Answers from a dead man
Crossover fic. Immortals AU x the Old Guard. Kiara. Booker.
Kiara added a roughly splintered log to the fire, no crackle or hiss because it was too damp from the blizzard raging outside. She didn’t need the heat and she wasn’t sure her companion did either.
He ought to be dead after all.
She’d seen death enough that she knew it. Had stumbled upon him in the white, Russian woods with short gasps as he struggled to breathe with a rope biting into his neck. She’d cut him down, intending to leave his corpse for the wolves and foxes desperate for food. And then she heard his heart beat anew.
Entirely new, not restored from something faded or weak. Beat as fresh as a babe’s inside the womb.
The vampire dragged him into a cave, carrying him through the shadows to avoid more of the bitter cold. She did not know if hypothermia was something that would end his second life, but it would be easier to deal with this on her own than to trust a villager.
Her fire was dwindling, the wet wood refusing to provide fuel for the hungry flame.
Kiara eyed the shivering body warily before starting to shed her layers. She piled the furs and wool on top of him before sliding into the darkness.
She was used to those who escaped death. Those, like herself, who became something else entirely; those, like her beloved, who became someone anew; those like Cane and Dorian who just never ceased to live. But those who died and just kept living? She had questions.
She found a farm, ignoring the beasts’ startled cries as she emerged from the shadows in front of the wood pile. A cat, curled atop the stack, hissed and arched its back as it recoiled.
“Hush,” she chastised distractedly as she dropped cord after cord into the darkness. The feline scrambled, darting to the corner to watch her warily. Satisfied with her collection, Kiara slipped back into the shadows and carried her prize with her.
The dead man was still unconscious when she returned, but still alive, his heartbeat loud inside his chest. She tucked the wood into a corner, away from the tree branch covered mouth of the cave, and then set about making her blaze brighter.
She’s lost track of time, honestly, until the muttered French outburst alerts her to her guest’s consciousness and she finds the dead man staring at her naked form.
Well, at least she knew what country he was from.
Unperturbed, she rested on her knees and raised a brow questioningly. “Are you feeling better?”
He groaned as he sat up, pushing most of her clothes away from him. “Where am I?”
“Russia,” she answered back in his language. “Pretty unusual place for a Frenchman to be, especially one as unprepared as yourself.”
Dead man shifted, backing himself against the cave wall. His grey eyes darted toward the cave entrance, hidden from light. Kiara could hear the storm outside, but that didn’t mean he could.
“You can try, if you’d like, to run,” she offered lazily, poking at the flames with a stick. “Freezing doesn’t sound pleasant, as far as deaths go, but who am I to know. You seem to have a better grasp on that. How is your neck?”
His hands fly to his neck, to the raw wound that is no longer there. His eyes widen, staring unfocused at her. She may not be able to read minds as her beloved does, but she knows enough about humans to know he is starting to piece things together.
He’s as flighty as her prey when she gives them a glimpse of her inhumanity – a smile with too much teeth, a grip too strong to break.
She sighs, knowing she won’t get the answers she wants out of him. Not when he doesn’t seem to know them himself.
“Fine,” she said, reaching for her dress on the pile of clothes he’d pushed aside. She pulled it over her head as he averted his gaze. “We can start with something simple. What is your name?”
He doesn’t answer, just warily watches her.
And Kiara is patient. She’s had centuries to learn, so she just sits there and waits, still as a stone.
Eventually, he breaks.
“What do you want?” he questioned, his voice raspy and weak.
“Answers,” she replied nonchalantly. She won’t get the ones she wants but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something to be gained. “Give me them and I promise I will return you to wherever you desire.”
There was a sigh of resignation, tiredness.
“Are you with them?” he demanded.
Kiara tilted her head, studying him. “With who?”
“The people from my dreams.”
“I can assure you. I’m with nobody,” she promised. “What’s your name?”
“Sebastien le Livre,” he answered, dragging a shaky hand over his face.
“Well, Sebastien,” she leaned forward, tossing a log on the fire. “How did you come to die?”
~*~
Kiara lingers on the edge of the crowd, keeping pace with her targets as they blend into the crowd. She knows the methods, familiar because they are her own and the way of practically every immortal.
Sebastien has a pack, the four of them spread and yet connected in a familiar way. She watches them move, watches the flicker of recognition on his face as he sees her. His pace barely falters, but it’s enough to catch the attention of his tribe.
The vampire stills, letting the four pairs of eyes rest on her on the other side of the crowded Manhattan street. A horn beeped, a metallic whine as one of those newfound motor vehicles races between the horse-drawn buggies and carriages. Satisfied that her presence is known, she weaves between the pedestrians toward an alley.
“Hello, Sebastien,” she greeted in French, noticing the way his feet barely make a sound.
He’d changed since Russian and France where she’d left him, more tired and resigned. Someone who had gotten answers to questions he’d never wanted to ask.
“You never gave me a name,” he responded, shifting slightly to try to block something from her sight. Over his shoulder, she saw two of his companions pause at the alley’s mouth, guarding it from curious passersby.
They were deceptively languid, the kind of relaxed that Kiara was familiar with. Like panthers ready to pounce.
“You can call me Kiara,” she supplied. “It’s been a long time.”
“You haven’t aged a day,” he commented, his grey eyes sharp and suspicious as they scanned her face.
She smiled, slow and wide, her eyes gleaming. “Neither have you.”
Kiara saw the fourth one, the woman, enter from the other side of the alley, moving so gracefully and dangerously that she might be worried, were she someone else. The woman was as tall as her, her clothes hiding a lithe form that the vampire would recognize as lethal even if she wasn’t centuries old.
“Calm down, Sebastian, I am not here for trouble,” she promised. “I only want answers. I’ll even go any where you want.”
His eyes narrowed. “Central Park, night fall.”
She nodded and disappeared into the darkness as the woman reached them.
~*~
Kiara was perched on a bench when he saw her, a heavy coat on as the frost descended on the city.
“Not the same as Russia, is it?” She asked, watching as the lighters made their way around the park with their wicks. “I wasn’t sure you’d come, not with the way your pack seemed spooked.”
“As if you couldn’t find us,” Booker reminded her. Unconsciously, his hand moved to his neck, where the wounds had healed decades ago. “I still don’t know whether our last meeting was real or a fever dream.”
“I think the fact you’re here is evidence of its reality,” Kiara mused. “You found your answers?”
“Not all of them, no, but more than I knew,” he replied, raking his dirty blonde hair away from his face.
She could feel eyes on her, in the nearly empty park, and some part of her felt relieved that he’d found someone to answer them.
“Does it hurt to die?” She asked.
“You don’t know?” he looked at her, surprised. “You’re not?”
“I’m dead of course, but I am not like you,” she answered, leaning back. “My death was more of a … transformation. A painful journey into a new life.”
More than 200 years had passed since Amity, since she’d seen a trace of her beloved. She’d traveled the world, watching humanity change and grow. Cane insisted she was insane, that her beloved’s reincarnation was not a possibility. But what did he know, when she witnessed things such as the man before her.
And sometimes, there was the nagging doubt that she was meant to find her beloved, to usher in the pain that she tended to herald.
“It is excruciating,” he answered, sounding pained. “No matter how many times I come back, the only difference is how fast I will heal.”
“Would you not, if you could choose?” she pressed. Would her beloved choose to return, if she knew Kiara was waiting?
“My friend says we are all meant to die, but we do not get a say in when it will happen.” Sebastian watched her with sad eyes, burdened with pain and understanding. “And I wish so often that I did.”
Kiara smiled sadly.
“It does not seem hopeful, does it,” she wondered out loud. “When all you have to do is wait to die?”
He chuckled darkly, a bitter note. “My friends feel different, because they have another. It is not the same when you know that you will have somebody to live with you.”
The blonde clung to the hope that whoever her beloved returned as, she would know Kiara was waiting for her. Somehow.