Deliverance || Nicolas x Jacob
bloodrageprince:
“Yes, in fact.” Nicolas replied with a slick, sickening smile. “Now that I think on it, you should feel very f l a t t e r e d at the time I’ve taken out of my day in order to end you. After-all, I can think of so many preferable uses for my time. Then again,” He mused waving the glass of scotch around, “I suppose I have an endless amount of time in front of me. You, on the other hand…” He tilted his head, a pitying hum reverberating at the back of his throat. “- Not so much.” After all of the tortures he’d inflicted on the younger vampire, Jacob’s prognosis was grim, even if he turned around and walked out of the house at that very moment. He would’ve needed help to recover, help he was not likely to receive way. They both knew that now.
In some ways, Nicolas wondered whether his own fate would be any different, were their positions reversed right now. Would anyone come for him?.. He had his sister, he’d made a few friends over the years - enough to be counted on one hand, maybe - but even those he’d h u r t and let down as though he was destined to cause nothing but pain. It was different than the torment he was inflicting on Jacob - but arguably more agonizing because it was not physical in nature. It was mental, emotional; deep under the skin where it struck at the most vulnerable parts of them. His legacy was more than kingdoms rising and falling throughout history - than blood, murder and mayhem to be shared around some campfire in scandalized whispers. It was a trail of hearts he had no right to break over the years - hearts he’d broken anyway. Disappointment here, betrayal there, robbing loved ones of their fragile hope in him and replacing it instead with grief and with gall… Why had they not abandoned him?…
Jacob was right. There was a few who’d be very, very pleased at his demise. How many more would be pleased if an Original were to die? And even at this bitter end, even with a corkscrew in his lungs, a stake through his spine and enough broken bones to fill a graveyard, Jacob tried to grasp at the remaining straws of his pride. What good would it do him?… What good did it do any of them, in the end?… No one was here for him, no one would cry for him - the room was e m p t y . It was a bleak enough thought to dampen even Nicolas’ own triumphant mood though he hid it well. Certainly, his taste for the running commentary had soured somewhat. “Go to hell…” He echoed almost thoughtfully, before knocking the drink back in one gulp. Hell … Yes, he supposed there was that to look forward to. “Kind of you to prepare it for me, keep my seat warm and all that.” He snorted, wiping at his mouth. “That’s as good a toast as any. Fine scotch too - pity you wouldn’t stomach it in your present state.”
He strolled towards the younger vampire, listening to each laboured breath, to the sound of his heart, struggling to pump any remaining blood through his failing system. “Well, I suppose on that touching note…” He let the empty scotch glass slip from his fingers and shatter a few inches away from Jacob, before leaning down to yank the injured man up by the throat. Nicolas ignored the cry that went up in pain as he dangled - it wouldn’t be long now. And then, without remorse or delay, he drove his hand into the man’s chest and reached for his heart, severing it from its home. Nature took over then. Five hundreds years caught up with the vampire as his skin turned a molten grey, red veins pulsating to a deep black around his eyes as the life finally left them. The Original released his bloodied grip, and the corpse dropped to his feet. The quivering organ in his palm finally stopped twitching and he released that, too.
“Goodbye, J a c o b D a s h w o o d .”
By now, Jacob just wanted Nicolas to get on with it. They both knew how this was going to end. All this talking and drinking was doing, was prolonging the torture. Something Jacob understood, absolutely. But he also hated it when he was the victim. “You’re trying to bore me to death?”, he edged his opponent on He was not going to beg. He would never bed. Not for death. Not Nicolas. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t try to speed up the process by taunting the Original. There was nothing boring about the piericing pain in his lungs, about the way he had to struggle for every intake of air, about the pain in his back and about the way he couldn’t move his legs. It was agonizing. It was something he had never thought he had to endure in his entire eternity of living.
And there would be no one to come for him. There had never been anyone close enough to come and check how he was doing. It didn’t matter how long Nicolas would choose to continue this torment, the end result was going to be the same. Jacob was going to die. Alone, the way he had lived. He had never been able to look past his hatred, past his arrogance. Never had that bothered him, until now he realized that all his life hadn’t meant anything. He hadn’t achieved what he had wanted to. The moment his body would turn to ashes, people would breath in relief, but then he would be forgotten. A ghost from the past, someone to forget about. And that might hurt him even more than every broken bone, every wound, every bit of pain Nicolas had inflicted on him. His life had meant nothing.
He wouldn’t keep Nicolas’ seat warm. He had no idea what the afterlife, what hell would look like, how much he would still remember from this life, but if there would be even a shell of the man he had been left, he’d make sure to do everything in his -probably very limited- power to make Nicolas’ arrival and stay there more of a torture than his own. He cried out when Nicolas yanked him up, an involuntary reaction when the stake was splintering in his spine, one that he hated because it showed weakness, but at least it would all be over now.
The pain of Nicolas’ hand plunging in his chest was only a weak echo of everything he was feeling already. It was over. After all the agony since he had opened the door tonight, it was finally over.
And then everything turned black.