Well, if they were going to be equals somehow after this particular revelation, it was better that they were both forced to be vulnerable, wasn’t it? Galina knew a little about where he’d come from, and who he had been: she knew too much, in short, enough to see past the lies he so often liked to tell instead.

So he linked his arm with hers where he’d been holding it, deciding they ought to walk as they talked, to avoid the sunlight creeping in or to feel a little less – exposed. That didn’t mean he stopped watching her, though: he was still peering closely.

“You know me,” Ishmael said with another twist of a grin; and the truth was she did, as well as anyone did in this lifetime. “Of course I want to know. Everything.” Anything she could bear to tell him.

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Ishmael's arm looped into her's and they began to walk. A memory floated to mind, so close to the surface with the talk of her past. An airy corridor with windows open, another man's arm companionably threaded through her own, the whisper of voices behind them, the eyes that gazed down at her so very familiar to the man who walked beside her now. Both men so very curious, but in different ways.

"Of course." There was half a laugh in concession in her voice. She did know him. Perhaps not as she had those in her first life, but it was rare to find someone in this life who told all the secrets behind them. But she did know who he was, his personality, his curiosity.

Rather than looking at Ishmael she looked out at the dim forest in front of them. The dark shadows that protected them. Her skirts rustled the leaves on the forest floor as they walked. She lost herself in the memory, an old phrase rising to her mind, bringing with it memories of a long forgotten nanny. Once upon a time.... Instead Galina started, "I was born the daughter of a count, a respected admiral." Then she told him of her youth, of the fields of flowers, of her brother, of her cousin's arrival, her arrival at the court of Empress Elizabeth. But here her voice stilled. She had never once told anyone of the nature of her relationship with the Prince. It had been known well enough that she had never needed to. Now she swallowed, reminding herself they were all dead now, none of them could hurt her now. But how would Ishmael look at her when he knew the truth? Knew her for what she was? She remembered the pain in his eyes when he'd found out she was his maker, the silence of three months. But to lose the respect?

Internally Galina squared her shoulders. She had known what she was, the whole court had known, and yet she had still had her pride. "My mother knew there would be favor for the ladies who dallied with the prince." Galina started again, painting the scene again. The prince, the arrival of young Sophia soon to be Catherine, her friendship with the young princess and her appointment and friendship with the princess's ladies in waiting, the scholar who had come from the desert lands south of Russia as an envoy for his land. Her voice grew quiet as she mentioned him, her eyes focused on the past rather than the path they made through the forest. Then she admitted the words she had never thought she would, "He planned to take me back with him." If they had been caught.... "It was folly, foolish to dream, too dangerous." Galina admitted, her voice filled with the sorrow of too many lifetimes.

"Then smallpox arrived. The empress had Catherine and Peter moved, but those of us in the court who were ill were left behind." Galina remembered the anguish in Catherine's gaze when she had been denied the chance to say goodbye. "My maker gave me a chance to live or to die." Galina's voice was quiet as she thought of him. He had hidden so long among them, no one had ever known. Galina took a deep breath. "I always intended to give any one I turned the same choice." Galina admitted, her voice filled with self depreciation. "I am sorry I took that from you, Ishmael." Only then did Galina dare to turn and look at the other vampire, to see the condemnation or disinterest in his eyes.

Around them the shadows had lightened the dark gloom to a murky dimness, she knew she had talked to quite some time. Now she would once again await her punishment.

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   Ishmael

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an amazing bee work of art

Anything she could bear to tell him, he had thought: but this was a great deal more than he had expected of her. This was her life, her human existence in its entirety, the part of their past most vampires shed entirely at one point or another. (Did Azazel ever remember that she had once been a young caged girl, thirsting for adventure, sneaking out of her family’s home? Or did she always think of herself as a vampire first, a murderess, a free creature now?)

But had any of them changed as much as Ishmael thought they had? Ishmael could trace the same him through it all, in spite of the ever-changing stories he told: he had always been a wanderer, a liar, a thief: happy to have nothing as long as it meant he could leave everything behind. Born with nothing; died with nothing; left every place he visited with nothing except the memories and the motto never stay.

For a while, though, he had lost himself in Galina’s past, so well-told it had to be true. Funny, Ishmael considered, how they thought themselves equals now – friends, to some extent. Part of the same world. If they had crossed paths as humans, how different things would be. Ishmael’s mind was still faraway when Galina turned her eyes on him, and Ishmael’s gut churned at the question of it, still unsure of how he felt, whether there was anger or regret or simply nothing left to feel at all.

“Don’t be,” Ishmael said finally, and though he had now untangled his arm from hers, he felt closer to her than he ever had. And he smiled again, in spite of it all. “I think I probably would have chosen it anyway –” he confessed, though his tone was nonchalant, a glimmer of amusement in his face. “I was no son of a count. I hadn’t had my fill of life.”

Strange that they would have made that same choice, maybe, but Ishmael still couldn’t quite put his finger on why Galina had ever chosen this.

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It was a balm to hear those words, even the light amusement in his tone. She had not realized how deep and heavy the burden had been, that it had gone beyond her abandonment of him to even this. The barest of promises she had once made herself that had been lost in a wild fit of emotions that she had not been strong enough to control. In those days she had thought herself in control, thought she understood the new being that she was, but looking back she knew how foolish she had been, how little control she had actually had, how much she hadn't actually known anything. And now Ishmael forgave her for her sins, or at least didn't hate her for them.

Indeed, Ishmael didn't even seemed concerned by her past. By the kept nature of her position at court, or by any of it.

"It's strange," Galina started thoughtfully, "How many would agree to the promise of eternity at the price of their current lives." Even she had not thought she would, until faced with it. But then again, it was that or meet her maker, if he were real that is. Otherwise it was simply the bleak darkness of nonexistence.

  

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Ishmael hadn’t even been sure himself – not until right now, until they were in the moment – what would become of he and Galina, knowing the truth. It might have widened the rift between them. They were from very different histories. She had changed the course of his existence in a way no one else could claim. And he thought – well, he was grateful for her.

He was glad, he decided, to have her around. She might have been lying to him for some years, but it was still better to know, and to be here now, rather than never finding her, and never knowing.

“Isn’t it?” Ishmael agreed, shaking his head a little at the thought. “But what if,” Ishmael asked abruptly, his thoughts finding a different vein, one he had been pondering alone for months enough without an answer. He trusted her opinion, had no one who would understand his dilemma better. “What if someone asked you for it? To turn them, make them like us. Do you think you would do it for them now?” Eternity at the price of their current lives, Galina had phrased it. He wasn’t... under threat of smallpox or at war – just aging, just the threat of being alone – but Ishmael wasn’t convinced Monty understood the price of what he was asking Ishmael to take from him.

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If someone asked? Her eyes met his gaze, wondering who had asked, assessing him, remembering her visit to London years ago, of the smell of humans in his rooms. It was none of her business of course, she had withheld enough secrets from him that he deserved the same curtsey.

They walked in silence, the only companion the rustling leaves, as she thought about her answer. Clearly when she had been younger she would have changed someone not only if they had asked, or if she had asked, or if neither had. The proof of that statement strode along next to her as the world dawned anew. But now? Would she doom anyone to this life? Having walked this path for so long. She had once lived in a palace, a life full of luxury if not a fair share of danger. Now she resided in a cave in the wildnerness, alone, sewing dresses no one would ever see. She had been arrested for a year and was now bound by a breed of creatures even more dangerous than herself. There was no contact with anyone beside Ishmael and occasionally his odious offspring.

But perhaps that was the root of the issue. It was a lonely life, if someone wanted to willingly live it with her.... could she say no?

"I do not know." Galina said softly, her words almost lost in the rustle of the leaves. "When I was younger, yes. Now? I want to think I wouldn't want to doom anyone else to such a life." The word lonliness stood on the tip of her lip but she did not let it slip out. "But faced with it myself, I do not know what my answer would be." She feared it would be the selfish one though.

  

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If Galina didn’t have a straight, sensible answer, he didn’t know who would.

And it was not the most helpful thing to hear, but somehow – even after this long, harrowing conversation – her admission, all the same, was strangely comforting.

“Mmm. I don’t know what to do, either,” Ishmael conceded with an honest sigh, raising his eyebrows briefly as if to say and that’s something I’ve never said before. It was true: he had never been at such a loss for how to proceed. He thought he had been right to have refused him – he was saving Monty a great deal of sorrow and suffering and sparing himself the risk of heartbreak, too.

Except that maybe he would lose Monty sooner than his natural death anyway, if this refusal was enough to have broken something between them. Monty could leave any time he liked; Monty was already barely speaking to him. It felt as though, one way or another, what they had was doomed.

(People were so much work. Maybe he should just give up and try being alone for once.)

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So there was someone. Galina's chest tightened for a moment at the realization. But then again Ishmael had adjusted to these magical creatures in a way that Galina had never felt comfortable doing, she much preferred the disguise of a normal human's ignorance - as quick as they were to dismiss what they could not explain. She had no reason to humor any ill feelings toward this someone if they kept Ishmael from the lonliness that had become her existence.

A smile as soft as the flap of a butterfly's wings crossed Galina's lips at Ishmael's look. In moments like that he looked precisely like her scholar. The same glint in the eyes and quirk of the lips, a meaning conveyed in a way she could easily read. There had been times in the past, of course, when the two men had shared a look and it had meant different things, but this one she knew. Funny how the memory held on to such things.

"Whatever you do," Galina had softly, "Make sure you know what you want." Perhaps advising him to be able to live with his decision would be more prudent, but it cut too close to the quick. She had borne her own regrets for over a century, she did not wish to see Ishmael walk the same road, plagued with the same misgivings.

  

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an amazing bee work of art