[The Past: Daniel & Misha, 2/2] Who: Daniel and Misha What: Employing Dickensian solutions (2/2) Where: A twinge into the past → Georgian England → Webster Vinyl When: Tonightish Warnings/Rating: Nope
Daniel looked briefly around. âItâs my room,â he said, factually, proprietarily. At ten he had been a precocious, distrusting little thing. He moved around Mishaâs question and yet answered it, in a manner that would infuriate Lin in perhaps two hundred years or so. Now he followed Mishaâs gaze to see what in particular was pretty, and joined him near the bed. There was nothing to indicate that it belonged to a child: its size was more suited to an adult, and there was no special soft pillow there, but rather ornate ones.
The gaze he gave the angel was suspicious, with the first betrayal of childhood folding his lip under his teeth. âWeâve never met.â He gave Mishaâs clothes an equally suspicious look, and then stepped back away from him as if something unfortunate had just caught his nose. âIf youâre lost, where are you from?â Daniel didnât believe he was lost. He was too free with his movement in a place that didnât belong to him. The man was touching his bed. You could see the thoughts moving in Danielâs eyes as he wondered if he should call a servant for help.
Misha, he didn't know a thing 'bout being lordly, but he knew 'bout deference. He knew older folks wanted it from younger folks. He knew the Host wanted it from everydamnbody. He knew folks who enjoyed power craved it, deference from others, but that wasn't a thing like this. This was something like entitlement, and Misha knew it was a product of the time. He still wasn't real sure what the time was, but he was sure the entitlement came with the wealth and the era, and the boy's things were fine in a way that stage sets weren't. This wasn't a thing made for an audience, this opulence.
"It's a nice room. I have a room now, and it's one of my own. Before, I didn't never have a place that was mine. It's real small, and it ain't nice as this, but I feel safe in it." Misha, he talked easy to youth. "I just got made the ward of a man that doesn't like me real well," he admitted, and now he was just talking easy, on account of talking easy being something Misha did well. "I'm from near the water, from a big old house on a lake, least that's where I'm from now," he said, and he knew he wasn't being truthful entirely, but he wasn't lying neither.
Misha looked toward the door. "Whose voices are those?" he asked, and it wasn't a deliberate attempt to spur recollection. He was just asking, trying to figure out the setting, trying not to think on what he was going to do if this man kept looking at him through a boy's eyes. But, Misha, he was young, and he wasn't real scared of some things, not like older folks would be. He stood from the bed, and he walked to the door and put his ear to it, as if listening would offer up the names of strangers.
Mishaâs observations were true to an extent. The room was simply too crowded to be a stage set. The chairs and the footstools, the benches along the walls, everything was presented and meant to be seen, which meant it was all in the middle of the room. High-backed chairs made seeing the contents of low tables difficult, and where a modern Daniel preferred shelves and books everywhere, the designers of this room sought to display elegant vases and Oriental knick-knacks in ivory and jade. In some ways it made one want to throw a tantrum just to clear a space.
Again, Daniel looked around it, as if trying to see past the familiarity into the ânice.â He made a funny little boyish sound at the top of his mouth, a thoughtful kind of hmph. He was still standing in his lordly little way (âlittle,â though he was full grown, and seemed not to know it) when Misha crossed the room back to the door. He didnât call for anyone, He was curious against his will, and a rather lonely little thing, as always.
He listened for a moment too. âThe hall boy, and one of the chambermaids,â he replied, wondering why this was relevant. He drifted a little closer, as if unwilling, and kept his own voice down so they would not be heard. âA lake,â he said, curiously. âOn the water?â And then, after a pause, he seemed to decide to take a brave path of inquiry: âAre you from Ireland, then?â
Misha liked clutter, so the things collected didn't fuss him any. He didn't have a real pressing need to make things less claustrophobic, and he didn't even mind what would be considered garish back where he was from. Misha, he was theatrical, and the room had a certain amount of theatricality to it, despite lacking in the purpose of a stage set. Now, that didn't mean Misha would want to live in a space like this, regardless of how fine it was. But it didn't bother him any, and he didn't think on it close. If he did, he still wouldn't have realized it was odd for a boy not to have toys. Misha, he hadn't grown with toys.
"What do they do, the hall boy and chambermaid?" Misha asked, real willing to admit the boy-man was his superior when it came to knowing things 'bout this room and this life. "They sound like servants," he mused, though he didn't have any real solid reason for thinking that. And he knew he should take to fixing on the problem at hand, but he was young, and he reckoned asking things was a step toward understanding.
Misha didn't have a damn clue how to answer 'bout Ireland. "You ain't going to believe me any, but I got no idea where I'm from." That came real earnest, on account of Misha being plenty confused 'bout his mortality and origins recently, and he sighed a little at the boy that wasn't any boy at all. Shoulders back 'gainst the door, Misha regarded the vampire. "My family name's Bellamy, and I reckon that sounds Irish. Does it sound Irish to you?"
Daniel looked at Misha like he was crazy. Which was funny, when you thought about it. âThey are servants.â As if this was the most obvious, and stupid thing. Misha received another suspicious look, more about how he didnât belong, and the boy that was Daniel fidgeted self-consciously. It wasnât anything an adult Daniel had ever done, a strange, sporadic twisting motion with his hands, wringing them together and pulling them apart again to bounce at his sides. It looked like something a boy would get scolded for, but on an adult Daniel it seemed unexpectedly flighty, even weak. âTheyâre talking. Theyâre not supposed to, but they do. About the weather.â The boy seemed to think this was significant, like he was imparting some kind of secret. More fidgeting.
Daniel thought about Mishaâs claim of ignorance about his origins. It was extremely visible: his eyes bounced from Mishaâs face, to his clothes, to the window, back to Mishaâs face again, and then finally up to the ceiling as he nodded confirmation. He decided to believe him. âVery well. I believe you.â
Daniel edged around Misha, going back to a chair, thinking about sitting, but then not. He weaved through the furniture and around it. âI suppose that it might,â he conceded. âI donât know what Irish sounds like.â It was true, but he was fierce about the fact, like Misha might challenge him on it.
Misha knew that look. He was real well accustomed to folks looking at him like he was mad, and he reckoned that made sense when a person really was mad, and Misha knew he was. Even here, doing this, he knew it was likely all fake, and that was the problem with delusions. The delusional, they never could tell when they were delusional, and they seldom believed other folks who told them. "I ain't never had servants," he explained. Wainright Manor had them, but they didn't belong to Misha. In fact, Misha had taken a small room in the servants' quarters, feeling like he belonged there a whole lot better than he did in the house proper.
The child-monster fidgeted, and Misha looked at him soft. "Why ain't they allowed to talk?" Misha asked it trusting, like he believed this child to be honest with him 'bout the happenings in this house.
Misha watched as Daniel moved through the space, and he reckoned it was fine to think of him as Daniel now. Daniel was younger, but this wasn't the vampire talking. This was a boy, sure as anything, and Misha hoped it was improvement. He hoped, but he knew he was going to need to take this boy and rip him from this place, and he wasn't looking forward to that any. But this was the past, and timelines could be corrupted real easy. But the boy was moving back toward a chair, and Misha moved away from the door and followed him those few steps. "I ain't sure what Irish sounds like neither." He could reach for his Grace, but he didn't. Even now, in the middle of all this muddle, Misha still wanted to be real human and plain, and he hadn't never learned Irish in his foster home.
"Will you show me 'round?" Misha asked. He lowered his voice youthful in a conspiratorial whisper. "We can be real stealthy."
âThey just shouldnât. They havenât anything important to say.â Daniel looked at Misha with curiosity, and also with a hint of respect, as if he was impressed by his alienness. The fact that Misha did not have servants solidified his place in the social order of things, far below Daniel, and quite alien indeed. But it appealed to him to do something he was not meant to do. His dark eyes (human dark, nothing like the black mirrors of previous) glistened with the challenge. There was also a certain safety in being with someone less important than you.
Though if they got caught, it would be Danielâs hide, and he knew it. The danger was a little thrilling.
He had decided that Misha was probably Irish, a sort of forbidden beyond-the-water race that Daniel both feared and wished to be part of. He wasnât quite old enough to understand the politics of fact, history and country borders. Instead it was something he should try his best to avoid becoming. Irish. He wanted to ask if he sounded that way too, but resisted.
âYes, all right,â he agreed, nodding his dark head. Awkward pause. âWhere do you want to go?â
Misha wasn't clueless enough that he didn't understand he was beneath the child inside the vampire. He knew social standing like a boy who spent years with the Host did. There wasn't a place more built on caste and hierarchy than Heaven. You were born into being a certain kind of thing, and there wasn't any notion of bettering yourself by action. A malakhim would always be a malakhim, and there wasn't no climbing to dominion or throne. Misha knew this boy was wealthy, even if he didn't understand how the boy had gone from being this boy to a vampire gone mad. He noted the humanity come to the boy's eyes, recognizing it as something different than had been there in that memory they'd just left behind unstirred.
The angel didn't know what was so wrong 'bout being Irish, but he didn't identify as Irish, so it was just words to calm this child some. Misha wanted that, to calm this boy, and not just on account of it being useful, but because he saw a lonely child standing there, in the body of this big ol' murderous thing. And he didn't understand real clear that there would be hell to pay if they got caught, not beyond the understanding of a foster child raised in an unkind house.
Daniel agreed, and Misha held a hand out real willing to go exploring. Could be he should be thinking clear and focusing, but Misha wasn't having the best days recently, and this extending of his warm-cool hand was just a trusting thing with fingers splayed. "You show me anything you think's real important, or real pretty, or real interesting," Misha suggested, letting the boy pick. Might be it was counterintuitive, letting a child lead, but Misha wasn't much older or more knowledgeable, not when you took into account ten years spent Heavenly.
The vampire didnât seem to need calm. While he was quite different from the smooth, hungry thing that had met Misha in the Capital flat, and again not what had reacted to the flashes of love lost with panic and anger. Even physically he was different. He held himself more erect, with his chin higher in the expectation that more people would be taller, but he tilted his head more often, the way children did when they were reluctant to look you in the eye. His fingers moved more, and he seemed less easy in the dull black of his jacket, shifting his shoulders against the fabric. He too had been taught that he had been born into his place, but there was also a peculiar notion that his place must overcome his birthright, like his elders could will him into the shape liked best.
When he was older, Daniel would grow into someone designed not to care about any of that: a determined authenticity.
Daniel took the angelâs hand. His was no warmer than it had been so far in the journey, and he looked down at this extension of his arm without recognizing it, the square fingers, the dusting of dark hair over the base of the fingers, the thickness of his knuckles, all alien. Something moved in his eyes. He knew. Somehow, he knew something wasnât right; it could have been conscious or unconscious, but it tore at him. âThereâs a wilderness to the east, and an old abbey out beyond that,â he said, quietly. You could take us.â He squeezed the angelâs hand and gave him an eerie, unblinking look.
The man's hand wasn't small and delicate like Misha reckoned it should be.
There was something real incongruous 'bout a vampire turned child, and Misha just closed his fingers tight 'round Daniel's and listened to the directions the boy-man gave for the wilderness past the old abbey. The vampire looked at him with eyes that were real eerie, but eeriness didn't fuss Misha. It was all real strange, everything happening in this room in the past, but it wasn't fear making Misha's steps slow as he moved toward the door. Did the boy expect him to blink them out to the wilderness? That was what Misha was fixing on, and he wasn't sure if this journey was meant to take place with human footfalls. Could be that blinking the boy out there could set things into motion for leaving here. See, Misha knew that they had to go. Didn't matter if it was a boy trapped in the vampire, and didn't matter if it was a man come to his senses. They couldn't stay in this place, where the real boy might come bounding in at any moment. And Misha, bless him, he tried to convince himself it would be easier to get a child turned back to normal, that it was better than how things had started, though he wasn't sure entirely.
Misha, he decided to try walking plain.
The doorknob was real near, and Misha turned it and looked into the hall, seeing if them servants from before were 'round. It didn't matter if they were, since the servants wouldn't see the angel and the vampire-boy wandering, but Daniel might be spooked at being invisible. But the servants weren't there any, and Misha just walked like he knew this place as well as he knew Wainright Manor. It was near the same type of grandeur, just in another time, and Misha turned toward the stairs without hesitating any.
"Why do you like the wilderness?" Misha asked, on account of it being the one place Daniel mentioned, and he reckoned that meant it was meaningful some. "Back home, there's that lake I told you 'bout. I keep meaning to go sit on it and watch the sun climb, but I ain't never had the chance, and I reckon I'm not real sure how long I'll stay. You born here, or are you a ward too?" He knew the boy was wealthy, but there was a loneliness that Misha, with his limited knowing, didn't associate with having kin 'round being loving. It made him wonder if this child was orphaned. He could use his Grace, reach on back and find out for himself, but he reckoned Daniel talking was a good thing, and so he encouraged as he and the boy reached the first landing. "Which door do we take?
Now was when things were easy. The child wasnât hungry.
His mind edged around the truth. The long halls, framed with low tables boasting tall Oriental pottery and fine candelabra, were familiar to him, not comforting but lacking in threat. All was as it was expected to be, and the anomalies were less terrifying. At least here he was not out of place, and nothing shattered when he touched it. He let Misha lead, looking back behind them consistently--sometimes to see if there was anyone behind them, and sometimes to watch the absurdly large shadow attached to his heels.
As they moved down the hall, the lively sounds of a living manor hummed around them: the maid in one of the bedrooms scraping at the hearth, the clang of a pot from the kitchen just one floor beneath their feet, the bang of a door and the creak of the old pile contracting on its mortar in the mist.
âI donât, in particular,â Daniel said. âBut you asked to see something pretty, or interesting, and the old abbey is haunted.â This was relayed as absolute fact. âItâs this one, and then the long stair.â As they progressed, Daniel looked out of one of the tall, wide windows on the landing. It wasnât a magnificent stained glass like some of the other parts of the house, but pragmatic and black, lined with lead. The rolling hills outside were a vibrant green clouded with mist.
âIâm not a ward. My grandfather is Sir Webster.â Misha was expected to know this name; it wasnât a far leap to understand that said person owned this place, though. âBut his son died,â he added. It was his son and not my father. âWho is your guardian?â It seemed polite to ask.
Misha was real careful, and he resisted the urge to go looking for the sounds he heard coming from all over. He was naturally inquisitive, was Misha, and he was mostly curious 'bout folks. He was real interested in seeing what folks of this time looked and acted like, what they sounded like, too, but he kept thinking 'bout the door, and he headed toward it, trusting as the boy told him where to head and turn. The long stair was real long, and the view outside the big windows was real impressive. For Misha, born in a Kentucky asylum and just being recently introduced to wealthy living, it was still plenty impressive.
"Who haunts it?" Misha asked of the old abbey, only reckoning after that maybe he was meant to be real spooked. But Misha wasn't spooked, and his interest was honest on youthful features looking at the boy-vampire.
When they reached the door, Misha looked 'round stealthy 'fore opening it, other hand still clasped in Daniel's. And outside was just as pretty as it had looked from inside. Misha almost whistled, but he'd been raised in the South and real polite, so he didn't let the inclination get the best of him. He just smiled at Daniel, growing accustomed to the expression of a boy on a man's face. "This way?" he asked, turning toward what he reckoned was the old abbey. "Sir Webster. That mean he's a knight?" He didn't pause or hesitate any, despite how Daniel described the dying of his sire. "I'm real sorry 'bout your daddy. My ward's a real wealthy man named Wainright. He's rich as could be, I reckon, and I don't think he likes me real well. But he's a good man, and he'll let me stay, just on account of me needing it."
Misha took a few more steps quiet. "Do you like your granddaddy?"
This was the juiciest bit of local history in the area, and Daniel reeled it off. âA nun haunts it. She put poison in their supper, the whole abbey, and they all died.â He didnât have an explanation for why, or even why it was only the one nun that haunted it and not the whole cloister.
The fog felt strange. Daniel was distracted from the angel holding his hand, from the sounds of the household, from the green rolling hills; all of that faded and there was just the feel of the wet air on his face. It was thick. You could taste it as you breathed. It tasted like grass, wet stone. A kind of clay earth that only came out of the center of the planet here, in this place, the place where he had been small. The first place he remembered: his first place. Without realizing it he started to go faster, lengthening his stride, going farther in one step than a child should be able to go. He took them across the green and abruptly around a high hedge so they were hidden from view of the house. The ground started to descend in an easy slope, and pretty little flowerbeds, currently low and green but without bright petals of color, lined the path.
âAfter a fashion. He owns a great deal of land, that way, and that way.â His arm swept to one side, and then another, indicated the horizons on either side. The question about liking such a man seemed to set him tentatively off his stride. His steps grew smaller again, shorter, and their progress slowed. âI donât know him. I am not sure that anyone does.â
They walked several steps, and then, abruptly, he said, âHe hates me, though, always. Until the day he⊠he dies.â An impressive view spread out before them as they walked, over several sets of hills and a small copse of trees with a false Athenian pagoda nestled within. The abbey was a stone shell of archways and overgrown shrubbery, stripped of any glass or wood a long time ago, and it sat on a small, picturesque rise. A herd of wet and ragged sheep dotted the hills beyond, far enough in the distance to be spots of cream on green, and the mist was a tangible thing, moving through the ancient stone ribcage of the dead abbey. Daniel stopped.
Misha thought on nuns. It was an easy topic for the boy, even one he found interesting in the extreme, and he tried to think on why a nun would poison an entire abbey and then haunt it. Misha, he didn't say there weren't haunts, or that things hadn't occurred like the boy-vampire said, on account of plenty of things happening that folks didn't believe in. But haunts were real, and he didn't ken a reason why murderous nuns couldn't exist. "I got a good friend who's nearly a nun. Her name's Claire, and I can't imagine her poisoning folks. But she is unhappy a whole lot, and maybe this nun was unhappy too," Misha reasoned, and it was just like the boy to look for absolving reasons behind murdering.
The air tasted pure, that was what Misha thought. Not strange, but clean and damp, and he liked sucking wet breaths in through his mouth and nose. Repose, it wasn't wet like this. New York, it hadn't been wet like this either. The closest Misha could come was a quiet hollow in Kentucky, some morning in Springtime and just as the sun was waking the day. But Daniel took to moving faster, and Misha quit focusing on his breathing to keep up with the long legs of a child who hadn't been a child in a whole slew of years. "Daniel," he said, not intending to interrupt, but his voice real reverent, "this place is beautiful." It was awe talking from young lips, and Misha listened real interested as Daniel talked 'bout his granddaddy. Family, it was a real point of interest for the pale boy.
Misha's brow furrowed a second later. "Why does he hate you? He can't hate someone young." He didn't point out that this man, walking 'longside him, wasn't young at all. "Folks can't really hate children." But Misha knew better, and his foster momma had hated him more than she hated the burrs that caught on her long dress when she hung laundry to dry on the line.
The view, once Daniel stopped, was distracting in its beauty. The world, the present world that Misha hailed from, wasn't a thing like this. It made him think on how Damian described Turkish baths and a world far away, and how it felt like something written in a book for reading. This was like that, and the abbey called the angel like a tug 'neath collarbone. Decaying and dead, there was still presence there, and Misha tightened his fingers 'round Daniel's, and now it was Misha tugging impatient, needing to get close and press a palm to that old stone.
But Daniel wouldnât go. He had stopped there on the rise, looking at the abbey and the divisions of hills framed by banded stone, and would progress no further. He separated his fingers from Mishaâs, easy because his own had gone brittle in the chill, and they wouldnât flex beneath the tug and pull of the angelâs energy. Daniel was strong, and he resisted, taking his hand back and keeping feet planted where he stood, like a black standing stone himself, the damp curling his dark hair against forehead and neck.
âIâve never seen her, the dead sister,â he said, almost to himself. He made no effort to raise his voice over the muffling effect of the dense fog spilling down the curve of the land in front of them. âYou might go, and see her. What a grand thought she had, to just scrub them all out. Bit of porridge for breakfast, gone by supper.â He gave a soft, huffing chuckle. No humor at all, just irony in a horrible, resigned sound. âI used to think she had the right of it. Then Iâd have some too, and theyâd be sorry.â He licked his battered lips. The world around didnât have the pulsing glow anymore, and the pharmaceutical mess of the future wore away. His skin felt scraped flat under his sleeves. âI never meant it, not really. I wanted to mean it, but I didnât.â
Perhaps Misha was even gone by now, down into the lee of the big roofless chapel, and Daniel was still there, talking at nothing. He seemed not to notice, and lifted one thumb to work madly at one incisor, a thoroughly neurotic, unhygienic gesture of uncontrolled thought. The pad came away bloody immediately, red spilling down over the curve of his palm, and he didnât appear to notice that either. âThey really did hate me. I brought something here, in place of their son, like wine gone to vinegar.â
Much of the child seemed gone. He licked at his palm, dropped his hand, still staring out at the beautiful ruin. âAnd I got away. As soon as I realized there was no help for it, I⊠I left for the Continent.â He was crying now, without a change of expression. The clear tears tangled in his lashes and confused at the planes of his cheekbones, eventually sliding down past a mouth that didnât display a crease of emotion.
Misha, he was the kind of child that was real aware of making folks do things they didn't want to do. Could be said that consent was something he felt real personal 'bout, and holding onto fingers being tugged free wasn't something he was prepared to do. Despite wanting to tug Daniel with him down to that abbey, Misha let the boy-vampire go, his own hand hanging there in belated offering a spell.
"Folks are fragile," Misha said sagely, and that was his response to porridge and little lives being snuffed out by the dinner bell. But, Misha, he'd never wanted to do badly to a soul. He hadn't never wished himself violent or stronger, and he hadn't never wished his tormentors ill. That didn't make the boy strong, not in his own estimation. He reckoned that was just his makeup, and it was like praising someone for having fair hair, when it wasn't their own doing any. "It's okay to want bad things when folks don't treat you right," Misha said, despite his own lack of understanding 'bout it. But it was human, he knew, that wanting, and Misha felt real reverent 'bout everything human.
Misha watched as Daniel pressed thumb to incisor. "Don't," Misha said, and he reached for the boy's hand. Angels like Misha, they couldn't heal a thing. He couldn't make Daniel quit bleeding, but he could make the hurting from it fade, and he did try to touch the back of Daniel's hand, despite it being such a small thing, a bleeding finger. "If they hated you, then that's 'bout them, sugar. It ain't 'bout you, and it ain't right. You didn't bring a thing here wasn't here already. You gave them a gift. You were a gift. All children are," the angel said, real soft and somehow real firm, and both at the same time.
It took Misha a second to realize Daniel was talking like the future was a thing he could recollect. The hand that had been moving to comfort bleeding finger, it move to Daniel's back, where it rested, if allowed. The warm that seeped from Misha's fingertips, it wasn't deliberate any. It was a sympathetic reaction to them tears. "What happened when you left here?" Misha asked, and the question was nearly a reverent whispering. He reckoned talking through to the present would be good for the boy that wasn't a boy anymore, but Misha feared it would lead right on back to madness. So, his hand stayed where it was, warm and angelic and soothing.
Daniel had different ideas about consent. He was here, after all, in the gallery of his past, and no one had asked him if he wanted to go. Misha accepted the consent of the hive, however, and the vampire had understood that, in its simplistic way. Daniel himself would have asked Claire for the quick, sharp end of her knife, a finish to the whole thing, because he was a coward and he didnât like confronting the things of which he was capable. In the abbey of Danielâs life, the aconite in the porridge had been long eaten and all were long dead, the vespers now only echoes in his head.
âTheyâre not fragile. People are strong. They adapt and continue, for the most part. If they do not, it is because the damage is not physical.â Daniel knew the power of the mind over the body. He knew it more than his parents would, than any mortal could, and certainly more than Misha did. He was starting to realize why he was here. It was in the white set of his mouth, and the strain on either temple where the veins stood stark in the cold. Daniel had never been a particularly good father. He didnât think himself capable of having biological children, in fact, but he had those he had decided to claim as his own, to ask no questions of fate or prospective mothers, to deem his blood and own it the way his grandparents had not been able to master. His descendants, as he chose to call them, were adrift.
They werenât born yet.
He turned away from Misha without acknowledging the angelâs reassuring words, and he looked back at the manor in the distance. He had seen it once, before he left for America, and it had been a ruin. Cattle were using the great hall for shelter, and the rain had made every step a sponge of wood and very old paper. He doubted it still existed in Mishaâs time. âI left here, and I was made in the Terror. I was never again what I was here.â
Slowly, he turned one final time to look across the years at the angel. His face was a mess of tears and clinging mist, and he held his jaw so tight he seemed ready to shatter. âPlease take me home.â The request was formed with excruciating care, and it took more effort to force it into coherency than Daniel imagined four words could take.
Misha was made for saving things. He was made for helping folks live, and this was, to his young mind, helping Daniel live again. He wouldn't have undertaken it without everyone's agreement, and could be that wasn't consent proper, but he reckoned it was like when folks got locked away for their own care. Misha, he had a whole lot of experience in that. He didn't self-harm, and he never had done, but he'd seen plenty of folks in asylums who did. His nature, as it was, and his youth, it hadn't led him to question whether those folks deserved the right to give up. Could be he'd make it to that thinking someday, but today and looking down at this abbey, it wasn't that day any.
Daniel was talking 'bout folks, and Misha smiled a real soft and ethereal smile. "Their fragility is their strength. The fact that they're made up of such vulnerabilities, and they survive, and they flourish, and they live real fearless, when their lives are things amounting to seconds. Any little thing can carry them away, and yet they're fearless as can be. I can't fathom it sometimes." That was the angel talking, and could be he wouldn't remember any of this, the boy that he was when his mind wasn't being soothed any.
The vampire, he turned away, and Misha felt something unpleasing in his chest.
"But what you are, it's something special. All them folks wouldn't care 'bout you if it wasn't," Misha said of terrors and never being the same. And it was young thinking, real trusting in folks to see the good in others. He was thinking on that when Daniel turned, and the tears surprised the lanky boy with the shadow of angel's wings at his back, the penumbra a thing cast on the grass behind long legs and coltish boy. He raised a hand to catch dampness on his thumb, and he wanted to embrace the man standing there. Misha, he was empathetic, and he hurt when other folks hurt, and he nodded when Daniel fought to form words 'bout going home.
The angel didn't consider where to take them.
He wrapped Daniel in a real quick, real young and messy hug, and the sensation of moving was muted some by the press of Misha's body. There was coolness accompanied by the sound of feathers, and they were in the music store. Not in Daniel's apartment, but downstairs amid the vinyl that was growing dusty from not being cared for. Misha stepped away, and he looked at the man standing there. "Are you going to run off again? I won't stop you, if you're inclined."
Daniel wasnât saved. Misha might think this was a mercy, like a restorative draft from yesteryear, but the look on Danielâs face wasnât gratitude or resilient calm. Everything about him was shattered and glued together around the edges to maintain appearance, and the expression in his eyes came closest to grief and kept going beyond it. The creature in the filthy Capital flat had, at least, been collected, and certain about his nature. When Misha moved away from his embrace, Daniel looked at him with such resentment that it was only the tears that seemed to prevent it from progressing into rage.
Daniel had never been one for deliberate, slow, physical self-harm. Too much of a coward for that. And he knew that Claire wouldnât ever give him an easy death, not when he was in his own head, and he didnât have the performance chops to make her believe he was anything less. He knew what it meant, him standing there in the dusty hole of wood and vinyl. He was able to speak his own name, and understand that where the angel had taken him was long gone, and he also knewâwith the deep, terrifying reality of someone waking up from a nightmare they couldnât quite remember, what had happened.
He tried to remember if he had killed anyone, and thought he had, but couldnât draw up any names or faces. It was a quick, ready torture, like the one Misha had just subjected him to. He put distance between himself and the angel.
âYou donât have the right to interfere. Youâve done enough.â The place felt empty, and Daniel shook with the repressed need to find somewhere to be alone, without another heart to tear. âPlease leave.â Again, the excruciating politeness, the not-quite-gone British accent, the roving gaze to avoid eye contact. Daniel was perfectly aware that Misha had meant well.
Misha wasn't real accustomed to being looked at hard like that. He took himself a real long step backward, and it wasn't that he expected violence from the man he'd just deposited in the music store. If it was violence he expected, he would've stood real firm, on account of having always been the type to take the blows when they came, quiet and real good 'bout it. This wasn't fear, but it was the understanding that could be he'd gotten this all wrong.
The boy's face fell.
Daniel put more space' tween them, and Misha's youth showed in his expression as failure dawned cruel. Not failure to make this man remember himself, to bring him back to what his friends believed he would want. It was failure to the vampire himself, and Misha tried brief to figure out how he'd gotten it so wrong.
Daniel told him to go, lectured him 'bout interfering, and Misha didn't bother saying interfering was what he'd been created to do. His lower lip trembled. He'd forget this once he was home, in a borrowed bed that didn't belong to him any, and that too was something he was trying not to think on any. He didn't defend himself or say a thing, and he wouldn't tell a soul Daniel was back. He just closed his pale blue eyes and was gone. Feathers, cool air, and Daniel was left alone with his vinyl and himself.