Archive of Our Own

Legundo wakes up.

Consciousness hardly welcomes him at the best of times, but coming back to his senses has rarely been so much of a fight. Reality swims just out of reach in a dark, swirling pool of sensation and emotion, shot through everywhere with things — memories — he flinches from without understanding why.

Slowly, horribly slowly, thoughts begin to fall into a coherent line. Some order reasserts itself in his mind, and he engages an old ritual to take stock of his body.

Unfamiliar pain, radiating throughout, is demanding his attention and muddying his thoughts. A stripe across his scalp, an ache behind his prosthetic, and a sharp sting at the left of his pelvis make themselves known without reprieve. Dozens of smaller injuries flare in protest when he attempts the smallest movement. However, the worst ache by far is in his abdomen, an empty wrongness like he has been torn open from the inside.

It takes significant concentration, even as his faculties return, to pay attention to much sensation beyond all the pain, but he pushes though it with the aid of long practice.

He is cold. He is lying on something too coarse and unforgiving to be a bed, or a cot, or anything but the woodland ground. Strands of grass, heavy with morning frost, brush the thick hair on his arms and irritate his neck.

It smells—

Legundo fumbles his mental checklist entirely. At some point, in an attempt to placate his battered body, he had begun holding his breath— and never stopped.

He finally forces his eyelids open, and stares blearily at grass coated in frost and dried blood. Memory returns in fragments. The town of Oakhurst. The supernatural, manifest. He was attacked. An enemy combatant— no. Someone he knew. Someone he wanted to help, once. A weak hand rises to graze his stomach, fingers gently confirming what he dreads acknowledging.

He hasn't been injured there.

He's hungry.

Improbably, time slips away from him.

It is a long and hateful process to pry himself up from the ground, and then to march into the wood, toward his lab – but his head betrays him, and it all blurs together with his other moments of weakness and failure.

Boots thud, guns fire, soldiers and children and civilians cry out, animals fall without time to scream.

And then he is drinking.

Life flows into him with each gulp of crimson. He had thought before that blood might taste like rich wine to a vampire, if it tasted different at all. He finds it instead like nothing so much as the sweet and overwhelming pleasure of water after a hard march. As it courses down his throat, warm and thick, it tastes like iron, like syrup, like the sickness within him.

His wounds itch and then stop itching, as the muscles and flesh knit together. At one point, the pressure and driving pain behind his eye sharpens, and the prosthetic drops out of his skull entirely. The headache remains.

As wounds close and fingernails lengthen into claws, Legundo's thoughts return somewhat to his control, and most of the pain trades places with a duller dysphoria. Leaving aside the… new additions, this body is dead. Legundo draws breath now only from habit, and if blood still circulates through his veins, it's not a beating heart which moves it.

He tries several times to step outside of himself, to alleviate the discomfort, but he keeps getting shocked into clear sensation — when he takes a step and his stride is longer, smoother, uncomplicated by aging muscle and bone; when he realizes that he can see and hear clear across the room; when the pleasure of feeding overwhelms his resistance.

When the flock hidden in his lab are gone, and he is as close to sated as he's likely to get, the fog abates almost entirely, and his heightened abilities overwhelm him. He has gorged more, much more, than he should need to survive.

Whatever else Legundo gains, he tells himself, the strength is necessary, to deal with whatever awaits him. To save anyone left, or at least to seek revenge on Scott or — his own sire.

He needs to use this, this curse, to do what good he can. And then he can still — finally — find someone to put him down.

He doesn't encounter anyone on the way, but it takes longer than it should have to find the nearest beacon. When he sees it though the trees and ancient stone at last, for a moment he's convinced he found the wrong place.

The beacon is dark. Not the sinister crimson of the desecrated, but a miserable, dead black. It seems to lends him strength, but where he has grown used to the gentle warmth of a consecrated beacon or the hostility of a desecrated one, he finds instead a humming apathy.

When he reaches it, Legundo just stares. The beacons have never looked this way before, and the inevitable inference crushes into him like a boulder.

All of the beacons have been desecrated.

The humans are all dead.

Despite his new power, Legundo's legs weaken under him. While he lay useless in the woods, transforming into a vampire, all his remaining chances to end the conflict, to save the civilians, have come and gone. He has, without even being there to bear witness, left another empty town in his wake.

He adds their names to the list, right under Avid's. Martyn. Ren. Abolish. Pearl.

He has no way to know if Apo has been killed, or Cleo. Or— Oakhurst wasn't planning to go down quietly, and the vampires at the castle had been turning on one another. Anyone could be gone. Everyone could be gone.

Legundo feels something slide down his scarred cheeks and swipes the back of his hand across them. It comes away bloodied.

He drops to his knees on the crumbling wood and stone under the beacon, and finds himself fighting for breath he doesn't need. This is the worst-case, nightmare scenario. Everything he thought he knew is gone. All his half-formed plans gently unwind and drift away. What can he do now?

Lose the leg, save the body.

Without conscious intent, he stretches out a hand and lays it on the beacon — as if he could hope to change its state. Instead, a new awareness fills him; the discomforting feeling that he is in seven places at once.

The survivors — any survivors — if they remained around Oakhurst, would be gathered in either the town or the castle, surely. A foolish hope rises as he pictures the town. Someone, anyone. Please.

The world turns upside down for a moment as his body disappears and re-assembles, and before he can fully figure out what's happened Legundo is retching onto a different floor, head and stomach spinning.

It's all blood.

After a miserable minute, he lifts his head and recognizes the base of Oakhurst's beacon tower. The beacon is the same unsettling black as the first he saw, no real surprise. He has been instantly transported across the forest and fields. Well, that's one reason the vampires were always able to mobilize so quickly.

Legundo means to steel himself before rising to face the rest of Oakhurst, but he hardly gets a chance. Several of the doors hang open on their hinges, and one looks like it met the wrong end of a battering ram.

Beyond them…

Oakhurst is gone.

Houses, gardens, and walls lay in blackened ruins, dripping with the moisture of the morning and a recent rain. The usual grey clouds hang overhead, leering down at the remnants. It looks almost as if the last few months of building and living never happened — but no, those are the walls that he built, the crops Cleo tended, the paths they walked.

Legundo can see much, much further than he's used to with his one weak eye. At the moment, it is the opposite of a blessing, but least there is this: he can be sure there is no one else left in Oakhurst.

If he had been there — if he had not been so stupid — maybe things could have been different. He could have fought, could have healed, could have used his life for something worthwhile. The universe, or at least the spirits of Oakhurst, have a cruel sense of humor.

Legundo steps up to the doorway, but the thought of going out into the town, walking among the fallen walls, is suddenly overwhelming enough to keep him frozen.

Instead, he glances back into the tower. The stairs are intact, and they stand firm under his weight.

He climbs.

Sitting at the top of the tower, perched casually on the rim and bouncing a leg, is Owen.

His trousers and shirtsleeves are dark with bloodstains, darker than Legundo remembers, but his face and hands are clean. He glances up when Legundo emerges from the stairs, blank expression broken swiftly by surprise and then — by glee.

Legundo's thoughts spin on a new axis and his vision goes red. He lunges forward, faster than a human possibly could, to grasp Owen's arm and slam his lithe body flat against the damp stone floor of the roof. He goes with little resistance, as if his vampiric strength left him just as Legundo gained it.

Legundo wrestles himself into a kneeling position, pinning Owen's arms and chest and digging his claws into his shoulders to prevent his escape, bat form or otherwise.

The cleave of his claws through human flesh is almost effortless; it supplies the same heady satisfaction as using a well-sharpened knife. He wants to break the body beneath him into messy chunks of meat, sinew, and bone. He wants to tear at every inch of skin with his teeth until it's all weeping crimson. He wants revenge.

He wants to vomit again.

Owen grins up at Legundo, fangs and feral delight on full display. His long waves of hair fall over his face in messy strands and splay out beneath him like an inverted shadow. "Oh, I thought you were a failed project, soldier. We had to kill them all ourselves. But you're—" he huffs involuntarily as Legundo clenches his fists, driving claws through muscle. "—you're beautiful."

"I am going to kill you," Legundo says. It comes out, raspy and tight with rage, through broken vocal cords. For a moment, he doesn't even recognize it as his own voice.

Owen's smile doesn't waver. "Are you? There's a stake in my pocket."

It only takes a glance down to find it. Legundo shifts his grip and pulls the stake out of Owen's belt. Owen begins to struggle to free one arm, but Legundo pushes his weight forward to prevent it, and drags the hand still on his chest up to close around his throat, smearing it with dark blood.

Legundo can feel the muscles contract beneath his fingers when Owen swallows, and is briefly distracted by how easy it would be to just curl his fingers tighter around the slim, tan length of skin and feel it crumple, watching Owen lose consciousness. Vampires don't need to breathe, but with the weight behind his every move, Legundo knows he could strangle tightly enough to destroy the body's connections to the head.

But that would only drain Owen's reserves, not kill him.

Owen's hands come up to claw at his wrist, his back arching off the ground with the effort of trying to rip Legundo's grip off. He's weak, not nearly as sated as Legundo, and all else now equal between them Legundo has the definite height and weight advantage. His struggles barely register over the thrumming of Legundo's thoughts.

He deserves to die. He has burned every bridge that was raised, bit every hand that was offered. He has left nothing on the world but a stain.

This will not be balancing the scales, but it is the only thing he can do to stop them tipping further. He's proved irredeemable. He can only bring misery to others. This is a duty. This is a need.

Legundo raises the stake. He sees it plunging into the skin, past muscle and through the ribcage, piercing the heart, Owen's form dissolving under the force of the rough length of wood. Sees himself alone at the top of the ruined tower, in the ruined town, alive and alone.

"...No," he hears himself say. His head hurts. The stake falters.

"No!?" Owen repeats incredulously, finally prying himself loose enough to speak. When Legundo just stares back, too overwhelmed to speak, Owen squirms under his grip and growls, a deep, wild sound of frustration.

After a moment, a glint enters his crimson eyes. "I killed Martyn, you know." Horribly, he warms to the subject. "I found him alone. He tried to run, and barely got in a good swipe before going down. I speared him through the back with my claws and drained his body dry slowly. It was kind, really – he gave me enough power to hold my own in the final battle."

Legundo shuts his eye, as if that will help him stop imagining the expression on Martyn's broken body, one of the many blank and bloodied stares he has seen in his long, long, life. A jolt of nausea hits him over the head like a blow. He cannot bear to see one more. "No," he repeats. "No, no, no. Stop," weakly echoing the frantic retreat he made as Owen hit him, killed him, turned him.

But this time, Legundo is — not in control, exactly, not in this form. He just has the literal upper hand, the power to rip and tear and kill. Owen is no longer the threat he was — and right now, he only has his words. Unfortunately, those are as brutal as his teeth.

"Make me stop," Owen says, almost begs. "You're supposed to be good at—"

He cuts off with a strangled noise. Legundo opens his eyes. His grip on Owen's throat had tightened without his conscious command, preventing him from speaking further.

Damn. Legundo hesitates for a long second, then unclenches his fingers minutely. His other hand drops to the side, still clutching the stake. "I— this is what you want," he says. There are other reasons, other instincts, swirling in the deep well of his mind, but this floats to the top first. Owen has made a show of fighting, but he was happy to see Legundo. He pointed out the stake and taunted him. And it is clearly a bad idea to do what Owen wants.

Owen barks a laugh, still a little choked. "This is what you want, Doc. Have the bad blood out. What is it you used to say? Lose the leg?"

Legundo flinches. His old creed, his old self, echoes and knocks around at the back of his mind. "You don't get to call me that," he growls. "Not anymore."

"I'll call you whatever I like, thanks," Owen drawls. His grin sharpens again. "You'd prefer I call you what you really are? What I saw in your blood?"

"No," Legundo says, but Owen talks over him: "Soldier, murderer, poisoner, monster."

He hits Owen. A hard blow to the jaw. Owen takes it and keeps talking. "You deserve life least of any human to step foot in Oakhurst. Is it satisfying to see it fall, too?"

"That isn't what you said when you did this to me," Legundo spits.

Owen laughs. "I was playing with you. Didn't you realize? I wanted to unleash the killer in you on Oakhurst so I didn't even need to spend the effort to lift my own hand again. Tethered together," he scoffs. "I left, just as soon as you fell unconscious. I didn't mean to be here if you woke."

To unleash you on Oakhurst—

Breath hisses from Legundo's mouth, steam from a furnace. He can tell Owen is just trying to piss him off, and that doesn't stop it from working. Searching for anything else to concentrate on, something stirs in the back of his mind, the return of a concern which fled his thoughts when he saw Owen. He tries to strangle the rage from his voice, and almost succeeds. "What happened?"

Owen's eyes flick up and down over Legundo. "Something in his— in my line, I suppose," he says dismissively. "I was unconscious for a time following my own turning."

"No," Legundo says, forcing the words through his grille of sharpened teeth. "What happened. To the town."

"Oh, I didn't see exactly what happened to everyone. There was a large battle. Humans and vampires on both sides fell." Owen sounds entirely too happy about that. "Those who remained standing all left, and without even—"

He cuts himself off and hisses in frustration. "Don't change the subject. Shove that stake home and you can go find out who survived. You've the rest of your miserable life to track them all down."

Legundo looks down at the vampire beneath him. He is a weeping, festering wound. Once, Legundo wanted to offer stitches, gauze, something to numb the pain. Now he's struggling not to provide a much simpler and faster cure. One that, for once, won't be rejected.

The problem is that ultimately, killing Owen will not solve anything; it would not even change Legundo's wretched state, with no human to cast the cure, no beacon to support it. There is nobody of worth left here for Owen to torment or murder. Ending his existence only serves to increase the death toll.

Oh, but deep down, it's not that complicated. He does not get to claim such a noble, rational excuse.

Owen doesn't deserve to get what he wants.

He denied an ending to Legundo. Turnabout is fair play, someone tells him months or years ago. It's not, not really. He doesn't care.

"…No," Legundo says. It's final. "I won't."

Owen begins again to struggle beneath him, and Legundo straightens and retreats a step to let him go, assuming he's only trying to get free. Instead, Owen rises to a crouch and lunges towards him, making a desperate grab for the stake. His glancing swipe carves red lines down Legundo's already mangled forearm. Instincts which never fully left him flare into motion, and Legundo knocks their arms together in a hold to prevent Owen from plunging the weapon forwards.

He's caught unprepared again when Owen instead tries to pull Legundo's hand down the other way, into his own chest. Nevertheless, the angle is awkward and Legundo's knuckles skid flat against his shirt, stakepoint aside.

After a moment, Legundo wrests control of his hand back, and flings the stake away with the full force of his strength. It sails off the top of the tower and clatters to a distant landing in the wreckage of Oakhurst.

Owen screams in fury, in anguish, and throws himself at Legundo once more.

They trade blows frantically, blood spraying every time claws connect. Legundo is past caring about causing harm, but given he's not trying as hard to kill his opponent, he finds himself on the back foot. Owen presses forwards relentlessly, forcing Legundo to circle backwards on the platform.

It's even ground, but, as Legundo learns when his boot slips out under him, not completely flat or dry.

Instantly, Owen is upon him. Familiar fangs sink into the flesh of his upper arm and tear it apart, hands coming up to hold him in place. Legundo yells in pain and struggles to throw Owen off. It seems that his earlier weakness was at least partially a show; it's not nearly as easy to shove the man back as it was a minute ago.

Ultimately, though, he still has the advantage in strength, weight, and vampiric power. He takes Owen's left arm in his hands and forces them together in just the right place, until he hears the expected snap and Owen screams, releasing his jaw. Legundo twists the broken arm back and captures the other before its claws can retaliate.

"This has to stop!" he cries, taking the opportunity to back off as much as he can without knocking into the wall.

"Why?" Owen is for once breathing heavily, with exertion or emotion; he falls back into a crouch. Legundo doesn't follow, but he doesn't leave his guard down.

"I'm not going to kill you."

Still half-crouching, Owen retreats and slides his back up against the parapet to sit limply. The tension unwinds from his lithe body, save for where one arm clutches the other. His visible wounds are closing, but not nearly as fast as Legundo's, and it might be a trick of the light, but his claws look shorter.

"Do you want me to beg?" Owen asks. It still has an edge, but lacks his usual affectation of malice. His dark eyes glitter with an emotion Legundo can't quite identify. "Is that your game? Just—do what you're meant to and let me go."

Legundo grabs his own arm to stop his sudden urge to tear at the itching wounds across it. A short growl rises in his throat. "I've made my decision and I'm going to stand by it. No matter how much you provoke me."

No matter how much he might come to regret it, or how tangled his reasoning is.

He's expecting the sneer he gets in return, but not that Owen suddenly leans forward, with an intent air. "There's nobody here to pretend for, you know. I saw your memories— I saw you. Killing, marching, starving them. One more death by your hands is hardly significant."

"I disagree," Legundo says quietly. Only one such death would be "hardly significant," and it's the one he can no longer take.

Owen's face is twisted in frustration. Legundo pauses to give himself a mental shake. He knows most humans — most people — foster a drive to live which he has long since dismembered. Many of Oakhurst's latest residents notwithstanding… wanting to die is strange.

Stranger still in this case. Owen won't be feeling regret, or even something so natural as guilt. He only ever bragged about his massacre, once he was unmasked as a vampire.

A morbid curiosity blooms, and Legundo slumps against the opposite parapet wall in something like disbelief. He can't still be trying to understand the man who broke him, who killed Martyn and who knows who else. It's far past the time for peace and understanding; he knew that, weeks ago.

But then, he has developed a knack for self-destruction. And there is nobody else left here for Legundo to help, to save, no meeting to join, no fight to stop, no reason to protect himself. It's over. If his mind turns from Owen, he will have no choice but to confront something else. Someones else, or rather, their ghosts.

He thinks about leaving. Twisting his form into the shape of a bat, as he's seen the others do, and flying free from this cursed town. He can tell how he might do it, too, as soon as the thought occurs: it might take no more effort than commanding a fist to clench.

But he is not yet so broken that he will simply let someone like Owen out of his sight to wreak more havoc, destruction that he now has the power to avert. His actions would lay blame on Legundo's account; all the heavier if they were intended to reawaken Legundo's own attention or ire.

The apathetic grey sky is more pleasant to look at than anything else. Legundo takes a breath he doesn't need, and asks.

"Why? Why do you want to die?"

Immediately, a growl. "What? Why should you care?"

Legundo doesn't bother to repeat himself anymore. If Owen isn't inclined to answer, probably nothing will change his mind. He waits.

And waits.

Finally, Owen shifts a little, cloth rustling as he adjusts his arms. "If you must know, if it will move your withered heart, it's the only way that… that I can see him again. I know he's waiting for me."

Louis. Of course.

Though… on the whole, that explanation raises more questions than it answers. Legundo looks back at Owen — whose own gaze is fixed on his crossed shirtsleeves — and scrapes together some tact. "I didn't take you for a devout man."

"I'm not. I am also not an idiot," Owen sneers. He cannot remain still for long, and begins tapping a foot. He doesn't lack for the unnatural poise of all vampires, but he is always in motion. Even when the shadows cloak him, a pacing or fidgeting often betrays his position. This is not the only thing which would make him a bad soldier.

"The world would never be so kind, so fair as to loosen its grip after death. There is a hell of some sort eager to meet me, I'm sure. But he'll be there. Louis was… good doesn't begin to cover it. But he was also a creature of the night. Like Scott, like me, like you."

"We are not all the same," Legundo says fiercely, and is surprised and relieved that the familiar passion still rises to hand. "I knew it from the start and you refused to listen to me. I can feel it, now. Cleo—" he swallows. "Cleo was right. I'm not different. This is what I have — what we have —always been, just… more intense. Just hungrier."

He clutches his chest, where already a gnawing is beginning to demand his attention, despite his… meals earlier.

"You're still on this soap box?" Owen asks, looking like he's tasted something sour. His voice evens out into that calm, arrogant tone he would taunt the town with. "Well. No matter our own convictions, the forces at work here — a god, or the church, or the 'spirits,' or whoever created those powers you all had; the cure… they clearly consider vampires evil, no matter what. In a just world, Louis would have earned a different fate, in his life and in his death. This is not a just world."

The two of them can agree on that, ironically. In a just world, they both would be long since gone. But something about what Owen just said, about the way he has been talking, sticks in Legundo's teeth, and he doesn't care enough to stay tactful. "You shouldn't get to see Louis again? You think you deserve… hell?"

That gets a rise out of Owen. His brow pulls into a scowl once more. "I told you to keep him out of your fucking mouth."

Legundo shrugs. "Fine. I don't need to keep pressing on your most painful wound."

Owen continues to glare, clearly catching the note of sarcasm. For a moment before he speaks again Legundo thinks he's going to once again abandon conversation and launch an attack, and he braces.

But it's only the muscles in Owen's jaw that clench and release. "Like I said, I am not an idiot. Humans are rotten to a man, but executing them hardly makes me a saint. It makes no difference if I am kind or wicked. I am already a monster, and I will not hesitate to use my monster's weapons to claim vengeance, to claim justice that is due."

A shadow crosses his face, and he glances down to one gnarled hand, short claws curled.

"Justice which I have now, more or less, and I'd just love to be done with this hell and move on to the next, if you're any more in the mood to oblige after this useless bit of conversation." His eyes flick wooden-pointedly.

Legundo blinks. Behind the dark rage and grief and resentment in Owen, he catches a glimpse of that something else: resignation. Of course. It's because of that resignation, that calcified core of pain, that Legundo reached out to Owen in the first place. Owen is clinging not just to the memory of Louis, but the belief that his actions are inevitable and irreversible. He must deny that change is even possible, because if he acknowledges otherwise — if he truly faces what he's done…

He has to swallow against bile as a flood of his own memories threaten to drown him. He cannot lose himself in poisonous self-pity. The parallels between himself and Owen are, past a certain point, selfish fantasy. Owen was pushed to breaking by everyone around him. Legundo has no such motivation, no such excuse. He tended his own grotesque rot, and that he also reversed course largely on his own does little to absolve him.

"That isn't true. You had the chance to be different, to do good, Owen." He laughs. It's not a pleasant noise. "I know you'll never take it, but you technically still do. For all your dramatics, there's far more blood on my hands than yours, for far worse of a reason."

A spark of dark amusement flickers as he realizes this is literally true. Owen's dark blood is still drying on his claws, and his own ichor has dripped down out of the scratches on his arms.

Owen is less amused. Never the most cheerful of men, he looks truly furious now. "Oh, I'm so tired of arguing philosophy with you. Spare me the millionth sanctimonious lecture before I claw off my own damn ears. You lack any moral high ground whatsoever. This… this attack of conscience you apparently had just makes you miserable. Denying your nature makes you, if anything, more horrible. At least I'm honest about what I am."

Out of some remnant of charity, Legundo holds his tongue about the way Owen acted in the weeks before he was outed as a vampire. Quite literally. His new fangs begin to bear down dangerously, before he unlocks his jaw and opens his mouth. "You're right."

Owen puts a hand on his knee and pushes himself to his feet, gathering steam without appearing to hear him. "I don't want to hear another word out of you. You can't hope to know what's—"

"I never, ever, claimed to be a good man," Legundo insists, stepping forward and raising his voice to cut Owen off. It isn't exactly true. He might not have announced himself to everyone he met, because introducing yourself as a mass murderer tends to close the doors he needs to enter.

"You put that label on me, Owen. I know what I am; what I've done. The scale of my stain upon this earth is… insurmountable. That is why I wanted to be gone, eventually. A just afterlife, if there is one, would see me punished no matter how much I try to atone now, no matter if I am a vampire or a human."

Owen squints and opens his mouth. Legundo pushes on, determined to make his point.

"But. I am not — I have to believe that I am not just hiding the monster. These past years of my life, I changed. I have been spending my time helping others, saving lives, while I wait for my time. It won't, it doesn't, fix what I've done, who I was, but I… picked a new path."

He catches a hand in the bloody tatters of his robes and turns away, so that Owen might miss the weakness in his face, if not his voice.

The view of the bleak ruins of Oakhurst does very little to help get him under control. They merely remind him how badly he strayed from his oaths here, and for what little ends.

"It's a fool's errand, Doctor," Owen says at last. He is still angry, but there's a note of something else in his voice, a pitch Legundo hasn't heard since their first few conversations, and an address that stirs a dozen conflicting emotions. "You're wasting your time, to make yourself feel a little better, trying to fix up people who don't even deserve it."

This is a familiar refrain. It's strange to hear it from outside his own head.

"I ask myself why a lot," Legundo admits. "I'm asking myself that right now. Living on, living with myself and accepting the weight of what I've done is the hardest thing I have ever done. It shouldn't make me feel better. I have to do it, because…" He shakes his head, searching for the words — for his oaths — past the guilt, and pain, and hunger, and the grief he hasn't begun to let himself feel.

"There is no other way to live. I have to believe that. It's not about me, it's about the people I can help, can save, and the ones I… didn't."

Healing is not entirely an unselfish act. He gains a kind of satisfaction from it that belies his wretched, self-centered motivations. But the people who live, who flourish when they might not have, are a positive good no matter his reasons for saving them.

Legundo turns and tilts his head at Owen, who goes crooked in his monocular vision. "Does it make you happy, really, hurting people?"

"I have never been happy," Owen snarls. He visibly recoils at his own words a second after they leave his mouth. "I mean— rather, I can never just be happy without humans ruining it. People may as well constitute a plague. I don't care if they're happy, or safe, or healthy."

His face twists with emotion, and he gets much quieter. "I thought maybe it would be different, when I woke from my slumber to find you all here. I thought other vampires would be different, would be like him, willing to accept people like me. Instead it's more of the same — people fear and hate what they don't understand. They turn on one another for no good reason. They create outcasts and tyrants. They're selfish and cruel."

It's hard to disagree with a great example. It's hard to dissent at all after everything they've been through in Oakhurst, these past few months. And yet unlike Owen, Legundo has left Oakhurst.

The ghosts of dozens, hundreds, thousands of people press against him: those he killed, those he saved; those he remembers for one reason or another. "I've known a lot of bad people in my time. Even children can be cruel." Legundo ignores Owen making a snort of agreement. "I have also known kind folks, even selfless ones, and bad people who have good moments. On the whole, humanity is… messy, but it's not good or bad, and almost every life is worth something."

"I don't know how you can believe that," Owen says. He clearly means to be derisive, but there's honest disbelief in his expression.

"It's easier not to, isn't it?" Legundo says, and is freshly ashamed when he feels the smile crack his face. His filters have been destroyed by — by everything. At least nobody decent is around to care. Owen, who has somehow been in his head, can't possibly think worse of him than he already does, and his good opinion is little worth chasing regardless.

"It would be so easy if everyone was awful. But they're not."

Legundo rubs a hand over his mouth to wipe away the expression, probably smearing yet more dried blood across his face. "Most people are just trying to get by. I don't think you — or any new vampires — were treated fairly in town. But we were just trying to survive, to help one another, and you and Scott, at least, were hurting people."

Owen scoffs. "To help one another? You were helping yourselves, never us. Somehow, I always seem to get left out. Even the other vampires had no loyalty to me."

He stalks closer and jabs a finger at Legundo. "The one person who showed any care was a lying murderer who wanted to force a 'cure' on me."

This again. "I never lied," repeats Legundo, "And I was never going to force you or anyone to abandon vampirism."

"It's easy to claim that now," Owen hisses.

Legundo rolls his eyes and immediately regrets it when his mangled socket sends a bright stab of pain into his skull. He shakes it off. "Just because you're hurting doesn't mean you have to, or get to hurt others. It's not even going to get you what you want. When has lashing out helped you —really?"

"I have never had any other option," Owen retorts. "I was powerless, exploited, shunned my whole life. The moment I wasn't, humans took everything from me. I gave them the deaths they'd earned."

Legundo sets his jaw and takes aim at the hornet's nest. "And did that bring him back?"

Owen shoves forward and takes a swipe which, despite the force of it, Legundo easily anticipates and bats away. On the next battery, he leashes both of Owen's arms in a firm hold around the wrist.

He looks Owen in the eyes. "You can't seriously claim to know anything about people, when you have only ever expected the worst and treated them terribly. I know you were mistreated by some. Most people don't set out to hurt each other"

"That isn't how it works, not for me. This has to stop, this… patronizing, where you pretend that you know what it's like to be me, or that you know oh-so-much better how the world works."

"I do." The man in front of him is not nearly as young as he looks, but his maturity… Legundo almost laughs. "I admit — my claim to wisdom is seriously undercut by the fact I'm still here, talking to someone I hate."

Owen narrows his eyes, expression unreadable, and suddenly Legundo is holding onto nothing but air. Before he can begin to react, a small brown bat, one wing crooked, is winging away from him.

It pauses to hover over the opposite edge of the tower, wings beating in place. He watches it warily until it darts away. It seems that even the chance that Legundo will give Owen something he wants isn't enough to keep him around, after a while.

He could transform himself, and follow — but why should he bother? If he recalls correctly, vampires can travel quickly in bat form, but not for very long. The militia had some success trapping bats until they shifted back. If Owen is leaving for good, which seems unlikely, he would be able to catch up.

Instead, Legundo takes a clumsy seat and tries as hard as possible not to think about anything.

Apparently, he shouldn't have worried. After what can have been only a few minutes, Owen flies back down onto the tower. His form unfurls gracefully, leaving him perched back where Legundo found him, legs swinging. Legundo doesn't bother getting up to greet him, just looks up tiredly to hear Owen's next argument.

"What if I did? Just entertaining this absurd fantasy, you understand. If I… left Oakhurst. Lived among humans, or even other vampires. It wouldn't work for me. If I offered a hand to help, people would spit at it, that's all they ever do. And I can't claim your skills — I can't stitch up a wound, or administer medicine, nor would I want to."

"You could chop wood."

Owen laughs — not his mocking call, but a sound of genuine amusement. Despite himself, Legundo finds the noise arresting.

With much less malice than before, Owen shakes his head and repeats, "Nothing would change."

Legundo should leave well enough alone, let Owen have the final word he clearly loves. He has no reason to care anymore about changing Owen's mind… But this conversation is, improbably, the closest they have gotten to a real discussion maybe ever.

All it took was the utter destruction of their prior rapport and the town around them.

Dropping the argument now feels… a further waste. "You can't know that."

"Would you prove it?" It sounds offhand, tossed out with Owen's usual aloofness. It's clearly not. Legundo puzzles through the challenge, and one possible meaning occurs to him. But that doesn't—

"You're… asking to leave — with me?"

For several moments, Owen just glares and twitches his fingers. Finally, he mutters an affirmative.

Well. Legundo didn't mean to suggest that Owen actually travel. He expected himself to — what? Walk into the nearest settlement and ask someone he doesn't even know to stab a length of wood through his chest until it sticks? Leave Owen to lurk in the woods for another few centuries? He has never made future plans with much detail, but he realizes now that he considers his assumptions that they are somewhat ridiculous.

But what Owen seems to be proposing — "No. I… can't trust you, Owen. I hate you."

Owen gazes levelly at him. "Does it matter?"

"Yes. When there's—" Legundo gestures vaguely. "When there are people, good people, around for you to hurt again. If I let that happen, it's… it would be my fault. This is my fault. I still don't know whether killing you would be just another horrible thing, or the one right thing I could still do here."

"Oh, you are still considering it," Owen drawls, a little amused, a little interested.

"I don't see how I could ever stop," Legundo's mouth says, without consulting his brain.

"I don't think I could ever stop contemplating killing you," Owen says back.

Legundo's heart gives a phantom beat — a vestigial adrenaline, his body still wary of the creature that ripped him open.

"But you didn't," he says, raw emotion bleeding through where he has poorly bandaged the wound. It's half question, half accusation.

Owen's lip curls back. "I gave you your dues. I did offer, after, but you were fading fast."

Legundo opens his mouth to respond to that, but Owen isn't done. "You won't kill me, either," he says, and it's all accusation.

"There's no point." Legundo still can't entirely determine what stays his hand, and to think on it any more is only going to spiral him deeper within his own head. He's made his decision to prolong both of their misfortunes.

Owen is again uncharacteristically silent, and he drops to the floor on quiet feet in order to turn and lean against the edge of the tower, resting his weight on crossed arms. His gaze flicks across the ruins and the woods beyond. Above, the clouds lighten with evening sunlight.

He appears at last to come to some decision. He does not turn back, but glances over his shoulder at Legundo.

"When you do decide to kill me, I will let you."

Legundo closes his eye, trying to retrace the steps of their conversation, and drags a bloody hand over his bloody face as the meaning sinks in. "You would make me your judge and executioner?"

"Who else?"

Who else… is left? Who else would be able to stop him? Who else would accept such a rotten duty? Who else would ever consider forgiving him?

Who else would Owen trust? Legundo dismisses the thought as soon as he has it. The notion is laughable. "You would really promise to stop hurting people, stop drinking from them, to not just… disappear on me, so that I can't tell what you're doing?"

Can he stop himself from doing those things, faced with defenseless humans and a great hunger? He knows what that can do to far better men. Before thinking of that — can he even bear Owen's company for much longer? They are bound to irritate and wear on one another. Though… he is well accustomed to spending each day in miserable company.

Owen huffs. Legundo looks up to see him leaning against the tower sideways, facing Legundo. "I suppose that all is part of the deal, isn't it? Yes, if I do any of that, you can come put me down. As I said, I won't run from it."

"That's… not good enough, Owen." Legundo shakes his head. "Would you run towards it— like you just did? How can I believe you won't just kill the first person you see, or a dozen at that, to provoke me?"

"If everyone is nice, I won't have any reason to hurt them, will I?" Owen smirks.

Oh, yes, what a convincing argument. "You had no reason to hurt most of the people here," he points out. "Why on earth should I give you the chance to hurt more? I said you could change, I'm not stupid enough to believe you have."

Owen's lip curls and drops. He turns back to gaze out over the ruins. "I thought you were going to kill the first people you saw. I was counting on it," he says after a moment.

Legundo exhales, and doesn't inhale.

A sheet of silver curls slides over Owen's cheek, blocking his expression from this angle. "You didn't."

"You were wrong," Legundo says, as much to reinforce the idea for himself as to push Owen to recognize it. If he saw anyone before he fed — it might have been a very, very different story. But if he can resist himself enough to hold back for Owen…

There is, of course, no acknowledgement. "I still don't believe any humans would be worthy of my respect, would be capable of real goodness. Mostly, I want to be there when you manage to accept the truth. When we are turned away and spat on, for what we are or for no reason at all, by the smallest child in the sweetest village. And you see that the world would be better off without them."

Owen hunches over, and the strength of his voice fades. "Partially… maybe I'm moronic enough to give them one last chance."

Why now? A surge of useless anger swells and fades. This is what he wanted to hear, come far too late to make a difference to the dead. Legundo closes his eyes. Fine. He is here at the end, scraped raw. What else is he going to do?

Legundo still doesn't want, doesn't deserve, eternity. His continued presence in the world is only a stain upon it. But Owen was right about one thing — vampirism would allow him the time and strength to continue evening the scales… as long as he only feeds from animals, and the hunger doesn't take him over. As long as he can still, eventually, be gone and done.

And if he cannot do it himself…

"One condition. You kill me, when I ask you to."

Owen straightens in one fluid movement. For a wild moment, Legundo thinks Owen is going to try to do it now, before an invitation. But he just paces over to Legundo slowly and extends a hand.

Legundo blinks up at him before providing his own, not sure what to make of it.

He pulls Legundo up to his unsteady feet, grip strong enough to handle Legundo's pliant weight. He doesn't let go. Owen's slim hand should be cold and uncomfortable against Legundo's own, with the chill of the undead… but of course, their skin is the same temperature now.

Only a step apart, without brandished blade or stake or claws, Legundo looks down to search Owen's dark red eyes and fancies he can just make out his own monstrous reflection. Owen gives their joined hands a shake and releases them.

"Fine. We'll push the stakes in at the same time," Owen says, grave despite an uplift at the corners of his mouth, fangs poking out."I swear it, Legs."

He can't trust a promise from an unrepentant liar and murderer, from the same man who attacked him and forced immortality on him, who has refused to change at every turn before. He can't seriously be considering spending more time with him.

But Owen is right: Who else?

Nobody else could leave Oakhurst with him. Nobody else would agree to stay at his side as a kind of embodied punishment and ending. How likely is he to find another soul so willing to stake him?

And just maybe, in the meantime, he can try again, foolishly, to prove to Owen that he is wrong.

"I swear it," Legundo echoes.