After thirty years exactly (Scott had counted, as anyone mourning should based on his admittedly limited understanding), Scott stands up from next to Avid's grave, turns to Shelby, and says:
"Right then. You know, thirty years is pretty long on the scale of a human life, right?"
"That's true," she says. "It's funny. I hadn't noticed the not aging fully, but—"
"That's not really what I mean," Scott says, waving a hand. It's calloused these days, to the extent a vampire hand can be, and it's frankly irritating. He'd worked long and hard to make his hands soft, but these days his shoulders hurt and there are nicks on him. Dirt! Callouses! Hardly befitting an unaging vampire and a god amongst men. And for a time, he hadn't minded. It had felt—fitting. But time dulls all things. But the truth is, once he was no longer feeling more than a proper lord ever should...
Thirty years. He'd counted. "That's a perfectly reasonable amount of time to mourn, right? On the kind of timescale you and him were living on. Really, it seems like a bit long, given how short human lives are, but he was a vampire at the end so I'll give him that much."
Shelby frowns. "Scott, I still want to mourn him."
"Really? I mean, obviously, he's dead and I was very sad about it, and still am. But by now, haven't you learned not to think about it?"
Shelby sighs and looks back at Avid's grave. "I guess grief works differently for everyone, huh?"
Annoying. Derails his point further. He doesn't say anything, though, because he's reluctantly found that her being annoying is—fine? It's fine. During the three years she'd left to go settle some of her last affairs, the fact she hadn't been annoying around him had been—the point is that he doesn't point it out anymore, really.
But it's been thirty years.
"So don't you think it's been long enough?" he says. He looks at the callouses on his hands. "Like, okay, we can just like—I won't go back to eating people if that will bother you. But my manor, it's still just like, right there. And you know none of the human lords are better than me. When we were in Erewash, that guy who was taking so many livestock as taxes that we couldn't feed ourselves, let alone all the human peasants. Basically a bloodsucker himself."
Shelby frowns at the ground. "I mean, I guess, but—"
"And being hungry? I'm basically over it. The way I see it, if I go kill the guy who took my manor, you come with me, I can get you a super plush room, we'll be happy there. Avid won't mind. It's been thirty years. I'm tired of dirty hands."
"That's not normally what that one means, Scott," Shelby says. She looks back at Avid's grave. She swallows. "It's not."
Scott waves a hand. "Well yeah, but I've been good for thirty years. I can go back to taxing peasants for animals. Animals, Shelby. Not people! I'll be good or whatever, I just figure I don't have to, you know—I've been good a while, by human terms. We've earned a break."
Shelby looks at the grave.
"Not the one you have to worry about," someone says behind Scott. He turns around.
"Hello. Glad to see I can stop you before you misbehave for real," says Abolish, who immediately sticks the muzzle of a pistol into Scott's back. Scott sort of wants to tell him that guns don't kill vampires. Scott sort of wants to ask him what he did to his gun to kill vampires. Scott more than anything, though, wants to say:
"Oh, come on, can't you give a guy a break?"
"No." Abolish digs the gun in further.
"Would you hold a human to this standard? Really, I think it's a double standard. I'm just doing what a human lord would if I take Shelby up there and we just—I won't even kill anyone. You know, when Shelby and I were wandering, humans are killing their villages too, and would you—"
"That's not fair," Scott says. "It's not! I've been tragically sad for perfectly long enough, and even Shelby agrees I've been good, and don't I get a reward? Don't I get something? Are you saying that what, you expect me to be miserable for the rest of my eternal existence or you'll kill me? For the sake of morals your species doesn't even follow? I find that insulting."
"That's how it works, being good. If you see it like that."
"Scott, let it go," Shelby says. "It's okay."
Scott thinks he can take Abolish.
He can move faster than humans can react. He could kill Abolish now. It'd solve the problem, he thinks. He could go take back his castle. In a few years, Shelby would understand that just taxing the humans with their blood is easier and frankly kills fewer of them than famine, and they'd be comfortable and happy, and Scott wouldn't think about Avid except for once a year, which is good, because then he wouldn't have to feel about it at all. It'd be slow convincing her, but he's been good for thirty years, which is longer than Avid would have lived anyway so who cares?
Who cares? Who cares? WHO CARES.
"I can tell you're thinking about starting a fight. Do you prefer the easy way out? 'Cause I think that'd make my life a whole lot easier."
"It's not fair," snarls Scott. "You shouldn't get to bind me forever. I shouldn't have to atone forever."
"Tough shit," Abolish says.
"Scott, it isn't about atoning," Shelby says. She's still looking at Avid's grave. "It isn't. You don't—being good isn't a ledger book."
"Look at me if you're going to insult me," Scott says.
Shelby does. She looks like she used to in Oakhurst.
Scott shakes more and more. All at once he feels nauseous and empty. It's not hunger—for all he's only recently acquainted with the feeling, he knows it's not. It's similar, though. It hollows out his chest. It makes him want to wretch. Avid's grave is right there. Shelby hasn't had that face in a decade. Avid's grave is right there, and Shelby hasn't looked like that in a decade, and his manor is right there and it'd be so easy, it'd be so easy, it'd be so much easier for everyone—
(Avid died for fucking nothing, and Shelby's here for fucking nothing too.)
"Go away," Shelby says. "I'll kill him if one of us have to, but you don't need to—not here. Not here."
Abolish snorts. "He was gonna try to slippery slope you, you know. Some people don't change."
"And some do," Shelby says. "Leave."
Abolish pulls the gun from Scott's back. "Catch." He throws it to Shelby. "I have more." He leaves.
"Do you want the easy way out?" Shelby asks. It is horribly tremulous and horribly kind.
"It isn't fair," Scott says. "I don't—I don't want this, I don't want this. I just wanted to be comfortable. I just wanted to be happy. I didn't want—"
"That's life. Welcome to living," Shelby says. "I'll be visiting Cleo. Here. If you need it. I don't think we should go back to your manor."
She puts the gun down on the grave. She leaves. He's alone.
A gun and a grave sit in front of him.
He stares at them both for a long time.
