A Bloodthirsty Angel:
Part Two - Another Nature
By: Kitty E.
Trowa felt consciousness pulling him out of the warm, comforting darkness that surrounded him. He fought it at first, sensing that the world he was being ushered into would not be as pleasant, but there was no turning back. He was right, for the waking world had a hideous headache waiting for him, and a dull pain that spread throughout his body. He groaned softly, opening his eyes, and instantly regretting it. Even the subdued lighting of a lamp on the far side of the room was blinding. He waited a few moments, then tried again, finding the light was less painful, but no more welcome.
He gradually took note of his surroundings, recognizing his room first, and then that it was located in a safehouse somewhere in Canada. And Quatre... the train of thought he'd been following was slammed into by a memory. Ignoring the fatigue and pain he felt all the way down to his bones, he sat up slowly. A kiss, and then a... bite?
Quatre stood a few feet away, leaning against the window with his eyes closed, and features schooled in a quiet resignation. The moon was nearly full, a corner of it peeking through the window to cast a white light into the room that made Quatre seem almost transparent. So is he a ghost or a... but the thought was cut off when Quatre blinked opened his eyes and stared back at him.
Quatre moved forward without a word, hand reaching forward slightly. Before Trowa could speak, or protest, cool fingers were pressed to his brow. "Good, there's no fever, but you're still weak from the blood loss. You need some more rest, but I think before you go back to sleep, you should eat something. Stay here, and I'll go make you a sandwich or something." With that, Quatre removed his hand from Trowa's brow and left.
Trowa blinked several times, sagging back against the headboard as the door was closed. He lifted his right hand and stared at his bandaged wrist. A dream, then... or a hallucination. I guess the cut was worse than I thought, and I must've passed out. He let his wrist fall limply to his lap, unable to find the strength to it up any longer.
Vampires, he thought with a snort. Trowa, you've spent too much time listening to mercenaries tell their ghost stories, it's made you superstitious. Ridiculously so, it was a dream, nothing more. A combination of your crush on Quatre, and the parting image of blood you had before you lost consciousness. He closed his eyes, comforted by the rules of logic and science. Before long, he was slipping back into his dreams, and as his body relaxed fully, his head fell softly to one side.
A sharp pain in his neck startled him awake, lifting his hand to the base of his neck, not noticing how his fingers trembled. His blood, what was left of it, ran cold when the tips of his fingers brushed against the dressings on his neck. Shimatta... he did...? It couldn't be, but...
The door was opened and Quatre stepped through, plate and glass in hand. He paused briefly when he saw Trowa's expression, the hand on his neck. With an imperceptible sigh, he continued to Trowa's bedside.
"Trowa," he began, but could find no way to continue, no way to explain.
"I don't understand," Trowa said with uncharacteristic conviction. "What's-"
"I'll answer your question after you eat. As you do, I want you to think... do you really want to know?"
Trowa thought about arguing, but Quatre had asked a good question. If I didn't dream it, he thought as he began to eat. Then he did kiss me, and that in itself is reason enough to ask and... if he is what I believe then... he tried to kill me, didn't he? I felt death coming, but he didn't stop.
Quatre was staring out the window, face more solemn and pained then Trowa had ever seen before. Things can never be the same again.
"Are you what I think you are?" Trowa asked suddenly, he couldn't bring himself to say the word, vampire. It still seemed too farfetched, and he wondered if he was still in a dream.
Quatre's mouth quirked at the question, "Yes, and no," he replied neutrally. "I am a being who was once a human, and is now something completely different. A creature in a constant state of limbo, neither living nor dead, never aging, forever unchanging. And it's true that all I need to maintain this state is the blood of the living, but everything else you believe is likely superstition." As he spoke his eyes never left the moon outside the window, once finished he let them drop down the landscape below, but he still could not meet Trowa's unwavering, emerald gaze.
Trowa was silent for a long moment as his reality shifted to encompass a previously unthinkable truth. "It can't really be..." he said, finally.
"And yet you must believe it true, or you would never have asked the question," Quatre replied logically. He turned back at last to look Trowa in the eyes. "I am sorry," he said gravely. "For what I did. It was as best horribly rude, and at worse damaging to our friendship. But you must understand that I couldn't help myself. I didn't want to, but my... my other nature took over, and... I'm just sorry."
A momentary lapse of judgment... Trowa thought. Nothing more than a convenient snack. Ch' that kiss probably meant less to him than the wound on my neck. He suddenly felt too tired to deal with anything, much less such a bizarre betrayal.
The intense silence that passed between them was ripping Quatre apart. He wasn't sure of how he had wanted Trowa to react, but he was sure it was anything but the stoic silence he had fought so hard to break. "Trowa?"
"And the kiss?" Trowa asked softly, becoming more impassioned as he continued. "What forced you to do that? What 'other nature' took over you?"
Quatre swallowed reflexively, dropping his eyes to the floor to avoid the hurt look in Trowa's eyes he'd missed before. "If you must know, I kissed you because I intended to kill you." It was the truth, incomplete as it was, and one that did not encourage further questions. "Blood Law dictates that any victim we choose must be killed to prevent our secret from ever being revealed, the penalty is none to light I'll admit."
"And why didn't you?" Trowa asked.
"I can't explain that," he said. He hated having to resort to doublespeak and half-truths. Trowa deserved to know the truth, deserved to know that someone, however flawed that someone might be, loved him. But one secret revealed was dangerous enough, but a second could guarantee Trowa's death.
Trowa was silent, staring at the far corner of the room. Quatre moved forward to collect the dishes he had left, freezing as Trowa jerked away.
"Please don't hate me," Quatre pleaded. Whatever his decision, he still could not bear the thought that Trowa would never again call him friend. "At least not for what I am. I had no choice when I became this."
"It isn't the..." he hesitated at the word slightly. "The vampire that I hate, Quatre. It's the liar. If you meant what you said, then you used a kiss to lie to me. You deceived and then used me, Quatre. There's no forgiving that." He watched Quatre gather the dishes from the bed stand, and then added flatly, "If you have no plans of killing me in my sleep, I'd like it if you just left me for a while."
Quatre started, momentarily offended, "The fact that you're alive now speaks volumes for what I really want. Make no mistake, if I had desired your death in the slightest I would have taken it then, and never regretted it. You don't ever need to fear me."
"You've done enough," Trowa replied softly.
Quatre stared at him a moment longer, hands trembling so fiercely from the weight of words unsaid that he nearly spilled what was left of the milk. It's better this way, he told himself as he left without any further explanation. When I leave it all behind again, for whatever reason, there'll be no attachments... only my own. And besides, my love could literally kill him.
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Things were not going as well as Quatre had originally planned. The simple seek and destroy mission they had been sent on was nearly costing them their lives. One unfinished mobile suit, Quatre thought bitterly. He had left it, thinking no one in their right mind would follow the two causes of the complete destruction of their base. Such a softy, such an idiotic sentimentalist, Quatre berated himself harshly.
That one mobile suit had followed them unseen to their safehouse, and opened fire just as they left the safety of their Gundams. Badly damaged, the mobile suit had run out of ammo and power in only a few moments time, but the pilot had simply left the worthless suit behind and was now pursuing them with a pistol. It was terrifying, even an immortal had to admit that as they raced through the twilight forest, the sound of footsteps always behind them no matter hard they ran. He breathed a small sigh of relief when his sharp ears could no longer sense the pilot's gait, then sucked his breath back in when he realized what that meant. He's aiming!
He forced himself to run even faster somehow, closing the distance between he and Trowa. He heard the sound of a gunshot just as he pushed Trowa down a shallow embankment. A sudden, searing pain through his back threw him to ground, but time stood still long enough for him to watch Trowa roll with the fall, sliding down the leaf covered hill.
As Quatre struggled to get up, he heard a second body following Trowa, rustling the leaves in his close pursuit. "Trowa!" he cried. Ignoring the excruciating pain in his back, he ran after them. The pilot was aiming once again, having gained a better foothold than Trowa who was fighting to escape through the undergrowth and mud.
However, clumsy his injured movements were, Quatre could still move faster, and was stronger than a mortal. In the blink of an eye, he was upon his enemy, one arm firmly across the pilot's arm, and the other covering his mouth out of habit. He barely had time to think before he sank his fangs into the pilot's neck.
Trowa heard a muffled scream and looked back, gasping in shock. Quatre, diminutive in comparison to the full-grown man he had captured, was easily holding their hunter down. He walked slowly towards them, almost unable to look away, as Quatre fed. Surely, it wasn't that painful? he asked himself, as the man continued to scream, and shout into Quatre's firmly clamped hand. I guess... I guess he's not trying to be gentle.
The scene was darkly macabre in its beauty, but it seemed almost right in the most primeval way, predator and prey. Night was falling fast, and Quatre was clutching his victim close in the darkness biting harder and harder as the struggle weakened, until at last he let a dead body fall to the forest floor.
"Quatre?" Trowa asked, his voice suddenly hoarse. Witnessing that had driven everything home, removed any and all doubts at even the possibility of such a thing.
Quatre was breathing harshly, both hands over his mouth. Trowa could almost see the shift away from the other nature Quatre had spoke of. Quatre blinked several times, and looked up at him, "Did I frighten you?"
Trowa was still so shocked he actually had to think about it for a moment. He was surprised that he could say, "No."
Quatre's eyes saddened slightly, "Funny... because I frighten myself."
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Part Three