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Owen doesn’t sleep. He could — all that talk of coffins, of silk linings or bed sheets, of blocking out the world; it is an option, should he want it. For all the good doctor has offered him — for the pallet, for the blankets, for every attempted comfort — sleep is not something he holds interest in.
The doctor, by contrast, has found it slumped over his table. An alembic sits undisturbed by his breath while the inkwell waits for the pen he laid down only barely before his head. Whatever was being written — case logs, or so he had claimed — it is likely smudged now, though prior experience has proven a smudged line is nothing Legs cannot handle.
The door to the cell is met with a half-empty bottle caked in slowly-drying blood. It’s rare he takes of the doctor’s offering at all, but months and months leave a hollowness that must be filled, and with the doctor not fool enough to offer himself up as target without the stick of eternal imprisonment to guard him, the chicken-blood must, on occasion, be taken — but even then, only insomuch as was enough to keep him healthy. Owen is nobody’s pet, least of all to a human. He won’t be made by base necessity what violence failed to put him to.
Legundo wakes to sunshine and pain in his shoulders. The latter is usual — the former less so.
Owen’s voice crackles like pigskin over a fire. “You’ll give yourself a hung head sleeping like that.” When Legundo looks, Owen’s eyes stab into him with the force of a bayonet. “I’m sure the town would be very disappointed to lose you.”
“Would you?”
“Well, given I would likely starve without you to give me food—” Legs glances to the bars. Last night’s bottle sits, partially congealed and still half-full. “—I guess I would.”
“You want to live.” It’s more to himself than anything, but Owen still picks up on it.
“I’ve never said I wanted to die, doctor; only that I’d rather be dead than what I used to be.”
“I see you keep eating.” Does that mean you believe me?
“You can only hold me so long. One day, these bars will corrode, or you’ll get a bit too close…” Owen smiles, showing fangs; Legundo reminds himself huskies look a lot like wolves until you know them better.
“I hope you’ll realize I don’t mean you harm. I really do hope you’ll come to your senses.” He stands and wrings out his shoulders. Bones pop, but nothing starts aching anew. “In the meantime, I have to do my rounds. I’ll bring you something to eat come evening.”
“Mm.”
Legs winds a scarf around his neck — in the full of winter, every bit of warmth counts — and departs. He locks the door of his makeshift clinic, more for Owen’s protection than the town’s. Who’s to say what sentiments hide beneath agreeable faces?
Sundown returns before the doctor does, but not by much. Snow follows him into the clinic, dirtied by its days on the ground. He calls out as if to a loved one, friendly and settled; it is not a new routine, even with the addition of removing his scarf.
Idly, Owen wonders if the cold would still bite at his fingers with the same ferocity — he was turned in the final days of summer, too early to know. Would he still shiver if his coat went to shreds? Would he still find reason to bank a fire, to keep the same sort of roaring hearth Louis once did?
Legundo stokes the coals and settles firewood into a fine restart. Owen watches with wolf’s eyes, tracking motion and the slightest tremor in Legs’s hands.
“Is it cold?” he asks, playing almost gentle.
“It’s almost February. You can’t feel it? I’d have thought without proper blood…”
“I’m no effete, doctor; I know how to handle a chill.”
“You’ve barely been eating, Owen. I’d be concerned about your health even if you were human; without a proper circulatory system, I’d think you were more vulnerable.”
“No, not— well.” Owen stops. He can’t really speak from experience — but Louis had presided over the town for years and never seemed particularly averse to the outdoors. “I’ve seen vampires live through harsh winters.”
“But what about you? Are you cold?”
No more than usual, his thoughts snap, but he pauses. If the doctor really is so concerned… an experiment; payback for all he’s been put through. “Without human blood, it’s a bit… eughh. Animals can only get you so far.”
He can see the hesitation clear as day in the stutter of Legundo’s step. It takes monumental self-control not to smile. “‘Only get you so far’?”
“Well, you know. We weren’t made to feed on chickens, doctor. Sure, I can survive like this, but I’m barely myself. Imagine eating nothing but… nothing but weak stew every day. You won’t die, but it’s barely living.”
The doctor’s hand drifts to his neck — to the faded mark of their last encounter before war. “You need human blood.”
“It helps.”
“The others — Shelby, Apo — they haven’t said anything.”
“Would you, in their position? They’ve convinced you they’re safe; you’ve given them community and said you’ll take it away if they misbehave — even if nobody’s said it to their face, they know what you’ve done with me. You can hardly blame them for not telling you the truth. And besides — they’re only fledglings. You didn’t give Scott much opportunity to teach them.”
“If I give you my blood, Owen…”
“Fresh, doctor. Bottled, it does no good; loses its potency.”
A sigh, exhausted. It only makes the acquiescence sweeter. “If I give you my blood, Owen, do you promise not to turn me?”
“I do. I mean — I’m amazed you still trust me, but I do promise.”
“You’re my patient. I have to trust you.” Still, he fumbles with the lock — and does he realize the silver key would not trap him? Surely he remembers Owen drawing silver on an anvil in the early days, or at least how often they scraped silver protections from homes and beacons.
Owen meets him standing, hand outstretched. “As I recall, your kind don’t much care what your patients think.”
“Good ones do.”
“And you see yourself as one of the good ones.” Oh, how familiar.
The door is open; the doctor still. “I do.”
Owen sinks his teeth in without hesitation. Human blood, the first in months — it’s sweeter than honey, kinder than a lover’s embrace. He puts them both against the wall should the good doctor become unbalanced. He pulls away minutely, barely enough to speak. “Historically, I’ve not had much patience for ‘the good ones’.”
Legundo makes a sound; perhaps it would have been a word, if he had more in him. He doesn’t push Owen away — how would he, with venom in his veins and no fear to curb it? He’s put himself at a vampire’s mercy and told nobody to check on him.
Isn’t that a thought. The great peacemaker, trusted if not beloved, locked in his own cage with the person left behind by both sides.
Owen bites a second time.