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Avrae shoves her hands into her hoodie pocket and leans against the doorframe. “That’s everything.”
“Are you sure? You haven’t brought a lot,” I say quietly, looking around at the still fully furnished apartment.
She shrugs. “Everything I need is in the trunk. Rest is all… extra. Emsy’s kids can take it. I like to start over every now and again anyway.” She’s even left her guitar. I never thought she’d part with it.
I suppose I’ve never had to think about starting over. In the House Nocta enclave on Rigel, I was raised around vampires and those destined to become vampires. I never had to worry about outliving those I cared about by centuries or millennia. When you love a mortal, the turnover rate is so high that it’s only the blink of an eye before anyone who even remembered the one you attached yourself to is gone.
"Can I help you carry anything?"
"Nope."
Perhaps it would be in my interest to be more overt. "Will you bring more of your things if I help you carry them?"
She frowns. "Not likely. You're… really worried about that guitar, aren't you? Did you buy me new amps again?" Guilty as charged. "Bea…"
"You love music, I… thought it would be nice to have something familiar and grounding in a new environment."
"I'm good at music. It's the 'being good at' that's of comfort, not the music itself." She's never talked about being good at much other than killing, so I'd rather she not give up what appears to be her only hobby other than those shooting games she plays. "If I let you bring my guitar case, will you stop giving me that face? Go get it, then." She knows me so well.
The case is made of fabric and not as heavy as I had expected. Avrae seems eager to leave this place behind, and doesn't even look back as she walks out. I pull the door closed behind me and call out to her "Wait for me!" She always walks so fast with those long legs of hers (that I find so attractive!) and the guitar bangs against my legs a few times as I try to keep up. Something clatters to the sidewalk, and I stop to pick it up.
It's a picture frame: made of stone and glass and obviously very old, over a millennium if I had to make a guess. The picture is in color, and shows eight people, most of whom are clearly related, smiling brightly in front of a large house. In the centre is a person I recognise. It's Avrae, or rather, Neandra, the much younger, blonde version. Beside her are a redheaded child with piercing green eyes and a sandy-haired man with the same infectious smile. She looks so… happy. I've never seen Avrae smile like this.
"If it's that heavy, I'll—" she's in the middle of saying, but stops when she sees what I’m holding. “Let’s go, Bea. Throw that out, will you?” She turns around again.
“Wait, isn’t this a picture of you before? You don’t want to keep it?” She doesn’t answer me, just keeps heading toward the rendezvous point where we’ll return to the transport. As much as I want to believe she knows what she’s doing, I feel she’ll regret it if she truly gets rid of everything that reminds her of her old life. At my age, I know how badly I long for those precious few years before my body was locked in place forever and how my most treasured memories continue to fade as I get older.
We return to the transport and put Avrae’s things into storage. This is a larger, slower craft than we used to get to the Arena, and it will be picking up other (mostly vampiric) passengers on its way back to the Council estates. The two of us take seats by a window and sit in silence for a few minutes. I’m still holding the picture frame, and I haven’t seen this expression on Avrae’s face since the Arena.
“You’re upset with me,” I state matter-of-factly.
“No.”
“Then what’s all this?”
She sighs. “You want to ask about it. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, forgive me if I want to know why you’d throw out what looks like a thousand-year old photograph of your family. That’s not starting over, honey, that’s scorched earth.”
She’s still not looking at me. “It doesn’t matter. I already can’t remember those people.”
Somehow, I don’t think that’s true. “One of these people is the man whose wedding band you still wear despite being in a new relationship, I find it hard to believe you don’t remember him.” I remember a few more from the soulscape, two of her sisters, and it’s not hard to assume that the other two are also here. “Surely you aren’t trying to forget?”
Avrae looks down at her hands. Her fingers are twisting the wedding ring like they always do when she’s stressed. She’s quiet for a long time, then, she speaks haltingly, as if ashamed. “That’s… the only way I remember their faces. They’re not up here—” and she gestures toward her temple— “anymore. Just fuzzy shapes. The picture feels wrong, too. I hate looking at it, I know that’s not what they really looked like. Not to me, anyway.”
“And so you thought you’d throw it away?”
“Don’t need it anymore. It’s not my only tie to a time in my life when I thought things were gonna be okay. I’m starting a new phase in life, with you. It's gonna be full of paperwork and being annoying to people working harder than me like when I lived with them, I guess, but I don’t want to just rehash things. Starting clean.” She sighs and finally looks up at me. “Maybe the reason all that… stuff keeps sticking to me is that I keep holding on to that shit. Maybe if I finally let it all go, I can stop feeling dirty.”
I put my hands over hers. “These people loved you, right? And you loved them? That could never be dirty. There’s so much happiness in this picture. When was it taken?”
“My five-hundred-and-first. My twin sister’s jubilee was the previous year, and since I didn’t have a title anymore it wasn’t right for me to have much of a celebration. They all insisted on throwing me a big party the next year to make up for it. Tried to surprise me, but you know me and my paranoia.” She laughs, but it feels hollow. There’s clearly a lot of emotion in this photograph for her still. “I’m the one who asked for the photo. I just wanted something with all of them in it. Jenny, that’s her,” she indicates a woman in her late thirties, “was getting on in years and it was clear the oracle was going to take Leiana soon. I thought it might be my last birthday with all of them there.”
I don’t understand the thing about the oracle, but that doesn’t seem important right now. I point to the red-headed child. “This is the daughter you talked about, right? The one you had with your husband?”
“Aubrey, yeah. Looks just like him, doesn’t she?”
Really, the resemblance is uncanny, like a perfect fusion of the two of them. “Looks just like both of you, actually. Do you really want to forget her?”
“No!” It comes out way too fast, and she tries to backtrack. “It’s too late. I’ve already forgotten her. Head’s full of vampire stuff now. No point in delaying the inevitable.”
I sigh. “I don’t… I don’t think you want to get rid of this photo, do you? You’re just tired of the pain that comes with remembering how much you’ve lost. It’s hard, and you’ve been fighting for something or another your entire life.” I see this in her eyes all of the time, the constant fatigue. So much younger than me, and yet aging so much more quickly. “You just want to rest.” I move from my side of the table to slide in next to her. I wrap my arms around her and she immediately tucks her head into my chest. We don’t need to say anything more, and I’ll never tell anyone she was crying.