Chapter Text
1.
Lonely.
He doesn’t know what the word means anymore, if he ever did know it. He has been alone so long, it never occurs to him to seek the company of another, seek warmth or friendship, or love; he feels no lack without them. He reads the word lonely in stories, novels, stolen letters, without understanding. He still recognizes the other words - warmth, friendship, even love; he thinks he may have known them once, in a time before. But loneliness as a major theme leaves him puzzled or bored and he rarely finishes those stories, preferring the ones about treasures and wars, sins and vices and death, subjects he remembers and understands clearly.
She intrudes on him. That’s how he sees it. His life is ordered, small, a complete circle. He lives by his routine, keeps to it religiously because...because there is danger to him if he doesn’t. Tolerating an intrusion puts him at great risk. He resolves to discourage her somehow, to send her on her way, preferably without causing her harm (he vaguely recalls that harm should be an option in these situations...), with no disruption to either of their lives.
At first it is glances, over her shoulder, looking up when he passes on his way to the shelves. Then he finds her watching him outright as he moves about doing his job. Then comes one shy smile, and another (which he never returns, that would be quite stupid of him) and now she is saying hello when she sees him. He never answers, tries not to look at her, simply moves past and continues doing what he is doing. Until one day she follows him to the shelf where he is working, and insists on interacting with him. He ignores her until she reaches up and takes hold of his arm, gently pulls him around to face her. He is sure his shock shows on his face, but she smiles at him as if she doesn’t notice.
“I know you’re not deaf. I asked at the desk. Please stop ignoring me.” She smiles as if she thinks this is funny.
He stares at her. Usually this is enough to discourage people from having anything to do with him. He is good at the stare, has honed and polished it over many, many years until it is perfect. He can turn it on someone instantly and they will scurry away from him like frightened mice. He doesn’t fool himself into thinking that he would (or could) ever follow up on the implied threat. So far the stare has worked flawlessly. He really never considers anymore what he would do if it didn’t work; too many years have passed since the last time he has had to protect himself that way and he doesn’t recall a rule about it.
Never let them into your life; keep yourself separate. They are death, lasting death, and no matter how soft or harmless they seem, all of them are dangerous.
Remember.
He has forgotten so much. The weight of time squeezes the memories out, replacing them with pure instinct, the will to survive. The rules stay; they were ground into the bones, implanted in the cells - the rules are being, not survival. This is what - how - we are.
This woman...she holds my life or death in her hands, and she never suspects. I am at the mercy of her goodwill and she stands there smiling as if she is innocence and care and all good things instead of the possible instrument of my demise.
She looks back at him with large brown eyes, a little smile still on her lips. He wants to shove her away, run from this place. No matter how soft or harmless they seem, all of them are dangerous. It is hard to see the danger in this small woman, with her large doe eyes and soft thick hair, but he knows it is there. He sniffs: she smells of roses and bergamot, and something else, something musky and warm...but if she knew about him, knew what he was...no, no, he can’t risk her seeing him, no matter how curious he might be about her, about why she is so taken with him, why she pursues him when the others do not. Were there others like her, long ago…? It’s a wisp of an idea, too vague and ephemeral to grasp.
He turns away from her, flashes to the door and leaves, slips into darkness where he is safe, protected, secure. She is left standing alone, sad and disappointed. She is better off that way, he thinks, and fades into the night.
2.
She watches him turn from her, and he disappears; she blinks and he is gone. It saddens her, and suddenly there are tears in her eyes, unexpected, hot and painful. She has watched him for weeks. Each time she has seen him, her fascination has grown, until tonight she can’t resist it any longer and approaches him as he shelves the books in the stacks. She has watched him at this activity so often before, his smooth, pale hands with the grace of doves, lifting and placing, lifting and placing. It is hypnotic. She has watched, almost mesmerised, as he walked from stack to stack, tall, ascetically slender, straight and noble as a stag.
The whispers about him abound: He is some tragic nobleman, fallen on hard times; he is a poet who has lost his love and has sworn celibacy in honor of her; he is an outlaw who is hiding from the Yard, falsely accused...all of the women have their own story about him, some romantic fantasy to fit his odd and compelling beauty. He shuns them. He speaks only when absolutely necessary, as if his deep and resonant voice, so rich and lush it sounds like sin and depravity, angels and heaven woven all together, might cause a catastrophe if used too often.
She wants him to look at her. He keeps his eyes downcast as he moves, pushing the cart past the reading tables, into the stacks. She yearns for those eyes, to have him look back at her, to see her. It becomes an obsession, getting him to turn, to raise his eyes to hers. She follows him into the stacks, reaches out and boldly takes his arm, turns him…
Afterward she can’t quite remember. Were they blue? Green? Grey? Gold? All of those together? All she can recall is being frozen in place, unable to speak, passion flaring in her blood, driving her heart like a piston, out of control...and then nothing. He is gone, leaving inside her a terrible, tragic sadness, as if she’s suffered a great and nearly unbearable loss.
He smelled faintly of dust.
3.
He slips through the broken window of the abandoned warehouse, runs up the stairs to the top floor. It is one huge open space, empty, dusty, except for one corner. There he lights a small lantern, although he doesn’t need the light; following the habits of humans helps him to remember he is supposed to be like them. There are two mattresses on the floor, one on top of the other. He is more comfortable that way; he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t sleep there, his brief dormant states require no comfort, but he likes to lie down when he reads. Nearby is a garment rack, hung with only the necessities: a few suits, a dark jacket, some shirts, a coat, a scarf. Beside that is a basket holding underwear, socks. Several pairs of shoes are lined up in front of it. Only the bare minimum, to help him pass. There is a large jug of water in the corner, should he need it, to rinse his mouth or wash away blood and filth. Near the wall are neat stacks of books, hundreds of them, of all kinds, stolen over the years wherever he could find them.
Once on a time, he lived like an animal - naked, filthy, running loose in the countryside away from humans. He could do that then, and get away with it. There were villages, small towns; it was easy to steal into them at night and take what he needed. Then came a day, after he had been burned out of his den, chased and nearly caught, that he dimly realized it would be safer to camouflage himself, to live among them instead of hiding. He understood that his physical appearance was enough like them to pass as one of them; he was not misshapen, he did not look like a monster, as he had been told in the beginning. As he spent more time among the humans, he saw that most of them considered him quite beautiful.
These days no one questions his strange behavior; they simply write him off as mentally incompetent. They take pity on him, some of them if he takes advantage of his beauty, uses it to play on their tendency to be kind to pretty things give him odd jobs for the small amount of money he needs for clothes and other items in order to pass. He lives apart, but is able to blend in when needed. He’s learned much about humans and the basics of how they operate, from reading and from observation.
He is safer now than before, because they have ceased to believe in him.
He never lacks for food, although it is not the best. The ones who wander the edges are not healthy, are often diseased. The diseases won’t harm him but they ruin the taste. It has been a long time a very very long time since he has tasted pure clean blood. But obtaining it is too dangerous. Best if he keeps to the fringes, out of the light. Safer.
They will always hunt you. They cannot tolerate difference, divergence. They will see you as monstrous, evil. They cannot be trusted, ever.
They no longer hunt him, no longer seek places he might hide, not as they did in the beginning. He has faded from their reality, along with so much else. But that doesn’t erase the danger. He is still different, still not one of them, and if they discover the extent of his difference, discover what he truly is, he will be ended.
He doesn’t want to end. He has considered it, several times. Each time he has stood on that precipice, however, his view has expanded. He has seen more and more of the world and simply cannot leave it. He can see the years unfold, open into a brilliant kaleidoscope, millions of shapes and colors in an endless, eternally changing dance, and he can’t bear to let it go. Not yet.
So he finds ways to exist, to go on, finds ways to explore that don’t threaten his existence. He lives his life, such as it is. He lives.
4.
Life whittled down to the barest necessities, time structured to weed out distractions - she lives with minimums; it keeps her from the hurt, the pain of being different. It colors and covers her aloneness with the illusion of choice. I choose to be alone, I choose to live simply, it is necessary for my work. The aloneness carries its own price, its own pain, but it is less than the pain of rejection.
She didn’t choose to be different. She can’t be held responsible for an accident of birth. But others act as if she did choose it, as if her differences are not in her body, in her genes, but only in her imagination and attitude and can be adjusted to suit the dictates of whatever is currently acceptable to the ones who dictate those things. She is unaware of fads and trends, unaware of what is the current rage, is always hopelessly behind or blind to the fashionable. Her vision is elsewhere, her focus on the intricate, the somewhat esoteric; on knowledge and understanding of subjects of which most have never heard, let alone encountered. She sometimes, when her sensitivity is offended at behavior she finds strange, or, in her view, unacceptable, sees others as sheep, blindly and aimlessly following whomever they believe is in the lead, even if that leader is going around in circles. Then she feels shame, feels the full brunt of her differences her wrongness thinking she might rather be a sheep than be an outsider a reject so apart from everyone else. She takes on the burden of blame for their rejection.
The man in the library at night - he is different also, even more so than she. She senses it right away, like an echo resonating in her chest. She is shocked at his odd beauty, is well aware of how the others observe him, discreetly or openly, how they whisper and sigh and stare. He seems oblivious to all of it. He never smiles, never interacts with the others if he can help it. He shelves the books; gathers them from the tables, picks them up at the desk, rolls them into the stacks on his cart, puts them away. It is monotonous work, robotic, but he goes about it with a seriousness that would imply it is a needed function to avert disaster.
She is drawn to this man, knows there is something deep that sets him apart, something far greater than his beauty and grace and silence, something that the others - though they may be distracted and drawn by his physical beauty - will never see. Something in his being that is not quite...right. When he doesn’t respond to her approach, she experiences sadness at his leaving, feels bereft even, but it is not like rejection - it is loss, as if for just a moment she possessed a rare and valuable beloved object that has suddenly been taken from her.
Her life, her work, is filled with mysteries, with puzzles. She is adept at putting the pieces together, finding a coherence in the odd bits and shapes of information and making them whole. This man is a mystery, a puzzle. She resolves to solve it, to find him, in the odd bits and pieces she sees. And so begins her distraction - planning, scheming, filling up whatever spare time she has thinking about him, and how she might gather more information. After their one brief close up encounter, he has kept far away from her in his rounds of the tables, his stops in shelving the books; accosting him again in the stacks probably won’t work. No matter. She is adept at finding alternate ways to look at problems, finding answers through various winding pathways. She will solve him eventually. This planning, this purpose in her life makes her happy, makes her smile. It is her secret, her very own, that she keeps from the others as if it were a most valuable treasure, one that all of them would dearly love to have, but is hers alone.
5.
She will not stop watching him. He had thought their brief encounter would be enough to push her away. She has no reason to be there in the library every night. He knows which books she chooses and they are random, silly choices: Romance novels, various scientific texts on obscure subjects, an occasional children’s book. There is no pattern to the choices and this disturbs him. His conclusion that she is actually there to watch him stirs a cloudy memory, worrisome thoughts. There is a familiarity to all this that does not bode well, but it is unclear, muddy.
He is loath to move elsewhere. This job, this location is suitable for his needs, he doesn’t want to give it up to the whim of a silly woman. The proximity to his lair alone is enough to make it desirable. He has become accustomed to this life and this occupation. Until this woman appeared, he was comfortable enough in his routine and feeling as safe as he had ever felt. Now she is a threat. Having to do more to dissuade her from this idiotic preoccupation with him will not only be annoying, it might stir trouble in other areas. He doesn’t want the possible attention.
Along with the annoyance, however, is a perilous curiosity. Most people are willing to let him be a mystery. They are content to leave their fascination in the realm of fantasy and speculation. Why is this woman different? Why won’t she let it go?
In his years in this city, he has become used to the lust he occasionally sparks in both men and women. He has used it to his advantage before. Humans are so susceptible to beauty. They seem to crave it, and mistrust it in equal measure. But always, when the inconvenience arises of being attracted to someone like himself, someone who returns not one iota of interest or feeling, the attraction wanes; the problem resolves itself. The human fear and abhorrence of difference is enough to drive them away - as long as that difference is one that they are familiar with, one that may be a danger but is a known, human danger. If they knew the true nature and extent of his difference…
And that is the real threat to him that this woman poses. She obviously doesn’t care about the known, human danger. If she did she would have long since given up on him. She senses something more in him, a deeper and more significant difference - and apparently doesn’t fear it.
Not yet.
6.
He cannot risk another encounter inside the library, and so he resolves to follow her to her home, to confront her there and do whatever is necessary to disenchant her. The night he chooses is warm and pleasant; there are many people out and about. He decides to break his own rule and treat himself; he can’t recall the last time he did this. He tracks a young male strolling by himself on a quiet street, and takes him down, pulling the boy behind a hedge row in front of an empty building. He only takes enough to ease his hunger. He has no lust for killing. He leaves the boy lying on the ground, weak and dazed, but alive. He knows the boy will be sluggish for a day or two but will bounce back quickly. The tiny punctures on the throat have already begun to heal, and he has left the suggestion in the boy’s mind that he was attacked by other humans in a group.
The clean blood is intoxicating, and he is annoyed that he isn’t able to have it always. Avoiding risk is so ingrained him, however, that it doesn’t occur to him that he might change his usual diet, break out of his own restrictions. He thinks about this and a feeling of deep unease comes over him when he considers what he is doing this night: venturing into the domain of normal humans in order to influence one of them. He’s not even sure how he’s going to manage this. What if she proves immune to his influence? She seemed to be unfazed by his stare. What if he has no power over her at all?
No, this is unthinkable. He has no idea if there are humans who are completely immune to influence. He doesn’t remember ever coming across one. He searches what rules he was given and finds no reference to immune humans. He shakes his head, drives the thought from his mind. He will find out tonight.
He enters the library exactly on time, precisely five minutes before his shift begins. There will be few visitors tonight, he knows. Most people will prefer to be outdoors, enjoying the mild weather. The brown-haired woman comes in twenty minutes later and takes her usual seat in the middle of the large open reading room, where she can see him clearly as he moves about. He doesn’t look at her, ignores her half-wave and whispered hello as he passes within feet of her to retrieve a stack of books. He knows she will stay until closing, will dawdle until the last possible minute before the doors are locked. Ordinarily he would finish his work approximately thirty minutes later and the night watchman would let him out by the side door. Tonight, however, as she trudges out the door with a final look back over her shoulder, he zips through the door behind her and fades just long enough for her to go ahead of him some yards. Then he follows.
7.
Her home is not far from the library. As he studies the area, he wonders at the people who live here. Their lives seem tidy and not so much larger than his, defined by their own daily routines. He wonders what it would be like to live this way, in nice buildings with neighbors nearby, people who talk to each other. How would it be to live among others of your kind, with similar lives, to be the same as they? He can’t remember ever having lived like this, and yet...and yet, there must have been a time before, a time when he was not as he is now. He was changed, he knows that much, he was turned from one thing into another by...someone. His maker. The one who taught him the rules, who taught him how to survive. He doesn’t remember a face, but sometimes he hears a faint echo of a voice, like an old dream.
Since his maker ended, he has never encountered another like himself.
The brown-haired woman unlocks the door of a building and enters. Moments later a light appears in the window of a room on the first floor. He knows it is hers, he can easily trace her scent in the air. He waits a few moments more, then flashes to the door of her building. A man exits and before the door can close again, he zips inside. He follows the woman’s scent to her door.
The buzzing energy of this place is distracting. Voices, breath, activity - all the usual busy-ness of human beings creates a sea of sound and motion, constantly in the background. He is used to the abandoned areas near to his lair, where no one goes, where the energy is damped and muted except for the few fringe dwellers, those unwanted by society or unwilling to follow its rules. Even the library seems frenetic to him at times, with all its whispers and low voices. Here, the ebb and flow is constant, rising and falling with no discernible pattern, movement for movement’s sake, noise made simply for the sake of making noise. It occurs to him that perhaps he is much better off living where he is than in the middle of this chaos.
The curious, unusual thought startles him: how does the brown-haired woman feel about the constant whirl of tumultuous, corybantic energy in which she lives? Does she like it? This thought creates an urgency to his mission, an impulse to be get on with it, quickly, and return to his usual routine. This proximity to danger, this strange and unexpected curiosity, stirs something deep inside him that he dimly recognises - something that carries with it a stimulation that is both familiar and oddly distant. It can only be a threat to him. Everything that is outside his cautious routine is a threat...
He cannot physically pass through solid objects. He cannot turn to mist and float through cracks and crevices. He can flash - when the way is open. He can fade and become virtually invisible - when the light is dim enough. He stands at her door and considers the best way to gain entry to her living quarters. In the end, he settles for the standard human demand for entry: he knocks.
When the woman opens the door, she freezes, her mouth falling open, her eyes wide with startlement. He takes this opportunity to slip past her through the door. She stands for a moment staring at the empty space where he had been, still dazed. Finally she shakes her head, as if clearing it, closes the door and turns...she gasps and her hands fly to her mouth as she sees him standing behind her; she backs against the door.
Her heart is racing; he can hear it thumping in her chest, see the quickened pulse in her throat. She is trembling. He prepares himself to move, thinking she will scream, but she only stands there gasping for breath, staring at him.
He is very still, waits to see what she will do, his eyes narrowing slightly as he examines her. She is not beautiful in the classic sense. Her eyes are interesting. But there is something about her face...He lifts his head a bit, his nostrils flare as he isolates, identifies the myriad smells that waft through this small space. There is an animal hiding under a chair. There are human food smells in the other room. Soaps and toiletries, cleaning supplies, a multitude of odors and aromas. He blocks them all seeking her personal scent...there, roses and bergamot again, and that other warm and musky smell he noticed before, a faint trace of food on her hands, and soap on the rest of her skin…
She is still staring, but she seems to have come to the conclusion, since he hasn’t moved and he isn’t leering at her, that he isn’t a threat to her, at least not yet. She tries to speak, swallows, clears her throat, tries again.
“What...who...wh…” She seems to be having trouble forming words, sentences. He understands this, ignores her attempts. He is too distracted by his curiosity and something indefinable in her face to think about anything else at the moment, so he continues to stand and look at her, studying her like a specimen under a microscope.
His behavior is so strange that it penetrates her fear and confusion, and her body loses some of its tension. The trembling stops, though her breathing is still quick and shallow. Finally, she finds her voice, though it comes out as more of a squeak than she would like.
“What...what are you doing here? How…” She gulps, takes another quick breath. “How did you find me?”
He ignores her questions, opts instead to turn his head slowly and look at the room. He doesn’t often get a chance to see inside human homes. Most of his interactions with them take place either at the library or outdoors. Again that prickle of curiosity, which is becoming so strong that it is overpowering his caution. Words filter through his mind alarm dangerous and he dismisses them - wondering at himself even as he wants to see more, know more...He turns back to the woman.
“Why do you watch me?”
8.
His voice is like rich dark velvet flowing over her. It slides over her skin, caresses her, lulls her. She closes her eyes then pops them open again; her breathing has deepened and her lips part as she stares into those eyes she had so desperately wanted to see before...They are pale, neither green nor blue nor grey nor gold, but a mixture of all four blending, separating, changing according to the movements of his head in the light. The sharp planes of his face fascinate her, contrast with the lushness of his mouth. The dark curls and waves of his hair invite touch and her fingers twitch with anticipation. His slender body is erect, ramrod straight, but she’s seen the unearthly, fluid grace of his movements. As all this registers in her consciousness, she is aware of a difference in the air, a kind of shift taking place, two plates sliding against one another, aligning and forming a new figure...the feeling recedes and she is left with no idea what has happened but with the unmistakable knowledge that everything is different; everything has changed.
She focuses again, sees the alteration in his expression and there is an opening in her, a place where there was no place before, knowledge she has no way of knowing, foreign, alien, and yet as familiar as her everyday life. She is expanded, larger than herself - and yet she is the same as she was before, all of herself is exactly as she was before he came…
His eyes have widened astonishment alarm, his lips are parted as if he was about to speak, his posture slightly altered like an animal frozen as it prepares to flee - and suddenly it shifts again and he tilts his head, looks at her as if she’s spoken in some alien language and he’s trying to figure out why he understands it…
Long minutes pass as they study each other, examine themselves inwardly.
He is...not human! Oh god, blood, he lives on blood, that can’t be right he can’t be
She is apart from the rest of them like me but not like me but she is not them
I can feel him in me
How can I know her this way
This can’t be happening I’m losing my mind but I feel fine where is all this coming from
There is no threat here but she is a human she is dangerous
How do I know this what has happened
Why do I feel this about her
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME!
“V-vampire? My god, it’s not possible, you’re...but…” She stammers, amazed, confused, but not afraid. How can I not be afraid of him…?
He is silent, listening to a tiny distant voice screaming at him to flee, while his mind fills with knowledge of this small, brown-haired woman Molly and her life. She is no threat to me, even knowing what I am. How can that be?
A deep breath, and again. He wills himself to relax, unclench his hands. He blinks, his tongue peeks briefly between his lips.
“Perhaps...we should sit and...talk.”
9.
Reality twists, turns in on itself, reforms - and we barely notice. We consider it fixed, permanent, in order to exist from day to day with some semblance of order in our lives, but the truth is this: reality changes from second to second, reforming, becoming something other, while we place an image of it in our minds as one thing and one thing only. What we think and what is are two entirely different things.
She has experienced the impossible, and accepts it without reservation, without question. This person, this being, in front of her right now has become her reference point in this new fluid reality, and he is, miraculously, known to her, a familiar beacon of safety in the unknown dark.
And so she sits with him, this strange, startling but familiar entity, on her comfortable sofa in her cosy flat, understanding that nothing nothing will ever be the same again.
His beauty still shocks and entices; his difference is explained - outrageous as it may be, as bizarrely as it became known, it simply is - and he is here.
He is more familiar with the outrageous and bizarre, but nothing quite like this. She has shown him human as he has never known it (or if he has, he doesn’t remember), from the inside, the totality of an emotional being that is at once alien but oddly not - and his curiosity has grown into an enormous need to know and more, to understand.
There is so much to question, so much to explore, but for the moment they let it all settle between them, water finding its own level, before they begin. She finds a bottle of wine and a glass, her usual evening alleviation of stress. He examines objects littering her table, touching, grounding himself again in the here as well as now.
Talk is slow to start, hesitant, stilted. As they progress, what they now know of each other facilitates communication and they each find an unexpected enjoyment in it. He is slightly less easy with verbal exchanges, since it hasn’t been as necessary for him to use words, but the words - as well as the concepts behind them - are there in abundance, gathered from centuries of books. She is precise but timid at first; her confidence grows as they continue.
“Do you have a name?”
“Sherlock.”
“Unusual name. I like it,” she smiles.
She studies him, entranced by his large beautiful hands with their long fingers, the shifting colors of his eyes. He is somewhat relaxed now, leaning back on her sofa, and every slight shift of his body sends a ripple of pleasure through her.
He watches her face, the flitting of expressions across it, and finally finds a word for what he’d seen earlier, that had made her face so much more interesting than it should have been: character. It glows in her face with the warmth of flame. It’s a word with which he’s become familiar in his reading, describing the stronger protagonists, the ones he wished were real. Her character shows in her eyes, in the set of her mouth, in her determination and courage in the face of fear - and in her quick but difficult acceptance of what has happened to them both. He enjoys listening to her soft voice when she speaks and watching her expressive face. He’s never been close enough for long enough in human company to encounter real character before; it seems almost magical, as if she had suddenly stepped fully formed out of one of his books.
“What is this, this thing that’s happened with us? Do you know?”
“No. I’ve never experienced anything like this before. And there’s no one I can ask.”
He tells her what he can recall of his life over so many years, explains how he lives, what he can and can’t do. She listens, asks questions. She begins to understand that he is not like the stories she’s read; almost none of the mythology applies to him. But neither is he like the newly popular romantic vampires, cartoonish in their glittering perfection. He is beautiful, yes, but he is not heroic or dashing. What he does, how he lives, would horrify most normal people. He describes the simplicity and complexities of it all, and in a wash of empathy, she meets his aloneness up close, sees his difference as the cruel and terrible punishment that it is. All these years, these hundreds of years, to be so apart, so banished from human contact, even while living among them...it beggars belief, fills her with a horror deeper than she would have felt if he had told her he had slaughtered children. She knows the tiniest sliver of that apartness, that difference that rejection and sees it enlarged and darkened a thousand fold and lasting forever, with no possible relief...tears fill her eyes and she buries her face in her hands.
This reaction puzzles him at first. He watches, perplexed, as her tears devolve into sobs - for him. He has never experienced this level of sympathetic involvement before, but begins to feel a tinge of it sparking in his own emotions, ones he’d thought were lost to him. The intensity, the sheer size of it, distresses him and he suddenly feels a need to alleviate her distress - more out of concern for himself than for her. But then comes the revelation that this reasoning is not quite suitable; for perhaps the first time he catches a glimmer of true understanding of the reasons, the motivation behind human interaction, behind the concern - he does desire to alleviate her distress, not because it pains him but because it pains her.
He is at a complete loss as to how to go about this. His initial impulse it to touch her in some way, but apart from accidentally, his desire to touch any human has always had to do with hunger, with feeding, with physical need. The two are completely different, though this new impulse is becoming equally compelling. He wants her to stop crying; telling her this does not seem to have an effect. The sobbing is beginning to affect him, make him uncomfortable. He could leave; that seems reasonable on the surface, but the end result - going away from her - is not desirable. Should he touch her? The idea is alarming, somewhat frightening.
But he knows her. Now, after what’s happened, he knows that she means no harm to him at all, that, oddly, she is drawn to him for the very reason that has kept him hidden and apart for so very long, and that her crying arises from it. He stands, goes to her and drops to his knees in front of her, slowly reaches up and pulls her hands away from her face.
Sound, torrents of it filled with neon twisting shapes, sheets of silver slashed with brilliant exotic rainbows, a horrendous clap of thunder and sudden white billows smoke, the peal of giant bells, passionate sound and impossibly sweet light mixed into one terrific explosion and then
Silence - like air after drowning, like unbearable tenderness, like white crystalline towers rising slowly towards infinite perfection, like golden roots grasping devouring in ecstatic joy
He pulls away from her, falling backwards, scrabbling on his hands and knees. He turns and stares at her from where he crouches, his heart hammering its way out of his chest. She is sitting, stone still, her hands gripping the arms of the chair as if she would crush them to powder, her face fixed in a rictus of either astonishment or fear both pulling air into her lungs in desperate gulps.
Minutes, hours later he looks up at her from where he has crawled and curled himself into a ball on the floor. She has fallen back in the chair, limp, staring at nothing. She is still alive, he can hear her heartbeat, still strong. A deep sadness washes through him, pulling him towards her - a desire to run his hands over her skin, to learn her bones and muscle, to stroke her softeness...to see her eyes fill with light again. He crawls on all fours until his face is inches from her knees. Her smell is different - still the rose and bergamot, but tinged now with amber and some undefinable scent that makes him want to weep. With a hand that trembles in fear and need want he touches her knee with his fingertips…
Warm skin. No incredible sounds or lights, no thunder or smoke or bells. Just the ordinary, usual sounds of her flat surrounded by the ordinary tumult of life outside it. He grasps an arm of the chair, pulls himself up on wobbly legs. As he bends toward her, reaching for her hand, she suddenly stirs, looks up at him with a half smile and a deep sigh.
He blinks at her, straightens. She seems well enough. He turns and walks to the sofa, sits again, silent, waiting. She finally leans forward in her chair, elbows on knees, hands clasped. She glances around the room before finally settling her gaze on him, still with that small smile on her face.
“Well,” she says. “Well. I...I don’t quite...I mean, that was…” She breaks off, shakes her head slightly. “What was that?”
Hearing her soft voice calms him a bit, anchors him again. He takes a deep breath, lets it out, looks at her with wide eyes. “I haven’t the slightest idea. It seems to have passed, however.”
She regards him seriously now, a tiny frown line appearing between the wings of her brows.
“Sherlock...what...what are we going to do about...this, whatever it is? I mean, obviously there’s something very strange…” She stops and gives a soft laugh. “Strange isn’t the word for it. It’s beyond strange. It’s like...suddenly being tossed into another dimension - “ She feels like she’s starting to babble.
“How do you see me?” His interruption is soft but definite.
“What do you mean? I s-see you as...a man...an oddly beauti -”
He cuts her off again. “No. How do you see me? How did you know I was...not the same as you.”
She sits back in her chair again, pondering his question as she twirls a strand of her hair around her finger. It’s a curiously childlike motion, giving her an air of innocence that belies the depth of experience and intellect he knows is inside her. He is filled with peculiar thoughts, questions, his nerves tingle, words tumble over themselves in his brain. Something is coming to life in him, something he thinks might be familiar but he isn’t sure. Neural pathways are forming, synapses firing along axons, dendrites grasping...he searches for a word, a single word to describe what’s happening and finds long passages from books but no single word…
Molly watches him intently. He is obviously experiencing some inner confusion, just as she is, but he is struggling with it, battling his way through some great obstacle. His eyes are unfocused, brows knit in a frown, his curls tumbled over his forehead, hands moving, twisting together in some slow arcane dance. She studies him, finally afforded the chance to watch him closely, to observe him fully, privately. She shies away from examining what has happened to them; there will be time for that later. For now she simply watches him find his way through whatever internal labyrinth he’s wandering, and takes pleasure in his physical beauty.
It’s truly astonishing, she thinks, how easily we adapt to the extraordinary. She is surrounded by death, nearly every day. Death, for her, has become commonplace, though always still affecting; it is a part of life, of ordinary existence, for everyone. This...this is not ordinary existence. This is far beyond ordinary, way outside the pale. Whatever has happened is happening here tonight is apart from anything, any experience she could ever have dreamed. It is, in fact, much like a dream. And yet...and yet...here he is. This strange, eerily beautiful man who is not a man but something other has entered her life and changed it irrevocably, shown her the impossible can be real, opened her up and turned her reality inside out - and she is sitting here with him as if she’s invited him for dinner, waiting for him to order his thoughts.
10.
She comes out of her own thoughts to find him focused again, staring at her. He speaks without preamble, taking up where he left off.
“Is it because of your own difference? That you could see mine?” He leans forward slightly, his eyes nearly glowing he is so intent.
“No. That may be part of it, but I don’t think that’s the whole reason.” Softly.
“What then? How did you know when so many others haven’t seen it? That’s why you watched me. Because you sensed the difference in me.”
“Sherlock, I did know there was something different about you. In fact, most of the people at the library know there’s something different about you. But I don’t think anybody, least of all myself, knows - knew - exactly what it is. Lots of people are different. Not quite as different as you, but extremely different from ordinary humans.”
He waved his hand in the air, as if dismissing what she was saying, tossing it away.
“I know all that. But you knew that I am more different, a...further difference.”
She shakes her head. “No. I didn’t know how different you are, or in what way. I was drawn to you. Fascinated by you. Perhaps I sensed it subconsciously, but no, I didn’t have any conscious recognition of the way you’re different.”
He let this sink in. “But your differences allowed you to approach me. You are tenacious. You were planning on trying it again.”
She nods, thinking she should feel slightly embarrassed by her obsession with him. Instead she feels a bit proud of herself. “Yes. I wasn’t going to give up.”
A sudden realisation hits her then, one so obvious - given what she knows about him now - that she feels a bit thick for not seeing it earlier.
“Oh my God. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it. That’s why you came here tonight, to stop me from -”
He nods. “Yes. I thought you were...a threat, dangerous to me. I came to dissuade you from pursuing your interest.”
“How? How would you have dissuaded me?” There is no fear in this, only curiosity.
He blinks several times before he answers.
“I would have used my influence on you. Planted the idea in your brain that it was not good to keep on with your interest.”
“And now?”
His voice is very soft. “Now...I think you might be immune to that. The thought had occurred to me before that you might be, but I’ve had no experience in the past with any humans that were, and I couldn’t recall any rules - “
He stops, stands. Paces around the room, deep in thought, hands pressed together in front of his lips.
“There are rules for this?”
“What?”
“You said rules, what rules?”
He stares down at her, suddenly torn. This is insane! She is human!
But the rules are already broken. For her, they are shattered completely. She is no threat, no danger. She is not afraid of him, is immune to influence. She feels no horror at what he is, what he does....
In fact, she would defend him, protect him. She knows all of what he is, what he’s done, and yet...she would stand by him, even keep him from harm if she is able. He knows this as surely as he knows...anything.
These ideas are so foreign to his experience, so blatantly wrong against the rules where most humans are concerned, that he can only stare at her helplessly, unable to even express his confusion. And yet, he knows it’s true: in her own way, she is almost as unlike other humans, as apart from them, as he is. She understands his difference. And she accepts it, without fear, without judgment.
Relief. Gratitude. He has no memory of ever feeling these, but they flood through him now and his entire body trembles, as though he innately recognises them, knows them for the gifts they are.
It is nearly dawn. He is aware of the lethargy approaching. He should be in his lair, where it is safe, where he can relax and think.
He looks at this small, soft-voiced woman Molly and finds he is reluctant to leave her. So much has happened in this one night, these few hours. So much has changed. In his long life, change has always been external: seasons, decades, centuries - all have marched on and he has watched the life around him alter, evolve, become different in physical nature, in attitude, in habit. For him it has always been the same. The small adaptations he has made have had virtually no effect on him internally. Here, in this room, in this one night, he is now radically different. The understanding he has gained, the exchanges with this human, this woman, have overcome centuries of sameness, have introduced him to a new world of possibility.
She is watching him. The mental link they have shared has faded somewhat, but he still feels connected to her, knows - without knowing how - that they are bonded through this experience.
And he finds he wants more.
He asks, knowing the answer, but feeling he should ask.
“May I come here again?”
She smiles at him. “Of course.” There is so much she wants to know, so much she wants to say.
His eyes have turned a deep sea-green. He lifts his head, draws himself up, nods at her.
“Until then.” He starts to turn away towards the door, stops. “Until then...Molly.”
Then he is gone.
She knows she won’t sleep. She is filled with energy but relaxed, mind buzzing. The evening filters through her brain in images, emotions. She has no idea what the future might be like with this man in it a vampire, Molly, seriously but for the first time in a very long while, she is looking forward to it.
He doesn’t return to his lair. He finds the fire escape, climbs up it to the roof of her building, sits in the shadow of an air shaft while the lethargy creeps through him. He doesn’t know what harm, if any, could come to her, but he will keep watch just in case. He will protect her. He will keep her safe.