Work Text:
The private courtyard that surrounded the iconic Ahmanet Financial skyscraper had been the envy of every buisness mogul in New York City since Kamilah had first purchased her plot of land not long after the end of the American Revolution. It was where her mortal employees had congregated on their lunch breaks since she’d first opened the company back in the 1920s, yet she could count on one hand the amount of times she’d enjoyed her own lunch breaks there. Normally she simply met with Annie at whichever restaurant they could get a reservation at and still make it back to work in time for their respective afternoon meetings, or she worked straight through lunch in order to make it home to her beloved at a respectable hour.
So sitting there in her own courtyard on her lunch break with her wife of sixty-one years and their twenty-two year old daughter’s childhood sweetheart was an anomaly. She didn’t quite know what to do with herself as she fastened her gaze on the tousled, heavily planted garden around them. Long banners of honeysuckle trailed over the walls that separated their property from the bustling MidTown streets, its fragrance making the air so thick and sweet they might as well have been in Central Park. Butterflies danced amid bright splotches of poppies and peonies planted around the 500 year old water fountain she’d had imported from Italy, and well dressed groups of mortals sat at the tables with their various meals, laughing and joking like they didn’t have a care in the world. The courtyard was a place where people could well and truly live in the myth of New York more than in its reality.
“Zahra and Jax are so excited that you guys are going to be merging Raines Corp and Ahmanet Financial,” Adam said, smiling easily at them. The mortal looked comfortable and confident as he sat at the other side of the table, smartly dressed in a casual suit but giving off an air of effortlessness very few mortals ever managed to achieve. He’d grown from a slightly awkward young man into one who was strikingly handsome and so sure of himself he seemed to have the cool, collected allure of a lost angel painted by Cabanel as he spoke with them. “Since you told them it was happening they literally haven’t shut up about it… and now the news has gone public and all the renovations on the building are so close to being done they’re even more excited.”
She smiled in response to that, that same excitement that had not left her for a moment since she and Annie had agreed on the merger blooming to life once more. They’d worked together so frequently since Annie had taken over Raines Corp that merging was the next natural step in that process. Sayeed Industries would be overseen by her as CEO and Mathew as CFO whilst Annie devoted all of her time and energy to whatever her heart desired down in the labs. Adrian was planning to hand the political gauntlet over to Nikhil so that he and Annie could work together once more. Lily would be in charge of their cyber security department. Serafine and Tyler would be on PR duty. As stoic as she normally was about things that happened in her career, it was damn near impossible for her not to smile like a first rate fool at the thought of everything that was to occur in the years to come.
“Jax has already told me he plans on using one of my new labs for… well, I don’t really know exactly what he plans on using it for. My knowledge of neuroscience and neurosurgery is so basic that his first year of medical school study materials take me a minute or two to understand,” Anastasia pouted. “He’s going to teach me over the summer.”
She and Adam both laughed at that and she reached out to soothingly caress her face. Very few things pissed off her love the way not immediately understanding something academic did, the poor darling would pout about it for hours if she let her.
Annie rolled her eyes affectionately at the fact they were laughing, which only made them laugh harder. She looked so adorable sat there pouting in a simple tight black dress, her hair in a half-up-half-down style held in place with a claw clip at the back of her head. For a moment she went very still at the sight of her flame-coloured hair sparkling in the early afternoon light... rose-tinted cheeks and big blue eyes... and that lavish body contained in a dress so expensive only the most successful women could hope to afford it. Every filament of her nervous system sparked with an infusion of joy; how apt it was that she often told her she was more beautiful than the showiest of wildflowers, rich and vivid, a gleaming finish to the bloom. Her glacial eyes surveyed her with such attentive warmth that she felt a catch in her chest, a dart of pleasure-pain that had not ceased occurring since the day they’d met. Those damn eyes were her weakness.
“You know most people wouldn’t understand any of his textbooks at all and you have like twenty PhDs at this point so it’s fine,” the young mortal smirked. “Seriously, he’s taken over our living room with the flash cards he’s using for finals. Zahra and I were eating our cereal this morning and trying to make sense of them and we didn’t have a clue what any of it meant.”
“Close. She has twenty-one PhDs across several different fields, all of which have been awarded by the most prestigious academic establishments in the world,” she beamed, her favourite not-so-subtle brag rolling effortlessly off her tongue, “and evidently that isn’t enough despite the fact she holds more PhDs than any other person has ever managed to achieve.”
“Yeah clearly twenty-one PhDs isn’t enough because I can’t understand a first year medical students textbooks without taking a few seconds to think about things,” Anastasia huffed. Ever since she’d known her she could count on one hand the number of years she had spent not being a student of one university or other. Learning was fun for her and she never seemed to tire of it; she was constantly educating herself, constantly pushing further and further beyond what anyone would’ve thought possible. That mind of hers truly was miraculous. “If this continues I’ll have no other option but to go get my MD. I have no ambitions to actually cut people open or anything, I just can’t not know things.”
“I can’t follow them either,” she sighed wistfully, taking a sip of the iced matcha latte she’d bought from the little café down the street whilst patting Annie’s shoulder in a bid to calm her down. “Name any of Annie’s academic papers and I can rhyme off the key points of them like I understand the subject matter inside and out but I don’t have a damn clue what I’m saying when I brag to people about the fact our son is going to be neurosurgeon.”
Adam nodded and ran a hand through his golden brown hair. “If it makes you feel better I don’t understand anything on the complicated sheets of music Zahra studies whenever she has an audition… but you can bet your ass I go around work bragging about the fact my girl is going to be making her Broadway debut in six weeks. I did the same when she was still figure skating even though I still don’t understand the difference between an axel and a salchow.” He smiled into his iced tea and added, “Everyone who works with me at The Times knows about her… and I may or may not have earned the nickname Troy Bolton because I’m always singing show tunes whilst I’m working.”
She snorted and nodded in approval, feeling the oddest sense of kinship with him. She’d always had a great deal of respect for the polite mortal boy who’d adored Zahra — and been a great best friend to Jax — since they’d all met in the seventh grade. It was a rare thing for her to like anyone and she’d loathed the vast majority of their children’s friends but she’d always been very fond of Adam. Although he was far quieter than many of the friends they’d been introduced to over the years, everyone had always seemed to pay close attention whenever he spoke. For all his gentleness, he possessed a core of inner strength that had made him the centre of both of their children’s world.
Her respect for him had only grown when, at the age of fifteen, he’d insisted Zahra feed on him in order to speed up her natural healing abilities after she tripped and broke her arm in three places whilst on a school ski trip. He was every inch the man Gaius could never have measured up to; he did not dictate or try to enforces rules that only he fully knew and understood over their daughter, he saw her as a partner rather than a subject to reward or to punish, he complimented her without using those compliments to control or confuse her, and he didn’t hurt her. As a parent and an abuse survivor she felt safe in the knowledge their child had met a man like him. She knew without a shadow of a doubt he’d never hurt her.
Love, after all, was about finding the one person who made your heart complete. Who made you a better person than you ever dreamed you could be. It was about looking in the eyes of your partner and knowing all the way to your bones that she was simply the best person you've ever known… and she’d seen that in the way Zahra and Adam looked at one another long before their romance had officially begun.
“Zahra is, um, she’s actually why I asked you guys to have lunch with me today,” Adam continued, sitting up a little straighter as if to bolster his confidence for whatever it was he was about to say. “Oh, uh, before I start… I actually have something for you, Kamilah. I didn’t get anything for you, Anastasia, because Jax agreed that you’d probably… um… well… that you might be more chilled out about things.”
She and Annie raised their eyebrows as he dug in his backpack and then handed her an expensive looking glass bottle filled with rich, plum-red liquid.
Receiving it with some surprise, she turned it over in her hands to read the label.
"Madeira," she said with a smile. "Thank you. Although celebration is a bit premature considering whatever this conversion is going to entail is obviously so serious alcohol is necessary."
"This isn't for celebration. It's just to help you relax and realise I come in peace." He smiled softly. “It’s… well… a serious conversation and Jax agreed after I bought it that it would probably keep you calm.”
Her brow furrowed and she deadpanned, “As opposed to the raving and hysterical way I usually behave?”
Anastasia snorted and patted her shoulder. “There, there.”
She rolled her eyes affectionately and nodded gratefully at the mortal. “How did you know what my favorite wine was, anyway?"
He shrugged. "A lucky guess."
Somehow she knew it hadn't been luck… but she didn’t say anything further on the matter as she sat the bottle on the table and narrowed her eyes the slightest bit at the mortal.
“I wanted to talk to you about Zahra.” He let out a slow breath. “She doesn’t know I’m here today. I told her I’d have this conversation with you guys eventually but I didn’t want to tell her about it beforehand and risk distracting her from her rehearsals.”
She looked at Annie right as she paused with her fork held in midair, mesmerised by the sight of her slim fingers then setting it down in her salad bowl. Realising that she was staring, she took another sip of her matcha. Discovering a stray drop of salad dressing on the tip of her thumb, Annie lifted it to her lips and sucked it clean.
She choked a little and took another swallow of matcha. The iced beverage practically froze her tongue, causing her to flinch and curse.
Anastasia gave her a bemused, all too knowing look before looking back at Adam, her face lined with motherly concern. "Is there anything the matter?”
She sighed and pulled her cellphone out of her pocket. “Just give me the name of whichever poor sod she stabbed this time and I’ll have the situation dealt with.”
“It’s nothing like that, I swear,” he assured them with a soft laugh.
“Thank god,” Anastasia sighed, squeezing the bridge of her nose.
“There’s, um, there’s just something that Zahra and I have been talking about for a few years now and we wanted to wait until we were both done with college, settled in our apartment, and our careers were kind of off the ground before going ahead with it. We both ended up getting actual paying jobs much faster than we expected we would and, well, there doesn’t seem to be much use in holding off when we’ve both known we’ve wanted this since we were kids.”
She inhaled a sharp breath and sat up straight, knowing what was coming without having to hear the words. Her hand drifted to touch the heavy ancient necklace at her throat, worrying the smooth sapphires between her fingers.
When she dared to look at Annie again, she was consuming a fresh strawberry, holding it by the green stem. Her lips rounded in a luscious pucker as she bit neatly into the ripe flesh of the fruit. Christ. She moved uncomfortably in her chair and tried to focus entirely on the conversation at hand, while all the unending desire within her reawakened with a vengeance. Annie ate two more strawberries, nibbling slowly, whilst she tried to ignore her and Adam took several deep breaths to steel himself to continue with what he’d come to say to them.
He paused several times as he opened his mouth and began to speak. It looked as if he might as well have standing in the wings of some theatre, about to go on and perform in a play for which he was not appropriately dressed, and for which he had not adequately rehearsed.
“This isn’t me asking your permission— I’m sorry if that sounds disrespectful but that’s not how I mean it. I only mean that I know Zahra better than I know anyone else and she is so smart and self aware — she knows exactly what she wants — and I have too much respect for her to see this as anyone’s choice but hers.” He let out a slow breath and met each of their gazes. “You guys mean the world to her and you’ve always been so good to me, too. Growing up I was always happier and more comfortable when I was over at your place than I was around my own family. Even though you met me before I fully transitioned you’ve never once deadnamed me or misgendered me, you’ve just accepted who I am and that… means more to me than I think either of you even know. I want to do this right by both of you and by Zahra, and I’ve been talking a lot with Jax about how exactly I should go about doing that and he suggested just laying it all out on the table without actually undermining Zahra’s ability to decide for herself by going as far as to actually ask permission, you know? The last thing I want is for you guys to think is that I see her as a piece of property to be handed over because that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
She reached out and took Annie’s hand under the table as they both held their breath.
“I know I’m young and I’m just starting out in my career as a journalist. I know always seem to have a greater piece in my mind than I can manage to get onto paper and I don’t come from much and I can’t offer her the sort of extravagant life she grew up in — not yet, anyway — but the truth is I’ve loved your daughter since I was twelve years old… and she’s loved me, too. She’s my best friend and I love her with everything I am, everything I've been, and everything I hope to be. For me there is no one else. It’s her. It’s always been her and it’ll always be her. She’s the best person I’ve ever known and I don’t want to live a life where she isn’t by my side. That’s why I want to ask her to marry me.” He reached into the inner pocket of his grey blazer and pulled out a black velvet box that was too big to contain an engagement ring and opened the lid to reveal that the box was lined with red velvet. Pulling aside a protective layer of cloth, he uncovered an antique gold pocket watch on a long chain, the casing delicately engraved with flowers and leaves. A glass window on the hinged front cover revealed a white enamel dial and black hour and minute markers. “It’s unconventional,” he laughed, “but we all know Zahra doesn’t like rings. She says they dig into her skin when she’s holding her daggers and she complains about her daylight ring like twice every single day. I think giving her a ring and expecting her to wear it would send her right over the edge, so I’ll give her this then we’ll get matching tattoos on our ring fingers or something like that on our actual wedding day.”
“It’s beautiful,” Anastasia breathed.
“It belonged to my great-great-great-grandmother,” she heard him say. “She was a suffragette who got arrested like seven times whilst fighting for the vote back in England. It’s the only possession of hers that I have. Old family stories say she never actually carried it.” Irony edged his voice. “Even though she was mortal like me time was never important to her.”
She glanced up at him in despair.
“Time is what I’m giving Zahra instead of an engagement ring,” he said, looking between her and Annie. “There’s only one way for me to show her that I will love her and be faithful to her for the rest of my life. And that’s by loving her and being faithful to her for the rest of my life. Regardless of how long that is. Even if she ever chooses not to be with me. I’m giving her all the time I have left. It’s my way of showing her that I’m vowing to her that I will never touch another woman, or give my heart to anyone but her. It doesn’t matter how long I live, not a minute of my life will have been wasted because I’ll have spent all of them loving her.”
She and Annie regarded him with wonder, a perilous warmth rising until it almost pushed fresh tears from her eyes. She cleared her throat and sat back in her chair, her respect for the mortal growing considerably. She could count on her one hand the amount of people who’d have dared speak so frankly in her presence about a member of her immediate family without worrying they’d end up with a dagger protruding from their skull. The truth was there, in his voice, his eyes, on his lips. She could see it. He loved their daughter with his entire heart and soul.
She saw herself in Adam in that moment, as he sat there staring at them with bated breath, waiting on them formulating some sort of response to everything he’d just said. She’d once delivered a speech with the exact same tone to Adrian, Jax Matsuo, Serafine, and Lily after she’d decided she was going to propose to Annie… and she was quite certain she’d sat there with that same hopeful expression the moment the words had left her mouth. She knew only too well what it was to have felt this inexplicable, almost mystical attraction to a woman. She still thought it remarkable and she’d had Annie in her life for close to sixty-two years, to know in her heart there was only one perfect woman out there for her and to somehow have found her in a world full of people.
“You had my approval the moment you told us you respected Zahra’s ability to make a decision for herself enough that you were simply here to tell us this was happening, whether we approved or not.” She took another sip of her matcha. “To be quite frank with you, Adam, if you’d come here grovelling and had asked us to decide whether or not our adult daughter could marry you I’d probably have stabbed you.”
Annie choked on her lemonade. Actually choked. “Kami!” she hissed.
“I wouldn’t have stabbed him fatally,” she protested.
“Because that makes it better,” Anastasia sighed in that completely and utterly bewildered way she often did.
She shrugged and gave her the impish little smirk she always did when she didn’t bother a bit about adhering to typical social conventions. Not many people would ever get to see who she truly was; the person who was smart and kind and often even funny and simply said whatever happened to cross her mind the moment that it did. With most people somehow her personality always got lost somewhere between her mind and her mouth, and she found herself saying the wrong thing or, more often, nothing at all.
“I never planned on asking for permission but Jax made sure to warn me that you would’ve especially been pissed if I came here acting like Zahra couldn’t think for herself,” Adam laughed, taking her honesty in his stride. “I’ll never be the sort of guy who undermines her— I mean, I might stop her from throwing knives at people when they piss her off but that’s as far as it goes. I swear it.”
She huffed, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “You people seem to take great pride in personally oppressing Zahra and I, and I for one simply do not understand why.”
Adam and Anastasia shared a bemused look— the very same look she recalled on her mother’s face in the earliest days of her mortal life whenever her father happened to get a bit too carried away with his weapons. A penchant for causing trouble was a Sayeed family trait. Wherever they went there were stabbings, explosions, and debauchery, and they could drag even the most sensible people into the fun if they were allowed to run wild.
She gave Annie’s ankle an affectionate little kick under the table. Flecks of sunlight danced over her cheeks, scattered by the nearby trees billowing in the gentle early summer breeze. It made her appear to sparkle like a creature out of folklore. Beautiful women were often dangerous in those stories: disguised as a water spirit or a witch, to ensnare a hapless soul and lead them to their fate. But in real life… in real life Annie simply exuded power.
“I literally had this conversation over my Cheerios this morning,” Adam snorted. “Apparently me voicing my concerns that taking a five hundred year old knife to rehearse for a Broadway show was me being personally oppressive. She almost threw it at Jax’s head when he walked out of the bathroom and laughed at her when she was trying to get it to stay put in the waistband of her leggings.”
She rolled her eyes in her amusement. In this regard, she reflected, Zahra’s marriage to Adam would not be unlike hers with Annie. As two strong-willed people with very different sensibilities, she and Annie often affectionately bickered about her daggers and negotiated about how many explosives she should carry in her blazer... and yet this had not ever seemed to weaken their marriage. Quite the opposite, in fact— their union seemed all the better for it.
She considered all of the other marriages she’d seen... Cleopatra and her pet Roman’s as a harmony of two irritatingly similar dispositions... her parents’ with their opposite natures, as necessary to each other's existence as day and night. It was impossible to say that either of these pairings was superior to the others.
Perhaps, in spite of all she had heard about the ideal of a perfect marriage, there was no such thing. Perhaps every marriage was a unique creation.
“Taking a dagger to rehearsals is simply good sense. You know how… enthusiastic… those musical theatre loving mortals can be,” she huffed. “What’s happened to you? You're supposed to be level-headed!"
Anastasia snorted. “Ah, yes. Theatre people. The most fearsome enemies in the world. I hear in battle they’re known for their coordinated dance breaks.”
She narrowed her eyes at her.
Adam grinned at them and did his best to sound dignified. "Just because one is usually level-headed doesn't mean one is always level-headed."
That made Anastasia chuckle and cast her an affectionate little glare before she turned to Adam and said, “I also respect the fact you didn’t come here looking for our permission. A lot of parents might not like that but the fact you respect Zahra enough to know that no one else’s opinion really matters says a lot about the sort of man you are… and the sort of husband you’ll be.”
For a moment Anastasia paused and took another slow sip of her lemonade and then sat back in her chair, studying him in that intense way she so often did when she met with people whilst doing her duties as The Bloodkeeper. It was a look few people had the strength to meet head on. One often felt exalted, expanded, in her presence. Annie was not one of those leaders who miniaturised others. She was the opposite kind, driven by grandiosity rather than greed, and if she insisted on a version of a person that was funnier, stranger, more eccentric and profound than they suspected themselves to be — capable of doing more good in the world than they’d ever imagined — it was all but impossible not to believe, at least in her presence and for a while after they’d left her side that she alone saw through to their essence, weighed their true qualities — not all of which were necessarily flattering — and appreciated them more fully than anyone else ever had.
“I apologise if you’re not ready to think about this and it’s alright if you don’t have an answer for me yet,” she continued after a beat, “but you and Zahra have obviously discussed marriage and what you want your future to look like. You obviously know Zahra is a vampire and you’ve always been incredibly gracious about that… and you giving her the watch and putting an emphasis on time means you’re well aware of her immortality. Shes going to outlive you.”
“I know,” Adam nodded slowly. “We’ve… talked about it. Quite a lot, actually.”
Both she and Anastasia sat up a little straighter, her heart rate skyrocketing despite the fact she did all she could to remain as outwardly unaffected as she possibly could. This was a difficult topic of conversation for her, having struggled with Annie’s mortality at the beginning of their relationship. When Jax and Zahra had gotten old enough to be interested in romance she’d spoken with them about how their immortality would likely affect their relationships. It was one of the hardest things about life as a vampire, knowing that one day they’d outlive all of their mortal friends and partners and live long enough to see wonders the likes of which they couldn’t even begin to imagine. It was something that as the eldest in their family she had the responsibility of preparing both the kids and Annie for… and even though she’d lived for more than two thousand years it still wasn’t an easy thing for her to do.
How could she truly prepare their children for the inevitability that they’d lose the people they loved? That in a few thousand years they’d forget many people almost so entirely that their memories would feel like little more than vague dreams of dreams to them. How could she prepare them for the fact that whilst they’d forget the colour of certain people’s eyes and the sounds of their voices, they could potentially cross paths with someone so unforgettable that they’d haunt them forever? That their minds would forever be filled with a constellation of high summers, stars in the shape of memories, that one special person whose lifespan likely wouldn’t be as long as theirs would forever be the brightest star that marked their hearts?
It was an odd thing, immortality. The world may have made and unmade itself an uncountable number of times in the thousands of years she’d seen go by but when one stripped away the the modern technology, humanity was the same as it’d always been. Mortals threw their parties; some abandoned their children in fancy boarding schools on the other side of the world because they did not want to be parents; they struggled to write books that did not change the world, despite their gifts and their unstinting efforts, their most extravagant hopes. They lived their short little lives, did whatever they did, and then they slept. Life — mortality — was as simple and ordinary as that. A few jumped out windows, or drowned themselves, or took too many pills; more died by accident; and most of them were slowly devoured by some disease, or, if they very fortunate — or, perhaps, unfortunate depending on who one asked — by time itself. There was just this for consolation for those immortals who existed alongside such impermanent beings: an hour here or there when their lives seemed, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give them everything they’d ever imagined, though everyone but children — and perhaps even they — knew the hours would inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult, which would be followed by hours of hope and light, and the cycle would continue until time itself ceased to tick by.
To be immortal was to have a part of oneself that was forever stuck in the past. To look at the present moment and think back a century or two and wonder if any little decision had been made differently if one might’ve discovered something larger and stranger than what they'd got in the present. It was impossible not to imagine that other future, that rejected future. To be immortal was to face each loss as an odd sense of missed opportunity. Maybe there was nothing, ever, that could equal the recollection of having been young together with someone. Maybe it was as simple as that and that was why deaths seemed to hit harder in a persons first two or three centuries of life; for those were the people one had spent their most optimistic moments with. Those were the people who’d been around at what a young person may have believed to be the beginning of happiness, not realising until many centuries later that it was happiness; that the most minute experience shared between two people could play on a persons mind for millennia. How could she possibly hope to teach that to their children?
Still, she had to make sure they knew they had to cherish the people around them despite the fact they would grieve for them… and she could not spare them that. She could not possibly hope to prepare them to be overtaken by a sensation of unbeing — there was no other word for it — where one seemed to be nothing but a floating intelligence; not even a brain inside a skull, just a presence that perceived, as a ghost might. At times immortality was probably exactly like how it must’ve felt to be a ghost. It was a little like reading, that same sensation of knowing people, settings, situations, without playing any particular part beyond that of the willing observer as it withered and decayed and crumbled to dust. At the end of the day their children had been born vampires. They’d never know what it was to live a single lifespan, to watch the faces of their family weather with age. They were evergreen and the most of the world was not. She just hoped that their children would always consider the immortality they’d been born with as a blessing, rather than a curse.
“You’ve talked about it?” Anastasia pressed.
“She lives everyday with the threat of my extinction. I live with it too.” The mortal took a breath. “I’ve considered both paths— what our life would be like if I chose to remain mortal and what’d it’d be like if I did become a vampire. Zahra’s told me that I can’t make the decision based on what she wants or because I’m scared of how much my inevitable death will hurt her… but the truth is I am scared. Not of death itself… I’m scared of leaving her behind. I’d want her to be happy, to live her life to the full if I was here or not but I know her well enough to know she wouldn’t do that.” He paused. “She says loving so deeply runs in your family — you guys; Cleopatra and Antony; your parents, Kamilah — but she also says it’s as much a curse as it is a blessing. Loving so completely… it’s not an easy thing to let go of. To move on from. She says your family history is filled with great love stories that end in the death of both people involved because no one can bear to go on after losing their other half.”
She inhaled slowly and gave Annie’s hand a tight squeeze, the memories of the four days she’d spent believing her dead had traumatised her so badly that ending her own life had seemed like the only option. To lose the person she loved more than the world itself had been an agony so deep and pervasive that it’d torn her soul to shreds… and even though she had Annie back she still was not even remotely close to being fully recovered from it.
“I don’t think I could ever live a full and happy life if I knew that every moment my life was slipping away from me,” he continued. “Even now there are nights I lay there in bed next to her and I just feel like crying because I know that every moment I’m getting older we’re getting closer and closer to the moment I break her heart by leaving her. I want to Turn because I want a full and happy life with her. I want a home. I want kids. I want to travel and live long enough to see the kinds of things that only exist in movies. I don’t want to go on spending every moment knowing that I could be torn away from her so easily— that’s not a life. It’s not living.” He paused. “I know there are laws about who can Turn and there is a whole process you have to go through with the council— Zahra’s told me a little about it. I know it’s not simple and that it doesn’t always work. I know that if I am given permission to become like you guys that there are laws made by the council that I’ll have to follow, and that by being apart of your family I’m marrying into vampire royalty and there are certain responsibilities and expectations that come with being a Sayeed. I just want you to know that I won’t disappoint you.”
She nodded slowly and looked to Annie, who was processing everything the mortal had just said. Since she had taken over leadership of their society Turnings had grown increasingly rarer than they’d been before her time… and they had never been particularly common. No one Turned without undergoing an intense psychic evaluation performed by either her, Serafine, Jax, Zahra, or Kano — in order to ensure the Turnee would not become a threat to the peace that existed between their kind and mortal society — and even if someone had been Turned in an emergent situation there was a hearing where they had to undergo that same evaluation in order to decide if their immortal life was allowed to continue.
Annie took no pleasure in having Newborns who’d eventually turn into threats killed, or in denying the long term mortal partner of a member their community immortality, but peace was such a fragile thing and as a leader she had a responsibility to act in the name of the greater good at all times. The Bloodkeeper could not allow her judgement to be clouded by something as trivial as emotion the way Rheya and Gaius so often had, for the great balance of the world truly depended on her doing her duties with a clear mind. Her rule was a second chance for their society in so many ways most people would never understand— a last chance, perhaps. And she knew better than any that a second chance did not mean one was in the clear. In many ways, it was the more difficult thing. Because a second chance meant that one had to try harder than before. One must rise to the challenge without the blind optimism of the ignorance that had tainted their history.
“I haven’t used my abilities to go inside your head but I do get a feel of a persons soul just by being around them,” Anastasia said after a long moment. “Truth being told the actual psychic evaluation part of deciding who gets to Turn and who doesn’t is more of a formality than anything else when I have time to personally perform the evaluations— between us it’s meant only to make sure no one outside of our immediate family knows the extent of my abilities. To make them think I’m weaker than I actually am. I know within less than a second of meeting someone whether I’ll accept them as part of our society… or not. And I never change my mind.”
Adam gulped. “Oh?”
Anastasia nodded, her eyes boring into the young man with the sort of intensity most people shied away from. “You’ve changed so much since you were first introduced to us,” she breathed, toying with the ends of her hair. “Yet your soul is the one thing about you that has always remained the same. You’re a good man, Adam, and you’ve got a bright future ahead of you.” The mortal blushed and rubbed the back of his neck, smiling bashfully at Annie. “So let’s consider this the only approval you need. If a Turning is what you want then I’d be proud to accept you as a part of our community.”
“I’d be happy to Turn you and induct you into Clan Sayeed if this is the life you choose,” she added. “Jax and Zahra will more than likely handle your training but as their mother I won’t allow them to be a part of your actual Turning. They both love you so much that the last moments of your mortal life isn’t something they need to see— that’s not an easy thing for a person to get over. I won’t put my children through it.”
The mortal smiled at them and let out a breath he seemed to have been holding. “Thank you,” he beamed. “It’s definitely what I want and I’m glad you’ll keep Zahra and Jax away from the actual death part of it. I don’t want them seeing that either.” He paused and cleared his throat, but when he spoke again he sounded a little less sure of himself, “I know that when you Turn your body kind of freezes in time, right? Your hair and nails still grow and stuff but you don’t age and you don’t gain or lose weight or anything, right? So you can change certain things about your appearance but there’s a lot that you just have to live with.”
“Right,” Anastasia nodded.
“I have one more surgery,” he said quietly, his eyes darting away from them. “One more than my transition is complete from a surgical standpoint. So far Zahra and Jax are the only ones who know about it— well, I mean, I told my folks and that was kind of the last straw for them.”
Annie’s brow furrowed. “I thought your parents accepted you?”
“They’ve been as supportive as they know how to be… but their support has always had its limits and they asked me not to call them for a while if I go through with it. So I’ve decided to just never call them again because I’m going through with it.” He paused and ran a hand over the immaculately groomed stubble around his jaw, clearly remembering the face which had haunted him all his life, the one he had looked in the eye every time he’d looked in the mirror for so long. He then ran his hand through his hair, that was now cut in a style reminiscent of Leonardo Dicaprio’s in that awful Titanic movie — that she’d been coerced into watching too many times for her own good — enthusiastically framing his face without the weight of the braids his mother had styled his hair in when he was young. For the briefest of moments his eyes grew sullen and full of everything his parents had never allowed him to fully become under their roof. “I want to be the version of myself I’ve always been meant to be when I Turn,” he added. “Once I’m back on my feet after the surgery and I’ve popped the question, then maybe we can start organising that. I know I’ll always have days when the dysphoria is debilitating and that not something I can just get rid of but I wanna be feeling and looking my best when I Turn.”
She and Annie glanced at each other, horrified, and then back at Adam.
“Your parents asked you not to call them anymore?” Anastasia prodded.
“They told me that I’d always be—“ His voice hitched in his throat and he took a slow breath. “They told me that it didn’t matter what I did to myself, I’d always be… Ashley.” He shook his head. “Honestly, if I hadn’t got my job a few weeks ago I don’t know what I’d do. My folks had been helping me out a little bit financially but they’ve completely cut me off now— they’ve even gone as far that they’ve kicked me off their insurance. I don’t know if they think doing that will make me stop or what their motives are but… yeah. That’s where we’re at right now.”
Anger started bubbling up inside her, the way it so often did when people cast aside their own children so easily. If the mortal’s parents had it their way he’d have given his body up. They still thought it belonged to Ashley, to the girl he had not ever been. For so long his family had made him believe that the only way he would ever be a man was to die and be born again in a different shape, leaving everything of his body and history behind. Why they’d done that rather than helping him settle into the feeling of being himself, of being something whole, she just didn’t know.
He looked at Annie the way so many people often did whilst in her presence. Talking with her was like slipping into one of those silk-lined coats from the early twentieth century. Comfortable, luxurious. She was whip-smart, understanding the details, the unsaid words. She had a way of wrapping people in empathy that everyone seemed to respond to. It was the kind of charm that made people feel wittier, more attractive, more interesting, in her reflected glow.
People often did their level best to resist her lure but so few could ever truly manage it. Everyone who was granted even five minutes in her presence was so drawn to her, so damn besotted that within moments they felt safe enough to spill all of their secrets to her. People adored her fancy words and her easy smiles. Five minutes of her undivided attention was like a beautiful gift that begged to be unwrapped. Just being near her made the blood sing in people’s veins.
“When’s your surgery?” she asked, already opening the calendar app on her cellphone to clear her schedule on whatever date he said.
“The 3rd of next month.”
“We’ll be there,” Anastasia said without missing a beat.
At that, Adam burst into tears and Annie pulled him into her arms, holding him the very same way she’d always held Jax and Zahra whenever they were crying. She reached out and rested her hand on the back of his head, gently stroking his hair the way she liked her own hair stroked when she was upset.
“But— but— Sayeed Industries opens on the 5th,” he said, his voice muffled into Annie’s shoulder. “You guys are so busy and I don’t wanna be a burden or—“
“We’ll be there,” she interjected.
“It’s all well and good having your girlfriend and your best friend there but for something this big you need your parents,” Anastasia said softly. “We don’t know exactly what the surgery is and we don’t need to know. We’ll be there for you regardless.”
She gave his hand a reassuring squeeze and said, “You’re our son now.”
Adam shifted so his arms were wrapped around both of them, his entire body sagging in what could only be described as sheer relief. It seemed that simply hearing her say that aloud had been a moment so tremendous, so sharp and clear that it knocked all of the breath out of him. As if he knew that without the merest hint of a shadow of a doubt that she meant every word and his life would never be the same.
Anastasia nuzzled against her and as she sat there, holding both her and Adam, her mind drifted to the day she’d first met her in the conference room of Raines Corp where she now sat at the head of the table and made the sort of technological advancements no other person was capable of meeting. Back then Annie had been the very same age their children now were— it was a terrifying thought. One that made her feel even more ancient than she actually was. Despite all her scheming, she’d truly had no idea what would unfold from that very first moment when she’d hand her that scarab brooch. She’d thought she’d planned for everything that could possibly occur upon meeting her… but she’d forgotten to even consider the notion of romance.
Back then, she’d been so lonely that the very idea she’d make it through the next twenty-four hours without giving into the insatiable urge to hurl herself into the sun just so she might be reunited with her family had seemed like something too miraculous to be true. Yet there she was, almost sixty-two years later, sat in the courtyard of her building on her lunch break with the love of her life in her arms. Their daughter was blocks away rehearsing for her dream Broadway role of Elphaba in the Wicked revival, one of their sons was uptown doing his finals and taking one step closer to fulfilling his dream of becoming a neurosurgeon, and the other had recently secured his dream job of working for The New York Times and was mere weeks away from completing the final surgical step in his transition. She and Annie were safe in each others keeping. She was happy within herself. No longer lost. No longer alone. And absolutely brimming with a burning passion and drive to live and live well.
How amazing it was to think how a single action could cause a life to veer off in a direction it was never meant to go. Falling in love could do that, she thought. And so could bringing a woman into her life who tried and tested her at every turn and daring to think herself strong enough to resist the pull of her heart towards her— that could potentially change many people’s lives, and it most certainly had. She marvelled at the way each had the power to forever alter an individual's inner compass.
And it was the knowing that such a thing could so easily happen, as she truly had not known before, not really, that had fundamentally changed her.
And saved her.
She couldn’t manage a word when the time for Adam to return to work rolled around and she and Annie were left sitting at that little table in the courtyard. They watched him walking away, waving before he turned onto the street, and then her dark gaze lifted to Annie’s glittering eyes, and it seemed that emotions sprang from her in a fountain of warmth. She had to look away from her before she got too carried away with herself. But she remained intensely aware of her wife’s body next to hers.
For the briefest of moments they sat there in silence, half listening to the group of mortals at the next table entertaining each other with a tale of how one member of the group’s car had gotten stuck in the snow the previous winter. Luckily they had been helped by a passing farmer with an old fashioned ox-drawn wagon, but in the process of freeing the vehicle, all participants had been covered with snow from head to toe. And apparently the episode had left the ox in quite an objectionable temper. By the time the story was finished, everyone at the table was chuckling.
She smiled when she felt Annie’s hand slide into her lap beneath the table. Her fingers closed over hers in a gentle clasp. Annie reached for her lemonade with her free hand and brought it to her lips. She took one sip, and then another, and nearly choked as she played lightly with her fingers beneath the table. Sensations that had lain quiescent since the night before kindled into vibrant life.
“We’re getting old,” Anastasia chuckled after a long moment of companionable silence.
“I’ve been old for as long as you’ve known me.”
“Yeah but I was their age when you proposed to me and soon we’re going to have a daughter who is married,” Annie breathed. “Where on earth has the time gone, baby?”
In lieu of an actual answer she effortlessly picked her up and pulled her onto her lap. Gently she settled her back against her larger frame, and they watched the people around them in silence. The time had flown by since they’d become parents. One moment their children had been five years old, beating each other over the head with plastic lightsabers on a daily basis and the next they were grown. She tried to remember if there had ever been a time in her life when she had felt so awed by the passage of time and yet still felt so safe and content. No, she decided. Nothing could compare to how she felt in that moment.
Anastasia wrapped her arms around her shoulders and cupped the back of her head, holding her so close that she felt like something precious. “My arms have been aching to hold you all morning,” she mumbled. “The fact we’ll be literally sharing one big office in a few weeks is making me so happy, you know.”
She nuzzled against her. “You say that now but do keep in mind I require a certain amount of daily snuggles or people wind up getting stabbed. Chances are, whenever you’re not down in the labs, I’ll be sitting on your lap having my hair played with whilst making incompetent fools cry over the phone.”
Her arms tightened around her. “I can think of worse ways to spend an afternoon.”
Her hands moved lightly over her back. Her voice very soft when she spoke. "This morning in your meetings, were you a good girl in my absence?"
"Yes, of course," she said breathlessly.
She gave her a disapproving glance and kissed her with a seductive gentleness that sent her own pulse racing. "We'll have to remedy that immediately. I refuse to tolerate proper behaviour from my wife— when we begin working in Sayeed Industries I’m going to have to demand you be a brat far more often."
Anastasia touched her face, smiling as she nipped at her exploring fingertips. "I’m looking forward to not having to miss you at work all day."
"Are you, my love?" she smiled softly. "What part do you miss the most when we’re apart?"
"Your mind," she said without pausing to think about it, smiling at her expression.
"I was hoping for a far more depraved answer than that."
"Your mind is the most depraved thing about you," she told her simply.
She let out a husky laugh. "Fair enough."
“What part of me did you miss the most?"
"I missed you from head to toe. I missed the way you roll your eyes when you get frustrated. I missed the way you stim when you’re engrossed in something you’re reading. I missed the taste of you... the feel of your hair in my hands. I’m looking forward to having you by my side much more often during the day.”
She let out a soft sigh of sheer bliss as Annie stroked her hair. She stroked her in that gentle way she always did, understanding from the way each one of her muscles relaxed that the sweet caresses gave her unimaginable pleasure. Her eyes fluttered closed, the thick lashes trembling slightly against her cheeks.
“Thank you, my love,” she whispered, pressing her brow against Annie’s. How wonderful it was to be sane and to live as she was meant to live, richly and deeply, among others of her kind, in full possession and command of her gifts. “Thank you for this extraordinary life.”
“Baby…”
“Everything has been better since I found you. Time no longer haunts me as it once did and in moments like this one it feels as if we’re the only two people in the world.”
Anastasia caressed her face in no apparent hurry, but as as her lips drew closer to hers her hold on her tightened, and she snatched her up with an ardor that made her moan right there in front of her employees loitering about on their lunch break. She didn’t care though. She simply gasped and clutched her on her lap, and moved her smiling mouth over hers.
Glorying in the taste and feel of her, she kissed her wife thoroughly, eventually finishing with a soft, provocative bite at her lower lip. When Annie spoke her voice was so soothing and gentle that it would have caused an assortment of cobras, tigers, wolverines, and badgers to all snuggle together and take a group nap. “I’m so proud of you.”
Her eyebrows shot up as she wracked her brain, trying to think of exactly what she’d done that Annie would be proud of her for… but she couldn’t think of a single thing. “Whatever for?”
“There was once a time when someone dating a member of our family freaked you out to the point you made yourself sick with the worry that one of our own would find themselves in a similar situation to the one you were in with Gaius. Do you remember how worried you used to get if you knew Serafine had a date and she didn’t send you proof of life selfies every half hour?”
Her cheeks warmed and she buried her face against the side of her neck. “No,” she lied, so flustered she could barely function. “I most certainly do not.”
The truth was, she remembered only too well how panicked she used to get at the thought of someone she loved finding themselves in an abusive situation. Looking back she could see that Annie truly had displayed the patience of a saint with her whenever her trauma had risen to the surface and made her downright hostile to anyone attempting to weasel their way into her family until they proved they weren’t some abusive tyrant. It’d taken her years and years of constantly working on her recovery to realise that whilst abusive people did exist, there were far more good people in the world, and she really hadn’t been doing anyone any favours by running a full military-grade background check on everyone anyone she loved was talking to and then fixating on all the ways that person could then hurt whoever it was they were romantically interested in.
Getting over that particular hurdle in her recovery, in gradually coming to accept that the extent of the abuse she’d suffered truly was an anomaly, even amongst other survivors of abusive situations, might have been one of the hardest challenges she’d had to face. Realising that certain things that had happened to her weren’t things she had to worry about happening to their children or Adrian, Serafine, or Lily had been the most freeing experience— that didn’t mean she had to let her guard down with new people before she was comfortable, it simply meant she didn’t have to approach each new person who came into her life like she was interrogating a terrorist.
“You handled that conversation so well,” Annie said right at her ear, allowing her to hide her blush against her. “And what you said to Adam at the end about him being our son now, that just shows how far you’ve come. You should be so, so proud of yourself right now.”
“It all because of you—“
“No, sweetheart,” she interjected, the way she always did when she tried to brush it off when she pointed out how much progress she’d made. Annie never allowed her to believe for a second that any major steps she made in her recovery came down to anything but her own determination, even if the daily support she so selflessly gave her was the very thing that allowed her to live the life she’d always wanted. “You’re the one who did the work. You’re the one who has learnt that you cannot find peace by avoiding life, and you’ve looked life in the face. You now live a life where you always look life in the face and see it for what it is. At last, you know it. You love it for what it is, and you’re learning to put the past away, little by little.”
She tightened her hold on her.
Annie was the only one in the whole world who really knew the extent of the bad things she’d gone through, and who knew the full impact those bad things had on her mental health. She still couldn’t function completely independently; she needed daily support to be able to do things most people didn’t have to think twice about; she needed the safety that support provided her with to maintain and slowly increase the amount of independence she now enjoyed. Neither of them were sure that she’d ever be able to function the way she had before crossing paths with Gaius Augustine — perhaps after a few thousand years of healing she’d get close — but that didn’t matter.
With Annie’s support she was no longer living as a recluse, no longer so suspicious of her own shadow that she devoted her every waking moment to work and locked herself away from the world for the remaining hours of the day. Even on the days her mental scars were especially prominent Annie looked at her like some sort of superhero. She discussed business matters with her, treating her as if she were an equal partner rather than a mere broken thing to be mended. She accorded her such a mixture of indulgence and respect. She encouraged her to speak freely, challenging her opinions when she did not agree with them and acknowledging openly when she was wrong. She urged her to be bold and adventuresome, and in this pursuit she took her everywhere with her, to parties, museums, scientific exhibitions, and even when she had to travel for work she’d always extend the invite to her and if her schedule allowed it the two of them would make a miniature vacation wherever they were. Although Annie must have been aware that such behaviour towards someone with as severe mental health issues as she had was not always condoned by society, she did not seem to care… and that simply treating her like an actual person rather than a problem to be solved had done her wonders.
Annie let her hide nothing from her, either physically or emotionally, and she had never dreamed she could be quite so comfortable with being so exposed. She was the kind of wife she had never known she needed: a woman who shook her from her complacency and inhibitions, a woman who made her cavort and play until she had lost all bitterness over the responsibility-laden years of her youth, a woman who never asked her to be anything but entirely herself.
“Zahra will be happy, won’t she?” she whispered against Annie’s neck. “I mean, if she accepts Adam’s proposal.”
“She’ll be very happy, baby.”
“And she’ll be safe.” The whispered statement prompted Annie to kiss her hair, recognising right away that she wasn’t asking a question but was instead acknowledging the fact Adam was a good man. He wasn’t like Gaius. He’d never be like Gaius. “I don’t think two people could ever be happier than we have been,” she whispered, “but I do hope Zahra and Adam have the sort of marriage we have.”
Anastasia smiled softly and reached out to grab the bottle of wine Adam had brought her as some sort of peace offering, she used every ounce of her vampire strength to tear off the cork and she let out a loud laugh that turned the heads of several people who, until that moment, had been trying to be discreet about the fact they were watching them.
“We’re drinking wine straight from the bottle with ten minutes left on our respective lunch breaks?” she smirked. “My. How rebellious. I’ve been a terrible influence on you.”
She watched as the bite of sun-warmed wine seemed to dissolve in Annie’s mouth, watching her smile as the richness of it caused a tingle in the back of her throat. “Mmmm…” She closed her eyes in ecstasy as she passed her the bottle. “That’s good wine.”
Looking amused, Annie watched as she raised the bottle to her lips and took three long gulps before she passed it back to her. Yet before she took another drink her gaze fell to the corner of her lips, where a stray drop of wine glittered. Before she could wipe it away she leaned in and kissed and licked away the droplet, the caress of her mouth causing a new pleasurable ache deep inside her.
“Delicious,” Anastasia whispered, her lips settling more firmly, until she felt as if her blood were flowing in streams of white-hot sparks. She dared to share the taste of wine with her, tentatively exploring her mouth with her tongue, and her response was so encouraging that she wrapped her arms around her neck and pressed herself closer. Making out in the courtyard in the middle of the day was exactly the sort of wildly unprofessional behaviour that thrilled her. She was delicious, the taste of her mouth clean and sweet, the feel of her lean, small body immeasurably exciting.
“I’m horny,” she declared the moment the need to breathe kicked in.
Anastasia snorted and took a drink. “What’s new?”
Growling in pleasure, she kissed her neck, her tongue flickering around her pulse before wandering up to her earlobe. Anastasia moaned in astonishment at how bold she was being, jerking at the hot, moist touch, her fingers clutching at the rough silk of her hair. “Exactly how much trouble would I be in if I took advantage of the fact I’m much taller than you are and threw you over my shoulder, carried you upstairs, tied you up to stop you running back to work, and then spent the afternoon ravishing you?”
“Luckily for you I like your rebellious streak,” Anastasia smirked, her eyes narrowing the slightest bit at the mention of their height difference. “However, we have… eight minutes before our lunch breaks are officially done and not being at work starts to feel dark and dangerous. I say we finish this bottle and eight minutes from now I’ll become your willing captive.”
She playfully bopped her forehead against hers and kissed the bridge of her nose. “I was right,” she smiled. “No two people have ever been happier than this.”
~ fin.