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[lordoftheozarks]

When the ringing stops, all you'll hear is a cold voice that says one simple word, "Speak."

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[abhorrently]

She pats the creature, smiling gently as she does.

"Not much. I've been missing company that wasn't my own. Being ill recently was quite dull, and it gave me time to think. And now that I'm well up to the standards of a doctor, I can pay as many visits as I like."

The jaws of her trap are silent. Ensnaring with courtesy, with care.

"Actually, I have a question. Why did you name him Maxly? I've never had a pet, so I don't know a thing about how you decide on names, or any of that."

[lordoftheozarks]

"I see you got hit with that too. My lover Chris has been very busy in the clinic taking care of sick patients." Lucky Erik, he can't get sick anymore.

He's still ignorant of the trap, right up until the final snap of her words. In hindsight, he really should have seen this coming. He's heard Max talk to her like an old friend.

"Ah." He dips his head in shame. "I named him after a different Pet I had, because their personalities struck me as similar."

[abhorrently]

"That's sweet of you. Sentimental, really. It'd be charming, if I wasn't aware of who your pet was."

Fixing him with a look, she keeps blood red eyes locked onto his position. No magic surges from her, no hidden restraints, but there is a pressure in her gaze and her bearing that he might recognize - something more predatory, already in his home. If he lies, she thinks she has a good chance of discerning it.

Intuition. That's what this comes down to.

"I've heard his side of the story. Now yours is needed. Tell me why. Why he couldn't have been removed from your territory and allowed to live his own life. Why he lived in your basement."

cw: torture, imprisonment

[lordoftheozarks]

"I didn't think I would ever see Max again." That's the only defense he has for naming his ghastly that. He's aware that it isn't a good one.

Much as it pains him, he meets her red gaze head-on. He's not going to lie. He's not going to play dumb. If she wants his story, he will tell it. He has already laid himself bare to her once.

"I couldn't let him leave because I couldn't guarantee his safety anywhere else. The people my sister associated with... they do not give up until they get their own way. They never would have stopped trying to find him no matter what territory he went to. Eventually, they would have succeeded. The things they would do to him--they would have taken so much pleasure in spoiling such an innocent soul."

He's looking back at her now with the same level of intensity in his own gaze. She must be able to picture what he means. Max thinks only that he would have died. Erik knows better. Max would have been tortured for an eternity, turned into a vampire and left to starve until he wasted to nothing and yet still could not die--all for the crime of 'killing a superior being' or whatever way they would put it in their twisted minds. They considered humans as nothing more than prey and tools. The thought of that happening to Max is unbearable.

"He was safer in my basement. I built him that underground apartment in the hopes that it might be more comfortable for him."

[abhorrently]

"And let his family think he was dead. And instilled upon him that the rest of his life would be there. He called you his master." Her eyebrow raises, but she still rests her hand on Maxly, seeing no reason to make him move. "So what, in exchange for your protection, he had to serve you? How gracious of you, Lord Osborne. How considerate of you, really."

Her gaze is almost daring him to explain what that service entailed. If she doesn't ask, it could have been anything. The sarcasm drips from her words like venom from fangs.

"I'm sure that made him feel very safe and not at all like you'd throw him to his pursuers if he didn't do well enough."

And yet, the creeping dread up her spine asks her what right she has to be sitting here, interrogating him so. She doesn't know Max as dearly as others do - but still. It's too much of a reflex for her to ignore, even as the man's voice is in the back of her head talking about family.

[lordoftheozarks]

"I was his master. By vampire law he was considered my property. I'm not going to deny that. It was only because he was mine that he was untouchable. I instilled him with the brutal truth of the matter, that if his family did not believe him to be dead, if they kept searching for him, they would become targets. My sister's twisted allies would not have thought twice about using them as bait."

He does not break the eye contact. To his core, he believes every word he's saying to be true. It was necessary. All of it. She doesn't know his world like he does. That last part, however, gets him heated.

"Do not think, for one moment, that I ever threatened to send him to his doom that way. Never. Not once. I take the vow I made to him very seriously. I told him that from the day he was bound to my service, he would be protected always by me and mine. That was unconditional. I would protect him with my life." He has, in fact, but that is a secret he is also bound to keep.

Maxly, in response to Erik's raised voice, whines and wiggles out of Fever's grip. The ghost whizzes around Erik's head until the vampire reaches out a hand to sooth his pet. "There, there, it's all right, Maxly. Shh."

[abhorrently]

"Are you certain he believed that? No, a different question - have you ever once apologized for it?"

Without Maxly to occupy her hands, she leans back into the couch, still studying him. Turning over every part in her mind, trying to keep what was said in perspective, but still hating it. There were ways. If Max's death was feigned, if he changed his identity. There were options, they had just been deemed insufficient.

(and who are you, she hears in echo, to be acting so righteous now?)

[lordoftheozarks]

"I have, once. In writing. But I do still owe him the apology in person."

He pulls Maxly into his chest, hugging the ghost for comfort as if he were a stuffed animal. Maxly burbles happily and nuzzles his face into Erik, staying corporeal for now.

"Max asked me to keep my distance and I have been. Recently, we've been seeing each other for very short chats in a public spaces, but that's no place for giving a full and complete apology."

He releases Maxly and gives the ghost a gentle pat to get him to move aside so Erik can put both hands out in front of him, as if trying to show Fever there is nothing up his sleeves.

"I know it wasn't right. I believed it was at the time but I know better now. I cannot change what I have done, but I am committed to doing better. That is all I can say for myself. It is up to you if that will be enough."

[abhorrently]

"Enough for what? I'm not Max. I can't say what's sufficient, what's truly due him."

A pause, as she debates something, crossing one leg over the other.

"...he's the one that told me about this in the first place. In a far more forgiving fashion than I would expect anyone to. He knows I intended to speak with you."

Which means that for all the poison in her words, for all that she would love to make him squirm and lie and say it's some kind of justice, he's safe. They would remain words. Max has shielded him from the thinnest veil of an excuse to tear into him - much as she wants to tear into anyone, given provocation and a slip of self control.

[lordoftheozarks]

"You've got your own opinion, I'm sure. I suppose I'm glad you haven't already decided I put Max up to it in some fashion. I have been accused of that enough." And he's not hiding how much that accusation has stung.

He closes his eyes and draws in a deep breath all the way to his, practically atrophied, diaphragm. Frustrating as it is, he must remind himself that this outrage is deserved, no matter what his justifications were. He's not supposed to push back. And yet...

"Max is a more forgiving soul than most. For that, I am grateful. If he hated me, thought of me as nothing but a predator to him, I don't know that I could bear it. But he knows, whether the rest of you will believe it or not, that when I thought of him as mine it was never with malice. I was not like my old master. I was not purposefully cruel. Max was mine to protect. He was mine to care for and keep safe. Everything I did to him and for him I did because I believed it would protect him. I love him. Why can none of you believe that I loved him? I do still. Yes, I know, that is hardly an excuse in the end but... does it mean nothing? Do you, like the others, believe that because I am a vampire it cannot be true?"

[abhorrently]

"What? Of course not. Why would you being a vampire mean you're incapable of love?"

Despite the conversation, her brow furrows, the concept so absurd that it's thrown her off the rest of her train of thought.

"Love's complicated. It isn't reserved for a specific type of person."

[lordoftheozarks]

He snorts in chagrined amusement at himself. Well, of course she doesn't feel that way.

"There have been many people, over my long years, who have been very sure that a monster like me could never really love. Even I have wondered if I am only fooling myself."

The love of his sister is what started this. When she refused to let him die. But, from the moment she turned, everything was different. By the time Max came into things, his sister was already unrecognizable to him.

"Yes, love is complicated. It is multi-faceted. It ultimately may not be enough."

Maxly, in reaction the melancholy in Erik's voice, wiggles himself into Erik's lap and whimpers sympathetically. Erik smile down at his spectral pet and wonders, not for the first time, if the reason why his partners here and even his pet are all touched by death in one way or another is because he isn't compatible with anyone too full of life. Someone like Max needs more than he could ever give.

[abhorrently]

"You'd know the answer better than I." Love is a complicated, tangled thing. With her shattered brain, with her twisted self, her opinions on it mean very, very little. "I don't doubt that you love him. But I believe you can love someone and also hurt them. The two aren't exclusive."

She sighs, trying to mask how she feels out of her depth in that conversation.

"...It'd be ludicrous to expect you to hand me your life story, and in particular the wrongs you committed. I don't know your world, so you'll forgive me if I feel skeptical about what you say was required." And then there's really only one question to ask. "Are you going to do such a thing again?"

Because it's Daisy's voice now in her memory, echoing a very different conversation, with a heart that rhymes in a strange way.

(you're not, aren't you? wouldn't be looking so pale. wouldn't be standing there like I'm gonna bite you, or worse.)

[lordoftheozarks]

"I'd argue that we are capable of hurting the ones we love far worse than any stranger could." That, too, is a hard lesson to learn. It's one he should have known better than to discount. He won't forget now.

"Again? No. Of course not. I didn't want to do it the first time. I won't ever have to if I stay here."

[abhorrently]

"...then I have no more questions."

She closes her eyes briefly, feeling the pounding of a headache not far behind. She's not going to apologize for cornering him - she's not that sort of a person - but it does offer some relief to hear it. Max will be glad to know it was just a conversation. As promised. Fever doesn't regret knowing him, sleeping with him, being in his company - it's just another piece of knowledge she'll have to bear for the ones she might call friends.

[lordoftheozarks]

Maxly seems to sense her discomfort and phases right through Erik's hands to go settle on her lap again now, instead.

"If more come to you later," he tells her tentatively, unsure exactly where this leaves them but hopeful that it's still friends, "you can ask. I'm not running from my mistakes, Fever. I'm trying to amend what I can and atone for the rest."

[abhorrently]

Her response is half said to herself not him.

"What does that even mean? What does it mean when you can't fix the problem?"

With her eyes closed, she pats the spirit, and - yes, there it is, something of a small wince twitching on her features. When she opens her eyes again, she speaks more clearly.

"...might I have a glass of water?"

[lordoftheozarks]

From the way she says it, it seems to be a rhetorical question or something she's asked herself too many times before. So he doesn't answer it right away.

"Of course. Wait there, I'll get some."

He brings a glass back to her and looks her right in the eyes as he passes it over. "It means, Fever, that every day I will have to prove to everyone over and over that I am not the same man I was. The burden will always be on me to show my best self to the world."

[abhorrently]

"That sounds utterly exhausting."

She doesn't hold his gaze for long at all. Ostensibly, this is to fish out a small box from one of her pockets, flicking it open for the medicine inside. Swallowing it with the water, she's glad for the excuse to look elsewhere.

[lordoftheozarks]

"It is." Utterly. But, that's the point he supposes. His punishment is that he will always have to work for this.

"What is that medicine for? If I may ask?"

[abhorrently]

"I get headaches nigh daily. I can usually tell when they're going to come, and this will stop it from becoming something that splits my head open, and instead be something manageable, if not erase it entirely."

Life-changing, really. It's incredible to be without pain, to not just have to accept it as part and parcel of existence.

[lordoftheozarks]

"I'm sorry you have to suffer so. It must be such a burden to bear that daily. Is that medicine something you had in your home world or did you acquire it here?"

[abhorrently]

"Here. Sally makes it - I didn't really have time to seek such things out, before. They were just something to live with."

She shrugs - there's no bitterness in it. Only the fact that there was pain, and now there doesn't have to be. This isn't the sort she appreciates.

"I keep waiting for them to stop working or something else to happen, but no, she's sorted it."

[lordoftheozarks]

"That's an awful burden to live with," he remarks, more a statement of fact than a sympathetic overture.

"What else could happen?"

[abhorrently]

"Don't know. The headache to bounce back twice as hard or something."

She knows it's a foolish concern, but it's been there. If they started ever getting worse...

"Can some people just have this happen forever? Or does it usually heal?"

He's the immortal, surely he knows something? This is her logic, full of as many holes as a lace shawl.