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The road home was a long one.
It was winding, shadowed by trees, oaks, pines, birches, and more than Apo can name. She didn’t fear the shadows nearly as much as she did when she was walking the other way.
That time, they revel in them, in the cool relief of the darkness, the brief respite from the glaring sun.
In reality, the sunlight was weak. Winter reached Apo long before she left Oakhurst, and it had not vanished on her journey home.
They told themself they were building up a tolerance to it, so that they can live a normal life with Cherri. So that they can continue visiting the field and lake behind their house during the summer, still visit the small seaside town that’s only a few hours walk, and faster by horse.
She wanted those memories back. She wanted her humanity back.
But they had made peace with their vampirism. They have to had made peace with it. The other alternative was to break down, and they cannot afford to crack. Not when they were so close to home. So close to Cherri.
— — — — — —
The sun was setting when Apo finally knocked on her front door.
She and Cherri lived in a small house, with a thatched roof and crooked chimney. When they had been looking for a new house, Cherri had immediately fallen in love with the place. Apo thought it looked like it could fall apart at any moment. Cherri told her, with a playful jab to the ribs and a scowl, that it had character.
Apo’s pale hand stood out starkly against the bright cheerful yellow of the wood. It looked strange and out of place. They let it drop to their side, and ignored the roiling disgust in their stomach.
The house hadn’t changed much in her absence. Cherri’s pink flowers that had been in bloom when she had left had withered away, and in their place, were bloodred winter roses.
They reached over and tore one off, pricking their thumb as they did.
The blood, the sharp sting of the scrape, brought with it a flood of memories.
Scott and Pyro and Owen. The crypt. Blood, oh god, so much blood. Truffle, Truffle dead, Pyro, his horrified expression as she sank her newly sharpened canines into the meat with nothing but hate in her grin. The fighting, so much fighting, death and blood, the rush of blood, Sausage—
“Apo?”
Cherri’s voice tore Apo out of their thoughts.
“You’re—Apo, you…” Cherri stared at her, eyes wide. “They told me you were dead.” She choked out. Her voice was hoarse and angry and betrayed, but it was her, and she was there, and she was going to be okay, and she was alive.
Apo laughed, a short shaking thing that died out with an inhale. They aren't wrong.
She held out the red rose, and offered her Cherri a smile, broken, and filled with grief and tears.
“I’m sorry, Cherri. I’m so sorry.”
— — — — — —
When they were finally inside, they sat down at the heavy hewn oak table across from Cherri.
“Did you… do something to your hair?” Cherri asked. Her hands were on the table in front of her, clenched tightly. Her knuckles stood out white against her tanned hands.
Apo opened her mouth. No words left it.
“It’s… complicated.”
They told the other, with a tongue that felt too heavy to speak.
Cherri nodded.
Apo pushed the flower across to them in a silent request for forgiveness.
Cherri took it from their hands and pinned it to her dress. Directly above her heart.
— — — — — —
It took a long time to finally tell Cherri the truth.
It took restless tossing and turning at night, waking up with the moon shining through the gap in the curtains (that only existed because Apo had taken Cherri's requested measurements down wrong and now their curtains were too small) screaming, and sobbing, and then falling asleep again in Cherri’s arms hours later.
It took spending the brighter days inside because the sun felt like she was burning up, and it felt like she was back there, back in Oakhurst, back at the castle, back with Scott breathing down her neck with a sharp toothed grin that didn’t match his kind words.
It took them smashing every mirror in the house and sitting in the shards of glass in the hallway, tears running down their face, and blood dripping from their palms.
It took Cherri having to separate their silver jewellery and cutlery from the rest. The worst part of it was, they did it without any request from Apo. They watched her wince when eating the soup they made one day, before resorting to drinking it straight from the bowl.
When Apo finally said those horrible, terrible four words, I am a vampire, Cherri had just taken their face in her hands, said, I know, and, I don’t care, and, I love you, punctuated by kisses, to her nose and cheeks and lips.
She had taken their hands after drying their tears and said with a smile:
“We’ll figure it out. Together.”