Carlisle Cullen (hellischrome) wrote in _equinox_, @ 2008-06-24 00:29:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | character: carlisle cullen, character: sam uley, location: the woods |
Who: Sam and Carlisle
When: After the werewolves have finished grieving over Seth's death.
Where: Just outside the hospital, then in the forest.
What: Sam and Carlisle declare their undeniable, everlasting love for each other. With fists.
****
While Carlisle usually enjoys his shifts at the hospital, even happily takes others' (people were often so grateful, they didn't even realize when he's worked 72 hours non-stop), the last 12 hours passed with excruciating sluggishness. He had been uncharacteristically tense and distracted, a change that was observed and much-dissected by the staff. Usually, he lingered after his shift was over, devoting time and care to patients if they needed extra attention, but today, as soon his hour was up, he didn't even bother to change out of his scrubs before he was gathering up his bag and bidding the nurses and other doctors a grim and fleeting goodbye.
As soon as he had cleared the hospitals doors and emerged out into the cool evening air, he pulled out his mobile, needing to call Esme to see if there were any updates.
Sam had done his duty to Seth's memory - he had seen him to the grave and mourned for him there - swearing a silent oath to bring to justice the vampires responsible for his demise with every tear shed over the boy's broken body. He had waited the alloted time and been present in the alloted places to show respect to the Clearwater family. But as the week drew to a close, he began to make plans. With the scent of foreign vampire (for they indelibly knew the scent of each Cullen) still strong in his nostrils, he laid a trap for the one who orchestrated it all - Carlisle Cullen.
And it was perfect, wasn't it, that he would neatly remove the head of the family that had so long plagued his people and worried them to the extent that their pack was now larger (and in many ways, more vulnerable) than ever.
Through the screen of lush ferns, he observed Carlisle's tense movements and waited quietly until the cellphone was closed to pounce. He strode through the small parking lot, then, and rounded upon the doctor with his face colourless and his eyes flint.
No new developments. The werewolves were in mourning. Carlisle relaxed just a little, though things were far from ideal---and then he heard him before he saw him, the crush of brush and dead leaves, twigs snapping. He froze. The sour, rustic smell assaulted his senses next, and when he turned to meet the rush of wind creeping up on him, he was confronted with the grief-stricken and very angry presence of Sam Uley.
He couldn't explain the sudden bolt of fear that shot through him, the little voice that was telling him something was very wrong. Still, he pushed it away. "Sam," he said cautiously, softly, in the way he would approach one the loved ones of patients who had just passed on. "I'm so very sorry for what happened to Seth."
"So am I," he said, his voice clipped and mechanical as he moved closer to Carlisle and with no further provocation, brought his fist to bear upon the other man's jaw.
Vampires could move inhumanly fast when they want. When they could anticipate and know. When they were prepared. Carlisle, however, was not. And while a human punch wouldn't so much as tip him off-balance, a werewolf was not, in so many crucial ways, a human.
He found himself half-sprawled across the wide cement path that rolled up to the main hospital entrance, still brightly and obliviously illuminated. He lost his grip on his mobile and watched as it skittered from his pale hand into the thick grass.
He glanced back up at Sam in what he was sure was stunned amazement. And even through the dulling haze of shock, he was quickly putting two and two together. "Sam, this isn't what you think it is."
But Sam was already moving, using the side of the building as a screen to transform into the massive werewolf. His senses deepened and, as he took one long draught of the air, his lips curled over his gleaming teeth and he snarled.
He gave Carlisle a moment to flee - or to engage - as his fathomless gaze was set upon the pale sprawling body before him. It would be good to taste granite.
Carlisle's eyes widened at the transformation--too quick for anyone but a vampire to see manifest in clear detail. The rancid scent flooded the air, the growl so deep and menacing, he could feel it in his bones. And the outdoor lights seemed to catch every facet of those sharp rows of teeth, made to rend flesh, and things that were much harder. He looked into those glowing yellow eyes and knew there would be no attempt at reasoning with an angry werewolf now.
He could run back into the hospital, but something told him that he'd only be putting innocent lives at risk in the face of a creature who moved and operated mostly on instinct. The dark curtain of forest loomed behind him. He shot off for the dense cover of trees in a blur of movement.
It was better than he could have hoped. Though a vampire was fast, he was blessed with a similar speed that belied his great size. As long as Carlisle kept the bearing toward his own property, Sam hung back at his heels and ran easily. However, if the vampire deigned to veer off of the course, he would snap and careen, making it all too clear that he was herding his subject and there was a designated place for the battle that was coming up.
Branches were flattened against the sides of trees, leaves kicked up and left to circle aimlessly in the air before settling back down again. The sheer speed at which Carlisle moved made his medical bag whip across his hip repeatedly, and when it tangled within some of the underbrush, he snapped the canvass belt with his hands and freed himself of it.
At first, he raced through the forest towards home thoughtlessly, as if the very place itself spelt protection and safety--but then, a second, insidious doubt sunk in. There was no treaty anymore, as far as Sam was concerned, or he wouldn't have been at the hospital. He wouldn't be doing this now. Going home meant bringing this danger with him.
A kind of vital despair lanced through him as he jumped a low, thick branch and swung back in the direction he had fled. He was confronted with the startling array of the thick plume of summer, the creeping symphony of insects, and the heightened edge of the hunt.
"We didn't kill Seth!" he shouted into that dark tapestry, senses straining for the next sound, the next movement. "We would never do that to you!"
A clicking of teeth and a peal of sharp, angry growls met Carlisle's exclamations as he stalked out of the shadow to meet this man. It is just as good as murder, he would have said, with Surely you hired the ones who massacred him. They were still about a mile from the bonfire and he was impatient to get started on the evening's work. While he did not underestimate his opponent, he knew that time would eventually win out and he would throw every piece of Dr. Carlisle Cullen into that bonfire.
He really, really hoped the rest of the pack wasn't lying in wait somewhere. As it was, his words seemed to bounce off Sam's hide without effect as the werewolf steadily approached, not more than a little intimidating, even for a vampire. "Sam," he said quietly with an underlying plea, never taking his eyes off the werewolf. "I don't want to fight."
His moods were well past begging and rationale was thrown to the furthest wind. Carlisle and his family represented all of the inner turmoil in the Quileute tribe for over a century. And now ... reparations were to be made. The growl turned into a snarl and then a full-blown bark as he launched himself at the vampire, teeth bared and claws outstretched.
He only had time to raise his hands to ward off the brunt of the attack, and even still, the sheer size and magnitude of Sam sent them both clear off his perch and tumbling to the ground in a clatter of branches and leaves. He desperately gripped the thick fur at Sam's neck, trying to keep those lethal teeth at arm's length. "Don't want---to---hurt. You!" he managed through clenched teeth.
Claws and teeth scrambled to find purchase as they tore through the air, finally landing as he struggled against Carlisle's grip to reach any vital organ necessary for death and decimation. The grip, though, was strong and as it began to deprive him of oxygen, he changed his tactic.
Disengaging, he backed up slowly and let his tail sink between his legs, giving a series of pitiful yelps. He slunk down the trail a bit, sure to overemphasize breathing, adding a limp in his shoulder.
The absent weight was filled with humid air as Carlisle rolled to the balls of his feet, caked in damp earth. Adrenaline rolled through his body still, but his face sharpened with concern as a thread of worry twisted through him. "Sam," he tried, crawling across the floor of the forest towards the wounded creature. "I'm sorry. Let me help you...."
Could he keep this up for a mile without cracking beneath the weight of Carlisle's unstoppable sense of morality? He didn't know, but he inched closer to his goal, staying just outside of the vampire's reach.
"I don't want to do this," Carlisle continued, unaware of their slow, inching progress, just single-mindedly focused on his goal: reaching Sam, healing this terrible rift. "Please, just let's...sit and talk about this. I need to look at your shoulder. It could have healed wrong."
There it was ... he could scent the faint aroma of burning pine of the wind. They were within yards of the clearing. Having thrown off his act, Sam launched himself at Carlisle again, his teeth aiming for the fleshy side of the vampire's hip.
He smelled the fire just as soon, and it was his only warning before Sam attacked. In his unwittingly vulnerable position, he was ill-prepared for defense, and the razor sharp pain of Sam's teeth too easily penetrating his flesh was as if someone had set all his nerves aflame. Humans, he thought through the blanket of agony, had the capability to eventually shut off when it became too much. There was no relief in sight here.
He cried out, long and primitive, dragged off his feet by those monstrous jaws, rendered dumb and paralyzed by the barrage of unceasing pain. His hands gripped the top of Sam's slender skull, scrabbled through the fur at his neck, felt the thick muscles flexing beneath, and dug in.
And the chilling, intensely painful grip Carlisle head about his neck only made his jaw cinch more tightly. He dragged the vampire, slinging through brush and bramble, into the clearing where the flames danced high and threatened to blaze out of control. When clear of the brush, he gave his bundle an all too violent shake and felt the satisfying rip of granite. He slung his head to lob the flesh in his mouth into the fire.
An inhuman howl tore through the night as Carlisle felt those teeth snap down harder, as he was violently shaken in Sam's jaws. Something gave, and with it, an intense pain to the likes which he had never known, not even the feeling of slowly dying from the inside out, and he was thrown free, slung through the air, colliding with the ground and skidding several feet to the edge of the fire. At first, he was too wracked with the remnants of pain to even notice the intense heat burning just at his back. Something cold and sticky poured freely down his leg. Through the haze pulled over his usually startlingly clear vision, he couldn't seem to stop shaking. The world was an orange-hued blur of gaunt, moving shadows.
After having regained his breath, Sam stretched his long limbs and observed his foe's condition. Obviously Carlisle had never been so challenged - it pleased him to think that he would rend and tear this lying, deceitful vampire - and be successful where it seemed no one else had yet succeeded. With a whisk of his tail, he lept into the air, aiming paws and teeth at Carlisle's right arm. He wasn't a piecemeal fighter. He liked to take the limbs first so that there would be nothing left to grab and tear his neck.
A sudden oppressive thirst rose up in his throat. Carlisle's body screamed for blood. He felt his self-control slipping in the flood of urgent need, and then, the rage. He had been hurt. He hurt. Someone--no, something, this dog--was going to kill him. There was no further higher thought, and he certainly wasn't fully aware of his hand gripping a thick, heavy branch with a brightly blazing tail from the fire. As Sam flew through the air at him, he whipped the flaming branch around and aimed it at that snarling face.
Carlisle's blow struck true. It was only a momentary twist in midair that saved his whole body from falling into the fire. But as he landed with a low growl - that was more of a yelp - he found his left haunch on fire and quickly rolled to stamp it out upon the trodden grass. There was something satisfying about this - he was going to fight back - a hurt for a hurt. It was approriate. As he came back to a standing position, he crouched and prepared for Carlisle's next move.
And there was no hesitation this time, for Carlisle had no sooner let the branch leave his hand upon impact that he followed, launching himself at Sam with a snarl to rival any werewolf's, a tight, pale fist aimed at his throat.
Though he raised a paw to strike down that fist and let his teeth tear into it, he felt the impact jostle his body and send him flying. He used the momentum to spring from the ground, aiming to mount Carlisle's delicate and defenseless back.
But Carlisle was quick, beyond the searing pain at his hip, as he twisted and met Sam face to face. He latched his fingers through that tough hide, curling his legs around Sam's underside and feeling his ribs against his legs. Using Sam's forward motion, he rolled them both in an attempt to reverse their positions, all the while grabbing fistfuls of fur and ripping.
The intense pain in his face controlled a flickering consciousness as he howled. It was agony. He could feel every nerve on fire and wondered what hung around his nose, what dripped from his eyes, what exposed his jaw. As he tasted his own blood and saw the spray litter the vampire's pale face with crimson, he felt himself being pinned. He was on the wrong side of a quickly developing advantage and wondered, in the back of his mind, if this was at all the end. Wishful thinking brought Emily's precious face to his mind and her voice was chief in his ears as he attempted to gain some purchase by sinking his teeth into Carlisle's shoulder.
He too cried out, which only further drove his rage, the instinct to bite and feed and kill. His own teeth latched onto the closest flesh, the soft, tender tissue below a yellow eye. He bit down, tasted the bitter, rancid taste of werewolf blood on his tongue and nearly retched, but forced himself beyond the instinct, wanting to rend flesh from bones, wanting to crush the very life from this detested creature with his limbs. His hold became more constricted. He grabbed the top of Sam's snout and squeezed.
Sam rolled, dislodging Carlisle's grip on his body as the fire in his face burnt much more fiercely than the flames dancing beside them. The dirty leech had infected him! He felt his strength begin to waver as the venom strangled his senses and made his eyes swim in equal parts pain and rage. This had to finish - neither one of them could go much further, wounded and smarting as they both were - and all he wanted to do was end it. He gathered himself for one final plunge, one last chance to serve a death stroke. As he reared back on his haunches and launched his body through the flame to meet Carlisle, he aimed for the delicate neck to do nothing more than rip it completely from his body.
There was some quiet sense of knowing. The venom worked fast, and even as pained and ragged and wild as he felt, and thirsty--oh so thirsty--with the rancid werewolf blood sick on his tongue, he could move faster. Fast enough to wrench his body out of the way of Sam's attack, to turn the tables on him and launch himself at his back, sliding his knees against Sam's ribcage, digging his ankles into Sam's hips, while his arms gripped the undersides of Sam's forepaws and his fingers dug themselves into his sternum. And with everything he had, fueled by the instinct and rage to desire it, he crushed Sam's body in a parody of a loving embrace, envisioning bones crumbling to fine dust.
There was nothing left for him, only an irradiating sickness and a flickering thought that this was what death felt like. He felt each bone pop through the awful haze of the venom, felt his insides strain to burst from his flesh and only hoped that with it would soon come a stilness borne on swift wings. As his eyesight flickered and finally failed, he couldn't care about existence. He was only glad that the pain subsided.
The body beneath Carlisle's went limp, sinking to the ground. Its body easily conformed to his crushing limbs, snapping and cracking like twigs. A feeling of bloodlusted victory flooded through him and the red haze that had colored his vision surged with it--
And then, gradually, other sounds began to sink in. The crackling fire. Insects. An owl. Pained, wet shuddering breaths from the heaving, broken body beneath him. Sam. This was Sam, here, dying slowly. Sam. He had killed him.
"Sam," he croaked.
He started in horror, giving a cry and throwing himself back off the heap of that body. Thirst clawed at and strangled his throat. He felt so weak, but the rage was quickly receding, leaving only the shock and repulsion at what he had done in its wake.
... ah, but there was his name. Some sense flooded into his mind, enough (it seemed) to phase back into his human form. He could feel every bone that laid in angles as the venom screamed through his face and impeded his natural healing process. He gave a wet gasp and balled his right fist ( an arm and a leg one one side of his body the only thing marginally unharmed), attempting to blot the fire from his face.
Sam's transformation, back into being human, broke something inside Carlisle. He tried to stand and did something he had never done in over three hundred years: his leg buckled and he fell, hitting the ground hard. It shocked him, that he was so weak, but he shoved it away and found himself desperately crawling to Sam instead. So many things broken were already beginning to heal in malformed angles, causing grotesque protrusions from the skin. And Sam's face...nearly half of it gone, still gleaming in bright, fresh blood. It smelt rancid, but he knew, oh he knew. "I'm so sorry," he cried, didn't know if he was begging or not, but he was grabbing Sam's fist with a trembling hand anyway and forcing it back down at his side. "I need to..." and he couldn't finish, just curled his free hand across Sam's feverish eyes and closed his mouth over those deep, vicious holes.
Some small groan of protest emitted from his slack jaw as he could only perceive Carlisle's presence so near to him and try as he might to gather his body and slink away, it was not happening. He was too far gone to move. But as all of these thoughts rolled through his mind, he perceived a cold kiss upon the edge of the fire that enveloped him. He welcomed this as he felt the cooling sensation spread throughing his body and his face, leaving nothing but the good, physical agony of their fight outside of the supernatural factors.
The taste was horrific, sliding thickly down his throat. Carlisle choked at first, but then bore it with the same will that let him resist the song of human blood. Nausea curled within him, but he didn't stop, not until there were absolutely no traces of his venom left in Sam's blood. When the last of it was gone--until it was only sourness on his tongue--he wrenched himself away before his body staged a violent protest and began throwing it all up over the dead leaves.
As Carlisle retched - so that's what happened when vampires tasted werewolf blood - he found he had the presence of mind to lay the strips of skin hanging from his face back where they generally belonged.
He was still dry heaving, collapsing into the mess of regurgitated blood weakly. His throat was burning and every inch of his body cried out for replenishment. He vaguely wondered if he'd ever get the taste out of his mouth. Face smashed against blood and leaves, he glared at Sam with a set of his own dark, feverish eyes. "Don't move. Healing wrong," he rasped. "I need to...reset...Don't move." And he couldn't take Sam to the hospital, which was so painfully close, and he certainly couldn't run back and steal hospital supplies--he didn't trust himself around humans now. Didn't trust his own body to hold him up. It only left one option, really, bad as it was.
Gingerly, he crawled back to Sam, nearly collapsing on top of him, and barely managed to hold himself up to look him straight in the eye. "I'm sorry, Sam," he said again, but this time, it was for what he was about to do. He raised his fist high and brought it down swiftly against Sam's temple.
"No -- " he finally managed, it's fine ... Sam understood, perhaps better now than he had been upon the verge of death. Seth's small memory - Courtesy of the Cullens - didn't seem to fit this puzzle as the vampire he had nearly killed worked to save his life. But soon, again, he was plunged into darkness and drank the sweet draught of unconsciousness in full.