#balldwin

There are certain tasks left to her, sometimes for her skill set, more often than either of them will confess for her patience where her husband has none. It's why she's been in Venice these last two weeks, the honored guest of Domenico Michele along with her stepson. Baldwin hadn't liked it, considering the circumstances, but he's always been protective, and she's always enjoyed it. This was no different.

"I'll be fine," she'd assured him before they parted ways, her hands settled gently against his chest, the smile on her face strained. She doesn't like this. She doesn't want to do this. All those centuries she took for granted that, in most circumstances, she would be able to remain with him, but now it's them making these decisions. And if he is back, if he can't die—

—awful, isn't it? Now the prudent thing to do, not for themselves but the family as a whole, is a brief separation, to gather allies as quickly as possible. "Nico will look after me if I need the help," she'd continued, not wanting to say it, knowing it needed to be said. "And Domenico knows better than to let anything happen to me. I'll be fine, and I'll be back soon." (Who was she trying to convince?)

She extracted the same promise from Baldwin and she kissed him goodbye, with a real fear that it might be the last time she did. Perhaps she worries too much, but if anything warrants that kind of fear, it's him coming back. Niccolò had squeezed her shoulder as if to comfort her as they watched him leave, ever respectful of his father's wishes, ever dedicated to his family.

(And because they need to consider it, now, she thinks that her stepson, who hovers near her as they approach Domenico's door, is as good an heir as they could ever hope to find.)

The planned three days turns into a week. The week turns into two. She and Baldwin speak whenever they can, and she does what she came here to do. She is a skillful negotiator, a diplomat in her own right, and Domenico knew her when she was a girl, clinging to her grandmother's skirts and listening in when she wasn't invited. It means that he has a soft spot for her, sometimes, in a way he does not with the rest of the de Clermonts: she never rejected his overtures of friendship. She never denied him. It means, too, that he forgets sometimes that she is as deadly as she is, that she and her husband are well matched.

She leaves Venice with an agreement between them, the promise that when the time comes next their families will be bonded. No doubt Serafine will be eager to see her mate turned, and sooner than later, and Constanta is clearly no longer an option. More than that, she leaves Venice with information: the Drăculești will rise, there is no doubt of that, but they will not do so unobserved.

Niccolò drives, knowing that if he allows Astoria to take the wheel, they may not make it to Sept-Tours in one piece. Baldwin arrived the day before, let them all know he was safe, told Astoria to hurry back to him, and she's been eager to follow his instructions; her stepson watches her with some amusement, but doesn't date tease out loud.

She knows that Baldwin hears the rumbling of the engine, the crunch of gravel beneath the tires, the moment they're on de Clermont grounds. (She imagines Baldwin inside, standing abruptly, ignoring Matthew as he speaks. She imagines Matthew's irritated aside, and Baldwin's simple response: I haven't seen my wife in two weeks.)

Centuries, they've had together, but even centuries don't soothe her unease when they're apart, or calm the hollow ache in her chest to be away from him. Nor do centuries dull the impatience to set eyes on him again, or the eager joy when she recognizes his shape so far in the distance, the set of his shoulders. She grips the seat of her car tightly enough that her fingers pierce through the leather, prompting a snort of amusement from Niccolò.

"Drive faster," she demands hoarsely, and he laughs out loud at that, but he complies.

Astoria sees the moment that Baldwin gives up on patience; it is, remarkably, the same moment she does, as well. She's opened the car door before it's come to a complete stop as he walks closer to where he knows they'll park. One moment, they're apart, and the next, they've crashed into each other, Astoria swept into his arms and Baldwin's hands under her thighs to hold her in place as she wraps her legs around his waist.

The car comes to a stop behind them, the passenger side door left open. Neither of them notice. The moment she's in his grasp she's taken his face in her hands, relieved beyond words to have him whole and before her, and Baldwin closes what little distance is left between them to kiss her.

Centuries, they've had together, and only two weeks apart, but their reunion is as sweet now as it's ever been. One kiss becomes a second and a third, neither one of them willing to be parted, and only the familiar sound of Serafine, standing in a doorway with Diana as she greets her stepbrother, clearing her throat can make them tear themselves away from each other.

It feels like an open wound is healing. Astoria lets out a quiet laugh, and Baldwin tucks his face against her neck for a moment, breathes her in. "He's been insufferable since he got here," Serafine reports cheerfully, and beside her, Niccolò rolls his eyes and laughs.

"One day with just him. Try two weeks with just her."

"Beasts," Astoria informs them, "both of you," and her daughter only grins wider. It's a rare moment of familiarity, of peace, amidst the chaos. Miyako is due tomorrow, with Lydia. Fernando and Sarah will follow shortly after, as will Freyja and Marcus and Phoebe. Gallowglass and Stasia, she thinks, are already here. It's been some time since the whole of the family was together. She's almost glad for it, though now, she doesn't care for anything except the lingering touch of Baldwin's lips against her throat.

"Should I get the others?" Matthew asks. "Should we start discussing our next moves?" But even before he's finished the question Baldwin has lifted his head and begun to walk, Astoria still held firmly in his grasp, Astoria's arms and legs secure around him. When he makes no move to stop in the doorway, Matthew lets out a noise of some disapproval. "Well?"

"Do what you want," Baldwin says, a bit impatiently. He still doesn't stop. "It's been two weeks since I last saw my wife. If you need to speak to me now you can do so while I greet her properly. I don't think she minds an audience."

"You might learn something," she calls over his shoulder, and Matthew simply shakes his head and turns towards his nephew.

              with  a  gentle  smile ,  she  approaches  her  target ,  armed  with  her  weapon  of  choice  .   ❛❛  someone  wanted  to  see their  uncle .  ❜❜  she  looks  at  philip ,  who  stretches  out  a  tiny  arm ,  as  if  on  command .  ❛❛ isn’t  that  right  ?  you  wanted  to  see  uncle  baldwin ?    ❜❜  diana  lifts  herself  to  her  toes ,  pressing  a  brief  kiss  to  baldwin’s  cheek ,  before  lifting  the  infant to  sloppily ‘kiss’ the other  cheek . 

       ❛❛ i also  wanted  to  see you  about  something  too ,  if  you  had  a  minute .   ❜❜

                    𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐄𝐍, 𝐌𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐒 𝐖𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐀𝐖,  all she allowed herself to recall from the journey, as they had set course to Sept Tours.  Despite spring nearing and the colours of nature looking  lively,  and the distinct shades the older vampire usually saw in the varying colours, her mind was somewhere else entirely        it had been  numbed,  both out of necessity and choice.  How was she to look at such vibrant colours, when the light,  her light,  had been taken from her?

                        Initially, Miriam had  refused  to go         refused  to leave her late mate’s side for once and for all.  They had seen it all,  together,  and now she was expected to walk away as if nothing happened.  As if she hadn’t lost what felt like  half  of  her.    The fact that he was left in what was now enemy territory only made matters  worse.  Not ready to part, it had been Matthew who had taken her away ;  to  again,  in the time span of mere hours,  painfully  separate her from Ori.  Despite putting up a fight with Matthew   (  as if her life depended on it  )   her rational thinking found a way to  remind  her of the promise she had made.  As any promise Miriam made, she would honour it        but this one  especially ;  the  last  promise to her beloved mate.  To honour it, she needed to stay alive, and therefore she had to find a way to walk away.  Bloody tears formed in her eyes, her lip trembled and breath was caught in her chest as it couldn’t seem to move past her heart        an organ confused whether to beat or say entirely silent, as if it knew it had lost something dear.  

                        Miriam almost felt like a newborn once they had arrived on Sept Tours grounds on horseback, as she wasn’t sure how they had gotten to the place so  quickly.   In a way, the sharp and  painful  emotions had also served as a reminder to her infancy as a vampire        it being the last time she had felt such grief, after an incredible loss over her people and her family.  Back then, she had shifted her focus from grief to  vengeance ;  she had given herself purpose.  She couldn’t mortally harm the person responsible        it would go against the promise made        but perhaps the promise was strong enough to serve as a lifeline.  At least until she could cope without it.  

She wakes at the first blush of morning, a sliver of the sky visible from a gap in the curtains and glowing a pale violet. It catches her off guard some mornings, when she wakes here, and if she asked him to move the bed he certainly would, but the moments afforded to her now are precious and rare, and she guards them. She remains still for a long moment, listening for a change in his heartbeat, and when she hears none she turns, slowly, slowly, to face him, taking care not to disturb his rest.

          The older she gets, she’s been promised, the deeper she’ll sleep; as it is now even the subtlest change in the light can wake her. Some part of it is, no doubt, the natural consequence of a long period of adjustment. Even as a warmblood, Astoria loved mornings, and she woke early even on the days she could sleep in. And she would climb quietly out of bed and tiptoe in bare feet across the floor of her bedroom to the balcony, where she would sit, balanced carefully on the railing, her knees drawn to her chest and her arms around her legs and her hair loose as she watched the sun climb and color ripple through the sky.

          A few of the habits of her first life have remained with her—the way she holds her breath as she settles again, watching him for any sign of change, is one of them. But Baldwin sleeps, and after several minutes she relaxes.

          It’s not the first time she’s woken in his bed; she doubts it will be the last. Last night, as she has half a dozen other times, she leaned in his doorway and waited, a crooked smile playing at her lips, her curls damp but drying behind her, wearing a nightgown and nothing else. The woman he had been entertaining, perhaps expecting to stay the night, had stared back at her with open hostility; she looked to Baldwin, obviously expecting some sort of defense, but he’d only laughed under his breath and stood to gather her clothes. Astoria had noted with some pleasure that they were nearby, no doubt left there in anticipation of her arrival.

Perhaps because he is the lord of his own demesne, he doesn’t knock when he enters, or announce himself beforehand—he simply opens the door and steps inside, ignoring the various noises of surprise and, in the case of one of the maids fluttering around her, outright disapproval. For her part, Astoria only spares him a smile and a raised eyebrow over her shoulder.

          She knows that look—moreover, she knows not to argue with it. “Excuse us, please,” Astoria instructs, already taking a polite step away and waving a hand vaguely towards the door. When one of the maids, a woman in her forties with a particularly earth-shaking scowl, opens her mouth in protest, he cuts in before she can, voice smooth and sharp at once.

          “No need for you to dress her when I’ll be undoing all your work in a moment,” he says with the arrogant nonchalance of the obscenely wealthy and spectacularly powerful; one of the younger maids lets a giggle escape before slapping a hand over her mouth in embarrassment, and eventually all three of them have filed out of the room. Even before they’ve closed the door behind them Baldwin is behind her, hands settling at her sides, nose tucked in her loose hair; they are, as ever, a picture of perfection, wedded bliss to an extreme. It had been at once brilliant and impossibly stupid of her to recommend marriage as a cover a decade before and she is suffering for it now, all too aware of the way his fingers fit against her ribs, their skin separated by only the thin layer of her shift.

Every inch of her hurts. The wound in her side is fresh, and painful, but it’s the gash in her thigh that very nearly spelled her end, and there is a fierce and potent mixture of shame and anger swirling in her, a little tempest building and building in her chest. Baldwin has, quite literally, left a handprint on her side where he’s helped keep her upright, and when her eyes flicker down she can see the crimson stain on his fingers still. 

          Her own hand, pale and shaking, comes up as if to halt him. “Let me see if I know how this will go,” she says, voice strained. “I say yes, Baldwin, I am angry with you, because you stopped me from getting what I wanted. You say, better angry than dead, and you remind me that had you not intervened, Elyssa would surely have killed me. I say, at least she would be dead alongside me. You tell me that you don’t intend to waste your time teaching someone with so little interest in their own survival, because you are an important man with important things to do. I tell you then that I am exhausted more than anything, and that I have been left to simply survive for too long, and that if I cannot properly live then this isn’t worth it. You tell me that I will live again when I am ready, and that to get there, I must be patient, and I mustn’t sneak out of the house, and I mustn’t disobey your commands or ignore your guidance. If I have missed anything, then please, tell me.”

          There’s something not unlike a sob caught in her throat but she refuses to give it voice, refuses to give Baldwin anything that might suggest that she truly is so weak. And perhaps it is unfair to him — he has been a good teacher, and without him, she thinks she would be dead already. Even at his most frustrated, his most exhausted with her, he has been good to her. He doesn’t deserve her anger, and she knows it, and there will come a time when he tires of saving her from her own worst impulses. 

Something is going to happen tonight.

She's not sure why she knows, only that she does know. Everything feels slightly off: the plants in the house quiver when she isn't near, as if they're afraid of a coming storm, and the cats have been stalking the halls of the house with obvious anxiety when they're not staring out the windows as if on guard. Something possessed her to renew all of her protective spells this afternoon, to carve new runes into her black pillar candles and light them all; they're still burning, the flames flickering unevenly as she opens the front door and steps outside. Even in her boots and with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a cup of tea burning between her hands, the winter chill feels profound, and the snow falls silently.

That alone would be enough to put her on edge: the water always sings for her, but tonight, there's no sound to be heard.

"I hate surprises." She says this to herself, mostly because there's no one there to hear her complaining; the cats are keeping their distance from the cold as she kicks the door closed behind her, and even Maeve Roe hovers far enough away that Astoria can barely see her. Something is coming. It's getting closer and closer; it's been getting closer and closer for hours now. Her tarot cards and tea leaves have done nothing to help her sort through what it might be. Her intuition is maddeningly vague. Astoria only knows that it, whatever it is, is getting closer because the itching in her left palm has grown from a light tingle to something almost painful.

She feels the wind shift before she sees the headlights. Slowly, she takes a sip of her tea, wincing when she burns her tongue. It comes closer and closer and closer. Maeve Roe flickers under the sliver of the moon, like a vision fading from view, and Astoria tries not to read too much into it. If she were listening for it, she'd hear the sounds of the nine o'clock train passing a few miles away, its whistle audible even when its rumble can't be felt, but she's not listening for it. She's waiting.

She hardly notices the car even as it pulls up. Instead, she's staring at the shape of the man inside it, trying to catch a glimpse of him before he opens the door. When the door does open she feels another chill, unexpected and deep enough that she swears she feels a vibration in her bones.

The first thing she realizes, as she hears the sound of snow crunching under his shoes when he steps out of the car, is that he is a vampire. The second is that his presence, intimidating though it may be, doesn't feel wrong. Shouldn't it feel wrong?