The Cost of Peace

[Soran Nightblade]

Vlad's frown deepened, looking more like a snarl thanks to his augmented appearance. "You tell me," he said, a hint of sourness entering his carefully managed tone. "The last we discussed it, you remembered nothing, a complete blank. Your reactions earlier imply you know more. I may be every bit the monster you see with that contraption, but I am not a psychic," he said flatly.

[Emora Deen]

Tenele glanced to him. "I don't really remember," Tenele told him gently, wishing she had just kept her mouth shut. "I remember going after the pendant. I was almost to the docks and I couldn't see straight. I felt light headed. The next thing I know I'm on the ground looking up at the stars. Then, it goes dark as a man picks me up. I remember him..." She turned away from him, putting her hadn to her head as she clenched her eyes. She was trying so hard to remember the truth, and not what Verin had shown her. "He was undressing me." Now she was speaking as if she were thinking outloud, consentrating hard. "Damn it..." she muttered when her memory fizzled into that blackness again.

Tenele turned back to him. She looked at him despite his gruesome appearance. "You know me Vlad," Tenele pleaded with him. "You know I'd never give myself to any man but you. If I'm pregnant then he must have figured out a way around it..." But, how could you figure out a way around protection.

[Soran Nightblade]

Vlad just looked at her, his expression too blank to mean anything. "Why is that not the story you gave me in the first place?" he asked her. "Why lie then, and speak honestly now?"

[Emora Deen]

"Because then I was worried about your control. I was worried if I told you what he had been doing you would go off half-cocked and get yourself killed!" Tenele told him feircely. "I just ended up pissing you off more, and by that point if I had told you the truth you really would have gone mad."

[Soran Nightblade]

Vlad shook his head, restraining his frustration. "I didn't need a lie, Tenele, much less one so insultingly obvious. I'm not so delicate that you need to protect me from the truth, especially if you're the one who's been hurt." He was talking about more than the pregnancy now, whether she knew it or not.

[Emora Deen]

"What ever happened, whatever made me so out of it. I couldn't think straight. I just kept thinking that I didn't want you to get hurt. And then before long one lie turned into an even worst one, and then a worst one... and by the end of it, I didn't know what I was trying to cover up. I'm sorry I lied to you Vlad... It was stupid of me. I just didn't want him to kill you." She stepped away, looking further down the path.

She wanted to talk about this. She wanted it out in the open so it wouldn't be a burden of dead weight in the center of the room. But, even talking about it seemed impossible. She couldn't wrap her mind around the situation, or the fact that there was something growing inside her. Something probably very evil. Something she didn't want there. No, she wanted a child, but not Verin's. She wanted Vlad's, and even that was impossible and wishful thinking. She stood next to him with enough slack in the chain that she could wrap both her arms around her abdomen.

Even after saying such things she could feel that the static was still there. Was he lying to her now? Did he believe her?

Why should he? She thought she heard Verin's voice whisper. You've lied to him before. You told him you had burned Lothos's body, and you hadn't. One of the most important things to him at that moment and you lied. When he was near his limits he asked you to run from him, and you promised you would, but you lied then. What reason does he have to believe you.

[Soran Nightblade]

Vlad looked away from her uneasily. He didn't believe her. It was hard to admit it, but he really didn't. He believed, in his gut, that she'd taken Verin in willingly. Not that it was a fair fight; Verin was a seductive, overpowering force, much too strong for her to be expected to resist. He had barely resisted the god's call himself, had almost been ready to serve him without question. So she'd made a mistake, and she'd lied about it. She was still lying about it. She certainly hadn't wished for Verin's spawn inside her, so that put her in the position of victim here, didn't it? How could he be angry with her, when she was paying for that night like this? He simply couldn't.

But he could still resent it, resent that he wasn't allowed to be hurt by another person's seed in the woman he loved. If he couldn't hate her, then he could only resent the fact itself. The feeling was compounded by the fact that Verin's victory over her served as a pointed illustration of Vlad's relative impotence where offspring were concerned. And a child was what she wanted...he knew now, something he would not be able to give her, just one bullet point on the list of things he'd seen in the dream Verin had shown her that were impossible if she was with him.

He laughed then, low and humorless. "You are always so bent on preserving my feelings," he said, his voice aching with displeasure. "You should know by now that it's not within my nature or my pride to be protected, particularly by you. It's not my habit to play to caution at all. You infuriate me. For all my power, your independent tactics render me useless. What do you hope to gain from this relationship, if you won't seek my protection? I can't play the damsel for you, nor can I play human." He looked at her seriously.

[Emora Deen]

Tenele gritted her teeth, but did not look at him as he spoke. His words actually cut. She let him speak, and when he was quite finished she remained quiet a moment longer. "I infuriate you?" she muttered, dropping her arms at her sides. "Is that all you think I wanted out of this relationship? A protector? And if so I'm frightened to know what you intended to get out of it. I never expected you to be a damsel or human. I knew quite well what you were going into this. So what if I try to protect you, that's what we do for people we love. Even if they don't need it. Even if they are the strongest, the fastest... We try to protect them nevertheless. I infuriate you?! The only reason I try so hard to hold my own is because I am human. I will not be a burden on you, I refuse to be. I do not want to scream for help every time a problem arrises. I want to at least try to hold my own. I know my limits. Have I not called to you when I've reached them? Of course, that must be me just calling upon the only factor I want out of this relationship. A bodyguard."

She looked back at his monsterous form, her jaw clenched in a tight line. She was angry with him. He didn't believe her. More importantly, he was degrading her feelings for him. She wanted to slap him, to scream at him. What good would that do?

[Soran Nightblade]

Vlad narrowed his eyes. For all he'd allowed to leak out, he wouldn't bring himself to ask her what she DID want, or how she possibly expected to find it with him, because he already knew. He fought the temptation to yell at her any further, unsure what would come out of his mouth. "Are you well enough to walk?" he asked her coolly, trying to keep his mind on their predicament and not on the fact that, from his perspective, she'd just forsworn his help. His ego could play catch-up later.

He turned away from her as if to start walking, shielding the raw look that was forming on his face.

[Emora Deen]

Tenele followed along close, not really having much choice. Because of the odd hand the chain was placed on, she walked a little behind him with her hand out to keep from having to walk right on top of him to walk next to him. Not that she wanted to at this moment anyway. She was angry with him, and hurt.

Had he not expected there relationship to go anywhere? To always stay physical? Sure there was love there, or.... there had been. Her mind brought back the memory of what had occured only a few hours ago. The sweetness of that moment, and the love she'd felt. And now, it looked like something in the distant past. She told Vlad she loved him many times, but Vlad always seemed to find it so difficult to tell her. How did he even truely feel?

Not a whole lot, since he couldn't believe her when she said she'd never sleep with any man but him. Did he actually think that lowly of her? She wanted to kick him in the butt right then and there. She wanted to hate him, because she figured that would make the ache in her heart go away. But, she couldn't hate him. Despite what he might have felt towards her, Tenele had fallen deeply and almost irrationally in love with him.

She wanted to mend things with him. But, she knew that nothing could mend this. She was carrying another man's child. An enemies child. And he didn't beleive even slightly the possibility that Verin had found a way to force himself on her. He excepted hole-heartedly that she had welcomed him into her bed with open arms while the man she loved was downstairs in trouble? Damn the glasses, she couldn't wipe her tears. "They can come off now Verin. I see him for what he really is," she whispered, knowing the God could hear her. And she meant it too, in more ways than one.

[Soran Nightblade]

Verin wasn't the only one who heard. Vlad's ears were too keen to miss the girl's whisper. He wheeled on her, inevitably colliding with her in the process, and just stared at her. GO AHEAD. TAKE THEM OFF, a laughing voice boomed inside his skull. The vampire reached out slowly and touched the side of her glasses. He took the corner between his thumb and forefinger and lifted them away from her face, without taking his eyes off hers. His appearance returned to normal in front of her, and he was staring at her through bright red eyes set in a pale, handsome face. He could see the tears streaking across her cheeks, and the anger in her eyes.

There was an awkward silence.

[Emora Deen]

She was startled when he whirled on her, half expecting him to hit her. Why wouldn't she think that? He had to be beyond angry, and especially at her. Tenele's eyes did not leave his until she could tolerate it no longer. If she continued to stare at him she'd end up wanting to forgive him. She couldn't not yet. She averted her eyes from him still, keeping her fists clenched at her sides. She wouldn't even thank him for removing the glasses. Her jaw had clenched itself so tight it hurt.

She wanted to scream at him for not believing that she would be with only him. She wanted to call him a bastard for being such a cruel monster. Instead, she excepted that he was that and gave a heavy sigh. "We should keep moving," the Queen's Maiden said hollowly, moving to step around Vlad and take the lead. Maybe he should put the glasses on and look at himself, she thought bitterly.

[Soran Nightblade]

Vlad crushed the glasses like so much paper in his hand as he followed her movement against the chain. She hadn't taken back what she'd muttered to Verin, so he knew that she meant it. She'd accepted what Verin wanted her to think of him every bit as easily as Vlad had. The god's plan was working.

As the vampire walked with her down an endless sequence of identical passageways, he couldn't think of a single thing to say that could remedy the situation. He couldn't promise to believe her, because he didn't. He simply couldn't. But he couldn't stand letting her go on like this. The anger he could deal with, as he was quite accustomed to such responses from people. And as he could guess what she'd seen of him through the glasses, he had anticipated her reaction even before their exchange. The tears, however, he found difficult to endure. He was so unaccustomed to dealing with them that it took real concentration to decide what to do about it. What would help?

He tried to think of her situation independently of their bond, to take himself out of the equation. That made things easier. "Atul is a good man. There's no proof the child will share his father's nature," he said out loud eventually. "Perhaps it will even work out for the best." The logic may not have necessarily been the most appropriate or sensitive approach at the moment, in fact it almost certainly wasn't, but it was the way his mind worked: see a problem, try to fix it. He was trying.

[Emora Deen]

Tenele glanced over her shoulder and turned her face away from him as she stepped over a rather large crack in the ground. "Do you even know what happens to the mothers of Verin's children, Vlad?" she asked him, her voice very much unlike Tenele's usual sweet tone. "They die in child birth. Its too much of a strain on there mortal bodies to birth a child of a god." She kept walking for a second longer before she paused. "So it makes no difference whether he's a good man or not if I'm not there to see him become so."

[Soran Nightblade]

Vlad stopped walking again, as if a rock had just fallen from the sky and hit him. He hadn't known that. He hadn't known anything about that. The image of Verin's spawn destroying her fragile human body was suddenly too clear and immense in his mind to turn off. No, not her. Verin couldn't take her, no matter what else he thought he could control. Vlad wouldn't sit and watch him destroy her just to get at him.

"That won't happen," he said to her, sounding like he'd just been strangled. "I won't let it happen," he swore.