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why do you stand at a distance?





"You know, you really oughtta do something besides sit around the house and mope," Stefan suggested, leaning back in his computer chair with his foot planted against the desk and eyeing his adopted son a little sideways and a little upside-down.

"Wh-...I am not moping!" Mikhail refuted from the couch, where he lay stomach-down with a book he wasn't actually bothering to read - he'd've had to glance down and double-check to even answer if asked what it was.

"Well, you're something," the dhampir grumbled vaguely, "And it's starting to get annoying. Couldn't you just do something already?"

"I'm not anything!" Mik protested, glaring at his father. "Could you just tell me what you mean instead of making me guess?"

Stefan rolled his eyes. "All I'm saying is that, aside from getting yourself cut up, you haven't done anything in months! The most you do is just...wander off for awhile to do nothing somewhere else. How many friends do you actually have?"

"How do you know what I do when I leave? Maybe I do do stuff!" He ignored the actual question.

"Because I ask, and the answer is almost always 'nothing'?"

...he had him there, and Mik huffed and turned his head to break eye contact. "Well it's not like there's anything to do."

"That's bullshit, Mik," Stefan said flatly, "And you know it. We've been here, what, two and a half years? That's two and a half years you've had to finally figure out who the hell you are and where you came from, and you're next to nowhere because you keep avoiding everyone who could tell you anything. There's plenty you could be doing, so why aren't you doing it?"

The angel stared, shocked and dismayed and a little angered by his guardian's blunt accusation. "Maybe I don't want to!" he started, but had that explanation cut off by a no-nonsense glare from Stefan. "I...I don't like them, okay? They're all screwed up somehow! Airi's crazy, and everyone else is just...just...they don't make any sense!"

"They might, if you stopped for a minute and tried to figure it out," he offered sensibly.

"But what if I don't want to?" Mik snapped back contrarily.

"Then it's your own fault for being childish."

"I...I am not!"

"Yes, you are." Stefan sighed, righting himself and spinning his chair to face Mik properly. "Which I suppose is my fault, to some extent. I was really hoping you'd just grow out of it on your own, but apparently that's not going to happen." Apparently you need someone to hit you over the head first, he added to himself. "Maybe what you need is some motivation."

...eh? Mikhail looked nonplussed, but waited for whatever was coming next.

"Maybe you should start coming with me when I work. But," he interrupted before Mik could get started, "You have to be responsible. You have to listen to me - last time I tried this with you, you made me regret it. You have to remember that there is more to this than you think right now, and accept what I tell you - everything. And if you don't understand it, you have to try."

"If you shut off, tune me out, or otherwise don't listen to me, we will stop. If you are irresponsible, we will stop. The moment you decide not to take this seriously, one or both of us is going to end up hurt - or dead - or worse, someone else will who's not supposed to. And if we do this, it cannot be all you do - this can't ever be everything you are. So you will start trying to be Fa'e, because you're far enough behind on that already."

"Am I understood?"

"Yes."

In which there will be two vampires, oops, and ouch.

Once I said in my anguish, "I am shut out from your sight"





Soft, feathery strands of white hair brushed against his face, sticking for a moment in the light rain. He didn't bother to brush them away, for even now, the touch of another living being meant much to him. It was a faintly comforting, momentarily grounding feeling in a world that seemed less and less solid as time continued to pass; and even the passing of time was cruel, in this place where nothing ever changed. Everything was the same as it had been since all the living, breathing things had gone out of it. The plants never really grew, never died, never spread past where they had always been. The only thing that ever changed them at all was the wind, or his own passing, or his companion's feeding, but they soon went back to the way they'd been.

He hadn't noticed the unicorn until she stood right beside him, long mane blown across his cheek by the breeze. He glanced up at her, and watched her watch the fall of then rain against the tree they'd both been looking towards.

Turning his gaze to it again, he acknowledged, "Rhe'em."

"I did not think to find you resting in the mud, dear one," she said, what she meant to be affectionate jibing falling flat. Instead, it was a sad acknowledgement that things were not as they once had been.

"It wasn't mud when I sat down," he pointed out. He conversed almost reflexively anymore, with little to his words or voice.

She stared out before them and sighed, hesitating before she spoke again. "It has been raining for days."

"I suppose it has."

"You hate the rain. Why did you not move out of it?" He worried her more and more; he had for years.

"I was comfortable."

Rhe'em sighed a second time. "That is lying, and that is not like you either."

"I didn't feel like it." He drew his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms around his legs, ignorant of or unbothered by her distress.

That, at least, was like him - or the way he was now. It was not comforting. "Your apathy concerns me, dear one."

"You are repeating yourself."

"Some things bear repeating, especially to friends who do not listen the first time - or the twelfth, of however many times it has been." Frustration, hurt in the depths of those white eyes.

"I listen." The faintest impression of impatience. "I have answered you before. Why do you continue to come to me with this?"

"Your answer does not satisfy me," she admonished. "All it satisfies is your own self-pity."

"I have every right to feel this way," he snapped, clear emotion finally breaking through - but it was still no comfort. It was always this way. "I am in a miserable place, alone. Why should I not be miserable?"

The unicorn recoiled as though physically struck, and stared at him in horror that soon softened to deep sadness. After a long silence, she whispered, "You are not alone. Do not hurt me so."

"That's not what I meant," he said moodily. "There is no Light here. There is no life here. I have no brothers, no- this place is forsaken! Forgotten. We have been forgotten, Rhe'em."

"Do not say that," she warned him, voice hushed with distress, "You know it is not true."

"You always say that, yet it is always the same - nothing. We are prisoners here, when we have done no wrong." He pulled his wings in around himself, as though he wanted for an embrace. "I have only ever been a faithful servant, but He has abandoned me."

"Uriel, no!" Rhe'em cried, but it was too late.

He was gone.

In which there will be killing of vampires! And the discovery that guardians are heavier than they look.