Work Text:
Adrift
Author: pratz
Disclaimer: Smokebomb Entertainment. Ouaknine, Simpson, and Hall.
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vi.
You remember Dr van Swieten and his companion of that day. September 5, 1734. Moravia, Bohemia. He has heard about you from one of his “irregulars,” and you have to admit you admire his determination at finding you. The inn is small and quiet. Pedestrians below your balcony walk unrushed, enjoying the weather. Harvest has been abundant this year, and the smell of freshly baked bread fills the streets. A loaf lies on the table between you and van Swieten and his companion, and you wonder if it would taste any different if you dipped it in their blood.
Your gaze shifts to van Swieten. I was under the impression that we were here to play chess, doctor.
The monospectacled doctor leans forward, smiling. I have told you about my next research, have I not? The hair on your nape stands, but his smile is still harmless. He looks at the young woman next to him. There is no better sponsor for my research than Your Grace.
Van Swieten’s companion pulls back her hood, and a pair of blue eyes stares at you. A young woman of your age and of a noble line, you realize. The doctor seems to have briefed her of who you are—were: daughter of the Count Karstein, from Steiermark, murdered, turned. Yet he has not told you anything about this companion of his. You wonder if she were one of the Vatican hounds or another of his irregulars or a sibling you did not know.
Your people and ours have been at war in the last twenty years, van Swieten says. In the eastern part of this continent, Prussia, Habsburg, everywhere, there are reports and hearsays about, he pauses, trying to find a more diplomatic word but failing, vampire attacks. It must end now.
It must end, you repeat silently. How? Would you offer your weakest and poorest to feed us? Would you let us wander the darkest alleys of your hospitals and prisons to prey on your destitute and malfeasant? Or would you arrange a banquet to gather and then impale us all on your sharpest stakes?
We will find a way, the young woman says, as if reading your mind. I know not of your plight, and your people know not of the struggle of my subjects. It is not, however, a reason to continue waging a war. I will govern my subjects well on this matter, and you and your people will discipline yourselves. We will think of a way, you and I.
You want to laugh at the offer, but she is sincere and confident in her admission.
When I am Queen, she says, I will make certain that your people are counted among my subjects, too.
And what if this all were a deception? you drawl, finding a sick satisfaction at the sudden stiffening of her spine and van Swieten’s widened eyes. I do not comply well with liars.
Then you shall be the one to kill me, she says.
Van Swieten gasps at her daring words, but you merely narrow your eyes at her. Fool of the House of Habsburg, you think. A future queen without gold, men, and knowledge of the imperial matters of state. What can she achieve? Fool.
Komm zurück nach Wien, the young woman says, soft but firm.
And you are hit by a sudden need to rage you are nauseous. Did you think I wanted anything but, you want to shout at her. I want to see my father. I want to see how well he has aged. I want to see Vienna again. I want to be home again. How dare you taunt me with nothing but.
You could snap her neck in a flash, but you don’t. Instead, you swallow your rage. You work with van Swieten for the next twenty years and go with him when he submits his conclusion paper to the young woman. It’s a good decision that you, borrowing her words, discipline yourself that day and in the next twenty years. The rage is still there, but you are more than your rage.
Zugzwang.
Six years later, you watch the coronation of Maria Theresia Walburga from a distance. You follow her every step, and you watch closely as she becomes the greatest ruler of the House of Habsburg. She keeps her promise. In 1776, burning and torture are outlawed in all her dominion, and in 1768, apotropaics are banned, too. You and your siblings are still feared and a few intellectuals, who remind you of old van Swieten, still work in secret to understand your people, but open wars have come to an end.
You keep your promise, too.
-.-.-
vii.
She has another nightmare of the ocean of blood and Ell, and her trembling shoulders are lithe and fragile against your hands. You don’t have to ask to know that she does not want to talk about the nightmare. You wonder if she would ever ask about Ell at all, and you too wonder if you would ever be prepared to talk about Ell again. So you pick a book from your makeshift bookshelves, sit on her bed, and read to her.
As we pass one step, you begin, feeling her shift closer to your side, and as we recognize it as being behind us, the next one already rises up before us. By the time we learn everything, we slowly come to understand it. And while you come to understand everything gradually, you don't remain idle at any moment—
She looks at the cover of your book. Did you have any friends in Hungary?
You pause your reading, recalling the days of the failed uprising of 1956, the thundering rolls of incoming Soviet tanks—much like that day in 1945 Lobau, the so-called neutralization of the dissenters, and Elvis Presley recycling Peace in the Valley for the Hungarians refugees. You answer, Yes.
Were they good to you?
You answer again, Yes.
She is quiet for a while, then you hear, I’m glad you did.
Room 307, West Dorm. Silas University. October 29, 2014. Fifty-eight years have passed since that day you stood still at the Józsefváros District and wondered if it were what you were meant to do until the end of time: to follow every bloody trail this world had to offer you. You say, I’m glad, too.
You continue reading with the smell of smoke, gunpowder, and wreckage in your nostrils.
Much later, you look at her, now sleeping, and mouth her name silently again and again. Help me, you spell out muted words as you soothe the crease between her eyebrows with your thumb. Laura, help me.
-.-.-
viii.
The moment her blood spills onto your taste buds, you jolt and lurch and burst. A moan rings in your ears, but you’re not sure if it’s yours or hers. You can’t think, anyway—not when it’s her pulse against your skin, not when it’s her scent filling your lungs, and definitely not when it’s her blood on your tongue. Now you know why Maman keeps flaunting this temptation in your face. She wants to find humor as she looks down at her newest favorite toy: you. She wants to see you hunger and want and need so much you feel like you’re exploding. She wants to see you dying for more. For more. For more!
But amidst the pounding of your heart and the buzz in your head, you feel her grips on your arms slacken and her weight sags against you. Gravity pulls her down and breaks the contact between your mouth and her neck, and it’s only then that you snap out of it.
No.
The wound on her neck has already begun to scab, but the metallic tang on your tongue reminds you of what you’ve done.
No.
In your panic, you only manage to feel for her heartbeat—faint, but there. And so you flee.
No.
You crash into Maman downstairs. She breaks your fall with both hands on your shoulders, but the surprise in her eyes vanishes as she notices the bright red smear of blood on your mouth and chin. Her mouth contorts in a corrupt simper, all teeth and wickedness.
“Save her,” you manage to gasp out, hands trembling and knees shaking. “Take me away, Maman. Lock me up. That girl—she—save her. I can’t—she—she’s upstairs. Save her.” She’s nobody. She’s just a random peasant girl Maman shoves at you after you starve yourself for a week following your resurrection. Still, she shouldn’t experience that. She shouldn’t be here at all.
Summer 1698. Maman whispers words of comfort in your ear, promising that she will take care of the girl, whatever that may mean. She promises to take care of you, too, because you are one of her precious children and she won’t let her children perish. She promises an eternity. She promises many splendid things. You can’t even hear Maman’s response properly, because for the first time in your life you pray to a god who hates you.
My God, My Lord, I am not this monster. This is not who I am. I am not hungry. I am not hungry. I am not hungry. My God, My Lord, this is not me this is not me this is not me not me not me not me.
Help me.
-.-.-
ix.
Joseph Benedikt drops his face onto his palms and exhales noisily. When he looks up again, his face is ashen and grave. Carmilla, we have known each other for so long. My mother, he pauses to look at his brother, and yours have made peace feasible between my subjects and your people.
I was fond of your mother, you agree, noticing the toll of the tax reform and the bitter Hungary reform has taken on Joseph. He looks too weary for a man his age. I am fond of your sister, too.
Hence here I am asking you not as an emperor. I am asking as my mother's son and Maria Antonia's brother. Leopold and I cannot deny what pleasure the fall of Louis XVI will bring us, but our sister may not benefit as much. Should the worst happen, we ask you to bring her to safety. Flee Europe, if you must.
Beside his brother, Peter Leopold shakes his head. There will be no more despondent New Year's Eve than this, brother.
February 20, 1790. Joseph Benedikt dies a heartbroken emperor, abandoned by his ministers and failed on his reforms by his revolting duchies. Peter Leopold leaves Tuscany and succeeds his brother's throne. You leave for Paris, and you never look back. Yet you too are not in the slightest prepared to witness what last year's Summer of Revolution has befallen Paris.
Three years from that meeting, you watch the Parisians behead Maria Antonia, Joseph and Leopold’s dear sister. You remember her chubby hands when she hid behind Maria Theresia’s dress as she introduced you to her little daughter, and you suddenly want to take her lifeless hands in yours just to apologize for failing her and her brothers and her mother. What started as a yearlong winter of 1788-1789 has led to a number of heads rolling on the streets of Paris. Across the ocean, Britain’s strongest, most defiant colony stretches and flexes its muscles against the clawed hold of its mother, and France stands with it shoulder to shoulder. There will be more blood to spill.
You hold back the shudder as you inadvertently step on the wet, red ground near the platform. A public death is foul, but at least it is not a lonely death.
You wonder who would watch you die a second time.
-.-.-
x.
You are in the middle of reading Agamben’s Homo Sacer—his writing is depressing and his stuff is too bleak, too real, too close—when your ears pick up her voice filtering through the thin wall of Room 307. You hear: her high pitch yelp of surprise, crisp laughter, sarcastic snort, and finally the sound of the door being opened. You hear, too: bio major redhead, floor don redhead, and tall redhead walking away from the door. Good, you think. Finally some deserving quiet here.
But then she sits in front of her desk and drops her head on her folded arms and groans, and you can’t help but wanting to know what troubles her. A lit paper, you guess. That’s something you can help with, so you offer to. That’s what a good roommate does, isn’t it?
“It’s nothing! I can work it out myself. And I can always ask Danny, right. I mean, she’s the TA for that course. Really, it's nothing.”
“Yourself... and Danny,” you say, and between the weight of the lead in your stomach and the taste of sandpaper on your tongue, you find the cover of your Agamben dented by your nails, a couple of its pages creased by the pressure of your thumb. A sharp rush of anger swirls before your eyes and blurs your sight for a second, and your lips pull into a sneer. You watch her wince as your voice falls flat, but even after that you still can't stop. “Right.”
What is wrong with you, you ask yourself. Stop. Shut up. You don’t make sense.
Everything, perhaps. Everything is wrong. Everything, including the way you say nothing when she asks, tentatively and somewhat hopefully, if you are alright, including the way you remain silent as she reluctantly lets it go and leaves for her evening class and you throw your Agamben to the foot of your bed, including the way you let your study buddy curl herself on your side and throw an arm across your midriff and pepper your shoulder with wet kisses and press her lips to yours.
Everything is wrong, you think, but specially the way she just stands on the doorway and watches and watches as your now half naked study buddy yelps in surprise and takes her leave. Everything is wrong, because June her will madly usher your study buddy out with a spatula, September her will yell at you and lecture you about etiquette and decorum, and yesterday her will give you the disbelieving eye roll and snicker.
Everything is wrong, because she just shakes her head and exhales, and her voice breaks when she says, “You're such an asshole.”
What is wrong with you shut up shut up shut up you don't make sense what is wrong with you.
Laura, help me.
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