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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]

"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.

[lordoftheozarks]

"I don't think I blame you for having that fear. It must take a lot of energy to endure such a thing day in and day out." He may not have to worry about illness or pain very much in his undead life but he can sympathize with there being an ever-present distraction eating away at her focus.

"I really don't know. I have heard of cases called migraines that can plague a person for all of their life. But, from what I gather, each case is unique. I regret that this is something I cannot use my blood healing to correct for you. I would if it were possible."

[abhorrently]

"What does your blood healing do? And how are you so sure it's impossible?"

She's tried stranger things, and probably will keep doing so in her life. Migraines, though, Sally's mentioned that word before. That might be the word for it.

[lordoftheozarks]

"Any wound my blood touches will be restored. I can go so far as to remove old scars, in fact. But my blood must come into physical contact with the wound. For example, when River's leg was broken, it was necessary to surgically expose the fracture and apply my blood to the bone directly. Do you see? I can't very well crack your skull open, can I?"

[abhorrently]

"You could, don't sell your strength short."

But still, at the mention of old scars, her hand reflexively twitches. He doesn't need to be a mind reader to know that her thoughts fled to the scar on her midsection, the one that healed twisted and haphazard.

[lordoftheozarks]

"I could, but you wouldn't survive it." Which would defeat the purpose.

He notices that twitch, and can very easily guess which scar she's thinking of. Would it be rude to offer? He supposes the worst she can do is turn him away.

"Fever, if there is a scar you would like me to heal, you can ask. It will cost me very little to help you."

[abhorrently]

"It's something I'd need to think on."

She exhales, trying to figure out how to phrase it right.

"I'm...not enamored of all my scars. But they are my scars. And with my memories as scant as they are, I feel reluctant to let go of what's mine. If that makes any sense at all?"

[lordoftheozarks]

"It makes perfect sense. Those marks are clues to who you were. They speak of your past even if you do not know how to translate them. The offer will always stand, but they belong to you and I will respect whatever choice you make."

He lifts his own hand in front of her, immaculate and untouched by blemishes, as they always are. "So many people choose to become like me for vanity's sake. Vampires carry no wrinkles, no scars. If we had them in life, they are wiped away in death-- and with them, all proof we ever lived." His hand goes to rest on his shoulder, fingers stroking the edge of where the scars on his back begin. "It makes me wish I could be proud of the ones I do have."

[abhorrently]

"You survived what brought them upon you. Is that not enough reason to be proud?"

Her voice is soft, but sincere. Somewhere in the conversation she's put her elbows on her knees, chin resting in her hands, leaning forward.

"You lived long enough past it to have them heal. And further still, to make it here."

[lordoftheozarks]

"No," he says flatly. She doesn't know, so he can't fault her for thinking so. It's logical, in theory. Maybe she is right, but he can't stop the way shame burns inside him when he thinks of what those scars represent.

"They didn't heal. That is why they are my shame."

Maxly, noticing Erik's distress, floats to him and burbles softly at his side. Erik reaches down absently to pet the ghost's head or the equivalent of that which is to run his fingers through the ghost's gaseous outline.

"Vampires of my breed are born bloodthirsty beyond all reason. A fledgling could eat an entire village in one sitting and still crave more. That is why it is vitally important that a sire monitor them in their earliest years of undeath, to guide them through that particularly dangerous time. It is rare for any freshly turned vampire to resist the call of blood."

He stops brushing his hand through Maxly's ghost trail and turns his eyes to her. Even so, the look in them is so distant he may as well not actually be seeing her.

"There is something else to know about my kind. We cannot starve to death. If we are not fed, we wither, but we cannot die. Instead, the wounds we sustain do not heal, our bodies deteriorate and yet still the suffering will not conclude in death, only endless torment and madness."

He looks away again. "And if a vampire is left this way for too long, some wounds may never heal at all. To be a vampire blemished with scars is to reveal that you were starved to such lengths. Just by looking, any vampire could tell as much."

[abhorrently]

"...Someone tortured you. Someone hurt you, and kept you from blood, and drove you to the depths."

Cool, calm, as she doesn't move a single inch. She's listening, still as a sculpture might be, only blinking when needed, barely breathing.

"Do you believe you deserved their treatment? Is that why their cruelty is your shame?"