[The Past: Daniel & Misha, 1/2] Who: Daniel and Misha What: Employing Dickensian solutions (1/2) Where: A twinge into the past → Georgian England → Webster Vinyl When: Tonightish Warnings/Rating: Nope
It took Misha some doing, and the one reason it happened is on account of the boy being sleeping when it began, dreaming, angelic and something healing him. In the regular waking, he didn't think he was an angel any, not any longer, but tonight, he was, and Damian wasn't 'round to tell the boy he'd roused.
Misha, he hadn't never met Daniel. He'd heard a whole lot 'bout the man causing so much fuss, and he had different folks' takes on the man. Claire loved him, which Misha knew plain, even if Claire was real conflicted 'bout it. Louis was fascinated, which Misha knew wasn't the same as loving, but which was a whole lot more obsessive. Jude, Jude reckoned this man was all he had left worth having, having lost Oliver like he had done. Cris hated Daniel for being what he was, which Misha wasn't real sure the vampire could help any. Atticus was scared, which Misha thought was always a real bad thing to be when you were prey.
The opinions were real varied, was the thing, and Misha needed something more solid to go on. Misha, he'd only been back on earth a year, and most of it had been spent in Bellevue. He hadn't never tried nothing like this, though he'd been taught 'bout it during his training up to be a guardian angel.
And, Misha, he was meant to be hiding, but like anything a person got away with, he kept on taking more and more risks, and now he'd offered to go doing this. But he needed to know the man, least in order to find him, which meant Misha needed to go meet him, this man that everyone loved or hated in real equal measure.
Now, time traveling, it wasn't something malakhim did for their ownselves. It was a requirement to move 'long a person's timeline, to help and guard and bless when it was most helpful, and needing to move linear wasn't going to be real helpful for angel or charge. Misha, he used that ability now. He was standing in front of the music store, unseen, seeing as malakhim were always meant to be unseen by their charges. 'Round him, time slipped on back real slow, since Misha wasn't inclined to go real far. He just needed to go back to when Daniel was here, taking up this space, and he felt the new body inside near as soon as it was there.
Nighttime, but not real late, and Misha pulled the door and was surprised to find it open. Truth was, the thing would have opened regardless, even if Daniel had locked it, but it was real nice not to have to explain away walking in. Inside, the place was still, and Misha wondered when this place had last seen customers of any sort. The vinyl slumbered, which Misha thought was a real shame. He leafed some, wondering if the man upstairs would come looking to see who'd disturbed music's slumber.
Could be the little angel should've had a plan, but he didn't. Misha was real young, just turned twenty-one, and planning wasn't something he was inclined to doing. He stood there leafing through, dressed in real deliberate white, low-slung leather and a v-neck t-shirt, and he reckoned it might help for this vampire to see him back when he wasn't any vampire. His wings weren't anywhere in sight, but the sound of them followed his walking footsteps on black boots that were real hipster. His eyes were pale, human-boy blue, and there wasn't a hint of glow to his pale skin.
It was the record player behind the counter that Misha was headed for, having seen it, and the distraction was real genuine. It wasn't even anything intended to lure the monster from under the bed any. Misha picked up a record as he went, and he put it on the record player and tugged the needle on over black vinyl. He hopped up on the counter, and he listened with his blue eyes shuttered closed, pale lashes fanned on pale cheeks, head bowed reverent. The music was loud, felt in the marrow, and Misha looked on up when he sensed the man at the foot of the stairs.
Misha, he smiled. "It's real fine, ain't it?" asked the boy, and he motioned to the album. He started singing near immediately after, his voice real pure and like church choirs and eunuch boys, all the feeling and none of the purity in the clarity of his voice. Misha, he could sing, and it didn't matter what it was he took a mind to putting his voice to. He sang a few bars, but he was watching the man come down to see who had dared enter his castle. Misha, he lingered on that counter a few seconds, and then the boy was gone, the sound of wings accompanying his blink of departure as Aretha kept on singing.
And that was enough for Misha to find what remained of the man's soul, vampire or not. He slipped himself on back to the current timeline, to right where he began, and then he blinked himself to where the vampire was now. He didn't want to spook the man, not right off, so he put himself just shy of whatever door Daniel was beyond. Still dressed in white, and he reckoned there wasn't no point in pretending he wasn't what he was, not when he intended to move this man 'long his own timeline in defiance of every damn thing he'd been taught. Could be Daniel would remember him from that new memory in the music store, but could be he wouldn't. Didn't really matter to Misha, who walked bold toward that door and pushed on through it, lock or no.
The light here was different. The darkness was not so absolute, punctuated by the rhythmic flashes of a neon sign outside a window not far beyond the cheap wall. It was a small room, nearly an attic, though not so American and tidy as the one above the B&B house. This one was an untidy home. There was a cheap wrought-iron bed someone saved from repo, crates used as small tables, third-hand lamps, twinkle-lights from a decade past. Burnt spoons and discarded needles made the place a treacherous terrain, and it seemed unlikely the half-filled plastic bottles standing on many surfaces still held water.
Four souls were draped about this peculiar hovel, one old, two young, and one very old indeed. The oldest, a woman with a shaved head in her fifties, was tipped to one side with a bottle in her lap. Two teenagers were in a third act embrace on the bed, their drug-addled sleep making them particularly still, wrists up to the sky. While awake, the vampire was not sober, as this particular banquet had obvious side effects, and he wasn’t immune.
He looked deceptively modern on his chair near the window, watching the bizarre lights skip over the molded window-pane, an ill-fitting suit slightly askew on his shoulders. He turned his head slowly when someone intruded on the silence, and even stood--but very, very slowly. He didn’t recognize what stood there, but he had enough senses to realize that what stood there was both flesh and inhuman. Humans had a certain scent.
Misha, he wasn't sure what to expect 'bout where this vampire was holed, but he was real sure he hadn't expected this. Now, recall that all Misha had go on was one glimpse in the past, and then what folks said. Claire talked 'bout this man like he was real exemplary, and then it was varying degrees of fondness after that. In Misha's head, all that amounted to something more than a real dingy place smelling heavy of booze and sweat. Misha looked at the teenagers when he walked in, and he didn't understand they were on drugs, but Misha didn't have a whole lot of experience with that kind of living. So far, he only knew what he'd seen of Damian's morphine addiction, and that wasn't a whole lot. But, while he didn't understand what made the teenagers sleep, he did take notice of the spoons and needles, and he tread real careful as he walked in a door he opened easy with fingers turning the knob.
Misha let Daniel turn his head to look at him, and Misha smiled real genuine, real young, not looking a lick older than those teenagers tangled on the bed. "We ain't met officially. I'm Misha," he said, not seeing any point in not being direct. He could tell Daniel, or the vampire that was Daniel, wasn't sober any, and Misha wondered if that was going to hinder this. He reckoned it might, but there wasn't a whole lot of point in turning back now. And for all that the hovel reminded him a of a real distant past in his foster daddy's home, Misha wasn't comfortable there, and he was real keen to move on.
"I'm here to take you somewhere with me," Misha said, reckoning that being honest was best. It wasn't like Daniel could flee from him, so there wasn't no danger in being honest, not to his mind. Now, it was true that Misha was flesh and blood, thanks to his momma, but he wasn't worried any 'bout being ate or bespelled by this man near to the window. "I reckoned I'd find you staying somewhere more old fashioned," he admitted.
The vampire closed and then opened his eyes, observing the strange aura about Misha that was entirely pharmaceutical. Then he moved, and quickly enough that even angels made flesh must notice, moving through time as they did and slowing it to watch him divide the seconds in what was surely his most natural speed, with minimal effort or control. He stopped short of Misha, facing him only, disrupting his view of the teenagers in the bed. The woman with the bottle snored gently.
The vampire stepped back to view the tiny apartment. It was a place for rats, to keep warm and paper with their leavings. It was a place that cats went to hunt. He disliked it, but it was safe and comfortable, and it couldn’t be more plain that the vampire could move these people like chessmen on a small board.
“Where is it? And what if I do not wish to go?” he asked. It was not a threat, and there were no fangs. He examined Misha’s face and scent for something like memory, and found it absent. He didn’t remember much of anything. Sometimes it troubled him, but mostly it did not. He operated on momentum, instinct, and natural intelligence, looking for the fruit that hung lowest.
Misha hadn't never spent time close with a vampire, and he was surprised a smidgen when the vampire moved real quick like he did. Surprised, but he didn't fuss or move any. He stayed planted how he was, and he just looked at the vampire that came to stop in front of him, blocking the view of the teenagers on the bed. This near, it was maybe more evident that Misha wasn't human, not full and complete. The boy was cool and real pure, and there was something like a diffused glow from his skin, and his eyes were too damn pale for human. The boy was beautiful, but it wasn't conventional human beauty, and it didn't have a thing to do with what was happening here just at present.
"The folks that love you, they decided for you. I'm going to show you something past, or, rather, someone past. You won't be able to interact any, but you can watch the whole scene play. If you're keen, after, I can take you to see that person now, but it's the same way. You can just look, and there ain't a thing you can do to stop me from taking you." Misha sounded apologetic 'bout the last, but the choice was already made for this man. Maybe Daniel could tell, on account of the cold air that enclosed him real cocoon-like.
Misha touched Daniel's arm, and the scene swirled and changed.
They were in the hallway of a real expensive building, and a boy was there, in front of a door. The boy was dressed real bright, and he was real young, and he kicked at the door in front of him.
Now, Misha, he knew 'bout this boy, but he hadn't gone seeking him. He'd told himself he would find him if Daniel wanted to see where the boy was now, but otherwise it wasn't needed. It was real easy to get lost in folks, to hop into their heads and get all confused 'bout what they felt and what you felt, and it wasn't something done without a real keen need to understand a thing. So, this boy, he was new to Misha.
Misha, he looked to his traveling companion, and his blue eyes were real alight with curiosity. "He's younger than I thought he'd be. Do you recall him any?"
The vampire was cold, naturally cold, inside and out, and he was still looking down at Misha’s touch on his arm as reality melted away and put plush carpet under his feet. The light turned bronze and expensive around them, the air clean and conditioned. The thin trail of alcohol was now distant, as expensive as the light and the view from the crystal tower. The vampire looked up and around, his eyes gone black from rim to rim, his expression calm and mildly curious.
It was like picking up a very large black snake that had eaten recently, and dropping it somewhere new. First he coiled in, around Misha, just near his shoulder and the peculiar warmth he provided. Misha was shell-like and did not smell appetizing, even if his pulse should have been a call. The vampire moved around the angel in a slow circle, and then, uncoiling again, turned to face the dark-haired boy at the door. The black eyes swept up and down Lin’s body, taking in his appearance.
The vampire stepped forward, sensing fear and a lack of direction that called to him just like blood did. Easy prey. He stopped when the door started to open. It was not a wide hall, and the vampire looked into a ragged mirror image, inescapably. The other Daniel was both filthier and cleaner; there was a great humanity about his drunkenness and his cat that the vampire lacked. The creature stared without moving. The white cat was making most of the noise.
“What is this?” the vampire asked, in a voice soft and accented with age, tentatively reaching to touch the back of Lin’s shirt, to see if it was there.
Could be bravado or immortality, but Misha didn't flinch back from that circling in the real expensive feeling hallway. He just turned his head some to watch the vampire circle, least as best he could, and he turned back to look at the boy standing. He wasn't certain he expected any kind of real answer from the vampire on the comment 'bout the boy being young, so the query 'bout what this was, it wasn't real disappointing or unexpected. "It's your past," he said, and he refrained real well from quoting Dickens. Now, Misha, he was real well read in the classics for anyplace he'd had charges given to him, but he couldn't remember all that without his Grace. Still, some things stuck like glue, and A Christmas Carol was one. It had inspired this outing, sure as the day was long, and Misha liked to give credit where it was due.
Now, Misha knew there would be a version of the vampire here, but the man that pulled open the door wasn't what Misha expected any. He could smell human on the man in the door. Not living, on account of vampire's being dead folk, but there was something that clung to life there, and in a way it didn't cling to the vampire Misha was taking on a sightseeing tour.
Daniel's hand, it passed right through the bright shirt of the boy, and no one noticed a thing 'bout the extra visitors. The boy, Lin, pet the cat, and he hiked backpack nervously on his shoulder. "Mecheny?" Misha asked, looking at the vampire for clarification, not knowing the meaning of the word himself. "I'm told you loved him real bright," he said of Lin, and could be that was visible when Lin pushed past the doppelganger and into the darkly expensive apartment.
Misha, he followed in. "Come on now. Won't do a bit of good, us coming here and you not seeing." He smiled down at the cat. "You like white cats, I reckon. I'm told you got one back in Repose." He touched Daniel's shoulder. Blink, and they were in the center of the apartment, regardless of Daniel's willingness to come or no, and Misha perched on the arm of a chair to watch the scene go on, a quiet voyeur that was a whole lot more interested in the vampire's face than in his hungover counterpart's.
The vampire didn’t like being teleported without expecting it. He had not intuitively understood the angel’s question about the nickname, and after an expression of uneasy disgust had crossed his face on sight of the drunk, he focused instead on Lin. He was young, but to the vampire, all things were young, and he bypassed that fact entirely. The focus snapped at another touch from the angel, and the vampire pulled back as soon as they stopped in place, whipping around with his inhuman speed and snarling at the angel with eyes of ink and teeth made for rending. “Stop that.”
He turned again though, almost immediately, to look again at the mess of the apartment. There was no memory, no recognition on his face, and for all the attention he paid to the drunk, he might not have been there at all. Instead he moved again toward Lin, trying to touch him twice on the shoulder and the back of the head, failing each time. He avoided looking at the cat, moving away from it when it moved blithely across his path.
He folded his arms very closely across his chest, firmly at first, and then with more twist of limbs, standing very straight and back from where any of the three might cross his path. “I don’t know,” he said, to a question that was not asked.
“What are you trying to do?” Now he looked back toward the angel, an inhuman vision of youth personified. Neither of them looked right in Daniel’s expensive Las Vegas apartment, years ago that it was, because the vampire was too bleak and upright, and the angel too bright and happy. The apartment was made for isolation, for the storage of stale knowledge.
Hadn't nobody ever reacted to Misha's touch that way. Angel's were soothing fingers real unseen, and it was interesting to the boy that the vampire didn't like feeling fingertips 'gainst him. But he wasn't scared any. Could be on account of being immortal. This vampire could drink from him, but Misha couldn't never be drained, and he reckoned he might not be as tasty as real boys. Could be Misha just didn't have the sense God gave a groundhog, because this was like being faced with ninjas or fists flying, and the boy just took it. He stood there, real unflinching, just like he always had with his foster family. Misha, he'd learned crying and being scared, that just gave real awful people power, and he was real good at steeling his spine, even with all his apparent visible fragility.
Misha watched as the vampire went trying to touch the dark boy again, and Misha stooped some to look at the cat. He could touch it, but he would need to reach deeper for his Grace, seeing as it was a living thing, and he didn't reckon that was necessary yet. Wings sprouting in this confined space might not help this situation even the tiniest bit. "Trying to remind you. I reckoned I should take you back to before you were turned, but your friends thought this boy was the most important thing to you," he said real plain, moved now and sitting on the arm of that chair, the kitten forgotten in his attentiveness. He turned his attention back on the boy. "Said you'd loved him more than anything. I ain't never loved like that," he said musing, but the smile on the pale boy's lips said he reckoned that might not be true as it was spoken. "He's young, and he's pretty. Real smart too, ain't he?" In the room, the dark boy was being grabbed close by the man the vampire had been, and Misha sighed. "I reckon that's what craving looks like," he said, and it was plenty evident the angel was new to all this, folks clinging and grabbing and wanting. "Not sexual craving, on account of I've had plenty of that, but needing another soul near."
Misha, he looked away from the scene, hearing real familiar names but not reacting to them. This wasn't his space for remembering, and he wasn't here to pry any, not like that leastways. "Do you want to see where he is now? Or you want to see the rest, see how it ends here with you and him? We could always go real far back too, if you're inclined. Don't ask me to take you back yet. I couldn't bear failing so easily," he implored.
The cat hissed, seeing unseen things, and Misha didn't move from his perch. He grinned instead. "I knew you were going to let him stay." The dark-haired boy.
The angel was used to dealing to a certain type of person, a mortality and a fragility that came with a limited number of years and a sanctity of mind that Daniel did not have. The fact that he could not touch his surroundings, be seen, or make himself known gave the room and its contents an otherworldly feel, and the vampire was ever more certain it was not real. He gave the boy a last brush with one hand, and it was at a shadow. Nothing.
He backed away from the angel and the cat, and most especially the boy. In fact, he turned so he wouldn’t see Lin at all, eyes suddenly much smaller in their whiteness. “I didn’t. It’s not me.” That couldn’t be him. The vampire was not sure about a lot of things, because so many things didn’t fit right in with… with the way things should be, but he was absolutely sure that there was no other him. He didn’t exist twice. He existed once. Himself. Now.
Sure, maybe Daniel was crazy, and maybe that crazy saw things that weren’t there, but this regression was meant to keep his mind safe. The piece that pushed for recognition wasn’t enough. He was meant to remember being someone else? That wasn’t right. Not safe at all. This place was even more hostile than the last one, because he could feel the inevitability of parting. Like feeling someone die under his teeth. If this was meant to be a good memory, it failed. He tried to sink down deeper into his mind to hide from it, going farther back until it was enough the creature, or even before the creature, to keep it at bay.
The problem was not memory at all. Remembering is losing your way, a misidentifying of information. This was emotion, and the vampire didn’t want any of it. That was the point. He just had to be someone who didn’t feel like this. “I’m not here. He’s not here.” He tightened his arms over his chest and closed his eyes entirely. He would just wait for it to end. Wake up at home. “I’m not here.” It was a different sounding I’m than before. It sounded more like “Aihm,” higher on the top. The volume was softer. “I’m not here.”
The vampire was right. Misha, he was accustomed to real human charges, and he'd only had some. He was still learning, and he hadn't never dealt with a vampire. He hadn't never done this before any at all. This traveling, it was 'bout getting to charges, and showing folks things wasn't real endorsed in Heaven.
Still, Misha reckoned it could work. He was real hopeful seeing things would trigger memories of them things, especially if Daniel loved this boy as fierce as everyone was real sure he did. So he was surprised, despite himself, when Daniel backed away and took to talking. He stared, did Misha, with those pale blue eyes, confusing melting to disappointment real slow on his expressive face. Misha, he wasn't good at hiding a thing. But he wasn't real quick at giving up any, so he took himself a deep breath there, where he was sitting on the arm of the furniture. "Can we talk plain?" he asked, but he didn't go waiting for a response. Though, fair to note, that the white cat seemed to be real keen to listen.
"You're a vampire, and you're from a time real before now." Misha pointed to the room and the scene ongoing. "Not this now, but the now I took you from. You know that ain't your time, and that's real clear from things you've said to folks. So, something had to happen between your time and that new now." He pointed to Lin. "That's what happened, and you not remembering it, it don't make it not so. But, you go on and ask yourself what happened during all that missing time, if you don't reckon it's this. You know those folks in Repose somehow. How?" He smiled as the cat that came for petting, and Misha could touch that white fur fine, but it did make a chill permeate the room.
The vampire closed his eyes, and Misha just looked at him. "I'll take you home, but you tell me first if there's anything here from your old life that would prove to you this is you. Photo albums, memories, anything? If not, and if you really reckon you don't care to remember, I'll put you back in that real awful place with those folks passed out, but that doesn't seem like a whole lot of living to me."
The angel stood, the scene froze, and Misha took to rifling through things in the old and dusty sepulchre that was the apartment. Then, all of a sudden, he looked on back, and it was like realization blooming and flickering lightbulbs glowing to living over the angel's head. "If I take you to see him now, in your present, you can talk to him and touch him," he suggested, real hopeful and motioning to Lin.
Daniel wasn’t talking to Misha at all. He wasn’t even acknowledging that he was there, and he wasn’t going to talk to him, plain or not. Misha was trying to use the crowbar of memory to bludgeon the defenses down, and it wasn’t going to work. Daniel put them up stronger, stouter, and he even denied that there was anything out there at all in order to make it work. He could pick up some chunk of history, a book or a photo lucky enough to have survived the centuries, and he could throw it at the vampire in every figurative sense, and it would make little impact.
Coming unexpectedly to life, the vampire dodged around the angel and went through the room faster than most eyes could see, a rapid travel as he snatched at the two bodies there (reduced to hints of motion) and even once at the cat, who was smart enough to flee. He shoved at Misha himself as soon as the angel was foolish enough to turn away, and stood in the center of the room again a moment later, unnaturally still and focused inward. He wanted to lash out, but he realized quickly there was nothing here he could touch, and that put enough desperation in the madness to turn him inside out.
He closed his eyes again, laced his arms together, and swayed to a long-dead waltz only he could hear. The soft repetition of not-here kept up until it was a monotonous single vowel set, childish and simple around the hiss of his tongue. There wasn’t enough consciousness to concern himself with a real timeline; the best he could do was before and now, and even that was difficult enough. Misha’s youthful babbling, his reasoning, the vampire didn’t even hear any of that. It was like trying to talk a child out of fear with a lecture from a book.
Of course, this child had teeth, and if it didn’t stop, he was going to try more permanent, violent means.
Misha, he knew he was failing real hard.
Misha knew, but he still wasn't expecting the dervish that was the vampire coming to life, as it were. The man that had been Daniel, he snatched useless, dodged, moved like he would rend the scene apart with bare hands, despite that not being something he could do at all. Heaven, it had rules, and the vampire wouldn't be able to interact with this space or these folks, even if the cat could sense his presence real fine. Misha, he could touch, whisper, but Misha was made for this. Or, rather, this was made for Misha. But there wasn't none of that in the dead soul gone mad as he looked on shades he didn't want to see, or couldn't see. Misha, for all his years getting mental treatment, he didn't understand the mind real well. Could be he was just too young for it. Could be he was just too young for this.
But Misha he was there, sharing the same space as the vampire, and that shove knocked him sideways.
Misha, he wasn't the type to protect himself. As a child, he'd given in without fighting. As a grown boy, he did the same. He took punches, touching, and whatever else was thrown his way, and he did it still and quiet. The boy, he wasn't a fighter, not for himself. He misstepped, and he looked up at the angry face of the man standing. And it was real undeliberate, reaction without any attempt, the silhouette of the wings that branded themselves angry on the wall behind Misha, accompanied by a gust of cold that was near arctic and just as ozone. It was a shadow, sure as could be, and no wings sprouted from the boy dressed in white. But it was a warning some, an acknowledgement some, the reminder that this wasn't a child standing in this scene. Misha wasn't violent any, but he could send this vampire on down to Hell with a thought, and the sear of the wings on the wall of memory was large. Ten feet, and they were clear as real clean crystal.
The scene changed.
Misha just reached on back to Daniel's childhood, grabbed mental fingers 'round whatever he could, and they were there, in Daniel's childhood room, wherever that was. It was an empty scene, no folks, which meant Daniel could touch things if he wanted. But there were sounds from beyond a closed door, life and living from then, and Misha just crouched, head in hands and elbows 'gainst his knees. The shadow 'gainst the wall was brighter here, less angry sear and more gilded glow, fading as the boy got himself under grips once more.
At a little over ten years of age, Daniel Webster had beat the odds. A third of children in his age group died before their tenth birthdays, of sickness as yet unidentified, perilous accident, and a weakness of body that those people in Britain during the late Georgian period feared the way people now fear sudden violence and unexpected car accidents. There was not yet a Napoleonic war to breed hard men who pined for the army; instead there was political uncertainty and economic ambition, and even at this age, Daniel’s life had been defined by his class.
The room was huge. It was opulent. Everything in it bled the word “expensive” in gold and lace. Grecian cupids frolicked on the ceiling, and every chair, even ones that were made for his diminutive size, were gold-leafed and carved with delicate wings and shield-like seals. There were several doors, one that led to a manservant’s closet, and others that led to large hallways and smaller rooms, each with its own use. In this society there was little separation of public and private for rich men, so there was nothing warm about it, no mess of belongings, and all his toys had been forcibly left in the nursery not long before. To the modern eye, it looked like a museum.
Downstairs his grandparents would be visiting with neighbors. His grandfather would be discussing estate business with his steward, exchanging letters with influential friends in London. His grandmother would be approving a schedule of supply and entertainment with her housekeeper, and her letters would be to equally influential women. Neither of them would be with their grandchild, a half-Irish near-bastard who already understood that his place in the world was dreadfully tenuous. That boy was outside in the cold mist, at a riding lesson. Soon he would be gone to school. But his room was here.
Daniel, unaged and eternally thirty in body (though hardly in mind), opened his eyes to this safe place. It was not alien to him. The echoing emptiness offered security, as did the solitary walls papered by sage green leaf. His battered mind wrenched once, twice, looking for a lost love of a friendly, edible shoulder to cry on, and finding none of these things, settled into the place it expected to be, to match this world that had-been. The bed was already made, silver basins tucked out of sight, nightcaps folded and books set to one side. He went, of course, to the books first. He touched them, tentatively at first, and then more firmly, confirming they were his. He left them. He sat on the bed, touched its spread with his hands, feeling the slightly-cool gold embroidery, tugging the magnificent curtains with their heavy tassels, and then he stood again.
He had not seen the holy wings. It was questionable now whether he would have remembered them if he had. He poked Misha on the shoulder. As a child would. “You don’t belong here.” His voice was different again. Softer, pitched just slightly higher than it would be in centuries hence. When Misha looked up, an inquisitive, sedate face with eyes opened very wide was peering down at him.
This was new for Misha. Not the place, though that was plenty new, but acting thoughtless to move someone into a point 'long their timeline. It was careless, and he'd get real in trouble for it, but there wasn't a thing for it now. He looked up from where he was crouched, and it wasn't the space that caught his noticing. It was the man. The boy? Misha, he saw souls different than normal folks, least when his Grace was involved, and all this had made the boy's Grace real pronounced. In fact, he was something clean there, crouching ethereal. He was still a boy, make no mistake, but there was something whispered purity from every single pore the boy possessed.
But the soul in front of Misha, it wasn't how it'd been before. It was small, young and with the gleam of something unsullied. It wasn't a dead thing with fangs, not inside, and Misha wondered if he'd made everything worse.
Misha didn't rise from his crouch, and he looked up at the boy-monster. "I reckon I'm lost," he said, and it wasn't even fibbing. He looked 'round the room, at all the miniature things gilded and adult-seeming. He hadn't really thought any hard on when Daniel was born, but he reckoned he knew now. He hadn't paid attention any during Heavenly lessons to know on sight where he was in time. He knew it was a place that was old, and that he wasn't real likely to encounter a television here any, and that the man in front of him was young. He had no damn clue what he would do if this man remained a child. Could he even remove a child from this place? Would a child feed? Would the vampire die? It was all, to Misha's thinking, a real worst-case scenario.
"Do you live here?" Misha asked the boy-man. He straightened, but Misha was waif and willow, tall but not imposing any in his blinding brights, and he walked to where Daniel had been sitting moments earlier, to that ornate bed. "I ain't never seen anything so pretty," Misha said earnest. He hadn't. Heaven was purity and opulence, but it wasn't this. This was life gilded and embroidered, and Misha knew it as something belonging to Broadway stage shows and real expensive whorehouses. "I'm called Misha. You don't know me any, do you?"
Daniel was not tall. But he looked up as if expecting Misha to rise farther than he did, and blinked slightly, taken aback when there was hardly much distance at all when he looked upward. He seemed to dismiss this as an unusual event, like finding a strangely dressed boy with no manners in his room. He stepped back, and when he did so he even managed to make that rather lordly. Misha could see souls, perhaps, or minds, but the body was still a vampire’s, and it moved smooth and cold through this world, though the clothes didn’t fit and the bleak darkness of the machine-woven cotton made him look like a tourist in the middle of the lush gilding and sanded wood floors.