Work Text:
Baz
The corridor is long, and seems to wind on, in the distant glow of golden light, forever.
It’s so strange to be back here again, after all these years. The same darkness and confusion, the same party at my back, but not the same at all.
I’m not as dead as I thought I’d be.
I crack a grin in the darkness, I’m really not.
The mahogany is still glossy beneath my fingers. I run my right hand along the bannister (it’s less calloused, and so can feel the carved intricacies better), the odd ridges and flowing shapes strangely making me smile. I think I must be smiling too much. It’s been hard to smile. For years, really, since I was a little kid. But here I am now.
One day I’ll be ash. I know that. One day this whole world will be, or whatnot.
I’ve been laughing at absurdity, when it’s all that I can laugh about.
Life is so much, but it’s so finite. All the bullshit (I sound like her now) we - humans, people, whatever - create, it’s all so delightfully strange.
I tilt my head up at the ceiling, in the distant darkness my eyes can still make out the carved wooden panels. Mythic scenes, cherubs, Medusa heads. I’ve seen more mythic sights in the mundane. Pimpled legs, curls slowly working out, the shoot of ginger at the front of her hair, distinct yet nearly invisible, stories I don’t know why she told me, stories I’ll never get more of. Maybe myths are the only way to convey such feelings to unknowing ears. I remember being unknowing, I remember being young. Sometimes I still feel like nothing happened and I have to catch myself up all over again. It’s thrilling, and then it hurts all the more. People always seem to carve Medusa beautifully, instead of hideously. Maybe the artists do not dare to attempt an ugliness that could never match the mythos, maybe it’s that beauty is what’s truly petrifying. Or maybe it’s my taste in monsters. She’s screaming. Another day of wishing I was dead and yet getting to experience more.
My grief does not seem so terrible, so infinite, when I think that one day I will no longer exist. It reminds me, there are more things to see, to taste, to break my heart. Even when the world should have stopped, if it had any respect, it keeps on going, seemingly aware that there is no time to waste. Not to do anything in particular with. Mainly to exist.
I know I’ll die in a normal amount of time, now. My uncle’s new girlfriend told me. Or old one. Fiancé. Whatever.
I never thought I’d be sitting round a family dinner with another vampire. Nico doesn’t have to hide her fangs, her eye-teeth were pulled out. I thought it’d make it a real pain for her to drink blood. But she manages. Most people do, with what they have. And missing teeth don’t end up being a big deal.
And I’ve learnt to control mine. Some American vampire I met a while back. Not a vegetarian though, so I shouldn’t reminisce (although I do when I need the odd fantasy that won’t leave me in tears, she was very hot for a 330 year old). (Or maybe I just needed some kindness back then). (Lonely kids want for the strangest strangers).
I can slip up though, and it’s only an issue for my poor cheeks. Darryl decided Mordi and the rest were old enough to know, and Mother spelt them mum. They did row about that, but it’s all good now. The sentiment got to me.
I don’t have to hide, not at home.
I didn’t have to hide in a different home either, I think. Almost to spite myself.
Someday I’ll be dead, I think, someday I’ll be dead, so this pain isn’t forever.
I still pretend I’m in that home, in that bed, every night. I can’t get to sleep without it.
Maybe I should see someone.
A therapist, I mean.
Although, somedays I think I could see someone new.
It shouldn’t feel like a betrayal to move on from someone who left you. Who doesn’t want you. Who never quite did, the same. Someone who’s with someone else.
Circe, why did I think of that? (I sound like him, too)
It’s only a betrayal of myself, of what I think love should be. But one day I’ll be dead, and laying in bed, in delusion, in tears, isn’t not a betrayal of myself either.
Medusa is still screaming. It’s a silent scream. I would say obviously , but it is a magical home, and there are wraiths, so that would be unfair. I touch the skin of my cheeks, aching at the memory. Sometimes I’ll just buckle over and scream , without making a noise, the pain is too intense.
It feels so good to let it out, like when I used to go cry at my father’s tomb in Watford. Just sob and sob and revel in the shame, in the sheer volume and power of emotion.
I remember the garden. The leaves in my hands. The newness, the sunlight, the hope. I attributed it all to her. To something I could never be, alive, golden. But we made that feeling together.
I’ve always been alive.
Or, well, since I was born. There’s no always.
There are stars out the window. I can see them, without light reflecting off the glass. I’ve seen stars before. I have so many wishes. But I am now. I am seeing the stars alone.