WELCOME!

[Nicolai]

How long had it been since she'd crossed this threshold as a new-born vampire? Visago might not remeber, but Elissa did, just like she remembered everything else that had ever happened.
Six months and five days ago, she'd been turned by Visago in one of the upstairs bedrooms.
Six months and four days ago, he'd disemboweled her for screaming another's name.
Six months and two days ago, she'd stepped out of his manor and half expected him to kill her instantly.
He hadn't. But she'd vowed never to go near him again.
Yet here she was. Immortal, depressed, crying, and starving.

Exactly when the depression had hit her, she couldn't say. But it had hit her hard. It was the unforgiving kind of depression, the kind where no matter what she did nothing made her feel better. Even hunting wouldn't help. She hadn't fed in weeks because all she could think about was herself and Dane. More recently, Visago. The taste of human blood made her sick. She'd tried rats and all manner of other four-legged things, but it hadn't slaked the thirst. In the end, she just starved. And cried.

Elissa was quite a pathetic sight, standing in the freezing cold and the rain on the doorstep to Collina Silenziosa. She was drenched through, given that she had walked all the way from her downtown appartment, and shivering non-stop. Mascara ran down her face in ugly black streaks, and her normally well-nourished complexion was too pale even for a vampire.

Tentatively, she raised a slender hand to tap on his door. What was the use in knocking? He'd hear it no matter what, and he'd sense her presence. If he cared to see her, he'd open the door. If not... She shook her head. He'd see her and that was final. A sudden crack of thunder made her jump, knocking into one of the planters by his door and very nearly sending it crashing down. It took her two hands to catch it, despite her inhuman strength, meaning the planter was very heavy, or she was just that starved and weak. The second was more likely.

[Pardusnoir]

Laying unblinking at the bottom of his Jacuzzi sized bathtub in the largely Romanesque looking master bathroom, the water causing the mural above him to occasionally waver and become deformed, Visago let the oddly disembodying solitude engulf and comfort him. So much had happened in a relatively short time, and yet it had that disjointed feeling of almost being a lifetime ago… or someone else’s memories altogether.

Five months ago he had left Sangre Del Angeles to try and sort himself out and put off the desire to meet the sun as he had been tending towards at that time. Five months of travel, drifting lost in a world he no longer felt a connection to. Something inside himself having caved away to reveal an emptiness… a void that just couldn’t be filled. He had left thinking that he would perhaps give a reprieve to those who had somehow found a niche in his blackened heart… Emmet, Elissa… and Ivy. Yet it hadn’t done any good that he knew of. Emmet was dead, something he had found out only recently… and still hadn’t recovered from.

Why was it that one truly understood just how much another meant to them only after that person was gone? Not just out of the picture, but dead… Why was it that now Visago felt just how much Emmet had meant to him, even after he had thought he was beyond all that? It caused him to wonder where his other Children were. Where was his fallen angel? Where was Elissa? Were they dead also? Gone beyond his ability to ever make amends if any were needed?

Sure, Elissa wasn’t one for gentle caresses or quiet intimate moments, but she had a spot in his heart all the same. Odd… being he had found her repulsive and nearly insignificant at the time. An opinion that had only heightened when she had called for another when he had taken her.

His dark eyes moved along the contours of the mural above him even though he had studied it so often he almost didn’t see it. His dark unruly hair billowed about his head in languid clouds of burnt ink, the only indication that there was any movement beneath the slowly cooling bath water. The rest of his olive body looking almost ethereal in its liquid environment, his scars seeming to be faded even more than they once were, although they would never disappear entirely. No… something within Visago kept them, tokens of battles just barely won.

A sound… or more exactly a vibration, moved through the water, causing the mural to ripple and dark eyes to turn towards the direction the sound was coming from. Someone was at the door… and for a moment Visago puzzled over this because he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to visit him at this hour. Blinking slowly, the vampire sat up from his musings, causing the previously tranquil water to swell and recede about his form as it filled the vacuum his presence had left behind.

With a fluid movement of his own he was up and out of the massive tub, streams of water pouring down his body unheeded as he grabbed a towel and quickly wrapped it about his hips as he walked. Not even pausing in this action as he strode towards the bathroom door and out into the hallway. Leaving a cluster of puddles in his path. Whomever it was would just have to deal with him in nothing but the fluffy black towel he was wearing because Visago didn’t feel like dressing at the moment in order to greet some idiot who would dare interrupt him at this late hour. Scowling, he wondered if he should consider keeping one of his more trustworthy servants on at night in order to deal with such matters. It would allow him some more freedoms, although visitors were actually a rarity for him.

Once he reached the massive double front doors of his home, Visago reached out a hand to take the door handle when something caused him to pause. A glimmer of familiarity that stood upon the other side of those wooden barriers. For a second he considered reaching out a mental tendril to verify it was truly whom he thought, but the intimacy such a contact would entail caused the vampire to hesitate and then reject the idea. Best he opened the doors and saw for himself whom he suspected stood out there.

With a little too much force, Visago pulled open the doors with almost a dramatic flourish, and let his dark gaze fall upon the pale and nearly starved creature that looked up at him. For a second his dark eyes took in the debris of his planter first before settling upon Elissa’s pathetic form and feeling the slightest stab of pain in his chest at the sight of her. Almost immediately anger and anguish spun out of control within him so swiftly that the vampire almost slammed the door in her face… but instead he moved aside to indicate she come in. Not uttering a single word as he awaited her decision.

[Nicolai]

Shattered was really the only way to describe her eyes as the door swung wide in its frame and Visago in all his bitter-sweet glory was revealed. The blush not obvious on her cheeks was certainly clear in her eyes when he saw the mess she'd made. With the intent of muttering sorry, she opened her mouth but no sound came. The sylables formed on mute lips. She hesitated on the step, rain splashed on Visago and on the floor of his monstrous manor; the rain could not touch her though, she was soaked through, to the bone it seemed.

Still under the water's icy reign, dark eyes took in Visago's form. It seemed unchanged for the passage of time, but the scars had faded. Though she couldn't bring herself to meet his gaze, she knew his eyes were changed as well. A pain there... No, not pain. Some unidentifiable emotion unique to those who have lost so much too quickly. Elissa knew that loss, far too well.

Realizing suddenly that minutes had passed - though it seemed like an eternity - the child vampire ducked her head and darted into the house, past Visago into the light and warmth. Nothing could steal the chill that had settled over her in the past weeks. Human blood could take the edge, Visago's companionship could warm her for a time... If he was willing to offer such things. It would take time to bring her back from this abyss, assuming she didn't fall deeper as sh was climbing out.

Elissa's pale, slender hand was extended towards Visago's olive skin, towards the comfort and the warmth her sire could have provided. But they hadn't touched since he'd ripped her intestines out. She hadn't dared reach a hand out to him in the few days she spent in his house, and never since then had she attempted any contact. Assuming such contact would be forbiden, she withdrew her hand and simply stood looking at him.

What could be said after six months? Long time no see? Or like she'd said to another 'you're not supposed to be here'. This time it was her who wasn't supposed to be there. She didn't have the confidence to feel that there was no where she didn't belong. Elissa didn't belong anywhere. Like the stray dog that wanders from house to house, stealing food and getting kicked out... That's what she was. A stray dog getting kicked around. Or at least that was what she felt like.

She wanted death. Or she thought she had. Part of her came here hoping that Visago would kill her. She sensed he wouldn't though. Something in his eyes told her he felt as alone as she did. Of course, he wasn't a starving, shivering, pathetic child dripping rain water and mud on her marble floor. Visago was well-fed because he was strong enough to keep feeding even when he felt alone. She wasn't.

"Visago..."

[Pardusnoir]

In silence he watched her, his features almost stoic as he awaited his Child’s return into his manor, the wonder at her appearance hidden deep within eyes as dark as night. Yet it was there, rising within him as he truly allowed himself to take in and accept not only the fact of her presence, but the actual condition of her being. There was a time when he had sworn to himself that he would kill her if ever his eyes were to fall upon her again. However there he stood, removed from her path into his house and awaiting her decision as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to allow her back in.

The minutes ticked away dream-like as she studied him with the look of a feral cat unsure of the hospitality being offered her. Minutes that allowed him to draw in her scent once again... to remember things that he had wanted to forget. Things that had hurt him far worse than even he had expected. Only now they had little impact on him other than an unpleasant echo that almost seemed to belong to someone else.

Then she was moving past him, almost humble in her demeanor, and he closed the doors behind her with only a slight pause to glance out into the night as if to look for someone else. Someone whom he would never lay eyes on again. Then the doors shut with a load banging that echoed through the entry hall and seemed to finalize his decision to let her in. With a swift movement he locked the doors and turned to look upon his Childe just in time to see her reaching out to him with a small frail looking hand that trembled with her neglect and uncertainty. Arching a brow he stood silently and waited to see if she would actually make the contact. To touch his skin and make the whole moment that much more real. Would he kill her then? Brought back to the realization that she had hurt him in a way no one else had before and go crazy with the solidity of her presence here? He doubted it.

Yet a part of him tensed up in anticipation of that touch, as he stood before her in his black towel and dripping wet hair. Would he rape her? She was definitely too weak to fight him off and he could take her easily enough. But he found he wasn't interested in that either, and when she failed to actually brush her fingers upon his skin, he relaxed slightly and looked her directly in the eyes as she spoke his name.

"Come Elissa." His voice rumbled between them, a command that was neither forceful nor to be ignored, and then he was walking past her back towards the bathroom which he had come from only a scant while ago. "Lets get you out of those wet clothes and into a hot bath. You could use some cleaning up."

[Nicolai]

Like a wraith, she followed him silently into the cavernous depths of his manor. Even though she’d spent time here, she didn’t know the layout. Her eyes remained trained on Visago’s feet as his purposeful stride carried them deeper, past the point where she could have turned and found her way out again. His offer of a bath, command rather, was impossible to resist. And yet, she found herself murmuring the thoughts she’d had.
“I shouldn’t be here.”

Still, her feet carried on, powered by legs controlled by instinct rather than emotion. Elissa should have turned, run out of these hallowed halls. She didn’t belong here, and what had drawn her back to him in the first place? Animal instinct? The reaction of all offspring to crawl back to the safe-haven of the den? She couldn’t believe it was more complex than that. Not a solid thought had occurred to her in a very long time. Coherency was a far-off concept.

Unaccompanied, her mind traveled the halls aimlessly. Was the door to his bedroom still splintered from where he slammed it? The stain of her blood still on the carpets where she had lain? Somehow, she doubted he would tolerate such mess in his house. The repairs would have been made as soon as she stepped out the door six months ago. Then again, it seemed as though the house had stood empty for much of those months. Even a vampire’s house has the energy of being lived in. Here, there was only a faint hint of it. Where would Visago have gone, if not here?

They had come to the door of his bathroom without her realizing it. Elissa raised her dark eyes, but was presented only with the broad expanse of his muscular back. What was he thinking? She reached her sender hand out again, this time touching it lightly to his shoulder blade. A jolt of something shot through her, perhaps shock that she’d had the courage to touch him, perhaps something else.
“Why?”

It seemed the only thing that there was to be said. Why was he treating her like nothing had gone wrong the last time? What had she done to deserve his kindness? Honestly, the hospitality was shocking.

[Pardusnoir]

His movement were casual, almost feline as he lead the way to the massive bathroom that housed a sunken marble tub large enough for a man of his height to easily submerge completely in. A tub in which he had once bathed a feline lycan whom he had been trying to condition to be his assassin, and in which he was now going to let Elissa bathe.

Strange how completely aware of her every nuance he was even though he outwardly appeared to be giving her little thought at all. The scent of her very despair lingering about her like a cloud of smoke that held the faintest undercurrent of confusion to it.

Stopping before the massive door he raised his hand to the knob at just the same time she raised hers to his back, and reached out to touch the smooth chill brass just as her fingertips grazed the skin of his shoulder and almost in reflex the muscles there bunched and tightened at the contact. Visago froze.

His hand grasped the handle a little tighter for a second, almost threatening to bend the metal within his grasp as his eyes swirled blacker for a flicker of time. Then, with a sudden unnecessary intake of breath that almost sounded like a sigh, he relaxed and turned his head ever so slightly so that she could see the narrowest amount of his profile. His voice, always so beautiful and velvety, now sounded almost worn and tired even if the sensual hint still dwelled there. “I have lost one of my Childer… perhaps it is wise not to lose another… after all… who else do I have in this world?”

Then he was moving forward into the massive room and striding purposefully over to the Jacuzzi sized bath that was still filled with the water he himself had been soaking in when she had arrived and interrupted him. Looking down at it for a moment he almost seemed lost in thought, his eyes seeing far beyond the room before he blinked and turned his dark gaze back upon her. “You interrupted me… if you would like I could empty it and pour you a fresh bath… or you could use this water. I am sure it is clean enough for you…after all, I was only meditating in it.”

He hadn’t reached the point where he washed himself yet… although that was rather unnecessary as he was normally extremely aware of his hygiene. Still… she might want fresh water poured and he wasn’t in a mind to debate the point, and therefore turned to look at her fully as he awaited her decision.

[Nicolai]

Elissa found no words to respond to him, though her feelings were similar. She had no one, and until that moment she hadn't even had Visago. All she had was a prayer that maybe he wouldn't kill her once she was near him again. Well, he hadn't killed her, and now he seemed to be extending some hand of warmth to her. It was slight, tentative, but there all the same. Perhaps he wasn't so cold as she'd once thought... But she wouldn't allow herself to believe that he cared for her more than as a product of himself. Wasn't it the instinct of all creatures to move their legacy in DNA as far into the future as possible? This was the only connection Elissa believed existed.

Even the heat of the room, rising steadily from the steam formed over the tub, could not begin to eat away at the chill of death that had settled over her. She did not shiver, because she didn't seem to have the strength left to do so, but there was not a measure of heat in her body. The bath looked so terribly inviting... not even the thought that this would make her even more vulnerable to him could dissuade her.

She shook her head at his offer. "No, this is fine... Thank you." She didn't want to wait for more hot water, instead prefering to take what heat was there now. Even if Visago had taken his bath in it already. Actually, that almost made it more inviting. But such thoughts were banished quickly. Their last affair had ended in complete disaster, and though she doubted she would make the same mistake again, it wasn't worth the risk.

There was no shame in her, how could there be? Visago had seen her at all the worst phases of herself: mortal, dying, undead, weak and pathetic. Why should appearing nude before him now cause her to blush? Her hands pulled her shirt up over her head, revealing sickly pale skin marred by the scars down her back and the scar Visago himself had created. A faint star on her stomach where he'd plunged his hand in after... No, it wasn't worth remembering. Her soaked jeans were removed next, added to the pile with her shirt without a second thought. And there she stood, naked and vulnerable, and still shivering.

Somehow, she couldn't bring herself to step into the water just yet. Instead, she simply stood there before him. Waiting for something. What, she wasn't sure. Maybe for him to step in before her, maybe hoping he'd reach out to her so she wouldn't feel quite so alone...

[Pardusnoir]

Silently he watched her undress, his dark eyes seeming almost indifferent to her actions even though he noted the wasted condition of her body with a tinge of regret. Regret? How could he possibly even feel that after what she had done? Sure he had been vicious to her prior… made sure she had understood fully the amount of contempt he had held for one such as herself. A blood whore he had called her if he remembered correctly… and yet right now he felt the slightest whisper of regret in himself and it bemused him.

His gaze drifted away as she removed the final articles of clothes, his thoughts elsewhere as the kernel of emotion fed inside of him towards his other lost Child. Memories… all his own, and they swam up like thick bracken water threatening to drown him in their bitter taste. No… he would have none of that now. He refused.

Returning his gaze to Elissa he noted how she stood shivering and looking down at the bath as if waiting for something… anything. Without even thinking he arched an eyebrow at this behavior and pondered it for a moment. Was she waiting for him to tell her it was okay to enter? Or for him to command it? Looking over at the bath, as inviting as it was, he toyed with the idea of returning to it himself and seeing if she followed suit.

This thought, however, was suddenly interrupted by the memory of him washing the little feline lycan. That had calmed him, the bathing of her as if she were a child in his arms. Only… upon looking at Elissa he didn’t think such an action would be welcomed, and was very much out of character for him. Small indulgence… mild transgression… but not here and now.

Therefore he turned and dropped the black towel to pile at his feet as he once again entered the bath, not even giving Elissa a second glance even though his voice suddenly broke the quiet that had befallen them. “Come.”

[Nicolai]

Inaudibly, Elissa's breath caught in her throat as Visago dropped his towel. She wanted to feel his skin against her own... But no. It couldn't happen, certainly not now, and never again. He stepped down into the water and she closed her eyes, willing thoughts of them together away. When she opened them again, she still wanted him, though the want had subsided considerably. More than that, she ached for the touch of another. Not Visago, not Dane, just someone so she would know she still existed other than as a nameless specter -- something not meant to be. She stared at his back for a moment longer after his voice broke the silence, still unsure of herself. But it was only a moment, and then her legs moved to take the first shaky, hesitant steps towards Visago and the heat of the bath.

One foot broke the smooth plane of the water, and the heat burned her icy skin. To her nerves, it seemed that the water was as ice. Instinct screamed at her to draw back as if stung, but she ignored that urge and lowered herself into the water until she was standing even with her sire. The bath was deeper than she had expected, the water hit her above her slender hips. She stood face to face -- or, given the height difference, face to chest -- with Visago, staring up into his eyes unwaveringly. There was no more conviction than there had ever been, simply an openness, a willingness.

As she stood there, the numb caused by the extreme chill of being out in the rain and not feeding in weeks began to ebb. Warmth was seeping in to her feet, through her toes and through just the very top layer of skin. But there was another kind of heat beginning to fill her from the inside. Though they weren't touching, the sensation of Visago's naked body so close to hers was waking up urges she hadn't truly felt since the night he turned her. Oh, but it was almost unbearable. There remained no barrier between them but the walls they had thrown up against such an act. It would be so easy, too easy in fact, to let physical desires push her to him, into a forbidden union.

Bracing herself against a second onslaught of heat so extreme that it was like ice, Elissa forced herself away and sank deeper into the water. She stayed facing him, but moved so that her back was against the smooth wall of the bath. Her head was barely out of the water now, her long hair ballooning in the water behind her. Though she had moved away, her gaze had not broken and her dark eyes still begged for his touch. Another silence had fallen, and this time it was she who spoke to break it.

"You didn't have to do this."

It was a mostly rhetorical statement, and she wasn't expecting to receive any sort of response. What she really wanted to know was why he was doing it. She'd asked and had been given an answer, but the answer was hardly satisfying. When they'd last parted, it hadn't seemed that he cared he'd sired her. She was just another victim to be forgotten even though she was a fellow vampire. But he hadn't forgotten her.

"What changed?"

What made him consider her one of his children? What made him come downstairs and open the door? Loneliness? All questions that would most likely go unanswered, but needed to be spoken regardless. Because if the silence went unbroken or began again, she was going to lose control and break the promise she had made to herself before coming here. She was not seeking physical relations with him... Only now she wasn't so sure of that promise, because she did want him. Did he feel the same? Elissa doubted her sire would be so weak. He wouldn't allow it again.

[Pardusnoir]

Silently his dark eyes followed her progress although the expression upon his features would almost suggest disinterest and boredom. Not the faint hint of regret that still lingered about the edges of his mind at the sight of her condition, or the way she seemed to almost be in pain when she entered the water. Not that he could see it on her face or in her eyes as much as he could feel it from her. That caught him off guard a little as it had been a long time since he had been linked to her, and the fact that anything was creeping across that old bond amazed him completely. After all, they had not had a good Sire – fledgling relationship. He had assumed that the thin thread that bound them together had withered and died long ago.

Only now he could feel her inside him the way he had felt Emmet on so many occasions, and it unbalanced him considerably. As she drew nearer to him he felt a jumble of other emotions and found himself both balking and aroused by them. His dark eyes peering down upon her diminutive frame through half open lids lest she see anything in their depths that would betray his actual feelings at the moment, or the uncertainty the situation was causing him.

His jaws clenched, the muscles working spasmodically as he strove to keep his stillness so close to her soft pale flesh, her scent wafting up with the steam from the water and surrounding him in an intoxicating way that made him remember the way she had felt, regardless of the other things that had taken place at that time. His body remembered hers and he nearly growled down at her before she suddenly made the move away from him, putting some distance between them that made little difference to him at all. Tilting his head back a fraction while watching her sinking into the bathwater, Visago felt a craving he hadn’t felt in a very long time edge its way into the melancholy of his existence. The muscles in his arms and stomach tensed as he tried to fight off what she was doing to him right now.

He wanted to hurt her suddenly. To make this weakness of the flesh stop so that he could continue to wallow in his desolation. How dare she show up now and affect him so? How dare she look so tragic and inviting at the same time? He closed his eyes and tilted his head back more as she spoke, her voice both grating and sensual at the same time. Why?

He ignored the first statement; it was almost pointless to him anyways being he knew he didn’t have to do it… he didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want to. However the second question made him open his eyes and stare up at the mural upon the ceiling above them even though he didn’t see it. What had changed? So little and yet so much… Emmet was gone… his last love was erased from the world as if he had never existed and here she was… the last childe he might ever sire. He knew the more he had succumbed to the Crusnik in himself the harder it would be for him to sire anyone if he so desired. His blood was poison now, especially after feeding upon lycan blood and overcoming the dominant affects of it. He doubted his own childe could feed from him now, and the thought made him feel even more alone than ever before.

Looking down upon her he suddenly wanted her with a ferocity he hadn’t felt in a long time. Jaws clenching again as his hands balled up into fists, he held himself back from forcing himself upon the weakened fledgling before him. It would be so easy to just take her here and now. So damn easy…

With a soft low growl he backed away from Elissa and sat himself down before she could see his arousal and realize just how she really was affecting him. Had he grown weak? Or was loneliness affecting him more than he had given it credit? Leaning back against the side of the tub he eyed her carefully before answering in a low predatory rumble that almost sounded more like it belonged to the man who had disemboweled her that night than the one who had answered the door this evening.

“Does it really matter?”

[Nicolai]

Though they probably could have touched under the water if she'd stretched out, the distance between Elissa and Visago seemed to span miles. Two beings wanting the same thing, neither of them able to take what they wanted. For Elissa, it was fear that prevented her. What stayed Visago? She didn't know, and didn't really want to. He could have had any number of reasons, but given her past experiences with him she doubted it could have been one she would have liked. Liked was the wrong word, but a reason she would have understood.

Visago's voice was harsh, abrasive. It held a promise of violence that was altogether too reminiscent of her first night with him. That more than anything else served as a sharp deterrent to Elissa. She certainly didn't want to feel pain like that again.

"Yes, it does matter."

Her voice was steady and sure, though she refused to look at him. Her dark eyes stared down into the water, which was shifting and changing, distorting her view of things underneath it. Water was strange, and it conjured so many memories for her. Not the least of which were memories of Dane... She shuddered at the thought of him, and hoped that Visago would write it off as an effect of her chills... But the water now was healing. Restoring warmth to her body that she'd been deprived of for days. The contrast was strange...

[Pardusnoir]

Damn the link between them.
In a flicker of water he had caught her passing thought of the monolithic vampire and immediately his nerves were set on edge. Why? Why did everything have to circle back to him? With a deep sigh he rolled his head back and looked up at the ceiling while making a great effort to dismiss the passing image as something his fledgling couldn’t help. After all, he had known on the very night he had made her his Childe that the other was an undeniable part of her being. She could no sooner change that then Visago could change what he was.

Closing his dark eyes he still felt the subtle ebb of desire for her, regardless of the image that had come unbidden into his mind through their slowly reforming bond. Perhaps it was loneliness? The need to make contact, any contact, with another being who both knew and perhaps understood even a fraction of what he was, as dark and disturbed as that seemed to be now.

Once… a long time ago… Visago had cared. Had truly tried to make a difference in the world he had been forced into. Once he had met a boy with tragic green eyes who had made him remember what it was like to love…

Opening his eyes but a crack he peered over at the pathetically slender Elissa and wondered if she had ever known what that was like. To truly cherish and want the best for another so much that she would die for them? Was she even capable of it? Perhaps… in a twisted misguided way she was, and in thinking this Visago found he didn’t want to judge her any longer. He had had enough of that for now… maybe even for a lifetime, although surely not his own.

Lifting his head up to truly look over at her, he realized without a doubt that she wanted him, maybe not because she felt any affection towards him but the need to be touched, to be wanted was definitely there in the subtlest recesses of her expression, her haunted eyes. Now the question was what would he do about it? For surely she wouldn’t do anything, to subdued at this point in time to do more than be thankful he hadn’t lived up to his promise from so many months ago.

In a soft low rumbling voice that was interlaced with a slight touch of compulsion Visago spoke to her, his gaze carrying all of the necessary meaning of his command should she have the slightest doubt of what he meant.

“Elissa… Come to me.”

[Nicolai]

It was always him.
As much as she hated him, hated the memories she had of him, she couldn’t block out the feeling of him. It was like an image burned in to her brain. Elissa wanted to forget about him at first, but he was so much a part of who she was that she’d come to accept that she would never be rid of him. Not a waking moment would go by when she didn’t feel his hands on her, his breath on her neck. Not a night would pass when she didn’t dream of him...

Elissa shook her head, bringing herself back to the here and now, just in time to feel the slightest touch of ... well, she wasn’t entirely sure what she had felt from the vampire across from her, but she was sure it wasn’t pleasant. The marble features of her sire were unreadable, his mind and his emotions completely unavailable to the young vampire. Elissa was still a fledgling, barely a newborn compared to Visago. It was no wonder she had such a hard time reading him.

When his dark eyes finally flickered open again, he was still no more reachable than he had been. The feeling of being lost, of being utterly unattached to anything, was like drowning. Worse than drowning. Elissa was barely staying afloat, keeping a slippery grip on her own sanity, and being so far away from her sire – truly the only being she could feel any sort of connection to – was not helping her.

Visago’s voice when he spoke was like a lifeline, something tangible to keep her just above the point of nothingness. Come to me. His voice sent chills coursing down her spine, though entirely different from the chills she had felt moments before. Tentatively, almost warily, Elissa moved through the water towards Visago. She was almost in a daze, not wanting to reach out and touch him, but not wanting to ignore his command either. Her internal battle held her captive, standing in the water close enough to touch him, unwilling to reach out and do so.

“Visago...”

Her voice was a mere breath, and indeed once she had spoken it was impossible to be sure whether she actually had or whether she had just been exhaling. She wanted him, and the need to be touched could not be denied any longer. Still, Elissa’s hands remained at her sides.

[Pardusnoir]

Ire should have risen in him at her failure to completely fulfill his simple command. Should have, and yet didn’t although his dark eyes did narrow slightly while she almost seemed to hover before him as if on the brink of some hidden abyss that separated the two of them. In an odd way he could almost feel it, expanding beyond him to almost swallow the Childe whole, as she almost seemed to breathe his name, a soft beckoning that caused the spiritually fatigued vampire to suddenly sit up and reach out to her slender body. His large hand, warmed by the bathwater, cupping around her waist and pulling her the last few feet to almost plop down into his lap like a broken china doll.

The temptation to encompass her frail figure with his powerful arms was both abruptly consuming and surprising as it had not been in his nature to act thusly for more years than he cared to remember. And yet the memory of so carefully bathing a female lycan in such a tender manner rose up in his mind and almost made Visago balk in anger at such weakness.

Was he so tired that he would succumb to such frailties of the heart and mind? Especially when it was well known to one and all that he had no heart, and was incapable of loving anything ever again? The soft snarl that suddenly issued unexpected from his sensuously curled lips was almost as surprising to him as it might be Elissa. Yet he didn’t release her from his lap, instead choosing to sit back once again and regard the painfully thin female with his dark unreadable eyes. Hoping that this time they truly were beyond expression as he maintained his grip upon her slender waist with one hand and let his other arm rest casually upon the side of the tub, fingers dangling into the tub to brush lightly upon the heated water’s surface.

“Are you so timid now Elissa that you cannot fulfill one simple command without my having to finish it for you? You know full well you should not have needed me to bring you the rest of the way to me. You should have done it yourself.” His voice, despite his inner doubt, was a low even velvety purring growl that both reprimanded as well as threatened his childe for her pause in carrying out his command.

[Nicolai]

"Oh!" The single sylable came out as more of a gush of air than an actual word. Visago's emotions were almost tangible as they shifted rapidly at some memory that was hidden from her. Another shiver coursed her spine, and this one had nothing to do with her rapidly changing body temperature. She felt like a doll, pressed against his body as she was. His snarl made her start, but she remained almost motionless in his lap.

Elissa closed her eyes, doing her best to regain some sense of equilibrium before opening them again to meet Visago's gaze. His eyes were so sure, solid. They were deep, impossibly so, but not empty like Elissa knew hers were. Where was the defiant spark that her eyes had held that night so long ago when she'd first met Visago? Vanished, with her humanity. Ripped from her when Visago had disemboweled her so many nights ago.

She cringed at the memory and felt the phantom stab of pain in her stomach. His voice shook her to the core, scolding her. Elissa should have known better, should have, and yet... Even now that the connection had been made between them, she couldn't seem to close chasm that had formed between her and her sire.

"Forgive me..." Elissa lowered her dark eyes to the water, seeking comfort in its heat, in the ripples that twisted and distorted constantly. It wasn't enough, there was so much she needed to beg his forgiveness for... But so little of it that he would forgive. She couldn't blame him. Who could forgive what she had done? "I..." Her voice died out before she could finish the thought. She didn't know what she had been trying to say.

The change in her eyes was barely perceptible, but the flood gates had opened. Her lower lip trembled slightly and she felt the hot sting of tears in her eyes. Still unsure of herself, but willing to take the risk, she put her hand on his chest and leaned forward, touching her forehead to his shoulder. "Visago... I'm so sorry..."

For what? For her own weaknesses. For what she had done the night after she had been born a vampire. For returning to him now, though it had been an unspoken promise when they parted that their paths would never cross again.

Her slender frame trembled as she cried silently into his shoulder.

[Pardusnoir]

Shock, it rippled through him slow and steady, a mere breath of an emotion that grew, expanded, consumed him before he even had a chance to fully realize what it was. The feel of her forehead against his shoulder, cool flesh against falsely warmed muscles, as well as the realization that she was crying. Crying… something he had done once almost a lifetime ago when his eyes had fallen upon the mangled body of his first love and known without a doubt that he had been her destroyer…

A tremor coursed through him, shivering up his spine and causing the dark vampire to tense quite perceivable as Elissa’s frail body shook silently in his grasp as her anguish and sorrow glistened across deathly pale cheeks to mingle with the bathwater. Without even thinking he brought his other hand up from its casual perusal of the water’s surface and gently, perhaps even tenderly, stroked her hair.

A part of him wanted to be mad. Wanted to cast her away from him and punish her for bringing about such human emotions in him now when he had all but iced his mind like the frigid body he donned for all of eternity. It wasn’t right for one such as he to be anything less than a monster, and for a few seconds his fingers rose from her tresses to hover just above them. Nails extending slightly as the urge to kill lifted its festering head deep within his confused mind.

Then his hand settled upon her temple again and languidly stroked down the thick silken locks as he tilted his head forward to brush plush lips faintly upon her hair. “Shhh… little one. You are home now…” The words should have rung hollow, should have sounded forced, but they didn’t. There was something within them that solidly spoke more truth than any he had uttered in a long time.

Feeling her pathetically frail body against his, a mere shadow of her former self, a pain ebbed within his dead heart and he suddenly realized what he needed to do. The angst of this stabbed through him, a spear hot with the enlightenment it carried and what it would mean for him from this day forward.

Lifting his wrist to his shapely mouth, lips baring back to reveal the gleaming white extension of his cuspids, Visago bit into his flesh to open a wound for his lost Childe. Hesitating, as he knew full well the consequences of his actions, he almost didn’t lower his arm for her to see. Almost didn’t go through with the sealing of both their fates. Almost… but not quite.

“Elissa… feed from me. Take what little gift of blessed silence I have to offer.” Despite the fact of what he offered her, his voice was the soothing deep velvety purr of a lover, full of compulsion and even, if she listened… concern.

[Nicolai]

She had never wanted this. Not really. When Elissa had begged Visago to change her, she hadn’t known what she was asking of him. She hadn’t been prepared for the loneliness of eternity. All she could think of when she had asked to be a vampire was seeking Him out... Beyond that, she hadn’t had a plan. Visago had abandoned her, she hadn’t been able to find Dane, and then she’d just started wandering lost and alone. The vampiric blood had destroyed her beyond repair, and Elissa knew it. What was the point of going on in a life alone, without a purpose? Fleetingly, she wondered what kept Visago going.

Deep down, she knew how pathetic she must appear to him. But she hadn’t been able to recognize that and fight the hope that maybe, just maybe, he’d take her back in. She’d known the truth all along though. Visago couldn’t take care of her, though he might have felt some obligation as her sire, he couldn’t spend the rest of eternity babysitting her.

Elissa honestly didn’t know what would happen to her if she drank from him, but Visago’s words betrayed him. She couldn’t admit the consequences to herself, but she was silently crying out for release. Nothing could ease the pain she was in, she would never be whole again. Whether it was due to Dane, or the gift of eternity that Visago had given her, would never be known. She could see the rest of her existence before her, and it was barren. Devoid of love, companionship, anything that could have kept her from meeting the sun. There would always be the men on the street, desperate for anything they could get, there would always be the heat of passion, bloodlust, but those were poor substitutes for what Elissa knew she needed. And there was, would never be, anyone who could satisfy her.

Brown eyes stared up at him, half pleading with her sire to take back the offer because she wasn’t certain, half begging his permission because she wasn’t certain he felt right... But she couldn’t hesitate longer than a moment. She needed this, and at her core she knew it. Elissa couldn’t continue living... or not living... like she had been, and as it stood now, she was just as useless and disgusting a creature as a vampire. The blood hadn’t changed anything, not really. It had given her eternal youth, strength... But it hadn’t affected her mind. She was still the same tortured girl that Dane had left bleeding in her run-down appartment, the same whore that he’d left for dead on the beach because she’d told him to fuck her. Even now Elissa couldn’t rid herself of the memory of him; even now, as her sire was doing the only thing in his power for her.

The child squeezed her eyes shut, trying to focus on Visago and nothing else. She knew where his hand would be, and as she leaned against him -- her body curled against the contour of his chest -- she drew his wrist to her lips. Her breath was ragged, and she didn’t trust her voice; she could only murmur against his skin.

“Thank you, Visago.”

Those would be the last words she’d speak to him, and they were the last words she needed to.

Elissa drank from him, knowing what it would mean for her. The blood was intoxicating, more so than it had been when she was a mere mortal. One moment, she was in Visago’s bath, curled against the body of her sire like the child she was. The next, she was floating, the pain was ebbing from her. Not the physical pain of starvation and cold, that pain had passed. All the pain she’d endured over a human lifetime: the pain of losing her family; the pain of being not hated, but completely disregarded, by a man she’d dared to think she loved; the pain of being rejected by her sire; the pain of absolute, complete loneliness... In a moment, it was nothing.

It would be cliche to say that her life passed before her. Rather, she experienced all the emotions, all the events, being undone. And she felt peace. It spread through her, like the heat of the bath, absorbing everything in her. Elissa was gone. It would be wrong to say dead, for her heart had stopped beating over six months ago. But she was finally gone. Departed from the world and all the harm it had ever done to her.

Her thank you, to Visago -- the last words she had spoken to him... Thank you, for giving me the chance to understand what it truly means to be alone in this world. Thank you, for the gift of your blood. Thank you, for saving me...