continuum_of_drs | Home Again?

"It's ... all right."

When the bite comes, he only stiffens slightly, with a small indrawn breath of pain. An instant's instinctual revulsion shivers through him, but he dares not move. Her fangs had sunk into his neck like a pair of particularly large intravenous needles ... best to hold still.

His head drops back. Stay still. Breathe. His hands grip her upper arms, balancing against her.

She adjusts the bite, and then shuts her eyes as she drinks. He can feel the drain, the unnatural suction in his veins. She's gone too long without, and she drinks deep now. Sweeter than human, richer somehow.

Everything he is screams against this--the unnaturalness, the very loathesomeness of the vampire made his skin crawl. But ... how long had she gone without eating? How much did she need?

Consciousness wavers a little--time-sense pulled thin, he loses the flow. How long has it been?

The draining is becoming painful, now. She's pulling more than just his blood. A gasp sounds. His fingers tighten around her arms, much stronger than his slight frame would indicate. A shudder runs through him and he recoils, uncaring whether her fangs tore further, pushing her back from him, labouring for breath.

She tries, for just a heartbeat, to keep her grip and keep feeding, but then jerks back, stumbling away from him with his push and covering her mouth with both hands. Blood, smeared on her neck and jaw, is the brightest color in the room. His blood.

"Oh...." She looks ready to flee, glancing towards the door.

He looks up at her from where he'd almost fallen to the floor. Blood had run down his neck and he was noticably pale, face bearing a slight sheen of perspiration. It curled his hair against his face and under the angle of his jaw.

"Was it ... enough?" he asked softly, gingerly fingering the wound.

She licks the blood from her lips and fangs, breathing fast. "I.... yes, I'm sorry I took so much, I'm sorry...."

Russell's so smug back in there. Nothing more than an animal, I told you.

He could hear Russell. And something in the back of his mind agreed. The part that still carried millennia of Gallifreyan culture, Rassilon's directive, ancient indoctrination, the result of a war whose scale reached proportions almost unimaginable.

But ....

He forced his eyes to focus on her. This was not the face of the undead scourge his people had pledged to fight until the very last. This was a hapless mutant, a haemovore, an isolated case. Could she have made a vampire of him? He had no idea.

"It's all right ... I'm ... fine...."

He quieted the indignant yammering of his memories, of his other selves.

"...I forgive you," he breathed.

He felt time shift.

She stared at him, something new in her eyes. Pain, not caused by him but recalled. Yearning, for something. Something she lost.

The air in here was too thick to breathe.

"I.. I... I have to go."

If she could just get one good breath, she'd be running for the door.

"Clair ... Clair, wait...."

He pulled himself to his feet, wavering.

"Don't be afraid."

Clair took a step back, her hands pressed to her chest to keep them from flailing. "I.... You should rest. I'm sorry. I won't do it again."

"You don't need to run away. Let's just ... make some tea and sit down ... and talk this through. All right?" Smile?

His other selves are varying shades of disappointed, curious, angry... he ignores all of them and attempts to lead clair back to a small cluster of squashy chairs.

Meh! She very much wants to hole up, somewhere quiet and solitary where she can come to terms with whatever just happened. He... he let her drink from him, and forgave her the hurts she'd done him, even though her other self had been fully willing to kill him.

Almost unwilling, she lets him draw her to the chairs and curls up in the one nearest the room's fireplace.

Much better. He wobbles, though, and drops onto a footstool near the chair Clair is currently curled in. He breathes for a moment. Looking back up at Clair, he nudges her mind gently toward the idea of talking.

"What is it that's bothering you?" he asks softly.

She swallows hard before she can speak. Agh, the drama.

"Trevor hated drinking from me. Always worried he'd go too far and I told him it was okay because I *hiccough* loved him."

"Ah, I see. I'm sorry," he answered.

"Is he the reason you're a vampire?"

A half-nod.

"A lot of reasons, but he did it.... He drank my blood and I drank his. To save my life."

He watches her intently as she says this. "Did you want your life saved? It's not always a kindness to stop someone dying."

She pulls her knees up under her chin, staring into the flames. "He changed me twice. The first time, I wanted him to kill me. He bit me, the way I bit you.... On humans, it makes us a mutant. Not quite a vampire, but not human anymore. I.... No, that was still Russell. Tried to get him to kill us. We'd rather die than be tainted like that. He wouldn't. So... I happened."

"He didn't make me into a vampire until later. I was dying...."

He nods, listening closely. It was sounding less and less like a typical vampirising. Even the TARDIS is listening.

"I wanted it, then. I was afraid, but I didn't want to die and leave him alone like that. He...." Her voice strangles off. Trevor was a vampire. He could have lived hundreds of years. "I wanted to be with him forever."

"Ah, I see," he answers softly, almost regretfully.

"What happened to him?"

"He was killed by butchers. My best friends hid it from me, to keep Russell from coming out...."

"... I'm so sorry..."

It seemed all he could do was apologise. There wasn't any way to solve her problems until she decided she really wanted them solved. Until then, she'd continue in this limbo of loss and half-existence. It was an almost painful thought.

He curled an arm around her. She was so small and chilled.

Exhausted by emotion and reaction, she leaned into him. Already, the bones of her face and shoulders were less prominent, softer beneath the skin. It's only been a few months since her loss, and Russell keeps it fresh, using it against Clair to keep her weak. Her devotion to Trevor was a reaction to the psychotic break he caused when he bit her, and it was extreme, a rather unnatural love.

"I wish I could go back."

"I'm sorry. It's not possible to go back. Time ... can't be bent round that way. The past is still the past and it can't be altered."

Hug. The worst thing to have to say to someone. They don't understand, not any of them, but it's true. There really is no going back. It simply isn't possible.

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