The woman wreathed in golden, glimmering sunlight, gazes down at the vampire, Vlad Tepes, called Dracula. She meets his dark eyes with a gaze like the reflection of the summer sky in water - grim, satisfied, pleasure shock and turmoil in equal measure.
Rae wields her magic with the skill of one who has had to learn quickly or die, but there are parts of her mind where the role she has taken on will never lie comfortably. The baker of good, honest bread will face the lies and horror and violent death, but she will never long for them; she will take her satisfaction from lessons learned well, not from the purpose for which they were learned.
The war she is waging is one of necessity. War so that humanity will survive. So that, perhaps, the relationship between vampires and humans would not just consist of bloody murder. A war of ideas, not just the body count (and wouldn't he be the very figurehead of the way of unlife against which she fights?).
It would be nice to think that she could hold tighter to the person she had been. The person who, out of mercy, does not kill spiders she finds in her apartment. Who sets catch-alive traps for mice because she can't bear the thought of killing them. Not be this person whose purpose is to be a monster to the monsters. The villain of the cautionary tales told by the villains of humanity's cautionary tales. Not a human with a vampire - this vampire, who horrifies her and yet draws her still - at her feet, asking (however lightly) for mercy.
(Again, she can see Con stagger back to thud against the far wall, all inhuman grace lost. "What in creation are you?"
Again, she can see vampires flinch first when she meets their eyes, shying away from her - choosing to face Con in battle than approach one slow, weak human with a knife, though they can clearly see from the litter of broken bodies how well all the others who made the same choice fared.)
Sunshine breaks eye-contact with him first, irrationally worrying that he'd see too much in her gaze.
"There are a lot of unfathomable ideas in the world." Like how horror and desire can coexist and mingle so readily. Like showing mercy to a vampire. Like willingly sparring with a vampire, alone in a dark forest, at the end of the universe. Like the idea that light and dark are not mutually exclusive, and that one will forever pursue the other.
Moving like someone who knows she's going to be sore in the morning, or someone who doesn't know quite why she's doing what she is, Sunshine steps forward to offer him a hand up. Whether or not he needs the help is not the point.
The point is the offer.
"And yet they insist on existing, in case someone comes along to try and fathom them."
no subject
Rae wields her magic with the skill of one who has had to learn quickly or die, but there are parts of her mind where the role she has taken on will never lie comfortably. The baker of good, honest bread will face the lies and horror and violent death, but she will never long for them; she will take her satisfaction from lessons learned well, not from the purpose for which they were learned.
The war she is waging is one of necessity. War so that humanity will survive. So that, perhaps, the relationship between vampires and humans would not just consist of bloody murder. A war of ideas, not just the body count (and wouldn't he be the very figurehead of the way of unlife against which she fights?).
It would be nice to think that she could hold tighter to the person she had been. The person who, out of mercy, does not kill spiders she finds in her apartment. Who sets catch-alive traps for mice because she can't bear the thought of killing them. Not be this person whose purpose is to be a monster to the monsters. The villain of the cautionary tales told by the villains of humanity's cautionary tales. Not a human with a vampire - this vampire, who horrifies her and yet draws her still - at her feet, asking (however lightly) for mercy.
(Again, she can see Con stagger back to thud against the far wall, all inhuman grace lost. "What in creation are you?"
Again, she can see vampires flinch first when she meets their eyes, shying away from her - choosing to face Con in battle than approach one slow, weak human with a knife, though they can clearly see from the litter of broken bodies how well all the others who made the same choice fared.)
Sunshine breaks eye-contact with him first, irrationally worrying that he'd see too much in her gaze.
"There are a lot of unfathomable ideas in the world." Like how horror and desire can coexist and mingle so readily. Like showing mercy to a vampire. Like willingly sparring with a vampire, alone in a dark forest, at the end of the universe. Like the idea that light and dark are not mutually exclusive, and that one will forever pursue the other.
Moving like someone who knows she's going to be sore in the morning, or someone who doesn't know quite why she's doing what she is, Sunshine steps forward to offer him a hand up. Whether or not he needs the help is not the point.
The point is the offer.
"And yet they insist on existing, in case someone comes along to try and fathom them."
They are exactly who they are.