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It doesn’t end in fire or ice, as the literature of a different century seems to suggest. It comes to a stop on a beautiful fall day, when the leaves have already fallen copiously in the driveways in a triumph of reds and oranges, and the air ebbs on the chilling side of cold. A sky so blue it makes it seem like summer, though it's the middle of October.
The end is a heavy heart, pumping until it can, rattling inside a brittle ribcage etched with scars. Its rhythm a lullaby, a tune imprinted on his very soul. Jasper wants to cradle that heart in his hands, press on it with his thumbs and keep on pushing down, until the end of times if necessary, just to keep it alive. But their song has already had its crescendo and time has come for the waning, the silence. The understanding, tacit and mutual, that this is how they would part ways. Not for lack of trying on Guy's side; Jasper has been the one with his mind stone-set on his own convictions, his reasons maddening, the source of many fights. Jasper could take the shouting, the anger, the hatred, even. But he would not relent, not even when it had become apparent the end was nigh.
Don't you know?
A missed beat, then two. Slowly, steadily, blood turning syrupy. An emptying theatre at the end of the show: lights go off, doors lock, the curtain call. Only Jasper remains in the front row, paralysed. Finally, the breath that comes at the end of it all. A feeble thing, and if it does contain a soul, how light that must be.
Don't you know you can't survive this?
Jasper knows, has always known. The axis of the world tilts, his sense of gravity slides off with it. Reason is a cruel thing, to have no belief and no religion; to know there is nothing awaiting beyond cold darkness. It's calling to Jasper now, the sharp edge of the scythe. He will tune it out. He promised.
The blood lays still in its riverbeds, dawn breaks, and Guy is gone.
Life drags after that. There are flashes of something normal, seeping through the long days of stillness and apathy. People whose faces blur in a dull, beige collage of insignificant value. Moving about, calling in, handling necessary accommodations. What's there to accommodate for, aside from a coffin and a hole in the ground? One of those is at the ready, the other in the making. Jasper does not remember trespassing onto the graveyard; when he blinks awake, there is dried soil under his fingernails and his knees are covered in dust. The hole is a perfect size to sleep in, or to bury a lover. Months slip by, years turn into decades. He feeds when he feeds, rests when he rests, a hollow husk wandering the wasteland humans are making of their home. What is time, if not repetition of actions past?
Grief, he knows. Jasper had been made of grief, sewn out of it, a patchwork of tragedy and loss that belonged in a dusty basement. Felt like his bones could become the foundation of a temple, with how dense they felt with untreated sorrow. This is something beyond that, a void that does not bear a name. It haunts him in the early nights and late mornings, pushes him too close to old covens, ancient terrors, the ones even his kind won't speak of. Creatures older and fiercer than vampires, eldritch nightmares turned into salt and granite. He finds himself comforted by their existence: if even such beings could turn into stone with the passing of time, perhaps the same fate awaits him, centuries down the line. Perhaps then, the soft tissue of his being will be hardened enough to be unfeeling, unburdened by this all-consuming hollowness tearing at his seams, skin and all.
Guy had been right, as he often was, though it's probably easier to admit so in hindsight. Days and nights spent screaming (mostly Guy) and reasoning with practiced restraint (mostly Jasper), and yet nothing to show for it. Guy had wanted something, and Jasper had given him everything. Every second, every gesture, every part of himself that wasn't irremediably soiled by hatred and regret. He had given it all in stride for Guy to take, but it was never enough. Over this one thing! It was this single thing he could not give, refused to. Not because of morality, or wanting to preserve one's soul or their mortal existence. No, Jasper knew Guy would not survive vampirism. The mental toll too heavy, the endless possibilities stretching Guy's already frail psyche into a wormhole cannibalising itself. Jasper would not see that come into fruition. With a coldness that was straight out of his early immortal days, he had told Guy dead and cold was better than cold and walking. Guy had laughed, he had cried, then laughed again, left for weeks after that one fight. How fucked up they were in those days, before domesticity replaced the thrill of confrontation and Guy stopped fighting him. Only on this one topic though, on everything else he was still hot-headed, stubborn, a tough nut to crack. Impossibly obstinate.
Jasper misses him with the ferocity of a knife slashing him sternum to stomach, twisting to find that single, tender part of him and wring it out, put it on the chopping block. Cut it out and feed it to the crows.
Guy had given up trying. He'd tell Jasper he would come to regret denying him the Gift, but would not press him further. And when had Jasper ever listened, when it mattered? Thirty-five years they had been together, two of cat-and-mouse chase, and he'd never once accepted he may be in the wrong. Not when it mattered. Not when Guy had begged - Guy, proud and powerful and beautiful, and he'd begged with such a sweet voice, Turn me. And Jasper had looked down at all that he was, all that awaited them with his calculating, mulish mind and had said, No.
Don't you know?
The words are a siren's call, the one thing that keeps him awake on most nights. A curse, a cruel voice (it was never cruel, just convenient to think it had been). The song, the one he misses, the breath in his immortal lungs, the blood that makes his every cell. Guy's laugh, the crinkle in his eyes, the way he'd snore and startle himself awake, before finding Jasper's arms and diving back into slumber. His ragged breath, interrupted by the occasional beep of the breathing machine. The syllables of his name, Jasper, almost a purr, even on the days he could barely form a word.
The knife pulls out his heart, whatever's left of it. It drips black goop onto a grave that he refuses to etch a date onto, a dark slab planted under a yew tree off the beaten path. Jasper's hands claw at the dirt, chunks of soil littered on the curated lawn. He lays on the lid of the coffin, ear placed on the wood, wishing it would whisper the answer he seeks. Wanting to climb inside, have Death find their remains intertwined. But he has promised that he will go on, and he never lies. So, go on he must.
I will be gone, and it will tear you apart.
It crosses his mind, to just remain on this bench until morning comes. The sun will rise and it will burn through skin, tissue, tear down muscle, sizzle the bones. By the time the mortals begin to go about their day, he will have become a pile of grey ashes scattered by the wind. Gone, as if never existed. The darkness a far preferrable outcome to this state of unravelling, this madness that he has bestowed upon himself thinking he would be strong enough to endure past the loss, detached enough to persevere beyond a life of care and companionship and love. The idea solidifies in his mind, the decision made for him, time too short, or so he tells himself. What a beautiful, star-lit night he'd had the privilege of witnessing. The last one, before he'd break that promise. His first lie, told on his deathbed.
The light hits his skin and it hurts, of a bodily pain he has not felt in decades of existence. It's only momentary, this much he knows. Soon there will be no feeling, no dream, no nightmare to tear himself away from. Just the release of the end, the void awaiting. Peaceful, endless. Then, by virtue of some miracle that should not be, Jasper lives. The sun does not turn him into coal powder. His limbs don't come off, his hair does not fall down in clutches, his blood does not boil and his brain remains unscathed inside his skull. It hurts, but it won't kill him. How ridiculous, to have waited long enough that even the light of day refuses to take him now. Not even death will relieve him of the consequences of his assumptions. Jasper laughs, looks at the sunrise. His first in over two hundred years, and he should by all means be sharing this with his immortal companion that he refused to turn in fear of madness taking him. That very same madness that, with precise and cruel irony, had taken him instead. He laughs and laughs and laughs and the only ones to hear him are the wind and the trees, and the body turned to dust four feet below the frozen ground.
I will be gone, but you'll have to live on. How will you do that, love?