death is only the beginning - TULIO

[glinda]

Glinda was more upset than angry, now that she had calmed down long enough to gather her thoughts. A stormy rage she had been before now turned into a mess of would-be tears, if vampires could cry. Half of her was tempted to go out and find the nearest wooden stake, holy water, or garlic. It would certainly be a better fate than this.

She found herself in the observation lounge, which was deserted completely this time of night. She sat on one of the window seats directly beside the view screen that showed a perfect, unrestricted view of the stars. Normally they would have brought her comfort, but now they were simply an annoyance.

Drawing her knees to her chest, she punched the glass. It didn't crack or anything beneath her strength - she was such a pathetic excuse for a vampire. Now she had lost the one thing she had chosen to live for - her husband, who had clearly decided he was no longer in love with her by the way he stormed off.

Yes, death was looking much more appealing.

[Deleted]

When one lives for centuries, eventually they become desensitized to everything around them. It becomes harder every day to find something new, something surprising. Things that were once beautiful are now mundane, excitement now boring. That was why Tulio travelled the galaxy, looking for new things in new worlds, searching for... something, anything, that could illicit some emotion.

These were not the emotions he had been looking for.

After all these centuries, he could still feel heartbreak. He could feel pain and regret and loathing. Tonight, he was feeling more than he had felt for years. Upon returning to his suite had had torn the costume off, wanting nothing more than to burn it but not wanting to risk the exposure to fire. Instead he shredded it, destroying it as the memory it invoked had been destroyed. He had taken a hot shower, but it did nothing to warm his cold skin anymore than it could wash away the pain, the memories. His smell still lingered, as did hers.

Now he was wandering, needing to move, needing a distraction. He should not have disposed of that Doe as he had last time he had gotten upset; she would prove a welcome distraction right now.

Instead, the distraction came in a most unexpected form. Could something be a reminder and a distraction at once?

Glinda looked as awful as Tulio felt, and a thousand emotions washed over him anew. There were the usual ones he associated with her, the loathing, jealousy, contempt, but now... now he also felt pity. Worse, he felt understanding.

For so long he had blamed her for taking Vlad from him, for changing his maker into something different, not the beautiful, wonderful man he had known. She had never been good enough to Vlad, always bringing him down, making him less the legend, more... common. For these things Tulio would always hate Glinda, but now he knew something about her that he wished he didn’t know, something he wished he could forget.

She was just a victim in this as well.

He should have just turned and walked away, part of him wanted to, but instead he approached her with silent footsteps. Stopping at her side, he held out the bottle of whiskey to her, saying nothing.

[glinda]

Glinda smelled him before she heard or saw him. His scent was forever embedded into her mind now. The only other person who could possibly even understand. She wanted to hate him. So desperately she wanted to hate him and blame him for everything that had gone wrong, but all in all it was one person to blame, and he had disappeared.

Glinda was probably going to kill him the first chance shegot if he showed his face before she dared cool down. If she ever cooled down.

She didn't look at Tulio, but lowered her legs in case he wanted to sit down. Her back rested against the cool glass of the viewscreen and she continued to stare at the stars, hoping to get herself lost within them. Go anywhere but on that ship, be with anyone but him.

Without thinking, she took the whiskey and took a drink. It didn't burn like it used to, and did little to dull her pain, but it gave her something to do other than wallow in self pity. The feeling of something else in her stomach besides blood nearly made her sick, but she pushed that nausea away with another drink before shoving the bottle back at him.

"Too bad alcohol can't kill vampires." She muttered, finally looking up at him with a miserable look on her face. Stewing and making it worse would do little to make her feel better, but she was at a loss for what to do. Dracula had always guided her, always had somewhat of a hold on her life. Now that she was free of that, well, Glinda was like a fish out of water. A vampire without her husband. Lover. Sire.

Then again, the man currently in her company was missing the same thing as well, although, he had dealt with it before. She had not. She had ripped Dracula away from him, been the thing that he had put all his love for Tulio into, tried to force himself to love her - a simple replacement. But it wasn't her fault. She was just a plaything for Dracula their entire marriage.

Nothing hurt more than that.

[Deleted]

Although she barely acknowledged his existence, her motions were enough. Hesitantly taking the seat she had cleared, Tulio watched Glinda down the whiskey, his expression unreadable. True, the alcohol would do little to them, but it wasn’t completely without its effects. It would take a lot more than any human could handle to dull their pain at all, but it was more the familiarity of the action than anything. Even after centuries, the instinct to drown one’s sorrows was a powerful one.

“Add a little fire to the mix and it can kill anything,” Tulio replied, holding her gaze a moment before taking the bottle back and having a swig of whiskey himself. When he was done he set the bottle between them, his own gaze drawn out the viewport for a moment. They had talked of stars that night, the night, the one that had started it all. The one that would never be the same after tonight.

“He should have told you,” he eventually broke the silence. He knew it was enough, she would obviously know who ‘he’ was, and what should have been said. Tulio had so many different ideas of why Vlad had never disclosed their relationship to his wife. On his nostalgic days he thought that Vlad had wanted to keep the memories all to himself, something too precious and sacred to share; on the most bitter days Tulio believed it was because his maker had truly moved on and did not think it worthy of discussing. Every day, though, the younger vampire had been glad. He hadn’t wanted Glinda to know, he liked being able to secretly lord it over her; and, in a way, he had wanted to protect that connection he treasured just as much. “Now you know why I have never been kind to you.”

[glinda]

"Fire on a space station can be hard to find." She mused, tilting her head back to rest against the glass as well. It truly wouldn't be that hard to find if she honestly wanted to, but Glinda didn't want to kill herself in pity. She had done that the first time - look where it had landed her - and wasn't sure she'd be able to do it again.

Perhaps if she asked Tulio, he'd kill her. After all, he had nearly that one particular encounter at the tattoo parlor. But now, she had the feeling if she asked, he would most likely ask her in return. Something about the recent encounter had put them both in such similiar depressed moods that Glinda wondered if either one of them would ever be able to pull out.

She gave a bitter smirk.

"I'm used to him not telling me things." She muttered. Vlad had killed the man she'd been married to in her human life, and he didn't think she knew. Stupid little blonde, not smart enough to realize it had been him that had driven her off the cliff in the first place, only to end up saving her life. What twisted love story was it? Now he had hidden something from her - she had been a replacement for something that could never be replaced.

"I've never been kind to you, either. I thought you hated me just because I was me. Because I was stupid, foolish, and was nothing but a pretty trophy wife who didn't know any better. A pathetic excuse for a vampire really. I'd agree with you." She shrugged, twisting her head to look over at him. Her gaze flickered to the bottle between them, before she grabbed it and took another drink, replacing it between them a moment later.

"I'm sorry." She said suddenly. "For everything. I'm sorry you hate me. I'm sorry I've been such a prick to you. I'm sorry he tried to replace you, with me. I should have realized . . . . most of those things he told you that night he's never even said to me once . . . he's always loved you."

[Deleted]

Tulio couldn’t help the cynical smile that curved his lips upward. All the reasons Glinda listed, he had hated her for those too. More accurately they had made it easier for him to hate her, for him to convince himself that this was all her fault. They were also the reasons why he could never understand Vlad’s attraction to her.

Now he knew. His sire had chosen someone so different from Tulio to try to replace him, to fill that void. Someone who could never be a reminder because they were nothing alike.

“I hated you for those things too,” he admitted. His tone was not cruel, just matter-of-fact. He was merely stating an honest truth.

What followed next, though, took him completely by surprise. He had expected Glinda to scream at him some more, to blame him for everything; he had never expected her to apologise, nor to admit everything she just had. Tulio wished he could take comfort in the words, but hearing her say that Vlad loved him... the words stung. Closing his eyes, the dark haired vampire clenched his jaw. Maybe he was loved, but his sire had wanted to destroy that love, to replace all the memories. He had wanted to tear it from his heart, bleed it dry. There was no comfort in that.

“It is all my doing,” he said quietly, his voice inaudible to normal human ears, but Glinda would hear him quite clearly. “I was lost. I pushed him away. And he...” he had retaliated by turning Glinda, he had sought his revenge. He had used her from the beginning. “He found you.”

[glinda]

Her lips twitched as if she wanted to smile, but she stifled the urge and shifted on the seat. There were so many things she probably could have said, so many things she could tell Tulio that would probably make him feel just a bit better, but she bit them back as well. It wasn't that she didn't want him to feel better, but there were just things she didn't want to say.

She picked up his all-too-quiet voice with a slight flinch as he blamed himself. She looked up, meeting his gaze. "Don't blame yourself. It's no one's fault but his own for being such a . . . a . . prick!" She snapped, more for the fact that her anger was returning at Dracula, rather than snapping at Tulio. "He only found me because I drove myself off a cliff after he killed my husband - he doesn't know I know that - and he only changed me because he felt sorry for me. I only stayed with him because I felt sorry for him. What a souless-damned pair we make."

Sighing, she tugged fingers through her tangled curls before resting her hands in her lap. She wanted to rip the dress she wore up, as he had bought it for her. Burn it. Throw it out an airlock. She wanted to get rid of everything he had bought her, and everything he had touched - but that meant killing herself. His hands had been all over her, and it was that touch that was suddenly making her skin itch and feel as if it were on fire. She folded her arms across her chest and dug her nails into her arms to avoid scratching.

"Eternal life kinda sucks right now."

[Deleted]

Perhaps he should have enjoyed her anger at Vlad, should have shared in it, but the words only made him wince. Even with his heart so shattered he could not hate the man who had made him what he was now. After decades apart, of feeling loss and loneliness that nothing and no one could change, he still could take no joy in any harsh words spoken about his sire.

“We all have many reasons why we do what we do. Often we don’t even know all of them ourselves,” Tulio replied, tilting his head slightly to regard Glinda after her story. So much of her had always seemed so... human. She had never taken to the change as he himself had. “He did not change you only out of pity. He needed someone to fill the void I had left. It may be hard to believe, but one of his reasons may have been loneliness.”

Or revenge, or spite, or sheer cruelty, but why could Tulio not bring himself to say these things aloud? Instead he almost sounded like he was defending the one who had hurt them both so badly. He was looking for excuses; he wished he could just hate Vlad, but a much stronger emotion would never allow it.

In theory, he could agree with Glinda’s last statement, but not as fully as she meant it. He had known of Glinda’s suicidal tendencies, they were also a strong player in his utter contempt for her over the years, but he had never seriously contemplated it himself. To him it would always be a gift, one he would never trade no matter what happened.

“Tonight, yes, but one night, even one year, is barely a drop of water in a vast ocean. Even a decade of accumulated misery is overshadowed by a century of beauty, experience and change.”

[glinda]

Oh, he was going to go all philosophical on her? Just what she needed. She brought her legs up so her feet rested on the lip of the window seat and she pulled herself into a tight ball, resting her arms on top of her knees and her head on top of that. Staring out across the observation lounge, she quietly stewed for a moment.

“Yes, well, it's quite clear I could never quite clear that void. I loved him. Irreversibly so. He should have got himself together before I fell in love with him to return to you. Now it's going to be even harder to get over him." She twisted the wedding ring she had retrieved from the ground before disappearing out of the holodeck. It was cold between her even colder fingers, a Romanian declaration of love carved on the inside of it. She had memorized it and it's meaning long ago.

"Getting over him is going to take longer than one night, and one year." She spoke quietly, her voice sinking below that audible point that humans could hear. Only Tulio would hear. "Living with that pain for longer than forever isn't something I'm used to - hell, I'm not used to living without him. I'm such a mess." She buried her face within her arms, througholy disgusted with the entire situation.

[Deleted]

Tulio knew he should feel pity for Glinda right then, but while he knew exactly what she felt, he couldn’t help the flash of anger that sparked within him. She was speaking as if she was the only one who had been hurt by Vlad, as if she was the only one who had had to move on, to learn to live without him. It was as if she forgot that all the time she had been living with the man they both loved, Tulio had been existing without him, dreaming of him, missing him, wishing he could turn the calendar pages back and change everything.

“You may never get over him,” he spoke clearly; it was very obvious that he never had. “But it is possible to continue without him. There are other beautiful things in our existence, so many to explore. The pain may always be there, but it is not a joyless life.”

Maybe there had never been another, not since her, who had ever even come close to rivaling the strength of his feelings for Vlad, but a life of solitude was better than none at all. Tulio would not bow to Glinda’s melancholy reflections. If she wished to end her existence then he would not physically stop her, it was her choice, but he would never give her justification to do so.

[glinda]

Other beautiful things in their existence? Like what? She'd probably never find someone else to share her existence with. She couldn't have children in an attempt to fill that void. She wasn't even sure what to do now that she practically had no life. Get a job? Find a way off the space station? There had to be something to do. Maybe she could improve and be a better vampire - she was a pretty pathetic excuse for one right then.

"What did you do when you lost him the first time? What are you going to do now?" She inquired quietly, looking back over at him with mildly curiousity sparked within her dark eyes. Maybe something he said would give her an idea of how to proceed. After all, he'd had to deal with it before. She hadn't had to deal with it since she was a human, and even then it had only been grief for a few hours. He had changed her then.

(omg fail. sorry)

[Deleted]

Tulio considered the first question, a million memories washing over him in a wave. Despite what he had done, how he had changed, what he had asked of his maker, losing Vlad had come as a surprise. Perhaps he had been expected to grovel, to take back everything he had said, retract the changes that were overcoming him when Glinda had entered the picture, but if that was her purpose he hadn’t taken the bait. He had let Vlad go and continued down his chosen path alone.

“I was experiencing something at the time that he could not understand, it was what drove us apart,” he admitted honestly, meeting her eyes once more. “I continued down that path, following my obsession, devoting my life to it. I had something else to focus on and I gave myself little time to miss him.”

It had been easy in that time to put Vlad from his mind except to think of him in anger. Tulio had the girl then to think of, the one who had touched his cold dead heart, the one who had sent him on that road in the first place. It wasn’t until many years later, after she had been so cruelly and viciously taken from him, that the weight of it all had finally settled on him and he was almost completely overcome with the loss of everything. That was the only time in all his existence that he had even considered ending it, and even then it had been a fleeting thought.

Back in the present, he was unsure how to answer Glinda’s second question. What was he going to do now?

“I suppose I will get of at the next planet we approach, assuming it is habitable for one such as us, and continue as I always have,” he said, but it was clear that even he wasn’t sold on this idea.

[glinda]

"I'm sorry." She said out of habit now when he finished. She did honestly feel sorry for him somewhat, but no more sorry than she felt for herself. Part of her felt sorry for Vlad as well - sorry that he had been created to be such a prick. "Unfortunately, I don't have much of an obsession to devote my life to anymore. My life belonged to him and now - I haven't owned my life since the day I was born. I haven't been without companionship, either. This is a new feeling."

Glinda sighed softly. This was easily the worst thing she had ever experienced, which was sort of sad. Stretching her short legs out in front of her, she picked up the whiskey bottle with slight disgust now. She studied it as if she wanted to take a drink, then silently sat it back down between them. Alcohol would do little to help her now.

"I don't see how you find it just . . . so easy to forget and continue on." She admitted quietly. It surely wouldn't be easy for her.

[Deleted]

Tulio was not certain which was worse: to be forced to live without companionship after never having been without it before, or to have not had it, gained it, then had to learn to live once more without it. Perhaps he could find out if they discussed their personal scenarios, but it wasn’t an altogether appetizing prospect.

“Perhaps you will find that it suits you,” he offered with a shrug. “How often have you contemplated true death while not alone? Maybe finding your independence is exactly what you need for a happier existence.”

It was possible. It was also possible that if he left her alone tonight she may finally follow through with her impulses, having no companion to stop her. It was unfair, but Tulio could barely bring himself to care either way... especially after her following question.

His whole face darkened, a terrifying sight indeed.

“Easy?” he sneered, sitting up straighter, moving closer to Glinda in a single smooth movement. “You think this has been easy for me? You think it was easy to see the two of you together over the years knowing it should be me in your place? You think I have forgotten?”

His face was mere inches from hers now, one arm on either side of her giving her little room to move.

“I remember everything. I remember the pain and the ecstasy when he turned me. I remember every lesson he ever taught. I remember our first home, our first kill. I remember my first taste of human blood, how he soothingly stroked my hair as I destroyed my last shred of humanity.”

Tulio had cried that night, or as close to crying as he could, as he felt that first body grow still in his arms. There had been no turning back after that, and with Vlad at his side he hadn’t wanted to... for a while.

“I remember his smell, his taste, his touch...I have forgotten nothing, but I did continue on. I did it for me, for the curiosity and the adventure, but mostly I did it for him. He gave me a gift that night, he had chosen me as worthy enough to deserve it, and I would not throw that away.”

[glinda]

She recognized his face darkening and instantly knew she had made a mistake. He was nearly on top of her before she could react, but on instinct her upper lip curled to expose the fangs beneath. She pressed herself against the glass, hands gripping the windowseat on either side of her.

"You think what I've gone through is easy, either? Yeah, you're right! It should have been you because no matter what I do, I can never make him happy. But you should have got yourself together and come back before now. Maybe then things would have been a hell of a lot easier on all of us!" She snapped, trying to reel her anger in quickly after she spoke. She didn't want to end up doing something she'd regret. The last thing she wanted was to get worked up again. She had come to the observation lounge in search of silence. It appeared she was getting quite the opposite.

She didn't move, only met his gaze as his face grew closer to hers.

“And you think I don't remember those things? I shared those moments with him too, and I don't rightly care that you happened to share them first." Glinda said in a steely tone, eyes flashing darker in color with more rage as it boiled beneath her skin, held back by the edges. "From the moment I woke up in his arms after being turned I never looked back, not until now. Right now, I'm starting to question everything I've ever known, and it's not a feeling I'm used to, so forgive me for my lack of sympathy toward you!"

She shook her head, tongue pressed to the inside of her cheek as she refrained from saying anything else. A gift? Hardly. A curse was more like it. The more Glinda looked back on it, the more she regretted her decision about the entire matter.

"I'm sure if you returned to him now, he'd accept your company far more than he would mine."