Chapter Text
They’re running. Everything is a blur of color. A thunderous sound pursues them. Kageyama is scared, more scared than he had ever been in his life. He looks over at his mother. She’s struggling. Her face is strained and anxious and desperate. Her eyes meet his and they’re glowing a wild bright red.
The sound behind them changes – they are breaking rank. Kageyama continues to bullet forward, weaving in between trees, listening carefully to the shuffling of hooves as horses veer with the pull of reigns. Far to his left he sees one, a flickering image through the forest trees, nothing but a dark chestnut horse with a rider covered in a billowing black cloak. The mages are close and getting closer. A horse suddenly comes barreling from the right.
“Kageyama!” his mother screams, shrill and piercing.
The rider lifts his hand pointing down at Kageyama as they speed forward. This is it, Kageyama thinks, but he keeps moving because his body won’t allow him to stop. His mother speeds in front, takes his hand, and pulls him away faster than he is able to run. She’s strong despite her weakness. Kageyama is barely keeping up. His mother shoots to the left and darts straight up the trunk of a tall, thick tree, dragging her son with her. Then they’re leaping through the branches of the forest top, zig zagging and climbing and backtracking until the sounds of the horses below grow fainter and fainter. His mother finally slows a bit. She’s breathing hard and rough. Her long black hair is full of twigs and matted with dirt. And her skin is dull. Of all the things that pain Kageyama as he watches his mother’s illness progress, the loss of her radiant, glowing, silver skin is the hardest. He squeezes her hand. She stops and looks at him.
“I need to rest,” he says.
His mother smiles and nods. “Me, too.”
~
After awhile of catching their breath, Kageyama’s mother faces him. They’re in the trees hidden among the rich foliage, but his mother still manages to sit seiza-style. Kageyama’s stomach drops. She always sits properly when delivering bad news. She hadn’t faced him like this since telling him about his father’s death.
“Honey,” she says, “I’m at the end of my strength.”
Kageyama doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t want to interrupt her. His insides are crumbling, though, shriveling and settling with a heavy weight at the bottom of his being. The sensation makes his head feel very light.
“My love for you sparked when you were conceived, and it has grown more and more ever since. You are a beautiful boy.” Her eyes are watering. “Your existence is incredible. I am so glad to have been your mother the past fifteen years.” She rushes forward and hugs him tightly for a second. “I want,” she sniffs, returning to sitting on her heels, “I want to talk about your survival.”
“My survival?” Kageyama questions quickly. “Don’t you mean our survival?”
His mother gives him a watery smile. “It’s time we part.”
For a moment Kageyama wonders if he forgot how to breath. He looks at his mother as if questioning that it is really her.
“Honey, I’m dangerous for you –”
“We’ve talked about this,” Kageyama says, his voice a bit loud.
She looks at him hard. “This past chase was too close. We’ve made it so far, but this is the best we can do.”
Kageyama glowers at her. “We can keep going. I don’t know why you’re giving up.”
“I’m in pain, Tobio.”
His face softens instantly.
“I need you to listen calmly. I want you to go to Karasuno. It is a small wizard town. If you follow the mountains down and then walk a few miles east, you should find it. You can enroll yourself in a school and – Tobio listen to me!”
He’s waving her words away. “You’re not thinking straight. I can’t live in a wizard town. I can’t go to a wizard school. I’m a vampire!”
“Only half!” she shouts back. “Your father’s magic is in your body. If you hide it well enough, they’ll never know you’re a vampire.”
They glare at each other.
“I still need blood,” Kageyama says.
“Not nearly as much as a whole vampire. If you hunt at the edge of the mountains every other week, you should be fine.”
“I never learned how to hunt.”
His mother sighs. Kageyama’s father had thought teaching such a small child to kill was too brutal, so his mother used to bring him blood in opaque plastic bottles. And when they went on the run there was no time for lessons. All effort was put into not being followed.
“You’ll have to teach yourself. It will be hard, but it’s not impossible. You still have the instincts of a vampire.”
Kageyama remains silent.
“I know your father taught you some magic. You need to put every effort into disguising certain features of yourself and maintaining that disguise. You have to change your eye color and your teeth. You can’t have fangs. Watch your fingernails, too. Thankfully your skin is pretty tan, but it still shimmers when you get excited. That is a tell-tale sign of a vampire. It can’t happen.”
Kageyama feels something heavy press against his lungs the more his mother talks. She goes on for awhile, and he listens quietly, slowly slipping into a more hopeless, apathetic state. His mother is abandoning him. It’s for his protection, to keep him safe, but it is still abandonment, isn’t it? There’s a small stir of hot anger, but he looks at his mother, at her sunken cheeks and dark eyes, at her her stringy hair and slight figure and the anger subsides. He feels weak all of a sudden. And scared.
“Mom,” he says. “What are you going to do?”
She stops short. “I think I’m going to keep running east. I heard there’s a vampire collection somewhere that way.”
“Why can’t I come with you?”
“Honey,” she replies softly, “they’ll smell the magic in your blood.”
Kageyama opens his mouth and closes it. It is true. He, too, could smell magic. His father had smelled like dark cinnamon, but the stench that signaled the mages was strong and rotten. Kageyama wonders sometimes what his magic smells like.
“I’ve lived with other vampires before,” Kageyama counters dryly, but he already knows . . .
His mother is staring at him with large, pleading eyes. “These vampires are not the same.”
Kageyama breathes for a moment. “I’m not okay with this,” he says. “I don’t like splitting up. I don’t like leaving you to live among the enemy. I don’t want to be by myself.”
“Tobio, wizards are not your enemy.”
“They’re hunting us. They’re killing us!”
“They just don’t understand.”
“They think we’re monsters.”
“Tobio.”
“They’re the ones wiping out an entire species!”
“Tobio.”
Kageyama turns away. “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to face them alone.”
His mother moves in front of him and cups his face with her hands. Her red eyes are gentle.
“You won’t be alone. There are many, many good wizards just like your father.”
“Then why did they kill him,” Kageyama breathes, not meeting her eyes.
Her hands tighten on his face, and he can feel some of her gentleness slip away as anger and grief surge through her. Her eyes are hard again.
“People follow the ones in charge and the ones in charge right now are waging war. The resistance is small, and wizards who think differently are scared to say anything against it. But they are there. Good people are always there. You’ll find someone. And they’ll protect you like your father protected me.”
Kageyama lets his head rest a little more against his mother’s palms. She smells nice. He closes his eyes and feels safe. No matter how terrified he might have been the past two years, his mother had always been by his side. If she leaves, he’s not sure how long he’s going to make it.
Like statues, still and silent, they stand together for a long time. Kageyama doesn’t want to let go. His mother is crying without making a sound. He wants to cry, too, but he’s afraid of breaking his mask. There’s a wall inside him and if it crumbles the flood of emotions might be too much. He might not be able to leave.
His heart is beating fast. It’s hot, burning hot, as if it were screaming. Kageyama opens his eyes and licks his lips.
“I love you,” he says, voice hoarse.
“I love you, too, honey,” his mother says. She’s trembling, but she smiles and nods him away.
Kageyama takes a step. He doesn’t want to turn away. He really, really doesn’t want to go. His whole body is straining against his mind’s commands.
“Stay safe,” he says. “Make it to the other vampires.”
She nods. He’s a bit farther now. Soon, he’ll be at the end of the branch.
“I’m going to find you,” he says.
She smiles weakly. Kageyama has to jump to the next tree. He’ll continue down the mountain until the valley opens up, and then he’ll walk until he finds the city. He’ll do everything his mother told him, and he’ll survive until he is strong enough to protect them both, and then he’ll find her.
Kageyama’s breaths are shallow. He steadies himself and turns and leaps and runs without looking back and without stopping.