me if I wait.”
Reese nodded, acknowledging the statement. He knew this trip was originally pitched as a way to rid them of their mutually acquired cabin fever, but the choice of location was just a little too specific for him to think that was all it was for. If she came here, it was likely to seek closure of some kind, he just wasn’t entirely certain how.
He tried to shake any lingering fatigue from himself. She deserved his full attention.
“By all means, don’t wait,” he said gently. “I think I’m a little more used to tough questions than I was a year ago.”
And, for as much as he was reluctant to hand himself a victory in most regards, Reese couldn’t quite imagine there being a conversation left in the theoretical chamber that would truly entail him labeling it ‘difficult’ at this point. The gold medal in that race had firmly been won when they first said they’d loved each other, mostly because it was a conversation that was happening while Victoria was clutching the exposed bone in her forearm.
Victoria took a deep breath.
“Does my age… bother you?” she asked, atypically quiet with her words.
Oh.
That was not a question he would’ve anticipated. He suddenly found himself rather awake with little difficulty.
“Your… age… as in-”
“The fact that I have been alive for nearly two-hundred years,” she said, staring in front of her, fixing her vision at a random spot on the wall.
Reese couldn’t lie to her or himself, it wasn’t really something he truly thought about that often. Maybe it was cognitive dissonance on his own behalf, seeing as it was a difficult thing to truly and wholly forget.
Because the Hunter’s Blessing ceased the development of the brain upon being received, it was strange, uncharted territory. In the Twilight Realm, age differences between those who coupled up rarely mattered because everyone had so little to lose. A century-old Hunter turned at the age of eighteen would forever be that way, incomplete but preserved for an eternity in a form of stasis. Eighteen to twenty-five was their largest demographic, as turning them earlier was wisest, as prolonged training meant that they were far more likely to be killed while inhabiting a mortal body. It meant something odd for Hunters like their friend Ace, who was pushing thirty when he was turned only a few years prior. It wasn’t insane to think that socially, he’d have a leg up on most seeing as he possessed a fully-developed brain. Unfortunately, his reclusiveness furthered when he discovered that he was essentially in an organization of late high-schoolers and early college students who happened to have several more decades worth of memories than they should’ve, but remained on the emotional wavelength of young adults.
It wasn’t a completely unspoken thing between them, either. Victoria had frequently voiced to Reese in private that she often struggled with the dissonance of being alive within her own circumstances. She was perpetually going through the stages of late-puberty when it came to her emotions, seeing as she was turned at the age of seventeen. At the top of her class in both studies and combat, she was saddled with responsibility she felt she wasn’t equipped to handle even before she made Lieutenant. It made her feel inadequate, having to stifle any and all vaguely childish notions or reactions to maintain professionalism. It wasn’t uncommon that Hunters retreated inward with their problems, becoming more and more dysfunctional as they grew older in a way the human body and mind were never meant to. While effectively immortal, it also meant that unstable brain chemistry would also be with you until your life ended.
The most common side effect of this dissonance between experiences and the body’s innate capacity? Severe memory loss. Stephen hadn’t been the only one.
Even her own memory, a typically reliable one, could succumb to its limitations. Memories were not recordings, memories were the brain’s ability to recreate an occurrence accurately that depended on potentially thousands of different variables. It meant that one of the most common side effects this process had beyond memory loss was memory alteration. After centuries of rewriting your own memories every time you recalled them, you were more prone to hard-encoding errors and misremembrances into said memories, meaning past fifty or so years, the brain struggled not to fall victim to its own malleability. You could not reliably trust your own perception after enough time passed, and when so many of your peers died, there were less people around to correct you, or even to remind you how things might have transpired differently.
Ever since Stephen died, Victoria couldn’t help but wonder how much of her own past went with him.
“Well… do you want me to be honest with you? Fully honest?” Reese asked, trying to cushion his words as best as he could.
Victoria swallowed nervously.
“Always,” she said resolutely.
Reese cleared his throat, beginning to mindlessly pick at the seams of the rather posh comforter they were sitting on top of.
“Every once in a while I think about it,” he answered honestly. “I wouldn’t say it bothers me, per se, but it does make me curious. Makes me think about how I’ll see things once it… happens.”
She hated having to withhold details. It never ceased to make her feel like a phony liar, even if it was an expected duty not to dispense essential information regarding their practices outside of the Twilight Realm. She was beyond the point where such a thing would have entailed more than a slap on the wrist given her standing, but she knew this was all a slippery slope she wasn’t eager to fall off.
“I also worry that, because of my rank, I hold… perhaps an undue amount of authority over someone I consider my partner,” she said, a forlorn angst hitting her by the time she finished voicing her concern.
Partner… I should have said ‘boyfriend.’
Because of the sheer insanity of the last eleven months of their lives, some of the particulars got lost in the shuffle. Everyone was so worried about acclimatizing to the fact that the world was much bigger than they previously thought that even cursory considerations were swept by the wayside. Reese spent so much of his time preparing for his crush to remain that way, eternally unrequited, that anything beyond that felt like it wasn’t even worth thinking about. Once they admitted their feelings, their refuge in each other was really all that mattered.
Reese couldn’t stop looking at her, even though she still couldn’t take her eyes away from that wall.
“Well… I appreciate the consideration. I guess it’s nice to know that anyone would care enough to be concerned in the first place,” Reese said. “If you really wanna know where I stand on all that… It's odd. Like most things about us, it's messy. But… I worry about the reverse, sometimes.”
Victoria perked up. She turned her head to finally make eye contact with the brown-eyed young man.
“The reverse?” she asked, her cluelessness evident.
Reese tensed up. It was rather obvious too, considering his almost perpetual affinity to chill out whenever he was afforded the chance. Victoria scooted closer to him, placing her hand on his, getting him to stop messing with the comforter and turn his palm up. He smiled.
“It’s probably kinda stupid, but, well… hear me out here, okay?” he proposed.
Victoria narrowed her eyes, but nodded all the same.
“I’m no expert on any of this, clearly,” he presaged. “That being said… your entire life was stolen from you so you could be a soldier in a forever war. A literal forever war. You guys only learn about, what? Cursory history, combat education, and battle strategy, yeah?”
“Our general education is really a footnote so we aren’t entirely ignorant, but yes. More or less,” Victoria answered.
Reese absorbed the answer with a nod.
“I don’t know much about Twilight City, but it seems like you guys are in a different world. I mean, I know you are literally, but I mean figuratively, too. Talking to people, having normal experiences, even dating… that’s stuff you all don’t really have in the same way we do. If you’ve got any of that over there, it’s sort of a separate context. You guys come from a place where everything is born out of, like, a direct and immediate need for it,” he explained.
Victoria’s brow furrowed, not out of frustration, she simply still wasn’t sure where he was headed with this.
“That’s… also more or less true, I suppose,” she agreed.
Reese searched for recognition or understanding, he wasn’t quite finding any yet.
“It made me worry that… listen, I’m not trying to condescend or talk down to you. I’ve never had anything like this-”
He motioned between the two of them vaguely with his free pointer finger.
“-before. So, I don’t have a frame of reference, and normally, if I had any worries or doubts, I’d go to Joey, you know? I’m shooting fish in a barrel here. But, it was definitely easier once you started more regularly hanging out with us, ‘cause you were a little… socially maladjusted? At first?”
Thankfully, when he apprehensively re-examined her expression, the understanding was there.
She smiled.
“I don’t think that’s unfair,” she said, a dry, mildly empty chuckle escaping her.
He sheepishly smiled back.
“Not only did you not have a normal childhood, you didn’t have one. Like, at all,” he said. “I know you had comrades, and I know not everything over there is complete doom and gloom, but you didn’t grow up the way we do here. Two-hundred years is… a lot. Pretty fuckin’ intimidating number, if I’m honest, but I was under the impression that about zero of those years were spent helping you figure yourself out. You didn’t have parents, you had a commanding officer. You don’t go on dates, get to have social life, have hobbies, none of the normal kid shit. It’s… why I’ve had such a nice time with you. You see things differently. It's refreshing. You're smart, too, so your outlook... means something. To me it does, anyway.”
Victoria turned red. Reese had demonstrated a marked difference in his exhibited level of maturity over the course of the last year, but she very much liked the fact that he never lost his edge when managing to make her feel special due to his nigh-unimpeachable earnestness.
“I must say, it’s been nice seeing that what I’ve missed out on for so long was everything I always thought it was. Lots of little moments I hope I never forget,” she said, unable to stymie the wistful nature of her words.
I hope.
She wasn’t the only one blushing now.
“Me either,” he said plainly. “It’s not ideal by any stretch, but I think you did sorta teach me how to appreciate a lot of shit I took for granted. I was miserable before I met you, but not even, like, uniquely miserable? Lotta guys my age are self-consumed and self-pitying, and I’m no different. But getting to show you stuff, take you places, just getting to talk to you. It was like getting to see my life with a fresh pair of eyes.”
Victoria chuckled nervously.
“A life I helped introduce monsters into,” she said, unable to shake the lingering doubt she’d had on the matter since the night they met.
Reese’s face scrunched up, he looked skeptical.
“I think that’s disingenuous. A life you very literally saved. More than a few times, even. If not for you and Stephen, Baron’s Hollow would’ve kept getting sicker, and who knows how many more people would’ve died. We can’t really afford to lose that many people to begin with. Nobody cares about some podunk hick town down in the holler, but you guys did. That doesn’t mean nothing. Not to me,” he elaborated.
Victoria’s slight smile went a bit crooked.
“I feel like for every person I’ve saved, I’ve put another in danger,” she said, the images of Leah, Vaughn, Chris, Joey, and Joey’s former counselor flashed through her mind rapidly.
Reese leaned forward, putting his other hand atop Victoria’s, now sandwiched between both of his palms.
“You have put zero people in danger. If we wanna play the blame game, that’s Thanatos,” Reese rebuffed. “You were making the best out of one of the most catastrophically awful situations I can even think of. Besides, if you wanna turn blame inward, that’s still not on you. That’s the Hunters for putting people without fully-developed brains in leadership positions. I know they’re dealing with their own bad situation, but it would be less bad if they weren’t so concerned with getting able bodies to fight their war as soon as possible.”
Victoria felt… stupid. She had never truly considered this. It was the status quo. Things were hard. It was just generally accepted and understood by most. But, if they were looking at things on a systemic or even bureaucratic level, the buck simply did not stop with her. She was a blunt instrument. An effective one, but one all the same.
“I’m not so certain I can so easily see it that way, even if I understand what you mean,” she said, eyes now aimed at the floor as she gently withdrew her hand to place in her lap. “I appreciate that perspective, though. It still feels as though I wield a great deal of power that you and the others don’t quite have. I feel… insecure about it. I feel pride in my duties when I do well, but… should I?”
Reese shrugged.
“I can’t tell you how to feel. I won’t try to, either,” he said carefully. “I’m just saying that, for a while after Christmas, when things slowed down after Joey hightailed it? I had more time to think about stuff. I may not be the coolest and most well-adjusted dude out there, but I have a better idea of how some normal stuff works than you do. It felt a little like I might have been taking advantage of you, because you didn’t grow up here. You’ve got a shitload more responsibilities than I do, but when you work for people who make you into your responsibilities? I dunno. I don’t wanna make you out to be some doe-eyed little girl, but I couldn’t help but wonder… if you were just another person I went to school with, would I even have a chance? Was I just taking advantage of the fact that I found someone who was less 'well-adjusted' than I was?”
It was readily apparent that Reese had been holding onto this for a while. She hated when he didn’t communicate, he knew that, but she also understood why he may have been reluctant to volunteer this. If she was being honest with herself, she did hate the notion of being infantilized. She’d seen people die. She’d killed. She may have been aloof socially, but she knew what friendship and love were. She’d held onto those things tightly wherever and whenever she could, so the idea of someone insinuating those experiences were somehow beyond her felt invalidating and shitty.
“Did something change?” Victoria asked. “Or do you still think that way?”
She wouldn’t judge him if he told her that he did. It would just be something they would have to work through. However, she didn’t have to be thrilled about it.
“Don’t think so,” he answered.
“How come?”
“Because I realized that it was entirely possible I was overthinking that, and that you would’ve chewed me out for thinking you couldn’t make your own choices,” he said, the corner of his mouth tugging upward.
They both found a bit of levity in that. The chuckling had a bit more life this time.
“I… like to think I would’ve been more elegant about it, but I don’t suppose you’re wrong,” she said after some consideration. “Just so we’re clear, I have never felt as though you used your status as a… I guess we’ll call you all ‘Earth Ambassadors’ for the time being, to diminish me. In any way. If anything, I find your respect for my autonomy to be rather appealing. I value the limited freedoms I have, so I want you to know that it truly means something when I use that freedom to say that I have a deep respect for you.”
Reese looked taken aback.
“Wow,” he said, eyes a little wider than before.
Victoria winced.
“Too weighty?” she asked.
Reese shook his head, thankfully holding onto that miniscule grin that granted her some reassurance.
“No, I just… I don’t think anyone’s ever directly said that to me before? I mean, I’d like to think maybe a few of the others might, but no one’s ever just… said that to me,” he said, still reeling.
Victoria nodded.
“I apologize if that was a little much,” she reiterated. “Back home…”
She trailed off for a moment, a brief pause in her train of thought being used to examine the room around them for a moment. Reese understood, waiting patiently for her to pick her thoughts back up.
“Back home,” she said, regaining her wherewithal, “that’s not a terrifically uncommon thing to say to one another. Sometimes I forget that. I’ve spent enough time with you all to adopt your speech habits here and there, but in Twilight City things are very… direct. When any given day may be your last, you don’t want anything to go unsaid. We're frank people.”
He nodded.
“Well, it probably goes without saying, but I respect you, too,” he said, the words feeling uneasy as they fell out of him. “I can imagine it’s easy for people to give up. You haven’t. Any time I’ve felt frustrated these last few months, I think about everything you’ve gone through and it feels like a drop in the bucket.”
Victoria simply wasn’t used to hearing things like that. Hunters could be selfless, but some of them developed a big head about themselves. She had been around long enough to see it for what it was: a coping mechanism. Be all high and mighty about your duties in order to internally justify the incalculable toll your own life had on you. It wasn’t her--she found it mildly insufferable, in fact--but she understood.
It meant that Reese’s words carried a weight that few others could.
“As selfless as that is, Reese, please don’t diminish yourself on my account,” she softly encouraged. “I would much rather you talk to me about it instead of trying to convince yourself that the pain you feel, is, in fact, painful. None of this is fair to anyone. You included.”
Reese felt like he was hearing Joey talk to him again. The way he used to. The way they used to.
“I’m doing my best,” he nodded along, knowing that was something he still struggled with. “It’s not horrible though. I’m not saying I’m not allowed to feel bad about any of it, it just… helps with perspective, I think.”
Victoria could see the mixture of confidence and uncertainty in him. Always at war.
She leaned forward fully, embracing him. For a moment, Reese froze, but accepted the hug as she rested the side of her head atop his shoulder.
“And you are doing an incredible job at doing your best. If no one else is around to say that, then I want to be here to make sure that I do. You, Reese Darrow, are a thoughtful, kind man. Kind enough to indulge your mess of a girlfriend who spends far too much time worrying about everything,” she said, her voice like music without a melody.
Reese felt that inexplicable lightheadedness he experienced whenever she overtly complimented him. It hadn’t stopped feeling surreal.
“And you’re a pretty stellar girlfriend. I would know, given that I’ve had so many,” Reese joked.
She shoved him playfully, but didn’t let go, effectively tossing them onto their sides, now pressed into opposite ends of the same pillow on the bed.
It wasn’t as though his kidding bothered her. In fact, it let her know that he still held onto that part of himself, despite all that happened. Though, she’d be damned if she let an opportunity to have fun with him slip through her fingers.
“You are-”
“Incorrigible?” he finished for her with a knowing smirk. “That tends to be your default for me.”
She grinned, vision narrowing.
“Is it now? Well, perhaps I should expand my vocabulary,” she said. “Maybe I’ll just start calling you a nob instead.”
Reese snorted.
“Nob?” he lightly exclaimed. “I don’t think I’ve heard you use that one. Being back in the motherland got you relying on the old tongue?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Nob,” she said, immediately before sticking out her tongue.
As his smile finally widened to something closer to what she recognized, she flipped herself over, allowing Reese to drape his arm over her and pull her close.
Another thing she hadn’t experienced in a very long time. The simple comfort of intimate human contact. As she lost more and more comrades as time went on, it was something she sought less and less, purely to get used to its absence.
She couldn’t help but feel stupid for doing it as she felt his chin rest atop her head.
“So… are we alright?” Reese asked, tone reverting back to something more considerate.
Victoria took a deep breath again, not to calm her nerves, but to expel anything untoward that remained.
“We are, I think,” she said. “Thank you for indulging me.”
“I’m not indulging you,” he responded rather matter-of-factly.
“What would you call it, then?”
“Listening,” he said. “It’s pretty easy, all things considered. Kinda doubly easy when your voice is so nice to listen to.”
Another blush.
“Thank you for listening, then,” she said. “That path goes both ways, you know. I’ll always be here to lend an ear.”
“Even if my accent isn’t nearly as nice to listen to?” he asked through an audible smile.
Victoria closed her eyes, reveling in laying down alongside him for that much longer, knowing they’d have to get up and do their requisite ‘before bed’ duties.
But it could wait a few minutes. Or ten.
“Especially,” she quietly hummed. “I do find it rather charming though.”
“You do? Damn, I’m lucky. Think you might be the only one who thinks that.”
“Everyone else’s loss,” she said. “Good thing you found me, then, hm?”
“I should say so,” he said, following her lead and allowing his eyelids to temporarily fall.
The arm wrapped around her ultimately found her hand, their fingers immediately locking into the other’s empty spaces between their knuckles.
For a few minutes, they indulged in the astronomically unlikely hope that in century’s time this war would be over, and all their doubts and worries would have faded into the margins, ready to become the discarded memories they would eschew for the ones they made together instead.