Work Text:
Drift didn’t like to think about her failures. It was a bad habit, one a good detective wouldn’t have—but she wasn’t a very good detective anyway, so what did it matter? She would let herself have this one little thing. She wouldn’t despise the way the smell of orchids made her nauseous every time she walked past Pearl and Cleo’s garden, would own up to the fact that she shouldn’t have run, but it was too late now to look back and regret.
Her other great failure was quieter and more insidious. Some days she forgot about it entirely—or maybe, some moments would be more accurate. Every time it slipped her mind, something inevitably made it come rushing back, and every time it felt just as fresh and agonizing as the first. Those memories were trapped between every loose stone in the old cobbled roads of Oakhurst, soaked into every water-stained wall and dripping from every arched roof. Here was were she’d first met Avid, here was where he’d placed the silver block Pearl was so intent on breaking, here— here was the Vampire Awareness Center, door groaning gently on its hinges as it swung in the wind.
No one else wanted to approach the place, not when the door was just far enough off its frame that an onlooker could see the barest hint of the cell inside. Entrance ripped to shreds, russet stains covering the stone, and a vague malice that had yet to fade from the air made it feel like a scene straight from the detective novels her friends had always laughed at her for reading. Avid hadn’t laughed, when she accidentally left one next to the bathtub after a late night where she couldn’t fall asleep. He’d given her a sad little smile, looking somehow more settled than usual in the flickering candlelight, and said he used to know someone who loved the same series.
She couldn’t stop thinking about Avid. How she’d ignored her concern when he’d gone out for the day and never come back, let the others talk her into believing he’d just strayed further than expected gathering materials. Most of the closer quarries and forests with sturdy wood had been decimated by that point, they’d reasoned, and it would be no surprise if he’d had to travel a little further to find materials. He was angry, they’d reminded her, at some little comment Martyn had made, and he was irrational at the best of times—who was to say he wasn’t sulking somewhere just out of view, biding his time so they’d all feel guilty when he didn’t reappear?
Avid wouldn’t have done that. Drift knew that, and yet she’d nodded along, smiled until her cheeks hurt from the effort of keeping it up, and pretended everything was fine, even when he didn’t reappear the next day, or the next. It was bright and early on day three that she’d finally cracked, scouring the surrounding woods for clues. There was nothing. That was when the townspeople had finally begun to seem concerned.
Days four and five bled together into a frenzied blur of splashing through streams, climbing trees for better views, and scouring the forest floor for footprints or torn pieces of fabric. Nothing, nothing, and nothing. All of her experience, all of her energy, and the trail was still cold. Cleo had guided her back through the gates as the red moon rose, picking leaves out of her hair, and gently suggested a bath. Drift had broken down in their arms and sobbed at the thought.
It was on day six, stalking listlessly through the town, that she’d noticed the handle of the vampire clinic’s silver door had a dried rust-brown stain on its otherwise spotless surface. She’d stumbled through the door, unprepared to meet red eyes instead of purple, and when Avid had stared her down desperately, vulnerability draped across his pleading face, she’d run. She was always running, but it didn’t matter. The guilt always followed.
It’d caught up to her late the next night, while she’d stewed in her own uncertainty. Every creaking floorboard could have been him, moving freely through their house to drain her dry, because it was his, too—but she’d offered to share with Avid, the sweet vampire hunter who was just a little too certain of his ridiculous accusations for his own good. She’d never opened her doors to those bloody irises, that hungry look, that neck marred with two red dots. But that was Avid too, wasn’t it? Avid, who’d locked himself in his cell to avoid doing any more harm, who’d admitted he was hungry as if it was something shameful, whose face had filled with horror and whose legs moved him instinctively backwards when he registered her voice.
She’d just convinced herself to steal one of Martyn and Apo’s cows—which the military woman had become oddly protective of recently—and somehow sneak it into the cell when the screaming started. It was almost inhuman, clear and piercing without the faltering intermissions to draw in a breath. It was also distinctly Avid’s, and anyone who’d listened to one of his rambling rants about vampires—the entire town, at that point—would recognize it easily.
Even though she scrambled down the ladder without a second thought to anything but her sword, she was still one of the last people in the square. By then, the screaming had stopped. It cut off so abruptly there was a moment of pure, utter silence before the cicadas began to sing in the tall grass again, and it sounded alarmingly final. Drift had shoved her way through the small crowd, only to see Owen, ghostly hair framing his dark, empty expression, looking more monstrous than ever with his lips peeled back to reveal the sharp white points hiding beneath them.
He was cradling Avid, holding him gently to his chest, like something precious, and that was what finally broke her from her stupor. She led Legs through the crowd, brought him to the vampires’ side, and turned away. Of course, of course, she ran again.
Time hadn’t faded the image in her mind. No matter how she turned it over, the shadow over Owen’s face read to her like a righteous kind of rage, his steady hold spoke of care, and all those intimidating acts felt driven by fear. It didn’t make sense, fit with none of his previous cues—he hadn’t been fearful staring five of them down when alone and surrounded, nor when he’d appeared at the lake beacon and laughed at their panicked shock. The only difference, the only one that made sense, was Avid. Owen, who had sworn that Oakhurst’s streets would run red with blood, that Avid would have to watch everyone he loved turned against him, had, for some reason, changed his mind. In that weeklong gap, something had flipped, and now— now Drift’s empty plans and unfounded fears rang hollow, while Owen had supported her best friend’s limp body.
Sometimes, she forgot he was gone until she came home. That was when it hit hardest. He left a stake by the door, just in case, that she hadn’t had the heart to remove. A half-empty notebook lay abandoned on the table, its handwriting legible to no one but its owner, beside it a quill whose ink had long dried at its tip. The worst part, though, was upstairs. Somewhere on day three, when she’d still expected him to come home, Drift had laid a change of clothes out for Avid next to the bathtub. It was his favorite way to relax, and a part of her had stupidly believed he would know, somehow, that everything was prepared and ready for him.
She hadn’t had the heart to shove the outfit back into the ramshackle chest of drawers. If it stayed out, she could almost imagine that he was on his way back, that he would hug her and whisper an embarrassed thanks in her ear at the thoughtful gesture. Surely, wrinkles had set into the cloth by then, and if she picked it up to put away, she would have to hang it until the creases evened back out. That was why she left it there. No other reason.
The worst part was—she acted like Avid was dead, but he wasn’t, not in all the ways that mattered. That didn’t stop her from thinking absently that she would never see him again, treating his various things as memorials to their few-month stint as roommates, acting as if each piece of him was something she could never get back. She knew where he was, the whole town did, even if they never talked about it. The manor would be just a few-hour ride if they had horses. A two-day walk. He was nearly within reach, and here she was, imagining him dead and gone when only the first half applied. What was she doing?
Ignoring unpleasant truths had gotten harder as of late, with more piling up every day. Drift knew exactly why she was stalling, what she was afraid she would see. But she found, as she stared down at the rickety stool that had supported the ruffled shirt and dark pants for so long, the green vest she’d carefully mended weeks ago on top, that the fear of what she’d find paled in comparison to the fear of never knowing. She set out for the manor the next day.
Despite the nervousness churning in her gut, the trip was… boring. There was enough of the old path left that there were no real obstacles, and there wasn’t so much as a trace of an animal wandering through the brush. It was almost unsettlingly quiet, but most of the wild descendants of escaped livestock had either been re-tamed or butchered at that point—at least, that was what Drift told herself.
The truth was, the closer she got to the manor, the more she could feel it. A presence, ancient and intangible, shrouded the area in a subtle heaviness that made breathing just slightly too difficult to be comfortable. That was no surprise considering its residents, though at least Shelby, and now Avid, weren’t quite so menacing. Honestly, it was probably mostly Owen’s fault, maybe a bit of Scott’s. It grew to what sounded almost like whispers in her ears as she approached the bridge, warnings carried away by the wind before they could reach her.
It was fine. Drift wasn’t scared. She’d stared down corpses before, these ones were just… moving. But two of them were her friends! Really, her chances were good of running into someone slightly favorable towards her. Scott would probably let her in just to watch her stumble lost through the halls, Pyro could be bribed with one of her novels, and Shelby was just nice like that. The only vampire she’d have a hard time convincing to let her see Avid was— kicking his legs out over the edge of the bridge as he gazed down at the river. Just her luck.
There was something oddly human in the gesture, she realized as she approached. Owen tossed rocks towards his feet, occasionally managing to hit them with one shoe and send them flying into the white-capped rapids below. Most of them he missed, and they fell straight down. There was an almost peaceful look on his face as he watched the currents sweep the stray stones away—one that fell into cold annoyance as he raised his eyes to meet hers.
Drift paused for a moment, wondering suddenly what she was doing. She’d left a note on their door in town so no one would worry, but if she never came back, so close to Avid’s public disappearance, it could make the fear quietly brewing in town boil over. No one wanted to admit it, but Avid of all people, who was most fearful and most prepared, being turned without anyone knowing had caused doubts to come creeping in. What if this was something they couldn’t stop? Not even consecrating all the beacons seemed to have helped, even though it’d made them feel a lot stronger.
“Are you going to say something, or have you just come to gawk?”
Oh, right. Owen.
“I—“ her voice shook slightly, and Drift willed herself to stay strong and resolute, “I want to see Avid.”
“Why?” Owen’s eyes narrowed, his posture shifting into something more rigid. He looked ready to attack her, and Drift reminded herself again not to be scared, that he was acting this way because he cared, and she did too, and surely there had to be some common ground there. She ignored the part of her that wondered if he’d already known about her care, compared it to his own and found it lacking. It didn’t stop her from feeling as if the conversation was already over.
“I’ll ask you one more time, since you seen so unsure. Why do you think you deserve to see Avid? You knew he was in that cell, it was as clear as day to anyone who looked, and now you want to come back and pretend you care about the monster wearing your friend’s face?”
That was what did it.
“I’m not pretending! Avid is my friend, even if he’s not my roommate anymore, and I— I just want to know if he’s doing alright.”
“He is.” Owen informed her, voice forcefully detached. “You’ve made your token attempt, so now you can go. It’ll do him no good to see you, not when I can smell the fear rolling off of you in waves.”
“That’s why I want to see him,” Drift retorted, “I need him to know that I’m there even though I’m scared. That— that nothing he does, nothing he is, will change the fact that I care about him. I’ve done… a really bad job of proving that recently, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. I am afraid of him, but he was starving in that cell, desperate, and I can’t hold that against him. He always forgets that you’re more than what your worst moments make of you, and— I need to remind him.”
The emptiness had bled out of Owen’s expression at some point, leaving something confused and deeply sad. Drift had never seen him look so open before, didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t the bitter laugh that escaped almost involuntarily from his mouth.
“That’s so easy for you to say, isn’t it? I bet your worst moments have been petty fights with friends you make up with days later. Some of us have hurt people, done things that are impossible to look past, and you think you can act like it never happened? Like you don’t know that Avid nearly killed you that day, that he would’ve if given the chance? Sure, he would’ve cried over it after—he’s not so far gone as the rest of us—but in the moment? He wouldn’t have thought twice.”
“I know.” Drift forced out, trying to push back the anger threatening to rise in her chest. It was so hard, when Owen acted like he knew everything—but she couldn’t ignore the plain emotion written across his face, hurt and protective anger trying desperately to hide something more fragile, vulnerable, that heard her words and dared to hope. “I know he would have,” she repeated, “and I understand. He was in a terrible situation, and— I’m sure the thought of it still kills him. But there’s nothing to be done about what happened in the past, or what could have happened if one thing had turned out differently. Sometimes all you can do is keep moving.”
“And what,” Owen sneered, “let those lives hang over your conscience every day? Know your every step is weighed down by their souls clinging to your feet, trying to drag you down with them?”
“Acknowledge them, and the harm you did, but after that? Move on.”
“It’s not that easy when your actions are so reprehensible—“
“People have died because of me!” Drift yelled, not even realizing what she’d said until it echoed back to her from the cliffs below. She hadn’t meant to admit that— but she needed him to understand. “They’re gone because I ran when it was my duty to help, and even though it eats at me, I can’t— I can’t change that. And maybe letting go of that makes me just as much of a monster as if I’d killed them myself, but it’s all I can do, for them and for me. It’s all anyone can do, when it’s too late to change things.”
“…It’s not too late for Avid.” Owen murmured, looking slightly surprised at his own words. All the emotion had bled out of his face, but it left behind a pensive look, not the guarded caution from before. “He’s asleep, probably will be for a few days. Recovery is taking longer than we expected. But I can… pass along a message.”
Abruptly, Drift remembered why she came. The clothes were still folded into her travel bag, shoved under some dried strips of beef, and she yanked them out, careful not to damage the fragile stitching on the vest.
“I figured he’d appreciate these over whatever stuffy formal outfits Scott has squirreled away underground. And just— just make sure he knows my doors, our doors, will always be open to him.”
Owen took the clothes without a word, staring vacantly down at them. Drift turned to walk away, stepping carefully where the rough stone shifted to dirt path, but something convinced her to steal one last, furtive glance backwards. She wasn’t sure what it was—the way his face had twisted into something that looked simultaneously pained and almost awed, or how he held the clothes just as gently as he’d cradled Avid—but as she disappeared into the trees, she spoke as if to herself, knowing the winds would guide the words to Owen’s sharp ears.
“It’s not too late for you, either. Not as long as you don’t want it to be.”