Chapter Text
My beloved Cherri,
It’s done. I’m coming home.
The two days in the hotel aren’t just for Drift. Pearl especially is exhausted. For the first time in the last week, she drinks enough not to feel hungry. It seals up the slash over her cheek, and does something to soothe her aching muscles.
She’s walked away from fights with worse, and she’s got the scars to prove it. Given that she’s out of practice, that’s pretty impressive.
Pearl’s been great. I didn’t think it would be so nice to see anyone from Oakhurst again, but… I was wrong.
Although, saying that, I really hope she finds a way out of… all her stuff. I mean, being a vampire’s bad enough, but sounds like being a… were-pire, or whatever, is even worse. And I’m pretty sure this is her first time out of Oakhurst. It can’t just be me, that’s weird, right?
I guess it’s better than what Drift was going through.
Oh, yeah, I should say— I saw Drift again. Turns out she told Pearl about what S was going on. She’s actually in the room while I write this.
She’s so… she hasn’t changed at all, but she seems so… scared. It’s awful. She just keeps apologizing for stuff.
It’s been… actually really good talking to her, though. When it doesn’t make me want to dig him up and stake him all over again.
That’s metaphorical. He’s not buried.
Not in a weird way or anything, vampires turn to dust when they die.
… You knew that.
That’s actually one of the things I wanted to write ahead about. Drift, not… dead vampires.
Drift slumps into the mattress. “I still don’t know…”
“You could come back to Oakhurst.” Pearl offers, not for the first time. “Cl— uh.” She cuts herself off, and very pointedly doesn’t look over at Apo. “We wouldn’t mind. It’d be fun.”
“I don’t mind you talking about Cleo.” Apo says, extremely neutrally.
The other two stare at her for a moment. “That’s… not an “I don’t mind” tone of voice.” Drift points out.
“I don’t!” She almost exclaims it, and tries to pull back. “Cleo had a problem with me. Thirty years ago. I really don’t care. I hope they… sorted out whatever was going on with them.” Because in hindsight, none of… that was the behaviour of someone having a good time. Not that it makes it any better, but… still.
Pearl makes a very strange movement with her face. “Yeah. They’re— They’re okay.”
“Good. Seriously, that’s good.”
The silence drags until Apo feels forced to break it.
“… You could come and stay with me.”
Drift’s eyes go wide, and they quickly amend themself. “Not forever! I mean, unless— just— y’know, while you figure stuff out.”
“That’s—” Drift looks between Pearl and Apo. “No, that— that sounds great, actually. I’d love to. I’d, uh… no offence, obviously, but I think I’d like… a break from Oakhurst. Just… let it rest a while.”
“… Yeah.” There’s something very distant in Pearl’s voice for a moment, before she snaps back to normal. “None taken, I get it.”
So. I may have invited Drift to stay with us. Just while she figures out what she wants to do now. Hope you don’t mind. She’s still a vampire, but if I’m being honest, I really don’t think that’ll last long.
Although, I guess long is relative when you live forever.
They hear a knock at the door, the afternoon of the second day. Drift shoots from her seat— because if it’s Shelby, it has to be her, she has to be able to apologise— it’s not her fault, but she still needs to—
Thoughts of apology leave her mind, when she opens the door to see Abolish Veylocke.
There’s a moment of panic, but it’s mild— like opening the door to find a tax collector. Drift briefly dreads that someone’s done something wrong, before remembering where she is (somebody has done something very wrong). He looks the same as ever— long black coat, and one of the hats he’s taken to wearing since Oakhurst.
She can’t feel any silver, but the coat could definitely be hiding weapons.
“Uh. Hi.” she says, more than a little blankly. She shakes her head, trying to clear it. “Sorry, I— thought you might be Shelby.”
“Shelby’s not here?” Abolish sounds only faintly surprised. He doesn’t look armed, Drift thinks— but that doesn’t mean he isn’t. He very rarely looks armed, in her limited knowledge of him.
“… No. She, um. I don’t know where she is.”
Abolish exhales, in what might be a very well concealed sigh. “Okay. But the others— Pearl and Apo— they’re in there?”
How does he know that? Drift thinks, but, if he knows, there’s not much point in lying. He’s scary, but he’s— he’s—
If he was here to kill us, she eventually reasons, then he wouldn’t have come in through the door.
Luckily, she doesn’t have to answer anyway. “Is that Abolish?” she hears Pearl say, as she and Apo peer into the hall.
He looks past Drift, then back to her. “Yeah, I’m here about what… happened with Scott. Can I…?” He gestures at the threshhold.
“Oh, yeah, of course,” Drift says, when neither of the others protest, and steps aside to let him through. It’s just etiquette in Abolish’s case, asking for an invitation. He’s been an intermittent presence over the last few decades, and he’s seemed as human as he's always been. Or, at least, as human as he was when he left Oakhurst. His hair’s still jet black (under the hat), his heartbeat is quiet, but so is everything else about him, and sure he smells kind of strange— metallic, almost, in the way that vampires do— but he hangs around vampires all the time. She assumes.
Point being, this time, for once, the human explanation isn’t grasping at straws.
Pearl and Apo both stand up as he walks in. “How have you been?” Pearl asks, then does a double take. “Woah. You look, uh… good. You look good.”
“Yeah, I’ve been good.” Abolish says. His tone barely changes when he adds, “So. Y’all killed Scott?”
It throws all three of them off. “Yeah.” Apo eventually says. “Not Drift— me and Pearl.”
There’s a small furrow in his brow. “Drift wasn’t involved?”
“Drift told me what was going on.” says Pearl. “But she didn’t fight him. Scott was… killing people, Abolish, and, y’know. We had a deal.”
“Oh,” he says, like something’s only just become apparent. “This wasn’t personal?”
“I mean…” Pearl waves her hands vaguely, and winds up gesturing to Apo.
Apo’s jaw tightens. “It wasn’t.”
“Alright.” Abolish puts his hands in his pockets. “I just thought, you and Drift… anyway. And you lost track of Shelby?”
“She wanted to be left alone.” Pearl replies mildly.
Abolish shuts his eyes in what is clearly a disguised eye-roll. “Okay.”
“What were we supposed to do?” demands Apo. “Force them to come with us?”
Abolish ignores the question. “Anyone else involved I should know about? Cleo, M… Cherri?”
“… No.”
“Just us,” Pearl adds.
Behind Apo's back, Drift mouths, "Cherri?"
"Later." Pearl mouths back.
Abolish had us do some kind of… evaluation? Apparently it’s the Organisation’s policy when sires die. And, I guess, doubly so when you kill your own sire. After, he was gonna go, but…
“Wait,” Apo calls before he’s completely out of the door. Abolish turns back questioningly. “We— I need to get cured.”
“That can be arranged.” he replies. “Can set up a beacon nearby, get some holy water… just warning you, uh, once you’re cured, you kind of… catch up in age, if that makes sense? Obviously wasn’t a problem for me, but…”
It’s good news, dizzyingly good, better than Apo could have hoped for, but… “Oh. I thought— what about you?”
“What about me?”
All three of them stare for a long time at Abolish. Abolish, who is maybe a few years older than Apo. Abolish, who can't be younger than fifty, and who is still as dark-haired and fresh-faced as the day he walked out of Oakhurst.
His eyes flick between the three of them, ever-so-slightly confused, before he goes, “oh! Yeah, that’s a me thing. Don’t worry about that.”
Drift raises a hand. “If— What happens if you’re, like, hundreds of years old though?”
“We don’t know.”
Pearl splutters. “What’d’you mean, you don’t know?”
“No one wants to be the first to try it.” he explains. “Also, most vampires that old don’t really need the cure. They’re used to it. But, yeah, you can get cured. Just you, or…?” He turns an eye to Drift.
“Oh. Um.” She shuffles slightly, fiddling with the buttons on her cuffs, then looks down. “I… I don’t know. Maybe?”
“You don’t have to decide yet.” Pearl says reassuringly. “I mean, you’ve got eternity. In theory.”
“That everything? Cool,” Abolish gives them a polite nod when no one speaks up. “I’ll come and find you when the cure’s ready.”
“And when you find Shelby?” Drift adds hopefully.
“Maybe.” He doesn’t elaborate on what he means before he shuts the door.
I’m human.
It feels surreal, I didn’t think
didn’t think I was going to ever grow old with you.
I’m on my way home by the time you’ll get this. I literally can’t wait to see you, introduce you to Drift…
Be human with you again.
Yours, as long as we live,
Apo
Apo isn’t sure why they’d expected the change to be fast. Admittedly, it definitely still is fast— visible ageing happens over years, not days. But they’d been expecting… the weight of the years to hit them in one sudden moment, or something. They feel… normal.
But normal is weird. Normal is so weird. Breathing is weird, feeling their own heartbeat is weird. The hair that falls in front of their face is red, and it’s so jarring.
She’s missed it all so much.
It’s a little bit agonising, how slowly Drift is walking up the path home. She’s holding onto Apo’s parasol like it might be swept away by the wind— of which there is very little. But Apo can be patient. Drift’s nervous, that’s fine. Apo’s nervous.
… Excited, more than nervous. But the two aren’t that different.
Apo’s knees hurt. No one told her growing old would hurt (Cherri has, in fact, complained endlessly about it hurting, to try and console her). It makes her think of Martyn, and the doc, and their canes.
How old was the doc? Or Renhardt? Apo realises she doesn’t know. It didn’t seem important at the time, and it wasn’t, but now she can’t help but wonder how long it is until she’s older. A year? Five years? Has it already happened?
Consciously, Apo puts the grief down. It’s still there, she can come back to it later, but now isn’t its time. They’re almost at the door.
Cherri flings the door open so soon after she knocks that Apo knows they were probably standing behind the door the whole time. They squeal, press their fingertips to their mouth, then pull Apo into a tight hug. It’s overwhelming, it’s warm against the early December chill, and it makes her feel alive.
“Apo…” Cherri murmurs, drawing out the “o”. “You’re so old…”
Apo laughs, shoves her, and keeps laughing. Cherri pulls them back in and lets them rest their head on her shoulder while they regain their breath.
“You’re lovely,” she says seriously, “and I’m so glad you’re back. Now!” Cherri turns her attention to the third person on their doorstep. “You must be Drift!”
“You must be Cherri!” Drift replies. She goes for a handshake, then squeaks in surprise as Cherri hugs her too, albeit much more briefly. Cherri steps back, head tilted to one side.
“You know,” she says, “I imagined you shorter. Come in, let’s not stand on the doorstep, it’s cold!”
There is the understanding, in Pearl’s mind, that when you crest a hill and see the little silhouettes of your rooftop off in the distance, you’re supposed to feel like you’re going home.
She doesn’t feel very strongly about it at all.
She passes through the field, brushing her hands along the sunflowers and watching them bend. As the walls get closer, the sky darkens, and with it, the flowers become more sparse, their faces turned towards the chink of light to the south. The path splits, and down the narrower fork, is Oakhurst’s little graveyard.
Pearl doesn’t walk down it today, but she does look, in case Cleo’s there. Unsurprisingly, they aren’t; they would have heard her coming if they were. She continues into town, on the basis that Cleo might be there. Emphasis on might. They don’t avoid town, exactly, but even Pearl has to admit that it feels very empty when there's only two people living there.
She’d kind of wanted Drift to come with her, just so they could change that. Introduce some novelty. But it was up to Drift in the end, and she wanted to go with Apo, and, fair enough. Pearl doesn’t begrudge her that.
“Town would, of course,” Pearl mutters to herself, “feel a little less empty if it wasn’t just me in it!”
The only response comes from a few sparrows rustling in the overhang of one of the roofs.
“Y’know,” she continues, dumping her bags in the doorway of their house and turning along the route that’ll take her to the castle, “It’d be nice if it wasn’t so bloody dark, too. Like, eternal night is all well and good, and I didn’t even know how annoying the sun could be, but there’s no lights on! No torches, no candles, nothin’!” Oakhurst felt creepy that first day, before anyone had started to rebuild, but it was a different sort of creepy. Then, the town was like a rotted skeleton; ominous, maybe, made you wonder what had turned it from a living, bustling thing into a skeleton, but not nearly as ominous as a perfectly preserved corpse.
… That’s a line of thought she suddenly finds herself not wanting to go down. She presses on, until she reaches the bridge.
The vampires, way back when, had smashed it up, on the understanding that if you can fly (and they could), you don’t need such silly things as bridges. There’s some precarious scaffolding, but even that’s increasingly rickety.
Pearl is strong enough now to leap the gaps, but she’d rather not. Not if Cleo isn’t even here. “Cleo?” she tries calling, her voice swallowed and spat back out by the ravine. She gets no response.
“Dang it, Cleo…”
Oakhurst isn’t such a large place, but she still doesn’t fancy scouring it. Sure, she could always wait back in town for them to go home, but that’s not interesting. Plus, she’ll get told off for not coming to find them immediately.
With a sigh, Pearl closes her eyes, and reaches inward, to the spark in her undead heart. She thinks of a string, a very long one tethering her and Cleo together. She thinks of pinching it between her fingers and plucking at it, like a harp.
But this is not a part of vampirism that comes naturally to her at all, and all of this picture a string tends to just make her head hurt. There’s a way this is supposed to be done, she knows, but that way is hard and boring and it’s much easier to just wander all over Oakhurst shouting for her wayward roomie.
First things first. Pearl doesn’t much want to check the castle, she doesn’t like it, but there is one place near the castle that Cleo probably is. And that’s far enough away from this side of the ravine that even a vampire won’t be able to hear someone bellowing their name at the top of her poor, undead lungs.
Reluctantly, she balances across the beams of wood laid across the ragged edges of the bridge. They’re slippery, creak disconcertingly under her feet, and smell faintly of damp. Pearl tries to remind herself that no matter how much the fall hurts, she’ll get better. She’s got better from falls before, in Oakhurst.
It’s just that, falling down the crypts, she didn’t really have time to process her mistake until she’d already kicked the bucket. The ravine is probably hundreds of feet deep. She can barely see the bottom.
That’s not helping her reluctance, though, so Pearl pushes it from her mind and focuses on crossing the balance beams of doom.
Luckily, her balance is great, and she doesn’t fall to a gory death. She jumps down onto the little ledge of ground beneath the castle’s giant ominous windows.
Now Pearl feels something in the bond. She’s close. Very close, to catch outlines of actual feelings instead of just a presence. Pearl hopes Cleo doesn’t turn out to be in the ballroom for whatever reason. Not for any particular reason, she just doesn’t like the castle. It’s too big, it’s too spooky, and it smells like dust no matter how much either of them halfheartedly clean it up.
Cleo’s sad. A dull, lonely kind of sad. It’s the last bit of confirmation Pearl needs to know exactly where she is.
She comes around the edge of the castle, and sees comes into view of the small outcropping that the doctor’s grave sits atop. She never saw it by daylight, but she imagines it probably looked a lot less creepy back then. The wings at the edge take on a grasping sort of quality, even with her vision basically unimpeded by the darkness.
Cleo is nowhere to be seen.
“Cleo!” Pearl exclaims exasperatedly. She hikes up the rest of the way and gives the doc’s final resting place a weary look. “I’m supposed to be the one that goes walkabout. Cleo!” She continues around the borders of the castle, careful not to fall into the gaping maw of the tomb.
Then she stills. There’s something down there, something drawing her down there.
Why. Why is Cleo down there?! It’s a bunch of abandoned bedrooms! If there is one part of the castle that’s creepiest of all, it’s there! Pearl stomps down the stairs, for a number of reasons.
1: So that if Cleo’s down there, they’ll hear her sooner,
2: As mentioned, what is Cleo doing down here? And,
3: Stomping is fun.
It smells funky down here. Evidently vampire is the sort of thing that lingers. Combine that with some of them evidently leaving blood or meat down here, and it’s an unpleasant place to be without the abandoned bedrooms. It must have some sort of drainage, but even then, it’s rained recently enough that the air is clammy.
Cleo is down here, though. Pearl can sense it, in a way that feels alien and clumsy. She passes by doorway after doorway, deeper and deeper. She’s not in the coffin, is she? There’s no way. I’ll be so disappointed if she’s in the coffin. She has standards.
Then one of the doors swings open with a suitably rusty creak. For a good second, it feels like it might be a ghost, then Cleo rushes out and presses her cheek to Pearl’s. She’s wearing her mother’s robe— yet another bad sign— and her hair is as messy as it ever gets. Her eyes can’t exactly be bloodshot, given that they’re already red, but it’s clear from her voice she’s been crying.
“I missed you,” she says quietly. She even lets Pearl hug her— she even puts her arms around Pearl, if a little awkwardly.
“I missed you too.” Pearl replies gently. Then she takes a step back to add, “But what are you doing in here?”
Something closes off a little in Cleo’s face. “I wanted to see if there was anything useful left down here, that’s all.”
“Didn’t the coven clear this place out years ago?”
“Well, you know them.” Cleo’s a good liar, but only if you don’t know the tells. Pearl (she hopes) knows the tells extremely well. “They could have left anything. And you don’t like this place,” she adds.
“Didjda find anything?” Pearl asks, starting to lead them both out of the dark, smelly, generally nasty tomb.
Cleo still doesn’t meet her eye. Another tell. “No.”
This isn’t going anywhere. And Pearl still has hard conversations to have with them. This doesn’t bode well. “Okay.”
“How did it go?” Cleo asks as they reach the top of the stairs.
“It went good.” Pearl can’t sound enthusiastic, she did kill someone, but she does mean it. “He’s gone. I’m still here. Didn’t even take a hit.”
“What about Drift? Shelby?”
“Drift’s good. Shelby…” She trails off. “They took it worse. Ran off, I think.” Cleo scowls. “But Abolish is on it, so. It’ll probably turn out alright.”
“Might not for Shelby,” they mutter. “He killed them last time.”
“That was years ago.” Pearl says, hoping that they don’t have a point. “But, anyway. Yeah. It went good. What?” she asks, because Cleo’s still looking at her.
“There was a full moon, while you were gone.” Cleo observes, on the icy side of neutral.
“It was fine, actually.”
“Pearl.”
“What?! It was!” she protests. “I didn’t hurt anyone. I got far enough away from people for that. I’m okay.”
She’s not sure how much Cleo believes her, but they don’t press. Their grip on her arm does tighten, though. “I’m glad you’re back.” they say quietly.
Pearl… doesn’t reply. She isn’t sure how to reply. Her eyes go up, to the moon wavering in the otherwise pitch-black sky.
There aren’t stars in Oakhurst. She’d almost forgotten what they looked like, and there is no amount of positivity or brushing off that can counteract how awful that sounds.
She’s not gonna be selfish. She’s not gonna ruin this for Cleo. She probably does need the rest anyway.
In the end, Pearl works up the nerve to say something around moonset.
“Cleo,” she begins carefully, “do you ever think about… going?”
Cleo had had their back to her, but they swivel around. “What do you mean?”
“Y’know. Packing up, going someplace else. Even just for a little while.”
“… Pearl, you just got back.”
She feels a twinge of fear from them, and tries to back up. “I’m not gonna walk out, Cleo, obviously. This is home, for better or worse. You’re home. But… it’s been a long time.”
They look away. “… not that long.”
“Yes, that long! Look— you wanted out before, right? Back then? You wanted to go somewhere else.”
“Wanted.” Cleo replies brittlely. “I’m happy here. We’re happy here. I thought we were, anyway.”
“Cleo—” She’s pleading, but now that she’s seen what’s waiting outside, now that she’s remembered how much she missed it all, she can’t just go back. Oakhurst is so small and dark and dead. There’s life out there. “At least consider it?”
Cleo huffs. She shakes her head for a long time. Eventually, she says, “what would we even do?”
“Anything. We could do whatever we wanted.” Pearl stands, crosses the room, and puts her hand on Cleo’s.
“And what if I want to stay here?”
“Then you can do that. We—” she quickly amends herself. “We can do that. But— is it? Is that what you want?” Cleo doesn’t respond. “We— We have to guard this place. I know that. I’m not saying we should abandon it. I’m just saying that— we have all the time in the world.”
“You miss it.” Cleo sounds almost accusing when she says it.
“Don’t you?”
“There’s nothing to miss!” she snaps, pulling her hand away. “There’s just— just one house, one awful old house that doesn’t even exist anymore! I don’t miss anything, I never saw anything!”
The sharpness dulls as quickly as it arrived. She takes a single breath. “What would we even do?”
Except this time, it sounds like a question. An actual question.
Pearl has, on more than one occasion, even before now, dreamed of a hundred different answers.
“Have you seen the sea?” she asks quietly, knowing full well that Cleo hasn’t. “We could go there. There won’t be anyone around, this time of year. Too cold. We could go to one of the cities—” but there will be lots of people there, it might be a bit much for a first outing— “we could just go. See where we end up.”
Cleo is quiet for a very long time. She seems to look through the wooden walls of their house. Eventually, she murmurs, “and what about them?”
“Them?” Pearl asks, taking a moment to understand her meaning. “… oh. Them.” She follows Cleo’s gaze, and, yes, without walls in the way they would probably be able to see the graveyard from here. “They’ll still be here.” she says gently. “It’s not like they can wander off anymore.” Cleo lets out a short laugh. “They’d understand. You know they would.”
Cleo looks down, fists balled in her robe. “… okay.” she whispers.
Pearl feels her face split into a grin, and she pulls Cleo into another hug. The thought of eternity is… daunting. The thought of a painful, lonely eternity is almost too much to bear.
This, though. If she just focuses on this, on Cleo, on the silly cat winding his way between their ankles, on the small things. If she can live, instead of just existing…
That’s okay. That’s something she can do.