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part one.
In the three hundred and seventy years that Clemency had lived without her husband, these were the things that she most regretted; that she couldn’t save him, and that she never knew the words that last passed through his lips.
The fact that she couldn’t get revenge for him? Well, that problem didn’t take long to solve.
On the day her husband died, she was out of town, visiting her sister and her newborn baby. She returned to a castle, half-burning, and a mob of strangers outside her house. She couldn’t quite remember what her first thoughts were - nobody could expect her to remember after nearly four hundred years, after all - but she knew it was probably along the lines of the expletives appropriate for the time period.
She pushed past the huge crowd of people and into her home, her eyes quickly clouding with tears as she grew closer and closer to their shared bedroom. As soon as Clemency saw the motionless form of her Joceran, she was taken over by a relentless anger. She swirled where she stood, her skirt spinning along with her around her feet.
“Get out !” Her voice boomed throughout the room, her fingers balled into furious fists. They blinked cloudy, unseeing eyes and turned on their heels, moving as one towards the exit.
With another burst of righteous rage, she reached out with one hand and snatched the sleeve of the closest person to the body of her husband, snapping him out of his temporary daze. Clemency held on tightly to his arm, her eyebrows furrowed as she waited for the rest of the group to leave.
As soon as the only bodies in the castle were hers, her husband’s, and the murderer’s, she tossed him onto the ground, not caring about the way the floor creaked beneath him. “Did you kill him?” She shouted. Her voice threatened to tremble, but she forced herself to focus on the task at hand. She would have the rest of eternity to mourn him, but only moments to avenge him.
“Y-Yes, but I only did it to protect the townsfolk.” The man stammered out, the back of his hands shaking against the hardwood floor in an act of surrender. “He - he’s murdered before, and he would have killed someone important sooner or later.”
His mouth continued to move, as if he was thinking of anything that could save his life, but Clemency didn’t care to hear a word. She moved her hand into her long coat and drew her small dagger, driving it into their torso forcefully.
If Clemency was actually trying to remember her revenge - remember it vividly, she would have remembered the choked sounds as the man beneath her tried to take his last, shaky breath, and she would have remembered how he tried to use those last breaths to beg for mercy.
But she doesn’t try to remember her revenge. Whenever she reminisces over her first centuries as a vampire, she tries to remember how her husband looked at her lovingly during their evening dances, how he held her as she suffered through the nights of her transformation.
She drank from the crook of his elbow, pulling every last drop of gore from his veins. He doesn’t deserve to have the false hope of his survival , she thought. She wanted him dead more than she’s wanted and will ever want somebody to be dead.
After Clemency finished the murderer off, she pulled away and wiped her chin on the bottom of his linen shirt, leaving a scarlet stain on the fabric.
After going through his pockets and taking all of his material belongings, she threw him in the river and let him sink to the bottom.
part two.
It takes Clemency those three hundred and seventy long, long years to decide that she can’t take the way her heart breaks whenever she thinks about how much she misses him. It takes her a little bit more than three and a half centuries to get tired of crying running eyeliner into her pillow case. It takes her way too long to get tired of thinking of something he would laugh that amazing laugh at, only to realize that she would never be able to hear his laugh again.
She gets tired of being sad, of crying, of mourning. She knows that after the first century he would forgive her, but she doesn’t want to move on. She doesn’t want to find herself in the arms of another person. She wants him. She wants him for the rest of her eternity, because he promised her he would be.
After years of feeling sorry for herself, she decides to do something about it. She decides to raise him up from wherever he was, and to pull him back to her.
Clemency searches for a solution in her own castle’s library high and low, but isn’t able to find one. So, she goes to one of her most trusted friends, Victor Moris. He’s one of the younger vampires that she knows, but he is also one of the smartest and the kindest, so she knows that even if he didn’t have the solution to her problem, he would at least have sympathy.
With her plan in mind, she gets herself dressed and makes her way over to his house. It’s not very big, but it seems to fit him just right. She knocks lightly on his door, leaning back and waiting for the door to open.
When he opens the door, his hair ruffled and his glasses haphazardly tossed on his face, he blinks at her for a moment before sighing and moving his hand from his doorknob to rub his cheek. “Clem, you - you’ve come over to my house at some weird times, but I have to say, this is a new record.”
She crinkles her brows in confusion before she leans in and peers at the time on his clock - 1 a.m. - and rose her eyebrows before smiling at him charmingly. “I’m really sorry, Vic, did I wake you? You know I wouldn’t be over unless I really needed something. Can I come in?”
Victor seems to contemplate his answer before he nodded, stepping away from his doorway to allow her inside. “Come on in.”
Clemency smiles again at him, moving past him and looking around before turning to face him. “I need a book. Ah - necromancy. D’you have anything like that?”
A puzzled look crosses his face before he releases a soft sigh, his lips pressing thin. “I - What are you up to? I think so, but… geez, what are you doing?”
“You’ll find out eventually, Vic,” she reassured him, slowly making her way, backwards, towards where she knew his library was. “Just trust me, okay, babe?”
Before she could see his reaction, Clemency turned on her heel and made her way quickly into his library. After spending about half an hour rifling through books - making sure to put them back so as not to attract Victor’s fury - she found the book she needed.
part three.
It takes her until the sun rose to complete the ceremony. The ritual takes so much out of her. The first thing Joceran’s eyes see isn’t his bride, standing, her arms outstretched to greet him, like she had meant for it to be.
The first thing his eyes see when he wakes up from his slumber is his slumped-over, exhausted wife, leaning up against the wall of their living room, in their castle. He moves to stand up before he’s stopped - not by a person, but by the groaning of his old bones. He takes a moment to stretch himself out before walking over to Clemency, his eyes taking her in.
Her head is tilted forward and her dark red curls conceal her features, but he doesn’t need to see her face - he’s memorized it by now. Instead, what draws his attention and curiosity is the bright art adorning both her arms. As he gets closer, he realizes that they’re flowers - red roses and blue violets and purple tulips, with green leaves interspersed between them.
Joceran settles beside his wife, pulling her unconscious form close, up against his. He lets out a soft sigh and holds her close, resting his forehead against the top of her head. He longs to speak to her again, to thank her for rescuing him from that dark and lonely place. But that all can wait - he wants her to be okay, first.
It takes her hours to wake up. He doesn’t notice the time passing, but he realizes it with a start when he looks at the watch on his wrist twice - once at seven in the morning, and again at one in the afternoon.
When Clemency wakes up, it’s with a soft groan and a sniffle. She sits up on her own, lifting her weight from his side. He pulls away gently but keeps his arms around her, letting her get her bearings.
Her actions take him by surprise, somewhat - as soon as she lifts her head and looks at him, she shifts her body to face him and, immediately, her eyes are filled with tears. Joceran frowns, his hands moving instinctually to cup her cheeks and ready to brush her tears away with the pads of his thumbs.
Rather than crying, Clemency just laughs. It takes him a moment, but his grin stretches so widely he feels his cheeks start to become sore after only a few seconds.
“I’m so glad it worked,” She says, her words breathy as she looks up to him. “I thought - I thought I might mess up, and you’d be gone forever, and I’d be alone forever…” She takes a breath and calms herself, another laugh slipping past her lips. “I’m glad I did everything right, though, honey. I’m so, so glad to have you back.”
Joceran can’t help but laugh at the sound of her laugh, something awakening in the pit of his stomach. “I’m glad I have you back, too, my dove. I - I loved every time you contacted me, but it was never the same as having you here.”
She chuckled quietly and nodded, shifting forward to rest her head in the crook of his neck. He lets her go silent and simply holds her, choosing to just enjoy her presence. Again - he’ll have the rest of their lives to hold her.
It takes him a while, to adjust to the modern day. He has nearly four centuries to catch up with, after all - but she never changes.