listen to the wind blow / watch the sun rise / run in the shadows / damn your love, damn your lies
1st July, 1891 — The Forbidden Forest

He hadn’t been back at the caverns as often as he had used to, not in the last year. Less interested than ever in spending time with his own kind, he had kept to more human haunts, occupied himself with other things. He didn’t need his friends here; he could do just as well without them. But then there was Monty – and since the argument about turning him, things had not been quite natural there either, and now Ishmael had moments where he felt as trapped in London as he did here.

So he had just stopped by the caverns to stash a few things out of the way. And perhaps whilst rummaging through an old chest of his magically-stored things Ishmael had thumbed over some old counterfeit notes now being used as wrapping and been forcibly propelled back to some of his earliest nights of this lifetime. But just because he could think about it now, impassively, did not mean he wanted to forgive Galina for lying about who she was to him.

Instead he had wandered aimlessly through the forest, found somewhere else to linger alone. A ridge up above the caverns, the slope jutting out above most of the surrounding canopy. Ishmael wasn’t sure how long he had been sitting here, or how much time he had left before the sun rose and forced him back down into the shade, but the distant glow of Hogsmeade at night had faded out some time ago and the first streaks of milky morning light were creeping into the sky.

And there were noiseless footsteps coming up beside him, and he hadn’t yet brought himself to move. “Still here, then,” Ishmael said curtly, like he was surprised. He wasn’t, of course: he had never thought Galina was someone to run from things. Never mind her stint imprisoned, never mind how little there must be for her here – she had always seemed the sort to stand her ground whether or not she was wanted, and stick around regardless.

But not always, apparently. Sometimes she ran.

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Galina

  

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Minus the year in prison, this had been the lonliest of Galina's life, and perhaps even prison did not actually count. Mari had still not returned and Ishmael had been distant, even Azazel had vanished after her return. But Galina did not mind the solitude. It surprised her at first, that she could enjoy this quiet, that she could cling so tenaciously to a hope that had fizzled at the first realization, but as she walked the caverns she did not mind. She could come and go and not worry about what to say or how to act - for perhaps the first time in her life. That freedom, well it felt safe.

She spent many nights wandering away from the caverns, and the days sitting near the edge with her sewing. She had made several fashionable gowns lately and an idea had been nudging the back of her mind. But of course, she had no links to the outside world so linger it would do. Perhaps she would venture to the nearest muggle village and offer her skills mending, she had done it before, she could do it again. But that was just something to muse on.

As Galina returned from her nightly wanderings, her feet soft on the leaves that decomposed on the forest floor, she heard a voice and stilled. "Did you expect anything less?" Galina asked calmly, tilting her head up to look at the vampire above. But then perhaps he did, something twisted in it, but she ignored it. Calm and collected, she must always be calm and collected. Damn the solitude had been nice, already she could feel the bounds of courtly propriety tugging at her like corset strings about her chest.

  

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an amazing bee work of art

He was torn, already, just at seeing her: to spring up and slip away at once, and avoid thinking about her and everything now attached to her for another day or week or month or year; or to stay this time and force something honest out of her mouth, needle her until he felt better?

She had said five words and he already felt worse – a pang of anger twisting in his gut – at how collected she was, cool and unruffled as she always had been. And the thing was, Ishmael strived for that, to be that person, to be unaffected by it all... but she had been there then, had changed the entire course of his existence, shaped it, had seen him at the start, had been here all this time since and never once said a word.

And he’d been a fool for not putting it together, maybe.

“Oh, I don’t expect anything,” Ishmael said loosely, letting his eyes settle on her as if in utter nonchalance. But he couldn’t resist adding another remark to that truth, a little mordant comment – she could appreciate where he was coming from like no other, the way she’d promised to return and left him behind. “I learnt that lesson early.”

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Despite the affected nonchalance Galina could still feel the sting. She supposed he had the right to say he expected nothing. She had been inconsistent from the start, acting selfishly as she always had. Rather than face it honestly she had masked it under words such as pragmatism. No one, she was sure, could loath that streak of selfishness more than herself. She had done so many things over her long life simply for her own survival, including leaving Ishmael behind.

Perhaps it was because of the direction her thoughts had taken but she found herself looking up to meet his eyes at his last quip and saying, "A fact I truly regret." That he had learned to expect nothing from his maker - from her, that he had learned she was duplicitous and selfish. Oh yes, she regretted it all.

  

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an amazing bee work of art

The thing was, Galina was usually better in a debate. She could keep a cool head; she could hold an intelligent discussion; she had a clever, logical counter. That was why he liked her company.

But this was throwing him off. She wasn’t fighting back, just fucking agreeing with him? If she regretted it, why had she never said as much in all this time? If she wanted to wallow in self-pity about it, or make amends, why wait for him (and Azazel’s characteristic subtlety, he thought with a snort) to force it out of her?

Had she just lived here feeling that guilty?

Ishmael hadn’t decided whether to accept that apology or not – if showing regret counted for one – and so said nothing about it. Instead, carefully, coolly: “Why did you do it, then?” There were so many questions he needed her to answer for him, too much he didn’t remember, and he didn’t care which she addressed first, as long as she gave him something more than the self-flagellation of regret. (Why she had left him; why she had been there in the first place; why she had turned him at all.)

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If this had been another life of her's Galina might have used his question to answer only what she felt comfortable with. But Ishmael deserved so much more than that. He deserved the whole truth, he always had, from the moment of her first mistake with him through all the others. So instead, she met his gaze keeping her tone even. "That could be any of a dozen different questions."

A breeze rustled the leaves around them and sent loose tendrils of her golden hair dancing around her shoulders. She tilted her gaze up to the sky, the gray of predawn. They're last few precious moments outside. She closed her eyes letting the breeze brush her cheeks as she fortified herself for this conversation. It was time. It was long past time.

"Which do you truly wish to know, Ishmael?" Her voice was quieter as she opened her eyes and met his gaze once more.

  

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an amazing bee work of art

Hell, she was going to make him beg for it, little truth by little truth – Ishmael scoffed and looked away, as if he were reconsidering, as if he had decided he wouldn’t ask anything at all.

Galina had turned him and she had immediately left him, but somehow she knew him too well in spite of that: of course she knew he had to ask her, knew he couldn’t let this lie.

He looked back at her – Galina’s gaze had gone briefly to the sky. It was lightening steadily, day creeping in around them. They didn’t have all the time in the world to wait here. Ishmael watched her face closely and let out a quiet breath, not for the sake of breathing, but to expel the last of his resentment to make room for a flash of honesty. “I want to know everything. All of it,” he said softly. “Why were you there in the first place? Why... did you attack me? You didn’t – it wasn’t – it wasn’t an accident, was it? You meant to turn me?” Because he knew just how easy it was to keep drinking and drinking and kill someone before you knew it, but the vampire in New York had – Galina had – had self-control enough to stop. Caring enough to feed him back. But he couldn’t work out why. Why turn him, a stranger out of nowhere? Why turn him and then flee?

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For a moment Galina thought Ishmael would stop talking again, turn from the conversation and step away again. But he didn't. Instead he let out a quiet breath and looked at her. His words.... each one was like a weight, something buried that she did not want to face again, but she would. She started with his last question, her voice quiet in the stillness of the clearing. "You were not an accident. I meant to turn you." At least not precisely how he meant it. But there was much more to it than that. Galina sighed, she had determined she'd tell Ishmael so she would.

"I was still young at the time - foolish. I had just started to travel with Mari and I missed my old life." The old life that she had never told anyone about - not even Mari. "I..." This part was the hardest for her, but she forced herself to continue, "There had been someone waiting for me, back home." Her words softened in memory and she found her next words almost as quiet as a whisper, "We loved each other." She'd never admitted it out loud to anyone. "I thought," Galina forced her voice to even, not to waver, "I thought you were him." It had been foolish, her emotions and her instincts had been wild and young. "By the time I realized you were not it was too late." Her face was unguarded, the sadness clear on her face, there was no posturing or pretense, only raw truth. "There was a riot that night - Mari had incited it. I always meant to come back, but ... " Galina spread her hands out before her in a gesture of surrender. "Mari was unpredictable. By the time we stopped running it was too late." And Galina had never been able to tell Mari - worried about the harm she might bring to Ishmael. "I thought you would be safer without me then with me." Her voice was soft, full of recrimination.

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   Ishmael

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an amazing bee work of art

Young and foolish, she said.

Well, that made two of them. All this time not knowing... and Ishmael had been free to weave his own story about that night, had never let himself be the victim, but rather the hero – as if he had been special, somehow, to survive the attack. Lucky to have been picked. Able to make more of this tragedy than anyone else would have; able to see the opportunity in disaster, to reinvent himself, create a chance at something new.

But it had never been anything to do with him. The end of his life had never been a blessing or a tragedy. A tragedy for Galina, he supposed – he could feel the ache in her words as she spoke – for she had been desperate to be reunited with her lost love, searching for a reason to exist or someone to save. But to the universe, he had been, what? A trick of the light. A comic touch of Fortune.

“Not an accident, then,” Ishmael echoed, face creased pensively, like he was pleased or relieved or amused by this, that she had never been trying to kill him. “Oh no, I was much better than that,” he said slowly, and barked out a laugh. “I was a mistake.” She had mistaken him for someone else, someone she had actually cared about, and that was why he was here now. He was going to live eternally for that.

He laughed again, shaking his head, and found he couldn’t stop.

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Galina almost felt it in her bones, that look on his face heralded it, and there it was between them. The truth. The thing she could not say. The one truth she had been unable to utter laid bared as he laughed. It was a laugh with a tone she knew. The tone of someone who quite simply didn't know what else to do. Memories surged forward but she forced them back as she always did. It was nothing more than a life she had once lived, one of the dozens she had created for herself. That it ought to have been her only one, that the memories had seared into her mind in the way they did when you only had one life, was something she didn't wish to dwell on. It had never done to live in self pity and she wasn't about to start now.

It was hard to say something when he laughed like that. But Galina stood as calmly as she could. Her face the mask of unreability she had learned in that life that she wished stood out less amongst the ones that had followed. It was the placcid look of a well trained courtier. Like it or not that life was the core of her, had formed the basic essense of who she was - selfish, pragmatic, ambitious. Yet it also held a hint of the dreamer she had never been able to tamp out. That hint was what had gotten her into that mess before, it was her one weakness. Looking up into his face it was all too easy to see the reason there, to see her foolishness, her hope, ... her love.

So she did what she had done in the days that had made her and allowed her training to stay with her, to wait out his laughter and give him a chance to recover and react as he would inevitably do.

  

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an amazing bee work of art

There she was again, the Galina he knew. Cool and patient, who stayed and waited, forever blank as marble. You could crack skulls against the strength of her resolve; you could collide with her and bleed out before her and she would still be there in the end, unmoved. Looking on, just the same, like some far-removed deity who had seen more than mere centuries.

Ishmael didn’t know how long he laughed for, but she was still quiet when he surrendered to the silence again. He pulled himself up straight, swallowed, stared at her for a while longer, trying to see the last hundred years from her perspective, trying to fish for a glimmer of gold somewhere in the muddy waters of this revelation.

“So I look just like him, hm?” Ishmael said, the smile spreading onto his face out of nowhere, smile becoming a smirk – it was much sooner than he’d expected to find himself smirking gleefully again after finding out that, but he would take what he could get to feel better right now. Her lost love. He raised his eyebrows to spell out the rest, almost sorry for making light of her enduring pain. But not quite. So you’re definitely attracted to me.

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   Reuben Crouch

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In the almost one hundred and fifty years that had passed Galina had never mentioned him to anyone, even before the transformation. It had been too dangerous. They had had a plan. But if even one soul knew..... and then her every last dream she had allowed herself to dream (the only time she had allowed herself to dream) died. It had turned to burned with her fevers, turned to ash with her blood, and the last particles had floated away like dust in the wind with the ages. Galina had buried that life, had turned her face from it, and yet here it was facing her.

Facing her and ...smirking at her. It stung. The first person to know the truth and he was smirking. But it wasn't the manic laughter or the sullen silence. So Galina replied with the grace of someone entirely unruffled, "Uncannily so."

  

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an amazing bee work of art

Had he ever noticed it? Ishmael wondered. Galina kept herself to herself, had never said anything before – but maybe once or twice he had caught a look in her eye.

“I’m sorry,” Ishmael said, suddenly falling back to solemnness: in sympathy, not self-pity, this time. “Sorry I wasn’t him.” He’d been an unforeseen consequence, a side effect. Perhaps he ought to be glad she had ever cared about him at all – because irrespective of their past, there was some fondness between them now, wasn’t there? A little camaraderie?

“But what then?” he asked quietly, stepping closer and tentatively putting a hand to her arm. “You never found him, after?” She’d fled from Ishmael, and then? And if they had been planning to meet – if she had been planning to find her love, turn him, spend eternity with him... Ishmael swallowed. He didn’t think she would sound so sorrowful now if it had worked out how she’d wanted.

(After the argument with Monty about whether or not to turn him, well – Ishmael had begun to wonder what he wanted, after all.)

And maybe this wasn’t the moment to pry, and he was still digesting the truth of his own creation and Galina wasn’t prepared to say anything more about the man from her past, things she had kept to herself for so long... But if she couldn’t tell him, who could she tell? Their lives were long and often lonely, and what need was there, now, for more secrets between them?

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He was sorry? Galina's eyes widened ever so slightly in surprise as he went on. She had carried the guilt of ruining Ishmael's life since the day she had turned him, had been sorry for all the pain and ruin she had brought him - and he was sorry he hadn't been the right man? For once Galina had no idea how to reply to that. She had been sorry too, at first, but then reality sunk in and she had simply be sorry for how very very foolish she had been, how very much damage she had caused.

The other vampire moved toward her, another surprise given his anger since he had found out. But it was a tough truth he had asked her, one no one had ever considered of her. But she owed him the truth, besides no one was left alive to be harmed by the truth other than Ishmael and Galina. His hand on her arm bolstered her slightly and Galina found herself shaking her head. "No." She had never even tried. "He ...." She started, her eyes looking past Ishmael into the trees not seeing them but seeing her past in a series of memories.

"He would never have been in the colonies to begin with. His duties would never have allowed it. And I would never have been able to return home." not after how she had left it. It had been much to complicated. Her voice was even as she relayed this information but there was the slightest pause when she had turned to herself.

Then she recalled being in jail, how Skeeter had figured out who she was and she realized that Ishmael still didn't know. She resolved then and there that she would tell him. Catherine had been dead for decades now and could do no harm to her, indeed no one back home would ever remember her as more than a nightmare told to children.

  

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an amazing bee work of art

His apology had caught her off guard, he thought. That almost made him grin, purely to think that he had surprised her about anything. It felt like an accomplishment, somehow.

But Ishmael quieted and watched her intently as she grappled with his question. No: she had still lost him, once and for all. She had been a fool for trying. He didn’t know the what the man’s duties had been – didn’t know a single thing about the man she’d loved – didn’t even know exactly where she called home (he had some vague context, and some guesses), but it meant enough that she still called it that, after all this time. “No going back, is there?” Ishmael agreed faintly, in wry kind of comfort. She was not the only one who’d had to run from her mortal life; although Ishmael had faded more easily than most out of his, she had seen proof of that when she’d turned him. And for immortality, there was an odd impermanence about the kind of existence they both had now. For a predatory species, they often felt like the pursued – there was always something to flee.

“But there’s no real harm in looking back once in a while, is there?” He offered, more quietly still. It hurt, in some ways – this conversation about his past had been hard enough already – but a little reminiscing had to be better than relinquishing the memories entirely.

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"No." She agreed with a breathe almost a laugh as the edges of her lips tilted up ever so slightly. It was a truth their kind knew well enough. They faded from their old lives, blended into the shadows of the world around them. A shadow couldn't go back, a faded memory remained just that - a memory.

Unlike Ishmael she knew the harm in looking back, the daggers and edges of the world she had lived in. The tangled webs hidden among the flowers. That life had toughened her, despite the soft hands, the gentle glances, there had been horror there too. Her soften hands was weak as the memory she was now. But those were the wounds that could ache like a once broken bone in a coming storm. They were only the memory of the hurt not the pain itself. "No." The word was a whisper between them, but it the truth, however, ever much she disliked it.

She straightened ever so slightly and returned her eyes to his own. "Would you like to know?" She had never even told Mari, she had hidden this part of herself as far inside herself as she could, but Ishmael.... he wasn't a shadow in this story and he deserved to know.

  

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an amazing bee work of art